My Reading Stacks 2025 #1: Walter White, Saul Goodman, and the Joy of Recaps

February 2, 2025 By in Comics/Lit, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Each of the two books covered in this entry -- one with chemistry glassware all over it in a Jolly Roger shape, the other with a billboard silhouette and a tiny shyster standing at its base.

The one on the left is autographed!

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. This installment is all prose, though.

Granted, I haven’t even finished “My 2024 Reading Stacks” yet. Trust me, forgetting them is impossible — the literal stacks of books are still cluttering the living room, waiting for encapsulation here before they go to their next home in our library. I’ll get to those in the near future, but for calendar-related reasons I’m taking a quick timeout from Oscar Quest ’25 to praise a pair of recent reads that captured my attention at the intersection of reading and binge-watching.

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“The Brutalist”: Architectural Gothic

January 31, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
"The Brutalist" poster, with Adrien Brody lit by a furnace and surrounded by metalworking sparks below the logo and fine print.

A.I. art prompt: “Adrien Brody attacked by the internet, symbolized as flying glowworms”.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’25 continues! Once again we see how many among the latest wave of Academy Award nominees I can catch before the big ABC ceremony. The rules are simple and the points don’t matter to anyone but me.

Critics had already been raving about The Brutalist weeks before a big night at the Golden Globes gave it some light mainstream recognition. Based on the buzz, I saw it two days before its Oscar nominations were announced so I could cross it off my checklist in advance. AMPAS voters traditionally love sweeping epics at the intersection of personal ambition and world history, regardless of runtime or controversies. Director/co-writer Brady Corbet (Vox Lux) and co-writer Mona Fastvold (Apple’s The Crowded Room) figured the time was right for a resonant, fictional, occasionally ugly tale of underestimated immigrants, family rent asunder, talent discovery, teamwork, overreach, exploitation, and how the symbiosis between artist and patron can drift from reign to rot.

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“Wolf Man”: The Entropy of Lycanthropy

January 26, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Woman with pricey hairdo and flannel shirt in a dark room viewed through a werewolf's perspective so the colors are weirdly red and blue around the shadows.

Life viewed through the eyes of a werewolf — warped colors and very few survivors.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Leigh Whannell’s reinvention of The Invisible Man was my favorite of the four whole films I saw in theaters in 2020 and smartly updated James Whale’s original mad scientist into a millennial tech-bro stalker who just wanted to dominate a single fed-up ex rather than the whole unwieldy world. Though Universal Pictures claims they’ve given up on their plan to reboot their classic monsters in an all-new shared universe (with or without a vaudeville act to string them together again), it wasn’t exactly counterevidential when they let Whannell take another crack at the catalog.

The next title on his checklist is The Wolf Man, but he’s dropped the “the” (it’s cleaner!) and adapted it to another modern metaphor rather than perpetuate the whole “gypsy curse” origin that would invite the wrath of the Romani on social media. The metaphor suits a smaller, more intimate thriller, a phrase that might not appeal to the millions who love their Universal Monsters big ‘n’ broad, or to fans of Twilight or Underworld who were hoping to see an entire team of vulpine antiheroes fighting a horror-fantasy gang war.

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My Oscar Quest 2025 Quick-Start Scorecard

January 24, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Robot has baby bird in its palm. Hand emits red and orange light rays into the darkness around them, diffused through its fingers.

The Wild Robot, my favorite film of 2024, nominated for three Academy Awards!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest! The game is simple but time-consuming: after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announces their latest nominations for the Academy Awards, I make plans to catch the nominees in every category, 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. They have the Super Bowl; I have the Oscars.

I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short released between 2021 and 2023 — running the full gamut from the highest-priority Best Picture contenders down to the mediocre flicks with negative Tomatometer scores that show up only for Best Original Song. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Oppenheimer, and every Best Picture nominee from 1984 to the present, many of which were memorable and worth the hunt. I’ve enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets.

