Indiana State Fair 2017 Photos, Part 6 of 7: Antiques ‘n’ Arts

Beer Steins!

Anne and I don’t drink, but the steins sure look niftier than my cans of Coke Zero.

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, cooking demos, concerts by musicians that other people love, and farm animals competing for cash prizes and herd bragging rights. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. Usually we’re all about the food.

…but sometimes we also like browsing the wares, works, and wonders brought forth by the artists and collectors who grace the various exhibit halls with the things they’ve made, built, sewn, restored, or salvaged for other Hoosiers to see. None of these items were for sale, but a few could command impressive prices if they ever held post-fair auctions.

Continue reading

Indiana State Fair 2017 Photos #4: The Year in Lego

Red Babel!

Some of us have a problem with having our playtime regulated by The MAN.

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, cooking demos, concerts by musicians that other people love, and farm animals competing for cash prizes and herd bragging rights. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. Usually we’re all about the food.

…but sometimes you need other things to do for fun, activities to pass the time between feedings. Lucky for us that one of the commonest sights in their exhibit halls is Lego, the preferred medium for sculptors of all ages, from childhood to adulthood, whether enlisted in 4-H or freelancing for fun and wonder.

Continue reading

Return to Paducah: Our Superman Celebration 2017 Coda

Welcome to the Atomic City!

One of 50+ murals painted along Paducah’s Ohio River flood wall. Anne took pictures of nearly all of them while the sunshine baked us in our skins and now we’re dead. The End.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: on June 9th and 10th my wife Anne and I attended the 39th annual Superman Celebration in Metropolis, IL, a grand bash in honor of the Man of Steel in particular and all the super-heroes who owe their existence and livelihoods to him in general.

Across the Ohio River from Metropolis is the city of Paducah, Kentucky. We first explored their downtown on our first road trip to the area in 2001, but had found mostly empty storefronts, a few old antique shops, a couple of murals, a scary comic shop, and easy access to the Ohio River in case we wanted to take our chances on a dunking of questionable content. On our second through fifth trips to the area, we bypassed downtown and limited our Paducah exploration to our hotels and the restaurants closest to them.

On the occasion of our sixth visit, we dug more deeply into our online research, now that more resources are available to us today than we had in 2001. We learned of a few roadside attractions we missed the first time around and we found encouraging evidence that they’ve made some upgrades over the past sixteen years. Once we’d had our fill of super-hero glory, festival food, and sunburn, we decided to hop back across the Ohio and see how they’re doing.

Continue reading

My Free Comic Book Day 2017 Results, Best to Least Best

Spectacular Spider-Man!

Spidey and the Vulture, both older than they’ll appear in the next film. Art by Paolo Siqueira, Frank D’Armata, and one of the four credited inkers.

On May 6th my wife and I had the pleasure of once again observing Free Comic Book Day, the least fake holiday of them all. Readers of multiple demographics, thankfully including lots of youngsters, flocked to our local stores and had the opportunity to enjoy samplers from all the major comic companies and dozens of indie publishers. This year’s assortment saw a metric ton of all-ages comics far outnumbering the adults-only options, served up by a plethora of publishers great and small, hopefully many of whom will still be around a year from now.

I never grab copies of everything, and this year I restrained myself a bit more than usual. Sometimes reviewing comics can be fun, but I wasn’t in the mood to read that many kids’ comics in a row. Also left behind were a few books based on cartoons and movies, reminders that some publishers see comics more as a second-tier merchandising stream than as a literary medium unto itself.

The fifteen comics in my FCBD 2017 reading pile came out as follows, ranked from Totally Not For Me to I Would Pay Monies For More, complicated by the fact that several of these contain two or more stories. I considered concocting some sort of system involving grade-weighting and averages that would even up the scores, but ultimately I’ve decided to base everything on subjective non-math and internal whims instead. As most listicles are.

Continue reading

Our 2005 Road Trip, Part 9 of 10: Oklahoma!

Buffalo Bill!

