Last call for Rocky Mountain National Park photos!
Eventually we had to leave Rocky Mountain National Park, and so we did. On our way out, we saw animals, picked up supplies, drove till after nightfall, and found a few things besides mountains to photograph. But mostly we wanted to hang on to the mountains for as long as we could.
Right this way for some natural bystanders and one (1) random football stadium!
This glass-hawking gator in a fedora thinks you need to drink more. What could possibly go wrong?
The French Market strives to attract your attention for all your New Orleans souvenir needs, but French Quarter shopping and culture don’t end there. Across the street, around the block, art and commerce dot the sidewalks and lure in tourists starved for a change of pace from their milder, blander hometowns.
Right this way for hot sauce, snacks, voodoo, and another gator!
T-Rex snaps at Christmas wreath, mistaking it for low-hanging tree-dwelling prey. In the far background by the green-screen you can just barely, accidentally make out actor Chris Nowland, one of those “been in lots of things” kind of guys.
On this weekend in 1988, the inaugural Starbase Indy introduced Indianapolis to the amazing world of Star Trek conventions, though it later expanded its dominion into other sci-fi TV shows. Setting aside several years skipped during turbulent times, SBI is one of the most persistent fan-run geek conventions in Indianapolis. It’s a fraction the size of Gen Con, Wizard World, and our other regular cons, but we’ve attended SBI more times than we have any other con. The smaller scale allows for shorter lines and less suffocating crowds, while still attracting talented guests from shows well-liked by geeks like us. With 2015 marking SBI’s twentieth iteration, the con is a regular highlight of our average Thanksgiving weekend, usually more satisfying and ethically defensible than Black Friday. (You can click through to the “Starbase Indy” tag for select photos from previous years.)
This year we nearly didn’t attend. The guest list was largely composed of actors from shows we’ve never watched (Alien Nation, Stargate SG-1) or shows I gave up on (Once Upon a Time). One guest, Admiral Nechayev from Star Trek the Next Generation, we saw at Wizard World Chicago 2010. Complicating matters further, we agreed to host Thanksgiving this year and spent much more time than expected over the past two days with visiting family members from near and far. We had a few obstacles with Starbase Indy, but money wasn’t one of them. Our energy levels weren’t at their peak today, we only had about two hours to devote to it, and the ultimate to-do list we prepared in advance could fit on a single Post-It.
But they invited one Deep Space Nine actor we were thrilled to meet at last, there were a few vendors we thought deserved money in exchange for goods and services, and I rather liked the idea of viewing our one-day ticket expenditure as a sort of donation on behalf of keeping Starbase Indy alive, even if we arguably didn’t get what other ordinary humans would call “our money’s worth”. We got exactly what we came for. We’re fine with that. Our funds will nonetheless go toward meeting costs for this year’s con and, we hope, help ensure Starbase’s continuing future. Yay geek causes!
Right this way for what we did and who we met, including a fellow WordPress blogger!
Art by an anonymous Hallmark staffer, probably.
Every year I receive exactly one (1) greeting card wishing me Happy Thanksgiving. A fellow who works for my company in another state used to need my help on assorted requests several years ago, and I’ve been on his Thanksgiving card list ever since. Nowadays he needs my help only sporadically — if we have contact more than twice a year, I’d be surprised. But he keeps me in his thoughts. Above and beyond the pre-printed, mass-produced, well-wishing boilerplate, he writes a note of personalized appreciation inside each card, much more than just “Hi!” and a name. It’s always wordier than 90% of the Christmas cards we receive, the closest I ever get to an old-fashioned letter. It’s a tradition that used to strike me as odd, but as I’ve grown older I’ve come to appreciate it as a kind touch that adds a modest, welcome flourish to the proceedings. Also, this year’s model looks niftier than ever.
To MCC’s longtime readers: thank you for being you. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks very much for the comments and the encouraging feedback, whether one-click or multi-paragraph. Thanks for your acts, great or small, that go a long way toward making this peculiar labor of love an enriching experience. Special thanks to anyone who’s ever recommended or just mentioned the site to any other human. Thanks to all of you for being there at every level.