Sometimes I have to wait for smaller films to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re available on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes my only option is a streaming rental for a few dollars more. For extreme cases and a bit of savings, I used to turn to Redbox kiosk rentals, but alas, as of last July they are no more. I go wherever the Quest takes me, while my wife Anne waits patiently at home or in another room, like Penelope looking forlornly at her calendar and wondering why that pigheaded Odysseus insists on stopping at every single time-wasting Mediterranean island in his way.

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I Did Not See “Anora”. You Are Not Reading This.

January 19, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A smiling young couple sit at a Vegas card table, she in his lap, arms around his neck.

TikTok was made for couples like them.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I’m a prude who’ll never win a debate at Film Twitter’s water cooler and is not among the pro critics who spent the past few years writing thinkpieces about the lack of sex in today’s movies, up until Poor Things and Challengers apparently sated their appetites while they waited for the next Criterion 4K-remastered cult-favorite re-releases about sexual awakening or sexual liberation, which we all need now more than ever in case the internet runs out of porn. Ever the irrelevant blogger, I’m happy keeping my amateur-hobbyist consumption within certain boundaries.

That personal guideline sometimes conflicts with the rules of my favorite annual game: Oscar Quest! I’ve seen every Academy Award Nominee released from 2021 to the present and continue running myself into the ground while seeing how many nominees I can watch in every single category before the big ceremony — 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. Some years, I’ll try getting a head start and watch a few potential nominees in advance, based on buzz among the critics I follow on social media and, for my first time this year, begrudgingly peeking at the Golden Globes’ finalist list for possibilities. Sometimes the pre-homework pays off; sometimes I end up having watched a movie just for movie-watching’s sake.

Hence: Anora, a tiny indie released last fall that critics still won’t shut up about. I greatly enjoyed one of writer/director Sean Baker’s previous films, The Florida Project, whose characters and living situations reminded me of a few distant relatives and of old people I knew in my bygone restaurant-manager days. (Willem Dafoe picked up a deserved Oscar nod for it!) Anora‘s reviews positively glowed but kept calling it “SEXY!”, which for me is usually Strike One on my scorecard before deciding whether to see a given film. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot in hopes of reducing my fun workload after the Oscar nominations are announced this Thursday morning. As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised once I could stop averting my eyes after the first twenty minutes.

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2024 at the Movies at My House

January 18, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Robot in darkness wearing headgear made of antlers, talking to someone in the shadows.

The Wild Robot 2099.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in 2024 I made 29 trips to the theater to see films released or screened in festivals that same year. Meanwhile at home, I kept up with select new releases depending on what was conveniently available through our family’s streaming subscriptions, what sounded most watchable, and/or what felt like potential future Oscar nominees that should be gotten over with in advance to ease my annual Oscar Quest time crunch. For value-added fun, as an anniversary gift from my lovely wife Anne we now have Max, which expanded our options without expanding my available TV free time. I did what I could within the time slots allotted.

Hence the fifth annual installment of the MCC tradition borne of the pandemic: a ranking of all the brand new films I saw on comfy, convenient home video in their year of release. Sure, they could’ve been 20 separate entries written in real time as I consumed them, but that’s not how I roll. The Academy Award nominations announcement is coming up January 17th, assuming the L.A. wildfires are quelled and no further raging of them continues endangering lives or homes. As a teenager Anne survived the ordeal of her family’s home burning to the ground, so we’ve been following those tragic headlines and testimonies as they’ve kept on coming. Our prayers are with all those whose lives have been deeply affected.

So. On with our countdown, ranked from awfullest to awesomest, name-checking which service had them at the time. Some have migrated to different services since then…

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My 2024 at the Movies, Part 2 of 2: The Top 10

January 11, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tiny blond witch holds large ugly witch's hat.

Everyone don your sorting hats!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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. I saw 29 films in theaters in 2024 that were actually released in 2024. Seven were screenings at the 33nd annual Heartland Film Festival, some of whose makers are still seeking an American distributor. In young-adulthood I used to scoff at critics who’d fill their year-end Top 10s with films they saw at festivals that none of their readers would be able to watch for another few months, if ever. Now that I’ve participated in a festival these past two years, those seven totally count and I’m not cheating by including them. This is, like, just different.