Leonard McMurry’s “Buffalo Bill” welcomes you to the wonderful world of the wild, wild West!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome to the first installment of another special MCC miniseries, representing the original travelogue from our 2005 drive from Indianapolis to San Antonio, Texas, and back again in far too short a time…

State #5 on our seven-day, eight-state journey had its pros and cons, but at least we can say we crossed it off our list of states to visit. To its credit, unlike our home state of Indiana, it’s had its own famous musical. We haven’t watched it yet, but I expect we’ll get to it someday and develop a deeper appreciation for the Sooner State, or at least understand a few more pop culture references. I’m assuming it generated some, anyway. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a famous musical if everyone forgot the songs ten minutes later, right?

Continue reading

Our 2002 Road Trip, Part 4 of 5: The Meijer Art Department

American Horse!

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless it threatens your life perforce…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: a flashback to our fourth annual road trip, a meetup in Grand Rapids with fellow Star Wars fans for opening day of Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. Before and after the movie, we spent our first time in Michigan hitting a few key tourist attractions in the vicinity.

In Part 3 we walked you through the scenic greenery at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, years before a series of subsequent expansions turned it into one of Grand Rapids’ largest attractions. But as the name implies, we saw more than just gardens. Assorted sculptures are on display for the art lovers curious to see human creations in the natural mix. The largest piece by far is Nina Akamu’s 1999 The American Horse, which would be quite the destroyer if magic ever brought it to life.

Continue reading

Yesterday’s Entertainment Repurposed

Event Horizons!

We talk, joke, and moan all the time about Hollywood’s constant reuse, recycling, and rebooting of the movies and TV shows of our childhoods and of the childhoods before ours. We enjoy, or just as often roll our eyes, when today’s musicians cover or sample all the favorite songs of previous generations to present echoes of them to new audiences repulsed by old stuff, regardless of its anointed “classic” status.

Last month we found one artist who asked: why stop with cannibalizing the works themselves? Why not repurpose their very containers? What if you take all those shiny, reflective objects that served as portals into our homes for Hollywood and the record labels alike, and converted them into brand new, abstract doorways to imagination?

Continue reading

Merry Christmas in Seven Scenes from MCC!

Nativity scene!

The prettiest among my in-laws’ Nativity scenes, a handicraft find on one of their small-town expeditions, which they’ve surrounded with a selection of this year’s Christmas cards. I didn’t realize till a few minutes ago that the card we sent them tried to sneak into the shot.

Christmastime is here, basically! With last-minute shopping to do, relatives to visit, presents to give, and fresh-baked cookies to overdose upon, sleeping in heavenly peace may be an unattainable luxury during our three-day weekend. As we’re finalizing our plans and preparing to dive in, please enjoy this gallery of memories from our past four weeks foreshadowing the upcoming celebrations of Jesus’ birth (observed) and all those’ll entail, Lord willing.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Wondrous Weekend from the staff here at Midlife Crisis Crossover.

Right this way for six more quick shots of Christmas!

Cincinnati 2016 Overnighter Photos, Part 6 of 6

Cincinnati!

Our hotel room’s view of downtown Cincinnati high above the nightlife.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s convention time yet again! This weekend my wife Anne and I have driven two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend a show we’ve never done before, the seventh annual Cincinnati Comic Expo. With her birthday coming up in a few weeks, which usually means a one-day road trip somewhere, we agreed this would count as her early celebration.

Growing up in Indiana, we Hoosiers rarely had reasons to visit next-door Ohio until and unless it was time for another one-day family road trip to Kings Island Amusement Park, a few miles north of Cincinnati. If you believe the movie Anomalisa, the only two reasons to visit Cincinnati itself are the Cincinnati Zoo and Skyline Chili. After we wrapped up our Cincinnati Comic Expo experience, we did none of those things and found a few reasons not to be bored anyway.

Continue reading

2016 NYC Trip Photos #29: NYC Outtakes II

Chess & Checkers House!

Day Two: our endurance walk through Central Park included a rest stop at the Chess & Checkers House, moments before the clouds began sprinkling.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we guided you through the first six days of our second trip to New York City in twenty-eight episodes —- Sunday through Thursday, July 9-14,2016, our second time flying anywhere and my son’s first. Between the flights there and back again, we saw lots more New York we hadn’t seen our first time around when we drove out there from Indianapolis in 2011.

