Once again with feeling, the Golden Family Christmas diorama!
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!
I’d give it a major award if I could: Booth Tarkington Civic Theatre celebrates their upcoming performances of A Christmas Story: The Musical, December 5-27.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: each year the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis hosts a special Christmas exhibit called the Festival of Trees, for which dozens of local businesses and charities festoon a tree (or sometimes alternative objects) with decorations befitting their interests, causes, products, and/or colors. For the fourth year in a row my coworkers and I took a lunchtime field trip to their museum and immersed ourselves in holiday spirit, local pride, and tree-trimming cuteness.
The participating companies and entities come and go. Some put up a tree each and every year without fail; newcomers will often join in the festivities alongside them. (Alas, this year saw no trees from past providers such as the Eiteljorg Museum, the Avon Chik-Fil-A, and our Indianapolis Colts despite going a strong 8-2 as of this writing.) Once again my wife Anne couldn’t tag along this day because she has her own employer and perks, so I took pics to share with her and with You, The Viewers at Home. Please enjoy this selection from this year’s assortment of 84 different displays.
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!
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.
Proud as a peacock! Decorations by WTHR Channel 13, our NBC affiliate.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: each year the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis hosts a special Christmas exhibit called the Festival of Trees, for which dozens of local businesses and charities festoon a tree (or sometimes alternative objects) with decorations befitting their interests, causes, products, and/or colors. For the third year in a row my coworkers and I took a lunchtime field trip to their museum and immersed ourselves in holiday spirit, local pride, and tree-trimming cuteness.
Once again my wife Anne couldn’t be there because she has her own employer and perks, so I took pics to share with her and with You, The Viewers at Home. Trees are identified by their trimmers and/or donors. Links are provided for several — not affiliated links, mind you, because MCC has never been that kind of site. Enjoy!
One of many outtakes from my recent visit to the annual Festival of Trees exhibit at the Indiana Historical Society. This one was brought to them by Circle Centre Mall.
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!
My wife Anne amid the reimagined snowscape of Victorian London.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we don’t patronize live theater nearly often enough. Sure, we’ve visited New York City twice and strolled among those bright Broadway lights to catch popular favorites like The Lion King and Wicked. As for local theater here in Indianapolis…we’ve been shamefully negligent. My high school English classes took the occasional field trip to the Indiana Repertory Theatre — our most celebrated performance venue, but hardly our only stage — where my poor teenage self (whose family otherwise could never afford such extravagances) had the permission-slipped privilege to see productions of Macbeth (in minimalist postmodern with translucent walls), Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals (original source of “malapropism”, a useful word to fans of The Office), and Julius Caesar (starring no less an American celebrity than Family Ties‘ Michael Gross). My last engagement was thirty-three years ago.
Fast-forward to today: Anne and I had been discussing our omissions of local cultural experiences when an opportunity came up this holiday season: free tickets to the IRT’s annual performance of A Christmas Carol, courtesy of my employer (one of their nonprofit organization’s longtime sponsors). We kept our calendar clear, took advantage of the offer, and enjoyed a Christmas activity that for once had nothing to do with crowded family gatherings or big-screen movies with snow in them.
Portrait of a man and a wingless angel peering into the Twilight Zone 13 years before it was created.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Frank Capra’s beloved classic It’s a Wonderful Life is my wife Anne’s favorite Christmas film. One of the stops on our 2022 road trip was the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum in Seneca Falls, NY. A full decade ago we were horrified at the news that someone was sincerely planning a sequel, then relieved when it was canned a year later, though I had thoughts on where the franchise might’ve gone next. Thankfully no one was listening to me, but there was so much more to explore in Bedford Falls.
The film is one of the most famous non-geek precursors to pop culture’s recent glut of tales set in the wild, weird multiverse where one character can meet infinite variants of themselves, learn a little something about What Might Have Been, and appreciate their own screwy timeline a little more…or come away twisted with jealous rage and vowing revenge on their past writers. Way back in 1946 a rookie angel named Clarence let despondent everyman George Bailey suffer ninety minutes of tragic setup followed by a half-hour What If…? episode with an ultimately happy ending (even happier if we accept this 1986 SNL sketch as a canonical coda). Whereas today’s heroes sometimes meet dozens or even thousands of distortions of themselves — all the better to generate new action figures and IP spinoffs — just as Star Trek only has the one Mirror Universe, Clarence only takes George on a single measly tour through the looking-glass. That’s probably because Clarence’s trainee power-levels were several billion gigawatts below the all-seeing gaze of Uatu the Watcher, but still…he could’ve tried to access a few more if he liked George that much. Y’know, just for fun.
Diving polar bears represent for the Special Olympics “Polar Plunge” charity challenge.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every year the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis hosts a special Christmas exhibit called the Festival of Trees, for which dozens of local businesses and charities festoon a tree or tree-shaped object with decorations befitting their interests and colors. Last year I checked out the festival for my first time along with my coworkers as we sauntered over on our lunch break. We had so much fun that my boss decided our team should make it an annual tradition.
Last time I created not one, but two separate MCC galleries for the occasion. My wife Anne still doesn’t work downtown or at my company and was therefore once again sadly not included in our field trip, but I took photos to share with her and with You, The Viewers at Home. Trees are identified by their trimmers and/or donors. Enjoy!
IT’S SANTA! I KNOW HIM!
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 husband-and-wife. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.
Last year we attended the inaugural GalaxyCon Columbus in Ohio’s very own capital, which had arisen from the ashes of the top-notch yet short-lived GalaxyCon Louisville. We were happy the show went over well enough to merit a return engagement, with another lengthy guest list for fans of all media across the pop culture spectrum.
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 hours in and around the exhibit hall whenever we weren’t trapped in long lines or traffic-jammed aisles. The humble duo here at MCC enjoys the panoply, and 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.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 