Our 2021 Road Trip #36: Kaiju Americana Trilogy

Jamestown giant buffalo!

If all real buffaloes had been this size, the history of the American frontier would’ve gone very differently.

One of the all-time greatest songs about road trips is an album track by “Weird Al” Yankovic called “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota“. It wasn’t one of his classic pop-single parodies, just a wacky 7-minute riff on ’70s lite-country crooners that aptly captured the essence of roadside attractions in all their abnormal Americana glory. Over the past twenty years we’ve seen our share of eccentricity and ingenuity on the run, but in one respect we’ve found the reality comes up a bit short: there are not garish, campy, world-record-setting colossi standing in all fifty states. We’ve seen a lot of “big”, but not much “biggest”.

Clearly we should’ve driven more deeply into North Dakota sooner. A 131-mile stretch of I-94 through the heart of their unassuming state skirts past no less than three such mega-animals in three different towns. Sure, their national park was pretty and a few statues of historical figures were fine, but they shriveled in comparison to the frivolous joy of this towering trio, none of whom have ever been invited to star in their own Syfy Original Film.

Continue reading

Old Guy With a PS3, Year 7: You Are Now Leaving Skyrim

Skryim PC!

That time my character had to assassinate the emperor himself by posing as a chef. Well, “had to” might be an overstatement.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, at the beginning of 2016:

As a kid, I frequented video arcades regularly. As a parent, my son and I spent a good decade playing games together on his various systems. When he graduated and moved away to college, he took all his systems with him, leaving me with only my old Nintendo that won’t play cartridges unless you keep the Game Genie firmly inserted, and an Atari Plug-‘n’-Play Controller I got for Christmas a few years ago that interested me for about two weeks. On Black Friday 2014, I decided I wanted back in the 21st century gaming mode and picked up a used PS3.

Naturally I started off a generation behind the rest of the civilized world, but I didn’t care. After fifteen months without, holding a controller felt abnormal and rusty for the first few weeks. Once I got used to it again and figured out how to disable the “Digital Clear Motion Plus” feature on my TV, I could shake the dust off my trigger fingers, choose the games I wanted to play, sprint or meander through them at whatever pace I saw fit, and try some different universes beyond Final Fantasy and our other longtime mainstays…

…and it’s been a minor MCC annual tradition ever since. On average I would play three times per week, maybe two hours per session, and get through four to six games per year, except when I spent thirteen months on Borderlands 2, that other time I spent nine months of 2019 on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel…and, as you can understand, when I ventured to Skyrim for eleven straight months in the Year of our Pandemic 2020. That February I’d entered the Elder Scrolls world for the first time. A month later, the real world fell to pieces.

Continue reading

Our 2021 Road Trip #35: North Dakota Statue Stopover Trilogy

Young Theodore Roosevelt statue, Dickinson, North Dakota.

Taken together with other Presidential statues in this series, we see the Young Teddy/Old Teddy gap is nowhere near as wide as the one between Young and Old Elvis.

Tired of endlessly pretty panoramas from the Western U.S.? You say we should get back to some roadside art? Have we got some chapters for you!

Continue reading

“Licorice Pizza”: West Coast Comfort Food

Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim in "Licorice Pizza".

“Hey, wanna get some Fun Dips and go see Last Tango in Paris at Grauman’s? I have to bring an adult so they’ll let me in.”

It’s a bit early but I’m counting down the days till this year’s Academy Awards nominations are announced on February 8th, which will begin my annual Oscar Quest to see all the Best Picture nominees before the big ceremony on March 27th. These past couple years, the streaming era has made it easier than ever to make a side quest of catching nominees in the other categories as well. A few weeks ago I decided to get a head start by catching possible contenders in advance and thereby easing up my viewing load during the season itself. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza was one of a few ballyhooed works to convince me after the fact that, on second thought, I’ll wait till AMPAS voters tell me which ones I “have” to see and go from there.

Continue reading

Our 2021 Road Trip #34: The Rough Rider’s Roofless Rumpus Room

Boicourt Overlook!

When you’re still enjoying the scenery after seven days but verging on Badlands burnout.