Here, in our penultimate chapter: a selection of outtakes from previous scenes — a couple skipped by dumb oversight; a few that captured isolated moments disconnected from the rest of the narrative; one or two alternate shots of cool objects and places; and a few left behind due to inadequate wow factor. We may be aging amateurs who don’t have thousands of unconditional superfans, but we do have light standards.

Right this way for more art, architecture, animals, and aircraft!

2016 NYC Trip Photos #18: 20th Century Art Faire

Kandinsky!

My wife and I split up at the Guggenheim and walked the galleries at our own respective paces. Among the works we each photographed, one of the very few to end up in both our photo sets was Kandinsky’s “Black Lines”.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we gave you an inside look at Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum, renowned repository of assorted arts by myriad masters, with a focus on the early Modernists. That entry was the first in a long, long time to elicit a reader response on the ol’ MCC Request Line. Juliette Kings, a fellow WordPress blogger over at Vampire Maman writes:

Wonderful. More please.

Short, sweet, and entirely possible. Consider it done! Presented here are twelve of the many paintings we saw on our whirlwind tour of the Guggenheim’s geometrically dazzling facility. The Guggenheim’s complete collection is also viewable online via their official site, their official app for interactive use while you’re there in person, or through the numerous art aficionados who’ve shared these famous works on Pinterest and elsewhere. Enjoy!

Right this way for eleven more noteworthy works for your own independent art study!

2016 NYC Trip Photos #17: Art Museum as Art Itself

Guggenheim!

The Guggenheim’s original design concept was “inverted ziggurat”. As a Midwesterner I look at it and think “fat tornado”.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

Two blocks south of the Cooper Hewitt, New York’s famed “Museum Mile” continues with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, one of the most distinctive-looking cultural centers around. Credit goes to architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who passed away six months before his last groundbreaking creation opened its doors in 1959. You’re supposed to look at the works of early Modernist masters when you enter, but the building itself is fascinating to the point of distraction.

Continue reading

2016 NYC Photos #16: The Museum of Intelligent Designs

Vitruvian Flik!

Do we have enough fans of either da Vinci or A Bug’s Life to appreciate Vitruvian Flik? Here’s hoping.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

After our tour of the USS Intrepid and its aircraft and spacecraft collections, our next ambitious stops were a bit farther away, up into the mannered nether reaches of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I’d pegged a couple of Museum Mile mainstays whose current exhibits might be in our aesthetic wheelhouses. Getting anywhere near them was half the battle.

Continue reading

The Art of the Indiana State House

Indiana State House Dome!

The State House is shaped like a cross. The center is a rotunda with this magnificent glass ceiling four stories overhead.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

On October 15th, downtown Indianapolis hosted a very special convention of sorts. The “Hoosier Homecoming” was a celebration held at the Indiana State House in honor of Indiana’s 200th birthday, with a host of well-known local faces in attendance, an opportunity for self-guided tours of the State House, and the closing ceremonies to the Indiana Torch Relay, a 37-day event in which a specially lit torch — not unlike the Olympics’ own, but inspired by the torch on our state flag — traveled through all 92 Indiana counties by various transportation methods until its final stop in Marion County at the Homecoming.

We’ve seen the capitol domes of several states on the road trips we’ve taken throughout the years. Longtime MCC readers so far have seen examples we’ve shared from Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Someday we’ll get around to representing our capitol dome photo from West Virginia, as well as the capitol in Washington DC, to say nothing of capitol domes we might catch on future travels. Last weekend we added to the photo collection and got a closer look at Indiana’s own.

Continue reading

The Dashing Designs of “Downton Abbey”

Lord and Lady Grantham!

One of Lady Grantham’s many splendid dresses accompanies the military suit Lord Grantham wore that time he thought he was about to go sail off and win World War I single-handedly.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s convention time yet again! This weekend my wife Anne and I have driven two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend a show we’ve never done before, the seventh annual Cincinnati Comic Expo. With her birthday coming up in a few weeks, which usually means a one-day road trip somewhere, we agreed this would count as her early celebration.

Full disclosure: the Cincinnati Comic Expo was only one of our two primary objectives that weekend. The con didn’t open till 3 p.m. Friday afternoon, leaving us time to start the weekend with our other, eagerly anticipated stop: the Taft Museum of Art, temporary home of a traveling exhibit for fans of that fascinating, frustrating, elegant hit TV series Downton Abbey.