Our family wishes a happy, blessed Thanksgiving to you frequent visitors and newcomers alike. May your holiday and your weekend be filled to overflowing with a continual parade of kindnesses, from the largest favors to the smallest gestures. And may you find yourselves pleasantly surprised at which moments come to mean the most.
Last Saturday, November 21st, Indiana got its first snowfall of the 2015-2016 winter season, a month ahead of its official kickoff. Three weeks earlier, I drove my wife up the side of a Colorado mountain just so she could throw a snowball.
Right this way for teaser photos of precipitation coming soon!
Even in dystopia, there’s always time for handheld gaming.
At long last, the 1853 book series that was turned into a beloved but unfinished 1970s film series has reached its long-forgotten conclusion! That’s how long it’s felt since this franchise started, anyway.
It began with The Hunger Games, which brought Battle Royale to the West, adding shaky-cam and subtracting sex. It escalated in Catching Fire, in which the adult characters had to bring their A-game because the Games themselves no longer mattered. In Mockingjay Part 1 it paid homage to Wag the Dog, went behind the scenes at a post-apocalyptic marketing firm, and basically felt like one of those all-talk episodes of The Walking Dead where the stunt crew takes a week off while the characters sit around exchanging feelings so their eventual, horrible deaths will mean something.
And now, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is here to wrap up the character arcs for anyone who didn’t read the books, to finish adapting the remaining 213 pages of the 390-page novel that concluded the original trilogy. Closure is here for one and all, especially for DVD fans waiting to buy the eventual Hunger Games Quadrilogy set for cheap on some future Black Friday.
The French Market may seem empty around 10 a.m., but the calm and the extra personal space don’t last.
Day Four was spent walking here, there, everywhere around the French Quarter — gawking at random sights, browsing festive shops, learning history from museums, weaving through crowds, and trying our best to withstand the 90-degree heat that kept hammering at us all along the way. Fortunately a few places offered respite from melting.
Turkey and pie. Let’s face it: everything else at the Thanksgiving table is disposable.
All this week, every time someone friendly asked me, “Got plans for Thanksgiving?” I’ve had to shrug and say, “Wish I knew.” As of this morning, six days before the big event, neither my family nor Anne’s had communicated a single word to either of us one way or another. No Facebook “event” set up. No direct messages. No general statuses. No phone calls. No cards. No sign of any volunteers. No visible evidence that any of them still considered Thanksgiving a worthy celebration and not a fabricated Hallmark card-selling stunt.
Hoping for the best but planning for the worst, we decided tonight to buy our own fourteen-pound backup turkey. Just in case. Because sometimes you gotta take holiday matters into your own hands.
“I got a rock.”
Previously on Sleepy Hollow: a Norse monster pack tore each other apart; Pandora summoned her evil husband into our plane of reality; Jenny got powers but was summoned to the Dark Side; Sophie Foster, relic hunter, stood revealed as Agent Foster, FBI; and “fan favorite” Joe Corbin got kissed, pretty much his career highlight.
On tonight’s fall finale, “Novus Ordo Seclorum”: Pandora stands by her man, who’s not Anubis! Ichabod Crane goes to college! Joe is tempted to get tough! And when the dust settles, one of our cast members is gone!
For those who missed out, my attempt to hash out the basic events follows after this courtesy spoiler alert for the sake of time-shifted viewers…
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As we promised last time: MOUNTAINS. We saw some.
Welcome back to Rocky Mountain National Park in beautiful Estes Park, Colorado.
Right this way for mountains! And clouds! And mountains with clouds on them!
My wife and her grandmother hanging with their old pal Mr. C.
Each November my wife and I take her grandmother to Indianapolis’ own Christmas Gift & Hobby Show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Last Saturday when we dropped by, the event was on its 66th year; Mamaw is on her 90th. Most months, she leaves the house only when family or friends take her to church or the grocery, but the two of us enjoy driving her to two major events, where her brother works security and scores us free tickets. The Indiana Flower and Patio Show in March is her Super Bowl; the Christmas Gift and Hobby Show is her San Diego Comic Con.
Soon as you enter the nave of St. Louis Cathedral, on one side of you Joan of Arc is risen above.
