With uncharacteristically minimal preamble, we present random relevant pics we took in 2013 during our varied experiences in downtown Indianapolis so far this season. Consider it a bold experiment to see if I have the willpower to publish an entry under 200 words. Also: because Christmas!
All the best companies downtown have large holiday displays. Pictured here: the lobby of the OneAmerica Tower.
[No, loyal MCC readers, you didn’t sleep through a few missing weeks like Rip Van Winkle, and I haven’t deleted any entries lately. I’ve chosen to warp space-time with a very special flash-forward for the sake of holiday synchronicity. We’ll backtrack for the intervening installments in due time.]
When we told friends and family we would be spending an entire day of our vacation in Cleveland, they thought us mad. In the old days Cleveland was a frequent punchline whenever a movie or TV show needed a throwaway reference to someplace vastly inferior to a given cast’s current setting. Nowadays they’re more likely to use Detroit or New Jersey, but Cleveland suffered that role on numerous occasions. Exhibit A: all of Howard the Duck.
In the course of our research, we were surprised at how many geek-based tourist attractions the city had to offer. We eventually concluded that it deserved much more than a lunchtime layover. Thus were we compelled to spend all of Day Eight driving around the city in a carefully mapped arc, beginning with our south-side hotel, looping around and northward toward Lake Erie, and back around again.
First stop: the house where several key scenes were filmed for that beloved American holiday juggernaut, A Christmas Story — an underdog flick that changed the course of millions of lives in my generation and monopolizes the TBS airwaves for twenty-four hours out of every year, much to the chagrin of the generations before and after us.
Fans will be thrilled to note one of the first items that greets you upon approach is a Major Award. It looks seriously weird in daylight.
Like too many others, our extended family on both sides has given up on the ancient tradition of buying gifts for everyone they love. Few of us can afford to buy that many gifts, and it’s likely that the affluent minority wouldn’t have a clue about our interests, hobbies, or character traits. Heck, I don’t even know what some of them do for a living.
Some years we’ve agreed to buy gifts only for the kids, who were easier to treat as interchangeable when they were younger. As they’ve aged, they’ve become just as finicky and inscrutable as their parents. The process might be simpler if we lived near each other and/or spent time together. I hear that works well for some families. It’s not that we hate each other — if that were the case, Christmas gatherings wouldn’t be scheduled in the first place. But we seem to be a bit more fractured and preoccupied with our own doings than those families you see in movies or TV shows that do everything together. We can glean minutiae about each other from Facebook, but in most cases it’s not enough to influence our major Christmas purchasing decisions.
For the last few years, some factions in our families have livened up Christmas gatherings with a white elephant gift exchange. You chip in for a gift; you receive a random gift in return. It’s a way to say “I acknowledge you as part of the family” without designating a specific person as the recipient of the sentiment. More succinctly put: “Dear whoever: you technically matter.”
Remember when putting words in the mouth of Academy Award Winner Morgan Freeman was a thing? Did that ever stop happening?
PLEASE NOTE: the presentation of this clipfest does not mean I’m going on hiatus until January like a network TV show. I’m still allowing for a day off each week, as I’ve been doing for the past several months, but I expect to stick around and do my part to fill the void left behind by other bloggers jetting off to Grandma’s or Antigua or whatever. To me, holidays don’t seem like a time for not writing. Also, if I take more than one day off per week, site traffic paranoia kicks in and I have to breathe into a paper bag for a few hours, until enough internet wanderers click on that one undying, year-old Wreck-It Ralph entry to make me feel useful again.
Enjoy! And if I don’t see you before then: Merry Christmas!
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* “What Christmas is All About: an Imaginary Dramatic Reading” — The meat of this entry is shown above, but the link contains a couple more notes for temporal context.
Pictured above: the centerpiece from our table at my employer’s 2013 holiday party. This year’s shindig was held at a different venue than last year’s and consequently had different decor. Longtime MCC readers may recall last year my wife and I passed the time while waiting for door prize drawings by taking still life photos using any and all objects within reach.
I spent a lot of time this year staring into that centerpiece while life and partying went on around me.
Bruce Willis. Guns. Fake snow. Yep, it was that time again.
Sadly, I never see anyone show any Christmas love for Die Hard 2: Die Harder, which may be one of the two best films of director Renny Harlin’s career and is set entirely on Christmas Eve. Sure, its older brother hogs all the glory as the Greatest Action Film of All Time according to me and occasionally polls, but if you watch too closely and never mind the unfair comparisons to the One That Started It All, you’ll notice it has all the necessary elements of a basic Christmas movie, not to mention a few reminders of Christmas with your own family.
Where’s the Christmas in Die Hard 2? Count the ways:
* Snow! Die Hard had no snow. None. Not a flake. It was set in L.A., which has no snow because it hates Christmas. Die Hard 2 is set in Washington D.C., where snow is everywhere, even though most of it is fake movie snow that would make decent pillow stuffing. Even fake snow has more of a right to be in a Christmas movie than palm trees do.