Here’s the annual rundown of what I didn’t miss in theaters in 2024. Links to past excessively wordy reviews and sometimes bizarrely construed thoughts are provided for historical reference…

On with the better end of the countdown!

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My 2024 at the Movies, Part 1 of 2: Starting at the Bottom

January 5, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
IMAX poster for Madame Web in a theater hallway. Visual elements include five eyes in separate circles surrounding a falling body. In the middle there's a tiny spider. There are concentric circles and some cluttered webbing.

NEVER FORGET.

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.

I saw 29 films in theaters in 2024 that were actually released in 2024, a 20.8% increase over 2023, steadily climbing post-COVID. That number doesn’t include ten Academy Award nominees I caught in theaters in 2024 that were officially 2023 releases, but which I saw later outside the house as part of my annual Oscar Quest. It also doesn’t include the 2024 films I watched on streaming services, which will receive their own listicle.

Of those 29 releases, 16 were sequels, prequels, or chapters in an ongoing universe or venerated popcorn-flick IP. Only five were superhero films because Marvel sent themselves to the penalty box. Two were animated. Five had scenes during or after the end credits (again, blame the low tally on the MCU hiatus). Seven were screenings at the 33nd annual Heartland Film Festival, some of whose makers are still seeking an American distributor. In young-adulthood I used to scoff at critics who’d fill their year-end Top 10s with films they saw at festivals that none of their readers would be able to watch for another few months, if ever. Now that I’ve participated in a festival these past two years, those seven totally count and I’m not cheating by including them. This is, like, just different.

Here’s the annual rundown of what I didn’t miss in theaters in 2024, for better or worse, starting as always at the bottom. Links to past excessively wordy reviews and sometimes bizarrely construed thoughts are provided for historical reference. On with the countdown!

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Midlife Crisis Crossover 2024 in Review: Guaranteed 100% A.I.-Free

January 3, 2025 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anne in our kitchen wearing eclipse glasses and an Indiana Total Solar Eclipse T-shirt, doing jazz hands.

4/8/2024: Anne dresses up for the Total Solar Eclipse extravaganza. Indianapolis was among the prime viewing spots.

Hey, there! Welcome, gracious readers and bots, to the thirteenth annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review! Once again we self-analyze the site’s pinnacles and nadirs among readers, skimmers, search engine gadabouts, and any other casual internet users who come within fifty light-years of this li’l boutique site. Over a twelve-month period those fleeting glances add up to concrete stats that may or may not be reliable indicators of trends, fads, and wins ‘n’ sins on my part.

This virtual hermit cabin opened its creaky wooden door on April 28, 2012, as a place where I could entertain myself by making essay-shaped things out of whatever words and pictures I had at hand, and placing them somewhere I personally owned rather than someplace a capricious third-party moderator or owner could delete on a whim. (Yes, I’ve had bad experiences.) Often it’s been a satisfying platform to share galleries, memories, hugs, screeds, and pop-culture opinions that might otherwise have dissolved unwritten in my head or collected rejection emails from every professional website ever. Sometimes it’s disappointing, maybe even depressing, but whenever the encouragement comes or an impetus spurs me, I’ll make an effort for my most labor-intensive hobby anyway. When my head is in the right space, I can enjoy the process and the results, with or without feedback.

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“Nosferatu” 102 Years Later

December 29, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Young 19th-century woman's frightened face in darkness, with gnarly vampire hand around her neck.

PROTECT YA NECK, KID!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: with three films writer/director Robert Eggers claimed a neglected niche as an artisanal horror scenographer, creating unique environments with an obsessive fastidiousness that surely frightens and confuses any execs used to funding facsimiles of other films. At first The Witch disoriented the unsuspecting viewer with stylized Puritanical dialect before plunging them into a malevolent maelstrom of what Salem might’ve looked like if the witch-hunters hadn’t been making it all up. The Lighthouse was an intensely claustrophobic, black-and-white duel over Mellvillian obsession and 19th-century on-the-job training. As if those weren’t harrowing enough, The Northman retold the tale of the turn-of-the-ninth-century Jutland prince Amleth (you may recall Shakespeare’s watered-down adaptation called Hamlet) as a visceral, deafening Dolby Cinema experience in which its antihero, a doubt-free rage-monster, waged relentless revenge atop a sonic tsunami of pummeling war drums. Such are the hypperrealities that Eggers, diviner of realms unseen, has dared us to watch.