Our first indoor stop on Day Four that wasn’t a restaurant was the grand St. Louis Cathedral, centerpiece of New Orleans’ Jackson Square and one of the oldest cathedrals in America. The outside id distinct in its own right, but the interior decorations and designs were impressive in their own right, even the parts identical to what you see in other, newer, more modest churches. There’s something about such a venerable structure that elevates even the most mundane details toward a greater spiritual presence.
“How hard would it be to change our Tomatometer rating to 105%?”
In one of the precious few MCC movie reviews ever to draw non-positive responses, I called Skyfall my favorite James Bond film of all time, based on having seen maybe ten or eleven of them in all. Even as a kid I never got excited about the concept of a globetrotting sophisticate who’s more into booze and hook-ups than he is into crimefighting. At least Batman confines his vices and his expensive suits to his off-duty civilian hours. If Bond were an Inside Out character, the simplistic emotions ruling his head would be Sex, Suaveness, Sarcasm, and Slaughter.
After the welcome reboot of Casino Royale and the redundant vendetta of Quantum of Solace, Skyfall struck me as the apex of Daniel Craig’s 21st-century take, which built to a genuine emotional arc for the usually one-note character, supported by stunts genuinely thrilling without resorting to renamed sci-fi Bat-gadgetry, by updated camerawork, and with none of the nonsense of the last two Pierce Brosnan farces. It was a film designed to reach beyond the typical fan base, and for me it worked.
Spectre, in contrast, is less about director Sam Mendes deepening the impact he made on the aging series last time, and more of the intellectual property’s longtime producers giving Bond Classic fans more of what they want. Lucky them, I suppose.
I sure hope y’all like mountains because we took roughly six million photos of the Rockies on this trip.
On Sunday we landed in Denver shortly after 9:30 their time. Our Colorado Springs hotel was seventy minutes south of the airport. We couldn’t check in till 3 p.m. With plenty of time on our hands, we decided to follow up our short flight with a long drive — two hours northwest of the airport for an encore in a little town we last visited in 2012 called Estes Park, snug inside the Rocky Mountains.
Meet your obscure monsters of the week: the Cult of Curly Joe.
Previously on Sleepy Hollow: Our Heroes fought a wild ‘n’ wispy wasp woman; Pandora escaped inside her creepy blue Hellmouth tree; and we learned all this season’s previous monsters just barely had a meaningless connection with each other, kind of like a bunch of James Bond villains supposedly belonging to the same criminal organization but never lending each other a hand, so their secret evil fraternity doesn’t mean much to them or to viewers.
On tonight’s new episode, “The Art of War”: an ancient threat emerges from Scandinavia; Jenny has superpowers; Crane quotes Sun Tzu and touts the virtues of horsehair fishing lines; Abbie shows her mad chess skillz; “fan favorite” Joe Corbin has his first kiss; the Great-Big Bad behind our two Big Bads makes his grand entrance; and Betsy Ross, Action Spy, is off this week, probably on special flashback assignment or something.
For those who missed out, my attempt to hash out the basic events follows after this courtesy spoiler alert for the sake of time-shifted viewers…
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It’s like a prettier Disneyland without the rides or kids or paid stuffed animal cosplayers.
At the end of Day Three, we first laid eyes upon Jackson Square when the sun was on its way out of sight. Some clouds had lingered after a light drizzle that had peppered the city while we were inside Mardi Gras World. The world generally looked gray everywhere we turned. Then we got a good night’s sleep, commenced Day Four, and walked into the idealized sky-blue morning you see above, beckoning us with its possibilities and begging for a photographic do-over.
If you’ve never seen an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I’m really sorry that you’ve been deprived of the pleasure. I missed the first several seasons of its basic-cable run, but the Rhino Home Video releases began in May 1996 at exactly the right moment in my life when, more than any other, I needed powerful reasons to laugh, to overlook emotional pain, and to appreciate sci-fi puppetry. Joel, Mike, Crow, Tom Servo, and the rest of their motley crew were like a shining, snarky beacon through so much real-world darkness. I snapped up every episode as it was released and filled up a few shelves. When I could afford basic cable again circa 1998, I caught up to speed with the Sci-Fi Channel reruns, and the rest is a great time in history for this latecomer MSTie.
