Wizard World Chicago 2015 Photos, Part 3 of 7: DC vs. Star Wars Cosplay

August 26, 2015 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Freeze + Riddler!

Mandatory Bat-villains: Ms. Freeze and the Riddler! Incredibly, we somehow didn’t photograph a single Joker at WWC this year. Not one.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…

My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries.

With the average con we usually have enough pics for themed entries of a solid size, but our WWC 2015 results turned out so fractionalized across a number of media, companies, and universes that not much else besides Marvel achieved a real consensus. DC and Star Wars each put in a modest showing, but after using up a few of those in Part 1, both universes fell short of supporting their own independent entries. Hence today’s senseless duplex of an entry. Enjoy!

Right this way for some DC and some Star Wars! Because they’re there!

Wizard World Chicago 2015 Photos, Part 2 of 7: Marvel Cosplay

August 25, 2015 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Ant-Man + Star-Lord!

Teaser pic from the set of Ant-Man vs. Star-Lord: Clash of Hyphens.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…

My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries.

Tonight’s episode: familiar faces from the Marvel House of Ideas!

Right this way to Make Mine Marvel!

Wizard World Chicago 2015 Photos, Part 1 of 7: Team Cosplay

August 24, 2015 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Team Miyazaki!

Team Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke, Totoro, and Markl from Howl’s Moving Castle!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things…

My wife and I took an okay number of photos over the course of our three-day stay and will once again be sharing the most usable over the next several entries. Part One kicks off with clusters of themed costumes, because arbitrary categorization helps me organize my thoughts more clearly. I’m not the kind of guy to upload a hundred unlabeled cosplay photos all at once on the go. I’m all about pacing, parceling, staggering, and serializing our experiences for measured reading and perusing. Hence, chapters. Enjoy!

Right this way for more costumes! More cosplayers! More team-ups!

Five Shots from Our Convention Weekend in Progress

August 23, 2015 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

WWC Artists Alley Comics 2015!

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things. This year marks our first time splurging on VIP passes for a con as an experiment, and the first time in ten years that we’re attending three full days. We normally make a point of skipping Sundays, but we had multiple reasons for going overboard this once.

Pictured above: my haul so far from their Artists Alley, always an interesting place to scout out new comics and graphic novels. I’m annoying to a lot of folks in there that I tend to avoid prints, posters, sketches-while-I-wait, prose novels, zombies, erotica, amateur manga, and jewelry, but within my annoyingly rigorous shopping guidelines, I can usually find a few items to catch my eye.

Right this way for four more bonus pics while we’re away!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 5 of 5: Random Acts of State-Fairing

August 20, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tractor Wife!

Tractors! Farming! Farming accessories! Farming science! Giant things!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing…

…and now it all comes down to this: the grand finale, in which we lump together a bunch of photos of other whatchamacallits to finish defining what the Indiana State Fair experience means to us aging Hoosier geeks.

Right this way for one last round of photos with animals, crafts, mascots, and slightly more!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 4 of 5: The Art of the Fair

August 20, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

State Fair Clonetrooper!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing…

ART! It’s everywhere at the State Fair! It’s in the buildings or along the streets, it’s made by kids or by adults, it’s made of traditional media or of food, it expresses a thought or teaches a lesson or celebrates an idol or all of the above. These, then, are random examples of those very things that caught our eye.

Naturally we had to lead with Clonetrooper helmet. Its display-case roommate looks vaguely Legoesque, but I could be wrong.

Right this way for more things made by people! For things’ sake!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 3 of 5: Canned Characters

August 18, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Aminion Gothic!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing…

Another fun annual event is the Canstruction contest, which isn’t necessarily intended for local 4-H youngsters. Canstruction is a charitable organization that holds nationwide events in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other in building the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not lazy Impressionist piles with titles like “Cleanup on Aisle 6”. After the judging and the public displaying are over, all those meticulously planned figures are torn down and the components are donated to local hunger relief charities, who in turn forward them to needy families totally unaware their next few meals used to be Art.

Exhibit A, picture above: Minions recreating Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”. The makers called it “FARMinions” as if the farming were the most important part. Begging to differ, I must insist this piece’s true name is “Aminion Gothic” whether they accept it or not.

