The Lincoln Birthday Weekend, Part 9: ‘Round Springfield

November 10, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Brick wall mural of Homer Simpson eating one of many pink-frosted donuts raining upon him from above. Psychedelic tattoos cover his open yellow flesh.

The third Springfield we’ve ever visited has a mural that peers into a fourth Springfield.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together on some new experience. On past trips we’d visited the graves, tombs, mausoleums and virtual posthumous palaces of 24 American Presidents in varying accommodations and budgets. One of the biggest names ever to grace the White House kept eluding us: Abraham Lincoln, planted a mere three hours away in Springfield, Illinois. In May 2023 I figured: let’s make his tomb a trip headliner of its very own, not a warm-up act on the road to Branson or whatever. History is technically more Anne’s fervent interest than mine, but we found plenty to do beyond reading wordy educational placards…

…and Springfield had no shortage of engagement for us out-of-towners nestled among the numerous museums and points of Lincoln-based interest — food, art, a spot of geek shopping, and Saturday morning downtown street events we hadn’t expected.

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The Lincoln Birthday Weekend, Part 8: The Lincoln Museum Minus Lincoln

November 7, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Statues: Mary Todd Lincoln trying on a dress while Elizabeth Keckley pins it in the back.

Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley, her personal dressmaker and confidante.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together on some new experience. On past trips we’d visited the graves, tombs, mausoleums and virtual posthumous palaces of 24 American Presidents in varying accommodations and budgets. One of the biggest names ever to grace the White House kept eluding us: Abraham Lincoln, planted a mere three hours away in Springfield, Illinois. In May 2023 I figured: let’s make his tomb a trip headliner of its very own, not a warm-up act on the road to Branson or whatever. History is technically more Anne’s fervent interest than mine, but we found plenty to do beyond reading wordy educational placards…

…especially at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, but they offered much more than excerpts from our old school textbooks. Most museums nowadays beat out my old textbooks, that’s for sure. Throughout our travels over the past 25 years we’ve found the subjects out there more varied, the exhibits filled with new names I never heard until I learned them through the magic of historical tourist attractions.

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There, I Voted and Ate My Vegetables, Now to Spend the Evening Unplugged

November 5, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Comic book cover: campaign button reading "Vote the People's Choice: Captain America for President!" His smiling face is on a flag background. The rest of the cover is yellow.

I was 8 when Cap declined the chance to run for President. Today I’d vote for him three times if I could.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I’m an introvert, I suck at belonging to things, I don’t do sports or frats or hivemind collectives, I tend to be disqualified from group identification, and yes, sometimes I feel extremely sad about this weekly during Sunday church service. My misfit attitude — some of it my own fault, some of it everyone else’s — goes double for political parties. Were it up to me, all parties would be dissolved, everyone would be forced to deliberate their votes alone in a soundproof closet, and all candidates would be forced to run alone with no support system whatsoever, just their resume and their wits, exactly like any applicant for every ordinary job ever.

But I vote! Because I can and I should. I’ve voted in every Presidential election since 1992. I have never, ever been given the option to vote enthusiastically for a Presidential candidate who radiated wisdom through their every gaze and was demonstrably, empirically without sin. I’ll keep a light on for my future President Dulcinea, should they be born and ascend through the mud-slung ranks before I die.

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The Lincoln Birthday Weekend, Part 7: His Presidential Library & Museum

November 4, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Statues of the Lincoln family (Abraham, Mary and their three sons) in front of an indoor replica of the White House facade. Anne stands between two of the boys, doing jazz hands.

If you liked Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy or Archie Meets the Punisher, you’ll love “Anne meets the Lincoln family”! This fall on C-SPAN 3!

How do you do, fellow olds! Here on Election Day Eve 2024, do you feel the despairing urge to retreat from the present-day reality’s endless shenanigans into not-too-distant days of yore, when Presidential candidates with far more character endured and even persevered through much worse times in American history? Have we got the escape hatch for you!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together on some new experience. On past trips we’d visited the graves, tombs, mausoleums and virtual posthumous palaces of 24 American Presidents in varying accommodations and budgets. One of the biggest names ever to grace the White House kept eluding us: Abraham Lincoln, planted a mere three hours away in Springfield, Illinois. In May 2023 I figured: let’s make his tomb a trip headliner of its very own, not a warm-up act on the road to Branson or whatever. History is technically more Anne’s fervent interest than mine, but we found plenty to do beyond reading wordy educational placards…

…which are even cooler when they’re paired with statues in action! We got all that and more when we departed the Illinois State Museum for our next stop, the much larger Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum. This huge edifice was opened in 2005 and contains the Lincoln Presidential Library and other research collections, in addition to a series of statues reenacting various moments in the sixteenth President’s life. The statues were sadly not animatronic, but that didn’t seem to bother the few dozen field-tripping students we had to wade through on our way in. A selection of relics were found here and there around the life-sized exhibits.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Venom: The Last Dance” End Credits

November 3, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tom Hardy walking in a desert with a CGI balloon tethered to his back. The balloon had scary teeth and Spider-Man eyes.

The Mirror Universe version of The Red Balloon.

Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Venom: The Last Dance the least worst Venom film in cinema history! Unless we count movies about snakes containing literal venom!

