My wife Anne has been a Star Trek fan since at least high school, which is how long I’ve known her. I’ve tagged alongside her for the past few decades and watched a few hundred episodes myself. I’ve never 100% caught up to her but have seen Deep Space Nine in its entirety and can confirm it reigns above all. We attended multiple local Trek conventions and bought the occasional toys, comics, and other merchandise, but up until six months ago we had no investment in the new Trek works on Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) because we weren’t in the mood to collect ALL the streaming services. And to us, CBS All Access at launch sounded like a non-starter. We regretted the Trek universe leaving us behind, but our longtime favorite geek universes have broken our hearts before. We planned to cope and move on.
Yes, There Are Scenes During the “Morbius” End Credits
I thought Morbius the Living Vampire was scary when I was 6 or 7 and he showed up in a 1977 comic I picked up at the toy store. In a time when the Comics Code Authority was still touchy about allowing comics to show the undead because they might turn young readers into rampaging juvenile delinquents, Morbius exploited a loophole with an origin that revealed him as not an actual vampire, but as a scientist who conducted questionable experiments to cure his own rare blood disease, which went awry and turned him into a science vampire, with many vampiric powers and few-if-any vampiric weaknesses. He was a forerunner of the irritating horror sub-subgenre Vampires Who Ignore Vampire Rules and Who Therefore Aren’t Vampires by Definition So Maybe the Writer Should’ve Made Up Their Own Monster Instead of Misusing the Word “Vampire”.
Our 2021 Road Trip #44: Restaurants Rundown Redux

Nobody makes huckleberry walnut salads back home in Indiana. Adventures got only marginally fancier from here.
Longtime MCC readers may recall our best annual travelogues usually include photos from the restaurants we’ve visited in other states and the foodstuffs we’ve found that we don’t necessarily have back home in Indianapolis. We do enjoy sharing those moments, but you may have noticed their conspicuous absence from this series except in Part 30, when we covered our culinary results from Days One through Five, the first half of our vacation. We had looked forward to leaving home and hopefully leaving the year’s troubles behind for just ten days. The more we drove, the more we had to face reality: it was the same kind of 2021 everywhere in America.
Days Six through Ten had their moments. In this context “moment” isn’t always a compliment.
96 Tears and One Punch: The Oscars 2022 Season Finale
If you count the one-hour unaired portion of the 94th Academy Awards that began at 7 p.m. EDT, this year’s return to the Dolby Theatre technically came in at a staggering 272 minutes when the usual legal disclaimers rolled at 11:42 p.m., beating the year A Beautiful Mind won by nine minutes. We already knew going into this evening that it couldn’t possibly beat the Shortest Oscars Ever record of 100 minutes, achieved in 1959 when an angry Jerry Lewis gave all the Oscars to The Geisha Boy, read his 90-minute doctoral thesis about muscular dystrophy, and called it a night. Just the same, these Oscars were a lot, even before the cruel insult and the on-stage assault.
The Oscar Quest ’22 Grand Finale: All the Other Nominees I Could Catch

Vanessa Hudgens and Andrew Garfield in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tick, tick…BOOM! on Netflix. To those who swear Garfield’s best performance of 2021 was in No Way Home, I am BEGGING you to watch a second movie.
It’s that time again! Longtime MCC readers know this time of year is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve watched every Best Picture winner ever (some more closely than others) and as of this writing I’ve seen every Best Picture nominee released since 1987 (some in better-quality formats than others). Nobody I know cares, but it’s been my thing for years.
Thanks to pandemic restlessness and our current streaming media bonanza, starting last year I expanded the boundaries of Oscar Quest to see how many nominees I could watch in any category whatsoever, period. This is equally unimpressive to everyone I know, but now it’s like a game for me, and a far livelier one than solitaire.
The MCC 2022 Oscar-Nominated Short Film Revue