Whereas The Northman was less a do-over of existing material than a savage interpretation of the historical record, Eggers’ latest is his first total remake — a full-throated cover of the 1922 silent classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that took on a life of its own despite the ensuing lawsuit. Eggers’ Nosferatu has no subtitle and is twice the runtime, and follows in the footsteps of other movie-monster aficionados-turned-pros such as Guillermo del Toro and Leigh Whannell, but as one might expect, it’s no ordinary Dracula flick to throw on the ever-mounting pile.

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My 2024 Reading Stacks #1

December 23, 2024 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
My Favorite Thing is Monsters v.2 and Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.

Two of my favorite reads of the year: oversized-pages division.

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. In the meantime, here’s me and my recent reading results.

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Merry Christmas from MCC!

December 22, 2024 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
A small and a large Christmas cookie tin stacked in a tiny ziggurat on a festive table. On top is a Peanuts snow globe. On each level stand ornaments of the cast from Rankin-Bass' "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

The pinnacle of our home’s 2024 Christmas diorama, which is something Anne does every year with our various pop culture Christmas ornaments and figurines.

Hey, kids! It’s that beloved holiday tradition where we just post a few 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! Click, scroll, ooh, ahh, and keep on frolicking down the internet superhighway!

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Our Day at the Eiteljorg Museum (Beyond Jingle Rails 2024)

December 20, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Dialogue with a Deer!

Harry Fonseca, Dialogue with a Deer, 1995. (I’m reminded of the Deer Lady from Reservation Dogs.)

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: last weekend my wife Anne and I visited the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in our hometown of Indianapolis and checked out their annual, widely advertised Jingle Rails exhibit — a festive collection of elaborate toy train dioramas that recreate a variety of well-known settings using myriad natural materials to exacting specifications and festooned with Christmas trimmings. Walking laps around the hall in childlike, wide-eyed wonder was a neat feeling.

Obviously the Eiteljorg has more to offer beyond the one special happy-holiday attraction. I’ve worked a few blocks away from the Eiteljorg for years, but the last time we went there was waaay back in early 2007 to view a special exhibit of Roy Lichtenstein’s rarely mentioned Old West-themed works from his pre-Pop Art days. The two of us were online regulars back in that pre-MCC, pre-social-media era, but I don’t think we ever posted about it anywhere. I aimed to rectify that oversight for this special occasion and the rest of the museum.

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Nobody Cares If There’s a Scene After the “Kraven the Hunter” End Credits

December 19, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Leather-clad long-haired hunting guy stands on an African plain, slack-jawed. Behind him, an overturned truck burns.

Tonight on Wild Kingdom, an apex predator faces extinction! Or worse, irrelevance!

When Kraven the Hunter introduces our protagonist Sergei Kravinoff, he’s aboard a Russian prison bus on its way to a Siberian gulag, stopping at an abandoned gas station so the convicts on board can go take bathroom breaks all around it. The metaphor works pretty well for Sony’s “Spider-Man Minus Spider-Man” cinematic pocket dimension: the gas station is the hollow shell of a system still making these films, and the prisoners are the cast and crew who signed on and contractually had to see them through to the end, but nobody said they had to give their best. Or maybe theaters are the gas station and studio execs are those turning everything around them into a makeshift bathroom.