Last Christmas season on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Black Friday is my annual one-man road trip. I pick one side of Indianapolis; I hit the open road in that direction, leaving family and friends behind; and I enjoy some time alone. Sure, to the average human, rushing headlong into frenzied crowds may sound like the stupidest strategy to achieve solitude. For an introvert like me who draws very little attention and rarely inspires conversation from strangers, it works surprisingly well.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect this year. I kept my expectations near zero and remained open to the possibility that I might come home empty-handed and down in the dumps. I worried that so many stores opening the evening before would serve to put the “lack” in “Black Friday”. Would all the suspiciously priced sale items be sold out? Would all the store shelves and displays be barren, their wares looted by the Blackest Thursday stampedes? Would the stores themselves still be standing, or collapsed from the wear and tear of consumer shootouts larger and grander than the Battle of Helm’s Deep?
A few stores failed me, but I’m pleased that a few locations catered to my modest whims. Per my personal standards, my trip only lasted from 8 a.m. to noon., at which point I promptly pulled the plug and went straight home. Firm boundaries are a key component of effective self-restraint.
Thanksgiving success / is measured by the lack of / pretty leftovers. [Source: file photo from / our two thousand eleven / meal to end all meals.]
Just because I can
Write a Thanksgiving haiku
Clearly means I should
If you want to be first in line to buy Christmas presents for your loved ones for nickels on the dollar, even if they’re worth pennies at best, you need to be prepared.
Last year’s new fad was for stores to reopen at midnight Friday instead of waiting until Friday’s been up and running for a few hours first. This year, many stores think midnight is too long to wait for shoppers to come fork over all the monies, and are reopening Thanksgiving evening, around the same time that some families are accustomed to holding their Thanksgiving. On the bolder end of the spectrum, Old Navy plans to open on Thanksgiving at 9 a.m. I’m sure they’re not alone in rejecting the holiday’s existence altogether.
Clearly if one wants to win at two-day Black Friday, the old single-day Black Friday playbook needs to be shredded and competitive shoppers need to rethink their strategies. Because, like Black Friday, this new tradition of Black Thursday isn’t just about Christmas survival. It’s about Christmas victory.
My two perennial centerpieces, the disturbing duo of Plastic Faceless Reaper and the Bewildering Spider-Skull . And MCC readers who look closely will recognize a character from a previous entry!
First time in my life, as far as I can recall: this year the city of Indianapolis postponed trick-or-treating until November 1st due to a severe thunderstorm forecast for Halloween night. Considering how the eventual storm left thousands of residents without power for hours, I can’t dispute that it was the right call from a public safety standpoint. Our household was spared the worst of the ostensible onslaught. Our lights blinked once, and one of my Halloween crows fell on its side. If there’s a problem level more insignificant than “first-world problems”, that’s where our threat level fell.
The unavoidable rain delay killed our neighborhood turnout, though.
Bring a lawn chair, cozy up to the fire pit, and share an MCC entry or two from last October with the entire family!
As a Halloween extra for Midlife Crisis Crossover readers who’ve joined us within the past year, or for anyone who loves a good rerun, we offer any or all of the following links to last year’s themed celebrations of the season:
* “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Trick-or-Treaters” — In which I give American kids unsolicited advice on how to do their job properly and earn their free junk food with a clear conscience.
* “Pumpkin Flavored Everything” — Of the four (4) pieces of fiction ever attempted in MCC’s 530-odd entries to date, this 1000-word tale about family, obsession, and the Great Pumpkin remains the most-Liked so far.
* “Halloween Stats 2012; or, the Decline of Trick-or-Treating Civilization” — I’ve kept track of our trick-or-treater traffic every year since 2007, when we became first-time homeowners and escaped our old apartment that trick-or-treaters refused to approach. It helps me determine the next year’s inventory, and sometimes I think counting things is fun. Expect a follow-up this year, though a day late because Indianapolis has officially postponed festivities to Friday due to rampant murderstorms in our Thursday night weather forecast. Boo, hiss.
Enjoy! And Happy Halloween!
Fortunately for our uncommon family, J. K. Rowling created characters for every imaginable somatotype.
Most of the accessories were thrift-shop finds. My son’s Weasley hair was simulated using an entire can of orange hair spray. We spent the evening accompanying her sister’s family and had a total blast. And then we never did it again.
Are YOU ready to make your employees feel like kings and queens for a week? It’s rewarding and legal!
The premise, for those of you in other fields with your own traditions of positive reinforcement: each year for five consecutive business days, customer service supervisors who can spell and pronounce “morale” treat their employees to a series of extra fun perks. Sometimes it’s free donuts for breakfast and/or a a catered lunch. Sometimes there are team-building exercises or one-on-one contests, with useful prizes at stake. For companies with relaxed dress codes, there can also be themed clothing days — e.g., Hawaiian shirt day, sports apparel day, jeans day, etc. If it’s different from a normal work day and doesn’t double everyone’s stress level, it’s welcome this week.