Right this way for more familiar faces…in cans!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 2 of 5: The Year in Lego

August 18, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Lego SHIELD Helicarrier!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing, particularly in the area of Stuff Young People Made. As you’d expect, year in, year out, those young craftspeople love them some Lego.

Under the auspices of 4-H, kids statewide have the chance to compete in building competitions of varying categories. Sometimes it’s all about what they can create from scratch. Sometimes it’s about who can follow manufacturers’ directions best. Sometimes I wonder if kids put together sets like this Lego SHIELD Helicarrier, tell the non-geek judges they totally made it up, collect their purple Grand Prize ribbons, and look like construction wizards to everyone they know. All I know is on Lego.com this set is priced twice as much as my used PS3 was. Gotta admit, though, it looks much cooler.

Right this way for lots of blocky goodness!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 1 of 5: Our Year in Food

August 16, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , 5 Comments
Lamb Parfait!

This is not ice cream. That’s not chocolate.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. Usually, 70% of our quest is food.

Each year the State Fair announces the annual theme of a single ingredient and holds a contest daring all the vendors to create a new dish around it, like a sort of Food Network cooking show except I think the grand prize is just “for exposure”. Recent history has brought us the Year of the Tomato, the Year of Corn, the Year of Soy, the Year of Popcorn, and last year’s disappointingly non-food-based Year of the Coliseum, in honor of the longtime event venue that had reopened after a two-year closure for extensive renovations. This year’s theme was “the Year of the Farmer”, a.k.a. “the Year We Ran Out of Food Themes”. For anyone who thought “the Year of the Coliseum” wasn’t directionless enough, 2015 had only a handful of the many vendors offering a random, disconnected assortment of ostensibly new dishes, at least one of which was flat-out pretending to be new.

We tried to make the most of it anyway and found a few items worth actual dollars.

Right this way for pics of our 2015 in State Fair food!

2015 Road Trip Photos #7: Spirits of the Revolution

August 15, 2015 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Four Spirits.

The doves are symbolic, but the scene is otherwise as remembered from September 15, 1963, a quiet, graceful Sunday morning at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church where kids were suiting up for their next choir performance to celebrate another day of joy with thanks to the Lord.

At 10:22 a.m. an explosion of dynamite sticks and unconscionable racist rage left four little girls murdered, two dozen or more injured, and a gaping wound in the side of the Lord’s house.

If you’ve seen Ava DuVernay’s powerful Best Picture nominee Selma, you know when and how it begins. On this very block in Birmingham, across the corner from Kelly Ingram Park, is exactly where too much began that should never have happened.

Continue reading →

Ranking the 2015 Lay’s New Potato Chip Formulas

August 14, 2015 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Lay's Do Us a Flavor!

Yes, it’s true: I allowed these in our house. Some experiments you have to try for yourself.

Someone at the Lay’s Potato Chip factory got bored this year and let the general public choose new flavors for their mad food scientists to concoct and test on us consumer guinea pigs.

That was the state of the potato union in 2014 as we saw previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, and here we are again one year later. The adventurous bigwigs at Frito-Lay decided the previous stunt was so entertaining, they’re trying it again with four more theoretical flavors suggested by fans at home. The official site for their “Do Us a Flavor” contest lets eaters vote for their favorites and get to know the lucky fans whose suggestions became mandatory work orders for Frito-Lay’s top nutrichemists.

One of the flavors was suggested by a fellow Hoosier who recently spoke to the Indianapolis Star about her new-found claim to potential fame. If she’s one of three losing finalists, she receives a mere $50,000.00. If she wins and America loves her idea, she wins $1,000,000.00, the flavor becomes an official permanent product, and Frito-Lay keeps all future profits in perpetuity, assuming we all don’t band together as a country to troll them by choosing the worst flavor and wrecking their 2016 P&L sheets.

In the interest of food science and life lessons, my wife and I tracked down all four flavors and held our very own two-person chip-tasting party tonight. Also, because we can.

Right this way for our subjectively authoritative results!

2015 Road Trip Photos #6: Faces of the Revolution

August 12, 2015 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

MLK!