The best advance investment we made for the sake of this vacation was an America the Beautiful Parks Pass. For one flat fee that felt exorbitant at first, pass-holders get one-year admission to any and all the national parks, monuments, and other qualifying attractions within your reach before time’s up. Anne did the math and realized our itinerary would indeed pay for itself if everything worked out and none of our destinations shut down.

The pass got us into Yellowstone National Park, our primary objective. It got us into Pompeys Pillar National Monument, which was on our return route. The next day, it gave us the clout to check out a third locale of natural splendor in North Dakota that exceeded the pass price and began netting us some savings. Any more national parks/monuments/whatever that we visit between now and June 2022 are basically free. We should probably take advantage of that. If the pandemic would shoo, that’d really help us out. Or if someone could open another national park conveniently here in Indiana, even better.

Continue reading

2021 at the Movies at My House

Jamie Curtis in Halloween Kills!

Who among us hasn’t felt as stressed out as Laurie Strode lately?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in 2021 I made 22 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. The year before, the pandemic thoroughly quashed the moviegoing experience and shrank my annual year-in-review entry to a mere four entrants, which barely counted as a “list” and convinced me to start a new, separate annual MCC tradition: a ranking of all the brand new films I saw on comfy, convenient home video in their year of release.

Continue reading

Our 2021 Road Trip #33: Valley of Gold, Valley of Shadow

Anne and Makoshika!

Anne in happier times, by which I mean ten minutes into the walk, taken at her request for her Facebook friends back home.

When recounting our disappointments about Yellowstone National Park, at the time two occurred to us: we wished everyone else in the world had stayed home so that we could’ve had the entire park to ourselves; and we wished we could’ve hiked more. We spent so many hours driving from one site to the next that we really didn’t walk a lot of long distances. We knew some exercise would do us a world of good, and yet its hiking trails — which we were pretty sure they had — didn’t stand out to us on their official, main map. It was all about dots of interest, not lines for walking.

Our next stop in Montana satisfied our urge to walk, then exceeded said urge until it began to pose safety concerns. As darkness overtook us at the close of Day Six, we stopped any and all jokes about “getting our steps in” for the rest of the trip.

Continue reading

My 2021 at the Movies, Part 2 of 2: The Year’s Best

Scarlett Johansson IS Black Widow!

Yeah, I know, superhero films with only one timeline in them are so 2018.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: In 2021 I made 22 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. In Part 1 we ranked the majority from “this film is pretty keen” to “this film is my mortal enemy” but in reverse. And now, the countdown concludes with the ten most relatively awesome films I saw at a theater in 2021 that were released for general audiences in 2021. Exactly those dates. Exactly those dates.

EXACTLY those dates.

Onward!

Continue reading

My 2021 at the Movies, Part 1 of 2: The Year’s Least Best

Spider-Man: No Way Home!

“Our billion-dollar movie made six whole people grumpy! Let’s ask Doctor Strange to overwrite their brains!”

It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

Continue reading

Our 2021 Road Trip #32: A Celebrity Signing in Sandstone

William Clark's autograph!

An autograph so rare, it takes an entire national park to serve as its Certificate of Authenticity.

Chasing autographs is usually an activity better suited to our comic cons than to our vacations. This time we had an excuse to peruse one along our path through Montana. We weren’t allowed to take it home, and its signer was unavailable for a jazz-hands photo op with us, but we appreciated the chance for a close look at preserved physical evidence from a real historical figure who’d later go on to costar in a long-running comics series. The giant object containing his personal graffiti was pretty keen, too.

Continue reading

“Nightmare Alley”: How Grifty McGrift Became Grifton Griftershire, Esq.

Bradley Cooper in Nightmare Alley!

“Okay, once more for the polygraph: was it really that awesome to work with Lady Gaga?”

Hi! Show of hands: who wants to read thoughts about a new Guillermo del Toro film from one of the six people in America who didn’t care for his Best Picture winner The Shape of Water?

No? Nah, it’s okay, I understand. Our exits are clearly marked for safe evacuation. See you next entry!

Continue reading

Our 2021 Road Trip #31: The Montana Montage

I-90 and mesa!