“One of these things is not like the other” describes both the robin in this group hug and its status as the only family-friendly Animated Short Film nominee.
Each year since 2009 (except for 2021’s pandemic lockdown marathon) I’ve paid visits to Keystone Art Cinema, the oldest surviving art-film theater in Indianapolis, to view the big-screen releases of the Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film. Results vary each time and aren’t always for all audiences, but I appreciate the opportunities to sample such works and see what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences deemed worthy of celebrating, whether I agree with their collective opinions or not. Since 2019 I’ve also assigned myself the extra-credit activity of catching as many nominees for Best Documentary Short Film as possible, depending on their availability online. The good folks at Shorts.TV, who package the theatrical releases each year, are supposed to be releasing them for home rental sometime soon, which will be a nice way to save yourself some gas money.
First up: my rankings of this year’s five Best Animated Short Film nominees, which were the most mixed of mixed bags that I’ve seen in years, not to mention the edgiest and incontrovertibly NSFW-iest. Four are available online; one was exclusive to the Shorts.tv program.
“Parallel Mothers” and Fraught Intersections
Indulging in the Academy Awards season is easier than ever if you have the free time and all the accesses. The proliferation of streaming services has opened new doorways for any wannabe cineaste to create their own little film festival at home, with a panoply of options from across every category. However, some nominees still stubbornly observed the time-honored tradition of refusing a wide release until after their nominations were secured, and have therefore been exclusive to theaters this past month. Thankfully this year has been easier than ever for me to catch up to Real Critics — as of today Indianapolis has expanded from one tiny theater to four whole theaters willing to show films of all sizes, not just blockbusters, as we did ten years ago. It’s almost like we’re this close to becoming a real Big City.
One hope for my expanded Oscar Quest ’22 was fulfilled: fascinating new experiences I might not have otherwise prioritized. When the nominations were announced, our town’s new indie theater was still showing Parallel Mothers, the latest feature from the continually acclaimed Pedro Almodovar. I’ve read about many of his films for over half my life, but never actually watched one all the way through before. The first time I ran across him, I was a college-bound youngster who found Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! one night while channel-flipping, but didn’t stick around for the whole thing. I also faintly remember frequent commercials on the same channel for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which likely fit well into their niche programming. Till now, that’s been it for me. Read about these fleeting moments and more in my forthcoming memoir I Was an Unsupervised Teen with Cinemax.
Our 2021 Road Trip #43: Black Hawk Up
One last state. One last stop. One last attraction. One last park. One last forest. One last cliff. One last statue. All the plurals throughout this series come down to these.
Five Miles Out from the Walmart Volcano
I nearly called this “The Day They Nuked Walmart”, but that’s even less accurate and I’m told this isn’t a great moment in history to joke about nukes. One day nuke jokes shall make a comeback, possibly on my watch but not necessarily today.
What were we talking about? Oh, right, I didn’t mention it yet:
Six Kind Things About “The Worst Person in the World”
Indulging in the Academy Awards season is easier than ever if you have the free time and all the accesses. The proliferation of streaming services has opened new doorways for any wannabe cineaste to create their own little film festival at home, with a panoply of options from across every category. However, some nominees still stubbornly observed the time-honored tradition of refusing a wide release until after their nominations were secured, and have therefore been exclusive to theaters this past month. Thankfully this year has been easier than ever for me to catch up to Real Critics — as of today Indianapolis has expanded from one tiny theater to four whole theaters willing to show films of all sizes, not just blockbusters, as we did ten years ago. It’s almost like we’re this close to becoming a real Big City.
One drawback I fully expected from my expanded Oscar Quest ’22: not every film is for me. I don’t mean simply “some films bad.” I make no pretense to objectivity in these entries here on my li’l unpaid quasi-boutique hobby-job. No matter how many critics love a given work or how many awards it’s been put up for, I will not and cannot love everything, nor does everything have a fair shot with me. Some stuff is simply Not My Thing. There’re a few different ways a movie can lose me. Norway’s acclaimed dramedy The Worst Person in the World invokes a couple of them.
Once Upon a Time in “Belfast”…
…there was a tiny child named Kenneth Branagh, but everyone called him Buddy. He was a smarter version of Ralphie from A Christmas Story and even had the same preoccupation with the toys and films of his age, plus he even got to unwrap his fair share of Christmas gifts. He didn’t need Ralphie’s narrator powers because he was perfectly happy talking aloud to anyone who’d listen. He never got in trouble for talking too much, even when he kept pointing out little differences between Catholicism and Protestantism like an ’80s standup comic who’s never heard other comics’ routines and feels like he’s blazing new trails in the field of Just Asking Questions.
Our 2021 Road Trip #42: Ten Days, Nine Hotel Windows

Best window view of the trip was in a motel across the way from Yellowstone, which proved impossible to top.
It’s fun turning our vacations into extended travelogs threaded with a sometimes weird, often self-deprecating personal narrative that ensures I’ll never be invited to write for a travel magazine. This year I thought I’d also toss in our answers to a question no one asked: “How did the world look from the vantage point of our middle-class accommodations?”
Yes, There’s a Bonus After “The Batman” End Credits
It’s been two months since the last new superhero film hit theaters, and six months since the last new DC Comics film. Between Oscar season and unwanted studio castoffs, it’s been such a drought for viewers who’ll only leave the comfort of their homes for comic-book films. At last The Batman is here to save them. Not that I’m complaining too loudly about this cinematic rescuer, as it’s one of the Dark Knight’s best films in over a decade, maybe longer.
“Cyrano”: The Unrequited Renaissance Man Returns