During our sobering Sunday morning walk through Ingram Park, we saw small circles of chatting friends sharing the central commons area, while homeless stragglers reserved an errant bench here, inspected yesterday’s discarded leftovers there. All of us were equally surrounded by statues honoring those who fifty years ago walked, gathered, and fought on this very block for a better world. The reminders are impossible to ignore, but it’s up to each of us to heed them.

Continue reading →

2015 Road Trip Photos #5: Signs of the Revolution

August 11, 2015 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Freedom Walk!

Day Two, early Sunday morning in Alabama: we arrived at our first stop in the heart of Birmingham, a few hours before most of the city would wake up, some fifty years after our country began to wake up.

The four-acre Kelly Ingram Park is an idyllic public gathering spot, a touch of verdant life in a graying downtown, and a momentous landmark of tumultuous times. In the 1960s the stone walkways beneath our feet once hosted impassioned demonstrations against oppression, segregation, and various acts of racism both institutional and internal. Today various signs and statues around the park serve as reminders of what it was like to walk in their footsteps and stand where they took a stand.

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“Fantastic Four” a Maddening Marvel Mishmash

August 10, 2015 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Human Torch!

Michael B. Jordan gets into character while the film crew shields themselves from the toxic work environment.

As a longtime comics fan, John Byrne’s Fantastic Four was one of my favorite Marvel series as a kid. Years later I developed an appreciation for the first 103 issues in which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave us some of the greatest stories among their many collaborations. My FF fandom came and went as creative teams, interpretations, and times changed, but I have fond memories of great runs by Walt Simonson, Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pelletier, Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo, and the long-forgotten team of Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz (#219, 222-231) who introduced Marvel’s First Family to this impressionable eight-year-old. I have those runs, and I have my warm memories, but my emotional attachment to them as individual characters has faded enough over time that I’m open to seeing new and different reinterpretations. Honestly, though, I haven’t encountered a worthwhile use of the FF in years.

Meanwhile in the more recent past, I previously named Chronicle my favorite film of 2012. A previous entry already used up a couple hundred words explaining what impressed me about this found-footage mini-epic that imagined what would happen if one of Disney’s Witch Mountain films were remade as an episode of Black Mirror. Credit remains due to lead actors Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and The Wire‘s Michael B. Jordan; to screenwriter Max Landis making a heck of a feature-film debut; to cinematographer Matthew Jensen, editor Elliot Greenberg, and numerous other cast and crew members for an experience that still rattles me whenever I think back to key scenes.

In the MCC capsule summary I’d expressed my hopes of seeing big things from director Josh Trank in the future. Here we are today, living in that bleak future where the boundaries of Chronicle‘s imagination are visible in maybe two sequences from Fox’s newly rebooted Fantastic Four, which was mostly directed by Trank and finished by a producers’ committee using Trank as their contractually subjugated proxy/scapegoat. In a short-lived tweet last week Trank publicly blamed the studio for all the faults in the finished product. The multiple flaws that riddle this slipshod corporate product from start to finish belie Trank’s sorry attempt at a total cop-out.

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2015 Road Trip Photos #4: Cheese ‘n’ Knackered

August 8, 2015 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Adventurer Coke!

At last, it’s our turn for Coke to really speak to us! Or so we tell ourselves.

Not every stretch of highway is an endless parade of merriment. Not every side quest earns us a Trophy or Achievement. Not every minute can be filled with photogenic overstimulation. Sometimes we’re okay with that, because sometimes we need time to relax and breathe on our so-called “vacations”.

Sometimes the clock works against us. Sometimes it’s a choice on our part. One to-do item is sacrificed so another to-do item might see fruition. Failure and compromise play into every road trip.

Sometimes we find little moments between the grand occasions and the oncoming letdowns. And sometimes there are snacks.

Continue reading →

“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”: Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy

August 7, 2015 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation!

We once lived in a cinematic age when pushing a series to five or more installments was a generally unwise move. Rocky V. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. Superman Returns. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. An unwatchable army of various grade-Z horror also-rans that made it to #5 only through the undiscerning benevolence of the direct-to-VHS market. Many of us remain thankful the producers of Jaws and Lethal Weapon quit while they were behind.