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Halloween Stats 2024: OF COURSE the Only Day It Rained THIS ENTIRE WEEK.

October 31, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Halloween skeleton lying on a table surrounded by party snacks -- breadsticks, sausages, cheeses, carrots, and so on.

No, this wasn’t our house, but an office party I ran across a couple weeks ago.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: each year since 2008 I’ve kept statistics on the number of trick-or-treaters brave enough to approach our suburban Indianapolis doorstep during the Halloween celebration of neighborhood unity and no-strings-attached strangers with candy. I began tracking our numbers partly for future candy inventory purposes and partly out of curiosity, so now it’s a tradition for me. Like many bloggers I’m a stats fiend who thrives on taking head counts, even when we’re expecting discouraging results.

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So Many Signs: Indianapolis Redecorates for the 2024 Coming of Taylor Swift

October 29, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
Giant Taylor Swift mural on the front of a Marriott whose face is all blue glass. She has a pink guitar.

Attack of the 300-Foot Taylor Swift!

TAYLOR SWIFT IS COMING! TAYLOR SWIFT IS COMING! TAYLOR SWIFT IS COMING!

Here in Indianapolis, our local media are positively ecstatic to have anything to talk about besides politics, homicides, and the city’s increasingly toxic levels of road construction. For those just joining us: Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour will be stopping in Indy this weekend to play three nights at Lucas Oil Stadium. While she and her entourage take over the place, our Indianapolis Colts will be staying with buddies in Minnesota until someone calls and gives them the okay to come back, which will depend on how they do Sunday against the Vikings.

Tickets to her sold-out Hoosier trilogy are still available through the usual auction sites and scalpers for four-digit sums, so don’t expect live coverage from me. Downtown hotel rooms are sold out across the board, though some are available around the edges of town and in the suburbs. Tourists are welcome to fill those up as well, but please be aware, when planning how to get from your hotel to the stadium, the first several hundred Google results for “mass transit Indianapolis” are a long list of pipe dreams sprinkled with a few nice tries.

In preparation for the influx of hundreds of thousands of folks into our modest city, they’ve gussied up our downtown! In addition to the amazing colossal Swift temporarily pictured on the giant blast-shield Marriott on West Street, thirty-two new street signs have been posted at various intersections, pretending to rename them after her songs and albums. I work downtown four days a week and own four of her CDs, so I felt I ought to do something resembling participation. Monday afternoon I sent myself on a side quest at lunchtime to take a long walk and see how many of those signs I could spot before my feet were ground into mulch. Please enjoy this gallery of results, a fraction of the total signage out there for the gawking all this week!

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“Joker: Folie à Deux”: The Last Laugh Is the Best and Only Laugh

October 27, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Poster for "Joker Folie a Deux" hanging in a theater lobby with gray walls above a red couch.

Oh, great, THIS frickin’ guy again.

So I saw this during the week of the Heartland International Film Festival, when it served as a sort of contrasting intermission between eight other smaller, better films. I was much more motivated to type about all of those first (along with two other delayed non-festival entries), but the MCC rule is every film I see in theaters gets its own entry.

[resigned sigh]

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The Lincoln Birthday Weekend, Part 6: Misc. Museum

October 25, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A human skeleton and a horse skeleton posed together in a museum.

A man and his horse: the skeletons! Purchased in 1919 for non-Halloween purposes.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together on some new experience. On past trips we’d visited the graves, tombs, mausoleums and virtual posthumous palaces of 24 American Presidents in varying accommodations and budgets. One of the biggest names ever to grace the White House kept eluding us: Abraham Lincoln, planted a mere three hours away in Springfield, Illinois. In May 2023 I figured: let’s make his tomb a trip headliner of its very own, not a warm-up act on the road to Branson or whatever. History is technically more Anne’s fervent interest than mine, but we found plenty to do beyond reading wordy educational placards…

…though sometimes placard-based education can be interesting. The Illinois State Museum is smaller than our Indiana State Museum, but lured us to their doorstep with a temporary exhibit of Stuff Generation X Kids Had (including us!). We made the most of our admission fees and browsed other rooms while we were there.

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The Heartland International Film Festival 2024 Season Finale

October 21, 2024 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana, Meta, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Black pin with yellow border and lettering, "Audience Choice Jury Member, Heartland International Film Festival".

Woo-hoo! Free pin!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! Since 1992 my hometown of Indianapolis has presented the Heartland International Film Festival, a multi-day, multi-theater celebration of cinema held every October. Local moviegoers have the opportunity see over a hundred new works in the realms of documentaries, narrative features, shorts, and animation made across multiple continents from myriad points of the human experience. Some participants stop in Indy on their grand tour of Hollywood’s festival circuit; some are local productions on shoestring budgets; and a wide spectrum of claims are staked in the innumerable niches between, projects with well-known actors screening alongside indies with enormous hearts…

Heartland’s 33rd edition ran October 10-20 — over 100 films, at least seventeen of them with cast/crew Q&As afterward. I took a week’s vacation from my day job and posted for nine consecutive days about the seven films I saw at five theaters in ten days, one virtual screening we’ll get to in a moment, plus a few other overdue, mostly unrelated entries. I doubt anyone out there read every single word, but I’m not even done yet!

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