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’…

Prior to 2021 I’d been to 32 of our United States. Plenty of Americans have walked around more states than I have, which is pretty cool for them. Our last six annual road trips took us to new places we hadn’t seen before, but they were all in states we’d already visited in the past. This year we finally crossed another state off the to-do list as we exited Yellowstone into the southwest end of Montana. Pound for pound Wyoming was prettier overall, but the Montana scenery had its charms.

Continue reading

Midlife Crisis Crossover 2021 in Review: The Not-Great, Not-Terrible Sequel to 2020

Welcome Back to the Office!

A fun pandemic moment from June 7th when my workplace held a “return to office” party for anyone ready to end work-from-home. Thanks to this premature jubilee our stalwart skeleton crew had free leftover snacks for days after.

Hey, there! Welcome, gracious non-bot readers, to the tenth annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review! Once again we run down the site’s highlights and lowlights among readers, search engine stragglers, and anyone else who trips over us on their way to other, more popular internet destinations. Over twelve months those fleeting glances add up to concrete stats that may or may not be reliable indicators of things!

Continue reading

Yes, There’s a Scene After “The Matrix Resurrections” End Credits

Matrix Resurrections Red Pill Blue Pill Poster!

The grand return of the world’s favorite equivocal metaphor for every us-vs.-them feud ever, in which the beholder is somehow always a hero of “us” and never a lackey of “them”.

It’s hard to muster up enthusiasm for a conditionally beloved old series which had one really, really good film that made a groundbreaking impression on me in a packed theater, followed by two expensive letdowns. That means the series previously had a 33% success rate with me, a failure in any rational classroom. Sure, the animated follow-up had its fans, but it wasn’t quite the same thing even if one feels compelled to argue that it indeed “counted”. Here we are again in 2021 with a revival that perhaps some were wishing for, the studio execs more so than the public at large, inviting a few familiar faces to train a batch of promising newcomers in the ways of their franchise. The digital effects have been upgraded and more money has clearly been invested than anyone in the 20th century would’ve dreamed might ever be possible or necessary for a single movie. Just the same, the thought of sitting through such a perfunctory revival felt less like a joyous homecoming and more like that childhood dread of being forced to visit distant, smelly relatives — that sense of “Awwww, do I HAVE to go?”

In conclusion, that’s why I skipped Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

So why did I give The Matrix Resurrections a shot? Good question.

Continue reading

Our 2021 Road Trip #30: Restaurants Rundown

Pokey's kangaroo dinner!

Lunch on Day Four at Pokey’s BBQ: a dinner of grilled kangaroo (“Just the ugly ones,” swears the menu) and spicy corn nuggets.

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 so far. 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.

Continue reading

“Being the Ricardos”: Crisis on Infinite Balls

Being the Ricardos!

Our A-list stars resembling Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz about as much as they resemble Julianne Moore and Jeff Goldblum in The Lost World.

Remember the four worst things that ever happened to you? The four biggest challenges to your family, livelihood, reputation, or whatever? Now imagine if an evil time-travel despot had folded your timeline in on itself and all four moments of The Worst had befallen you in the same week. Be grateful they didn’t, but just imagine…what if? Enormous pain, right?

That’s the narrative conceit of Being the Ricardos, the third true-story project from writer/director Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7, Molly’s Game), yearning to avoid the trappings of a formulaic three-hour biopic, with their pedestrian history-book retelling and their leaps and bounds across their subject’s unremarkable years to deliver the Good Parts version of someone’s life. If it’s inescapable that your Hollywood production will bend some truths to achieve Art no matter what, why not embrace compromise and use your truth-bending skills to weave a smaller, tighter basket and have all the conflicts happen at the same time? While we’re at it, why not also have a film in which Queen Elizabeth II mourns the death of her father, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, and Prince Philip all happening in the same week? Historians would have apoplexies, but just imagine the potential pageantry of a Hollywood-designed four-way royal funeral procession.

Continue reading

Merry Christmas from MCC!

Buddy the Elf Buddies!

A coworker and I showed up at the office at the same time in near-matching ugly sweaters. So now we’re Buddy buddies!

Hey, kids! It’s that beloved holiday tradition where we just post a couple of recent Christmas-themed photos with some short yet sincere seasons’ greetings, and we give readers a break from my usual self-indulgent verbosity. It’s the most wonderful time of the MCC year!

