Our copies of Making It So, now available at a bookseller or other upstanding merchant near you! Or through bookshop.org! Or Amazon, if you must!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: two weeks ago my wife Anne and I drove two hours southeast from Indianapolis to attend our fourth Cincinnati Comic Expo. Their fun lineup of guests from pop culture works past and present included two actors from the world of Star Trek whom we’d met before but had reasons to seek out for encores. Longtime MCC readers are well aware Trek is a mutual interest of ours, though Anne outdoes me in numerous ways on this front (and many others). Among her various Trek-related collections and hobbyist accomplishments, over the course of 30+ years of convention-going she’s met every major Trek captain who served prior to 2017.

For those of you doing the math: yes, that illustrious roster includes Sir Patrick Stewart, who hasn’t attended a Midwest convention in over a decade. Anne had the pleasure of seeing him twice in person at shows prior to this website’s existence. On March 21, 1993, before she and I ever shared a relationship status, she watched him onstage at a con where interpersonal interaction wasn’t an option. Her second chance came at Wizard World Chicago on August 13, 2011, which the two of us attended together but were split up for a few hours because there were so, so many stars we each wanted to meet. I was off at some other booth when she obtained his autograph and got to exchange pleasantries with him, in a little anecdote I like to call “That Time Anne Nearly Made Patrick Stewart Cry”. It’s a long story that isn’t mine to tell here, but she’ll tell you if you ever run into us at a con and if you’re nice about it.

Fast-forward to today: the beloved British actor who’s played Jean-Luc Picard, Professor Charles Xavier, countless Shakespeare characters, literally every single speaking part in A Christmas Carol, Captain Ahab, the skinhead gang leader from Green Room, the poop emoji in The Emoji Movie, and more more more has just written his first book, a memoir titled Making It So. As soon as his U.S. speaking tour was announced, Anne was on top of it within minutes and found his closest stop to our house was Cincinnati. Back to the Queen City we’d go, so I could see him live for once. And third time’d surely be the charm for her.

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