My screening included an intro from director Joe Wright, thanking the audience for coming to the movies. He’s welcome.
Hey, remember romantic movies? With happy endings or otherwise? The list of romances I’ve truly liked would need more than one index card to write out, but I hadn’t thought about it lately until I saw the new adaptation of Cyrano and realized some rarely evoked emotions were surfacing. I blame blockbusters.
Our 2021 Road Trip #41: Sock Monkeyshines

Sock monkeys performing the classic “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” sketch like all your favorite politicians.
Show of hands, who’d be excited to visit a sock museum? Complete lack of hands, right? But what if the socks were turned into sock monkeys?
Some things are all about presentation.
Crossing Paths with “Drive My Car”
It’s a nifty feeling when you can revel in a film whose driving engine is closely built atop something else you’ve read or seen before. No, I don’t mean reboots or sequels.
Prime example: all the reviews I’ve read for The French Dispatch embraced its key objective as an homage to The New Yorker. Apart from clicking on the occasional Richard Brody pieces until I hit my monthly paywall limit, The New Yorker has never been my thing. Accredited critics apparently have lifetime subscriptions to it and were overjoyed to have Wes Anderson spinning tales within their distinguished frame of reference. Not that I’m begrudging them the chance to enjoy intellectual dividends on their literary investment, but I confess I sighed in relief when it received zero Academy Award nominations. The last time I sat for two hours repeating to myself over and over, “I don’t get it,” it was while watching Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which posed similar paradigm alienation for me. I wasn’t looking forward to recreating that experience for my Oscar Quest ’22 and am now not self-obligated to include it.
Meanwhile in Japan, one Ryusuke Hamaguchi — a new name to me because I’ve never been to a film festival or a theater in NYC or L.A. — co-wrote and directed Drive My Car, which loosely adapts a short story but whose narrative and thematic foundation is Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. As luck would have it, that particular play has popped up twice in my life — in one college class that I barely remember (I had the Cliffs Notes) and again in preparation for a comic con.
Our 2021 Road Trip #40: It’s Not You, Wisconsin, It’s Us
Humans aren’t built for infinite velocity or nonstop acceleration. Life was not meant to be lived like a marathon without a finish line. We need our days off from work, our pauses between musical measures, our moments of calm between stretches of pain, our interludes between content-packed chapters, our tactile diversions from doomscrolling, our little isolation-booth time-outs from social media, and our interstate rest stops on long, long, long drives. Sometimes we need breaks from sustained input, from our cravings for visual or intellectual stimulation. Sometimes during those little recesses, the world can’t help sneaking a few minute interruptions through the cracks.
My 2021 Reading Stacks #6-Up: The Super-Sized Finale

All 41 books and graphic novels featured in this series, not including the two I borrowed from Anne.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.
Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place.
I’ve previously written why I don’t do eBooks. Perhaps someday I’ll also explain why these capsules are exclusive to MCC and not shared on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites where their authors might prefer I’d share them…
Among the may disadvantages of scaling back my internet writing hobby is I now a massive backlog of entries that I tell myself I must do someday, which are now trapped in a bottleneck in my mind. Rather than drag these out to October, here’s all the other books and graphic novels I finished reading in 2021. Some capsules have been truncated to save time and to cut corners in instances where the work left an unmemorable impression on me. As usual, these aren’t ranked or even listed in reading order. They’re simply the order in which I’m grabbing them off the towers that have been sitting next to our computer for months and waiting for me to do this. So LET’S DO THIS.
Our 2021 Road Trip #39: Chasing Royalty Across State Lines
Day Eight began and ended in very different places, yet not so different as we compared notes between a pair of murals that have nothing to do with each other unless you dig too deeply beneath the surface.
The Secret Life of “Flee”

WE HAVE TITLE! Also, this is exactly what we fear would happen if we ever tried using a travel agent.
Have you ever looked at a list of Academy Awards nominations and thought to yourself that the competition might mean more if you’d seen at least one film in every category? You’re in luck: if you catch Flee, you’ll have an inroad to three categories at once, as multiple AMPAS branches served up three Oscar nominations for this Danish animated documentary, one for each word in that description.