Between my wife and me, we have [mumble-mutter] years of experience in customer service, many of which have been blessed by superiors who observed CSA Week. We each have multiple fond memories of the occasion.
The first half of Day One was spent rocketing across the wide expansive of big fat Ohio as quickly as possible so we could spend the evening in Pennsylvania. Before we settled in at our hotel, we detoured for one exploratory stop in the famous li’l town of Punxsutawney, annual Party Central for the American celebration known as Groundhog Day.
Taken out of context, this photo of a happily armed woman and some dork with a bowling ball could be misconstrued as a future submission to awkwardfamilyphotos.com with a caption questioning the decision to don summer wear in December.
At left in the 2012 Metropolis Superman Celebration T-shirt, my wife is holding a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. At right in the hard-to-see shirt sporting the periodic-table block for adamantium, that’s me toting the bowling ball given to Ralphie’s old man for Christmas. The backdrop is the living room from the original A Christmas Story House in Cleveland, open year-round for visitors like us.
Some vacationers might spend their time off getting drunk and sunburned on an exotic beach. That’s not who we are.
We’ve known each other for nearly twenty-six years, but Wednesday marks our ninth wedding anniversary. When the one you love is willing to pose with you without a whit of hesitation, surrounded by this much pop-culture ephemera, confident in the knowledge that we agree on the most important things in life while sharing a variety of commonalities in the Department of Ultimately Unimportant Things, you realize you’re ridiculously blessed beyond what you deserve. You also thank the Lord that He’s in charge and not Joss Whedon, or else something tragic would’ve happened five minutes after the photo was taken.
Happy Anniversary, m’lady. Can’t wait to see our vacation photos at age 70. 🙂
This entry has been brought to you today by the number 4 and the chemical reaction EXPLOSIONS.
Their objections are reasonable. The booms and bangs are drowning out the TV. The baby’s trying to sleep. The ruckus makes their pets skittish. July 4th isn’t meant to be a week-long celebration. The pops sound like scary gunfire. Something something fire hazard. Durn fool kids gonna blow themselves up one of these days.
I sympathize, but I don’t cosign.
There is nothing wrong with your ‘Net device. This search field is not clickable and is provided for illustrative purposes only. For best use, send the link to your friends and guffaw when they try clicking on it.
In the wake of recent conflicting headlines regarding the revolving-door employment status of its longtime participants, ABC’s The View announced a new initiative to move forward into a bold new era by hiring Internet sensation Tardar Sauce, star of the massively popular “Grumpy Cat” meme, as new co-host to represent for furry, nonhuman, and hatemonger minorities. The arguably photogenic Ms. Sauce will replace outgoing co-host Joy Behar and has sinister plans to drive out the three survivors until none remain. ABC executives are on board with this dramatic plan in hopes of boosting viewership in the precious young-adult-male demographic from its current double-digit negative ratings share.
Viewers who were Grumpy Cat fans before Grumpy Cat was cool are cordially invited to share her official site or her official Facebook page with bandwagon jumpers to show how superior you are to them, even though she hates you and newcomers equally.
Sally and Linus, humbly accepting food from a dog.
I was brought up to observe the standard annual rites. We bought a Paas egg-coloring kit at the grocery that came with all the paraphernalia you needed for starters: color-coded aspirin to toss in cups of water and turn it Crayola-colored and undrinkable; a wire hook to rescue submerged eggs from their watery prisons after a dozen tries; non-stick stickers, most of which would later be thrown away still attached to their original release paper; a wax crayon for drawing gunky, invisible shapes on the eggshell for no one to see and the dye to soak through anyway; decorative paper collars to use as Easter egg stands, as if the results would be museum-worthy; and the box that contained it all, designed with the punch-out holes to transform into an egg-drying rack that would collapse under the weight of three or more eggs.
When you’re sitting at a ballpark or other sports stadium, the crowd is doing the Wave, and you see the crest heading straight for your section, do you rise and raise your arms in rhythm with your neighbors? Or do you scowl, remain in your seat, and lecture your friends about how the Wave is conformist tomfoolery?
When your coworkers decide they’re not in the mood for cafeteria food or the tiny Weight Watchers meals they brought in their lunch bags and decide to order pizza or Chinese takeout together, do you go with the flow and chip in a few bucks for a little something different for yourself? Or do you denounce their impulsive extravagance and consign yourself to the turkey sandwich you brought because it was slapped together with only the purest of motives?
When you need to buy drinks at the grocery, do you base your decision on advertising? Do you buy drinks regardless of their advertising? Or do you specifically boycott any drinks that have ever been advertised in any way because advertising is shallow and irritating and unholy, and instead limit yourself to buying only products that have never been advertised in any medium?
If you’re at the theater watching a movie that the other patrons seem to be enjoying a lot more than you are, do you leave them to their difference of opinion and count down the minutes till the travesty is over? Or do you castigate them for their life choices and demonstrate the superiority of your disdain by chasing them around the theater with a stun-gun?
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 