Right this way for museum details and fancy PBS costume pics!

2016 NYC Trip Photos #6: Central Park Statue Stalking

Sherman Statue!

General Sherman prepares to depart Manhattan and rampage all over those Confederate flag sites we saw on our 2015 road trip to the South.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…

And in our last chapter:

On our 2011 vacation we saw maybe 5% of the total square footage of Central Park, if that. We saw a feature or two, but were so drained by the time we got there that the oppressive summer heat burned away the last of our energy reserves along with any drive for exploration. After we finished with St. Paul’s Chapel, we decided another, longer tour through Central Park was in order. All told, our Central Park walk took us from Grand Army Plaza at 59th and 5th to just behind the Met at 81st Street.

A few Central Park art fixtures were at the top of Anne’s must-see checklist. We encountered more than twice as many statues as we expected before we reached the two she was looking for at the end of our trail.

Continue reading

Wizard World Chicago 2016 Photos, Part 8 of 7: On the Occasion of Rosemont’s 60th

Rosemont 60th!

If you attended Wizard World Chicago 2016 and stayed at the Hyatt across the street, or at another nearby hotel linked through the same skybridge network, you missed this mural.

(Consider this entry the scene after the “Wizard World Chicago 2016 Photos” end credits.)

Though it’s named for the Windy City, Wizard World Chicago is held each year at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, which was incorporated January 20, 1956. We’ve done WWC eight times and still find something new in Rosemont every time we visit. That three-story mural in the lead photo adorned the free parking garage attached to our hotel for the weekend, known to WWC fans as “The Other Hyatt” — i.e., the one a mile north of the con and far away from all the good parties. It’s cheaper, quieter, and easy to make reservations there by accident if you don’t pay attention to the differing street addresses on Rosemont’s two Hyatts.

The Other Hyatt’s mural was our first notice about Rosemont’s 60th anniversary. On Saturday as we walked through the center corridor of the convention center parking garage, from the con over to MB Financial Park for dinner, we discovered another tribute to Rosemont’s 60th in the form of famous paintings brushed large but altered with homages to various Rosemont points of interest (some more interesting to the locals than to us out-of-towners). Anyone who didn’t walk the same walk, or who didn’t look closely while driving in our out, would’ve missed them easily. We caught a few of our favorites to share here for posterity as a sort of post-con epilogue. Enjoy!

Continue reading

Indiana State Fair 2016 Photos, Part 4 of 4: The Best of the Rest

GOAT FACE!

I AM GOAT. I HAVE GOAT FACE. I MAKE POSE. YOU GIVE ME SNACKS NOW.

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, cooking demos, concerts by musicians that other people love, and farm animals competing for cash prizes and herd bragging rights. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

In Part One we covered this year’s food, both the delicious and the deadly. In Part Two, the Parkour Show starring acrobatic dudes. In Part Three, selections from the great Indiana BISONcentennial herd. In this, the exciting probable conclusion, selections from the dozens of other photos we took during our visit. Other photos may surface when you least expect it, but these were among my favorites of the bunch.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #22: Winnie the Pooh and Ghostbusters Too

New York Public Library!

Hi, we’re the lions at the New York Public Library! You might remember us from such films as The Wiz and Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow! We have a terrible agent.

Considering how many films have been made in New York, it wouldn’t be hard to create a vacation itinerary made entirely of sights Hollywood has already shown us. Retracing the steps of those filmmakers can be fun, but it’s especially rewarding when they lead you to unexpected treasure.

Continue reading

Our 2011 Road Trip #18: A Day at the Met

Chinese Tapestry!

After spending some time resting and admiring this Chinese mural, a trio of young European girls asked me to take their photo for them. One tourist to another, it was the least I could do.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

After the Sony Wonder Tech Lab, we returned to the subway, rode to 86th Street, and walked due west to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seeing this entire ZIP-code-sized labyrinth of a museum would take months and require camping gear. In gracious deference to the member of our party with the shortest attention span, we kept a narrow focus on the Asian sections. On our next NYC trip someday before I die, it’ll be my turn to see what I want.

Continue reading