Today, sequel failure is no longer a given. X-Men: Days of Future Past and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix may not be the greatest of either franchise, but they’re nonetheless commendable works that furthered their sagas, asked more of their actors, challenged themselves to create their own unique moments, and validated their existence. They confirmed it can be done. Along that same line of logic comes Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Any other series built around any other A-list star might be accused of being a soulless cash-grabbing machine if they repeated a role this many times. Maybe not all the parts are brand new, but the ones that worked before shine up really nicely and fit together into interesting new shapes if you know how to tweak them.

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Our Road Trips, 1999-2015: the Complete Checklist, So Far

August 3, 2015 By in Meta, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Alabama!

Teaser image from our 2015 road trip, Day 5. Coming soon!

[Hey, all! The following special presentation is the all-new Page added tonight to MCC that merges and replaces the previous individual “Our Road Trip” checklists that were taking up too much real estate in the desktop header and the mobile menu. This handy Big Picture checklist summarizes all the trips we’ve taken to date for full historical context, with links to everything that’s been exclusively posted here since 2012, a few years’ worth that have been reprinted here on special occasions, and capsule summaries of other trips and vacations we previously shared on other sites in years past that, sooner or later, Lord willing, will all be re-chronicled on MCC someday as part of the continuing story of one geek couple and their annual quests to find new things to see and do.

Or if you totally hate domestic travel, skip down to the 2013-2014 checklists and pretend this is a different new entry called “A Salute to MCC Post Titles”. I’d understand if you did, really. I do like titling stuff.]

Right this way for lists within lists, which I also really like!

2015 Road Trip Photos #3: The Welcome Rocket

August 1, 2015 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 6 Comments
Alabama Welcome Center!

This never-used Saturn IB launch vehicle is now a fantastic lawn ornament.

We had no idea what to expect from our first foray into Alabama. Our seven-day round-trip drive took us both ways through the 300-mile expanse it occupies between Tennessee and Louisiana, and gave us opportunities for stops at several points of varying interest levels. Our first impressions confirmed our research results: it’s large. It contains multitudes.

That location in the photo? That’s just their Welcome Center.

Right this way for more about this spaceflight souvenir…

Gen Con 2008 Memories: Super-Heroes, Costumes, and Old Friends

July 31, 2015 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Hygena!

A souvenir of that one time we knew someone who’d survived a reality TV show and pulled off the rare miracle of giving us a reason to want to watch reality TV. Photo by the Defuser.

[Today kicked off Gen Con Indy, where enthusiastic hordes of gamers and related geek types have returned to game, and game, and game and game and game. North America’s largest tabletop convention has called Indianapolis home since 2003. In 2008, my wife Anne and I attended for our first time for a special reason.

Despite our recent computer disaster, we’ve recovered many of our photos from four different sources to varying degrees of quality. As my own way of marking the occasion and unearthing unshared items from our personal archives, presented above is a photo of the two of us with someone we knew at the show. More about her in a moment.

The following writeup was previously posted a week later for about ten or fifteen friends. I’ve subjected it to minimal Special Edition-ing to scrub a few in-jokes and satisfy my own fussiness. I also wrote a brief article about the experience for a short-lived wannabe news site, but that’s lost forever and someday I will have my revenge upon those responsible for pulling the plug without giving me a heads-up first. Not that I’m bitter.]

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2015 Road Trip Photos #2: Supping on the Shoulders of Giants

July 28, 2015 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

Pork Shoulder Sandwich!

We weren’t ready for lunch by the time we left the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville, but we knew I wouldn’t last all the way till Nashville without food. We pressed ahead another hour or so, letting Anne nap for a bit and keeping a lookout for a convenient lunchtime stop that was not a national chain. Interstate exit signs trying to entice us into McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Subway, and/or Waffle House were a waste of logo paint to my eyes.

Pictured above is my prize for outstanding achievement in the field of stubbornness: a pork shoulder sandwich on a pretzel-roll bun with barbecue sauce, discovered in a town called Munfordville, population 1600.

If you think this is large, wait’ll you see what my wife ordered…