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Toy Trains and Xmas Xings: Jingle Rails 2024 at the Eiteljorg Museum

December 17, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Intricate wood models of downtown Indianapolis buildings including the OneAmerica Tower, Salesforce Tower, and Monument Circle featuring the lit-up Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

A cross-section of tiny downtown Indianapolis, not to scale and with some buildings rearranged or missing.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: sometimes we leave the house for Christmas activities here in Indianapolis! Last year my wife and I attended the Indiana Repertory Theatre’s annual take on A Christmas Carol and had primo seats in the front-row fake-snow splash zone. My coworkers and I have made the Indiana Historical Society’s Festival of Trees a team-building tradition. Anne and I also used to escort her Mamaw to the Christmas Gift and Hobby Show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds until her passing in 2018. We’re Christmas fans in search of more Christmas ’round town, even though our place is loaded with enough Christmas decor for three households. (I’m not complaining.)

Once again we were blessed with an opportunity for another local cultural experience whose advertising we’ve noted and dismissed till now — free tickets courtesy of my employer (one of their organization’s corporate partners) to the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art on the occasion of their annual Jingle Rails exhibit. Whatever’s normally in their Allen Whitehill Clowes Sculpture Court is carted off elsewhere and replaced with enormous dioramas that are festooned with Christmas decorations and toy train tracks. Li’l locomotives run laps nonstop around the hall while visitors gape in childlike wonder. I guess that’s the ritual? As I said, this was our first time.

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The Billy Ireland Museum Presents Original Art from the Golden Age of Comics

December 16, 2024 By in Comics/Lit, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Alex Raymond Rip Kirby 6-27-1953!

Alex Raymond, the Rip Kirby strip for June 27, 1953.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I drove three hours from Indianapolis to attend the third annual GalaxyCon Columbus in the heart of Ohio’s very capital, met one of my all-time favorite performers, bought comics, chatted with fellow fans, and fled the place around 12:30 Saturday because it wasn’t the only comics-related event I wanted to check out in town. Fortunately we just missed the Great Convention Center Wi-Fi Crash of 2024 and the ensuing descent into temporary cash-only savagery.

We got our first taste of the Columbus comics scene in 2015 when we attended the inaugural Cartoon Crossroads Columbus and, while we were in town anyway, visited the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University, a graphic-storytelling tribute space with rotating exhibits and free admission. ‘Twas a fun Saturday for us, but for some reason we took and posted very few photos from the occasion.

This year GalaxyCon partnered with the Ireland for a bit of cross-promotion that included a Friday night VIP event attended by some of the con’s guests. We couldn’t work out the logistics to attend that soiree, but I wanted to see the museum’s latest showcase — a fascinating gallery of original art from the Golden Age of comic books and strips. We snapped quite a few more pics this time.

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Yes, There’s a Scene During the “Moana 2” End Credits

December 15, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Moana holding an oar, Maui holding his giant hook, both standing on a boat and looking upward.

They’re back! And they brought their favorite tools!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in Walt Disney Pictures’ century-long quest to devote at least one major animated feature to every human community or geographic region ever, they turned their attention to the Pacific Islands for Moana, a rousing high-seas mythical adventure that featured the lyrical stylings of Lin-Manuel Miranda during his post-Broadway movie-musical phase and a strong duo at its core — Auli’i Cravalho as the titular heroine whose connection to her environment brought an end to her home island’s cursed isolation; and Dwayne Johnson (on break from like twelve other acting jobs) as the vain demigod Maui who helped save the day with his magic tattoos, animal shapeshifting, and enchanted Saw-hook.

Moana and Maui are back with Moana 2, which was conceived as a Disney+ series before execs remembered movies can make way more money than TV, especially if the movie doesn’t suck. The reworking of that proposed material may explain why we have three credited directors and only two writers (the latter of which include Jared Bush, who was one of eight on the first one), but it works well enough for anyone who simply wants more Moana and Maui and isn’t finicky about the rest. The tremendously upgraded budget helps, one befitting a Disney theatrical release rather than simply stapling together whatever rough animatics were already in the can. It isn’t perfect and the first one’s better, but it’s better than the dregs of, say, The Fox and the Hound 2.

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High Street Outtakes: A GalaxyCon Columbus 2024 Coda

December 14, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anne sitting in a sandwich shop in a red-and-black flannel cap and a Mandalorian tropical shirt. She's smiling really big.