Some of its funniest fans were among the first online citizens I met when I discovered the wild world of Internets. My wife and I met several of those odd-fellows in person and quite a few cast members over the past fifteen years — at a St. Louis convention on our 2000 road trip, at Indy Pop Con 2014, and at C2E2 2015. It’s been kind of a wild ride.
Today news broke out across my social circles that MST3K creator Joel Hodgson, with the assistance of the good Samaritans at Shout! Factory (the show’s home-video distributor for the last several years), has obtained the rights clearance to pursue a full-on revival with the same puppets but probably an all-new cast — a bit like the Sci-Fi years in a sense, so some of us are bound to fret and complain till we get used to Tom Servo’s new voice. Rather than rely on modern studio executives to come to their senses and right the wrongs committed by their soulless ancestors, Hodgson has launched an ambitious Kickstarter campaign that will allow fans, newcomers, and hopefully kindhearted deep-pocketed investors to determine whether or not the world’s greatest Cowtown puppet show deserves another chance to live and riff.
As a fan, I hope it succeeds and I wish I could help. I also wish there were a way to do it without Kickstarter.
Right this way for more MST3K info! And for an update on this regretful ongoing MCC series!
Our Indianapolis International Airport welcome committee: WWI flying ace Harvey Weir Cook, who flew for the Army Signal Corps with seven victories to his credit, then later for the newly invented transcontinental airmail service. He was a colonel when he died in 1943 while training other men to be just like him. The terminal and major airport thoroughfares are named after him.
Each year my wife and I take a road trip to a different part of the United States and see what sorts of historical landmarks, natural wonders, man-made oddities, unexplored restaurants, and cautionary tales await us. We began the tradition in 1999 during our best-friend years as an excuse to attend geek conventions and fan gatherings outside Indianapolis. After four years of narrowly focused hijinks, the tradition evolved through our happily married years into an ongoing project to visit as many other states as possible, see what they have that we don’t, and filter the results through our peculiar sensibilities.
From November 1-6, 2015, we racked up a number of personal firsts. My wife Anne was invited on her first business trip to Colorado Springs, all expenses paid from flight to food to lodging to rental car, to assist with cross-training at a distant affiliate. Her supervisor gave me permission to attend as her personal travel companion as long as I bought my own plane ticket and food. Neither of us had ever flown before, largely because we each grew up in families too poor for such extravagance. We’ve also never taken two week-long vacations in a single year. Thanks to our unforeseen circumstances, we were shocked to find such things no longer inconceivable.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, I posted one photo for each of the six days while we were on location. With this series, we delve into selections from the 500+ other photos we took along the way.
“Fascinating. You know, Benjamin Franklin’s notebooks contain numerous recipes for delectable wasp cuisine.”
Previously on Sleepy Hollow: Our Heroes met Team Bones, borrowed some of their ratings, and spent Halloween fighting Zombie General Howe and his zombie Redcoats with magic blue napalm bazookas. Meanwhile, “fan favorite” Joe Corbin nearly sold out the mysterious Shard of Anubis to new baddie Augustus Nevins over his daddy issues. He’s an excellent team member.
On tonight’s new episode, “This Red Lady from Caribee”: Joey Jo-Jo Junior’s daddy issues make things worse! Our Heroes fight a woman made of wasps, and when she yells, she shoots wasps from her mouth! Pandora reveals slightly more of her horticultural master plan! And the ostensibly sinister Augustus Nevins finally appears onscreen, played by veteran character actor Bill Irwin, last heard as the voice of the robot TARS from Interstellar.
For those who missed out, my attempt to hash out the basic events follows after this courtesy spoiler alert for the sake of time-shifted viewers…
…
On the morning of our second full day in New Orleans, one of our first stops was St. Louis Cathedral. The majority of the structure dates back to 1850, with minute portions integrated from still older predecessors. It’s the centerpiece of Jackson Square (as you’ll notice in the preceding chapter), free for tourists to visit (donations are suggested), serves an active congregation, and remains the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 