Christmas in Metropolis!

Looking for places to celebrate Christmas spirit while distancing from others amidst a pandemic? Try an outdoor mall at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night when it’s below freezing!

Merry Christmas to you ‘n’ yours from us here at Midlife Crisis Crossover, High-Spirited Holidays, Vivacious Vacation, Divine December, and/or congratulations on reaching the light at the end of the 2021 tunnel despite the obstacles and heartbreaks. May your day be merrier and brighter, your celebrations invigorating, your downtime rewarding, and your internet circles calm and peaceful and filled with joyous content besides premature Best of 2021 listicles.

Introducing Our New Kindness+ Subscription Service

Kindness+!

Act now! Operators are standing by! But don’t expect them to actually pick up the phone. Leave a message or whatever.

The other day a friend of mine rhapsodized to acquaintances and followers about Christmas wishes and gave a gifting suggestion that might prove useful to some in this particularly tough holiday season: “Be kind to one another. We could all use more kindness, and best of all, it’s free!”

And I thought to myself: like, just give it away? In this economy?

Continue reading

Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” End Credits

Spider-Man No Way Home!

It wouldn’t be a true Spidey film if Peter didn’t unmask for the final battle.

Here’s the Too Long, Won’t Read version: despite some wonderful interplay among the main cast and the special guests at the heart of the film (and one beautifully meta performance in particular), Spider-Man: No Way Home is my least favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe film since Thor: The Dark World. I’m in the minority on this, but no other 2021 film has aggravated me as much as this box-office leviathan did.

Hope that helps? You’re now free to go. Thanks for stopping by. I do understand. I just need to get the following 5000 words out of my system. Imagine it’s Martin Scorsese’s rapid voice so it’ll move faster.

Still here? Cool, but fair warning: it’s been a long time since I front-loaded a movie entry with a courtesy spoiler alert. There’s no way I can adequately express my reactions without moving beyond the trailer-approved plot points and into its numerous surprises, some of which were foretold on various geek clickbait sites and some of which I predicted from the trailers. Really, the courtesy spoiler alert is for real, anything goes. You might find plenty of reasons for irritation with me, but by venturing beyond the courtesy spoiler alert guard post you hereby forfeit the right to count “AAAHH! SPOILERS!” among them.

Once again, for those just joining us: courtesy spoiler alert. Thank you.

Continue reading

“West Side Story”: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Anita and Bernardo

West Side Story!

Ariana DeBose steps into Rita Moreno’s shoes and dashes away with them as the new Anita.

It’s extremely rare nowadays for me to watch films I’ve already seen, but last week on a staycation whim I revisited the original West Side Story, which I have on DVD and my wife remembers me liking when we watched it together sixteen years ago. Maybe it gave me the impression this was the essence of Real Broadway. At the time we had little frame of reference, years before we had the opportunities to see actual Broadway shows in 2011 and in 2016. I’d forgotten much of it till I cued it up. The lyrical verve and the intricate dance numbers certainly struck old chords, as did Rita Moreno’s performance, far and away the best among the cast. Beyond that, the enchantments from my first time seemed a little faded. The Happy Days hoodlums and their 1960s color schemes held my attention for a bit, and some songs drew me back in when my eyes wandered to other gadgets (“America” and “Officer Krupke” are each satirical exemplars), but…I dunno. It was still fine? It’s creaky compared unfairly to a 21st-century stage production, but I guess I still get it? Setting aside the problematic aspects a thousand better websites have already covered?

I was not among the front lines of any protests insisting a remake was unnecessary or pointless. Every classic Broadway show has its revivals, often with revisions and updates for later generations with differing sensibilities. Why not this one? And why not let lifelong fan Steven Spielberg take a crack at it? Especially teamed up with his Oscar-winning Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner, the main behind the acclaimed Angels in America? Again, setting aside the problematic aspects a thousand better websites have already covered? And which Kushner acknowledged in a fascinating New York Times interview with film critic A.O. Scott? Why not? If nothing else, it diverted his attention away from potentially worse project choices like Ready Player Two.

Continue reading