The lovely lady dressed for winter and comic-con, in that order.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I attended the third annual GalaxyCon Columbus in the heart of Ohio’s very capital, met one of my all-time favorite performers, and…well, kinda wish we’d taken more cosplay photos. We also took photos of what we did before and after the show, but I left those out of the recap because most post-con Googlers rarely care about the little in-between moments and because 4500 words was already a hefty dosage of us without the scenes from the periphery.

Sure, cons are cool, but those little traveling moments are also our thing, especially when they happen someplace we’ve become fond of over time. We’ve visited Columbus quite a few times now — for this show, for the awesome Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, that time we tripped over a surprise Pokemon tournament, that other time I ordered a huge As Seen on TV burger, or when we spent my birthday checking out their children’s museum and their art museum, among other wonders. Columbus is a welcoming city with a thriving art community, close in size and temperament to our own Indianapolis hometown in many respects. If for some reason Indiana collapses and we have to relocate — like, say, when polio returns in 5-10 years and devastates our populace — Columbus is one of the top three places where I’ll consider seeking refuge, assuming they’re still standing when the rest of America collapses into a self-made black hole.

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GalaxyCon Columbus 2024 Photos, Part 2 of 2: “Weird Al” Yankovic and Everything Else!

December 9, 2024 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Us doing jazz hands with Weird Al, all of us wearing festive tropical-style shirts. Anne is also wearing a Santa hat.

The man! The myth! The master of musical mirth!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the third annual GalaxyCon Columbus in Ohio’s very own Greater Columbus Convention Center. The show returned with another lengthy guest list for fans of all media across the pop culture spectrum…though the two of us didn’t actually do a lot this time for a variety of reasons, and this year’s edition had a few logistical issues. Nevertheless, the show went on…

And what a show it was! We accomplished all our primary objectives, which was a shorter list than usual due to self-imposed budgetary restrictions. Frankly, we’ve had a long year of fiercely competitive, increasingly more expensive comic-cons and some non-geek expenditures we need to handle at fun’s expense. Also, unlike the last two GalaxyCons, there just weren’t a lot of actors on the list we wanted to meet that badly. We’d met several of them before, including the arguably biggest name, former teen star Hayden Christensen, who was at Indiana Comic Con last March. We had a couple of maybes on the list, but ultimately we had to be choosy.

I may also have been more nervous than usual because of an old comic-con war wound.

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GalaxyCon Columbus 2024 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Tiny Cosplay Gallery!

December 8, 2024 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
cosplay: Granny with stuffed Tweety and Sylvester dolls, and Yosemite Sam with a pair of cartoon revolvers.

Granny and Yosemite Sam bring joy on behalf of the Looney Tunes.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Anne and I enjoy attending entertainment and comic conventions together, whether in our hometown of Indianapolis or in adjacent states (or sometimes beyond). She’s been doing them since the early ’90s, and invited me to tag along as our relationship evolved from classmates to coworkers to neighbors to BFFs to married geeks twenty years and counting. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

This weekend we attended the third annual Galaxycon Columbus in Ohio’s very own Greater Columbus Convention Center. The con arose from the ashes of the top-notch but one-and-done GalaxyCon Louisville, and is a spiritual successor to the erstwhile Wizard World Columbus (née Mid-Ohio Con, which I used to read about every year in Comics Buyer’s Guide). The show returned with another lengthy guest list for fans of all media across the pop culture spectrum…though the two of us didn’t actually do a lot this time for a variety of reasons, and this year’s edition had a few logistical issues. Nevertheless, the show went on!

Before we showcase the latest additions to our celeb photo-op collection: it’s cosplay time! Per tradition we compiled an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny gallery of the costumes we photographed during our day-‘n’-a-half in and around the exhibit hall whenever we weren’t trapped in long lines or traffic-jammed aisles. The humble duo here at MCC appreciates the makers and wearers who enliven every comic-con with their talents and their exaltation of various fandoms. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun. Enjoy!

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