The Fate of Indianapolis is Partly in My Hands

My Vote, My Voice!

“Take as many as you want,” said the nice clerk at the polls five minutes before closing time. I tried to keep it subtle.

Dunno about your locale, but here in Indiana today we had our annual opportunity to participate in the Election Day primaries that determine which political candidates will be allowed by their respective parties to run for office for real in November. It happens on the same Tuesday every year, so it’s not exactly a trade secret, but the voter turnout is always paltry. Voting for positions such as city-council seats or school board members or tax referendums isn’t as glamorous or intoxicating as voting for mayor, governor, President, or American Idol, but it’s a privilege someone has to exercise so the system will keep running according to The Way Things Are and we don’t have to appoint new leaders by choosing from random LinkedIn profiles.

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Echoes of Homeowners Past

Ethernet Jack!

If you’re unlike me, your idea of a fun afternoon is inviting your friends to come over with their laptops, their ethernet cables, and all their favorite games that were meant to run at DSL speeds. Everyone gathers around the ethernet wall hub like Scouts around a campfire, plugs in to the same jack, boots up Windows XP, pops in their CD-ROMs, and has themselves a grand old wired time.

I’m assuming that’s what the previous owners of this house did. Or maybe they taught Applied Computer Science classes from home to all the neighborhood latchkey kids. Or they weren’t sure which jack the phone company would endorse but they figured you can’t go wrong with “Bigger is Better” or “Holeyer is Holier”. Maybe they were anticipating the one magical day when Internet Science would let you could hook two ethernet cables to your PC and double your processing speed. If only that had ever been feasible, perhaps RealPlayer would’ve been watchable.

Right this way for another case of MCC home “improvement”!

Top 10 Surprises in the Upcoming “Teletubbies” Reboot

Teletubbies Time Warp!

Pictured left to right: William Shatner, Harry Shearer, June Foray, and Seth MacFarlane. Or not.

Sooner or later, every old intellectual property must be revitalized for a new generation that has no interest in it. Revivals are perpetually on the way in every medium –as of this minute, your slate of candidates includes Archie, Logan’s Run, and even gum-wrapper superstar Bazooka Joe. Why waste your time and imagination inventing new characters when you can just stamp your preferences onto someone else’s venerated labor of love?

Also on the way: the return of the Teletubbies! England’s other, other, other Fab Four were psychedelic freeform heroes to a generation of toddlers born at a weird time. Now that formerly captive audience will have the opportunity to recapture their childhood, reunite with their old mentors, and complain about all those years of characterization, continuity, and PBS crossovers that are being tossed out the window and now the seasons they’ve collected on VHS are null and void. Welcome to 21st-century entertainment, youngsters.

Right this way for…another list!

Indiana Senate Bill 101.5 to Replace Governor Mike Pence with Grumpy Cat

Grumpy Cat!

If you’ve been following Indiana’s tumult in national headlines, which I covered to a limited extent in last night’s entry and satirized obliquely last week, then you’re aware that the signing of Indiana’s remix of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has incentivized the American jester majority to demote every resident in the once-kind-of-okay state of Indiana to the status of infamous generalized punchline stereotype for the next six months. So that’s been pretty inhibitive to my mental state, especially when internet quote-unquote “friends” join in the pummeling. Because, y’know, it’s my personal fault that a Congressman became governor by carrying 49% of the vote in an election with something like 52% voter turnout, and I have no idea how many eligible Hoosiers aren’t registered to vote and would drive the per-capita percentage still downward. Doesn’t matter to the world, though: if one-fourth of us make a wish, so wish we all.

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More Than Flowers at the Indiana Flower & Patio Show 2015

Blue!

In our previous installment, you saw flowers and nothing but flowers from the 2015 Indiana Flower and Patio Show. But the exhibition, sprawled across two buildings at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, has so much more to offer than pretty flower displays. Various vendors offer gardening implements, flower and vegetable seeds, digging advice, contest drawings/telemarketing signups, garage finishing services, gutter-cleaning inventions, non-stick cookware, liquor, chocolate, nuts, coffee cakes, summer sausage, massages, eyelashes, poor abandoned pets, Indianapolis Star subscriptions, and more more more. And if you’re a fan of pushy sales pitches, this year DirecTV had no less than four different booths staffed with aggressive go-getters excited about interrogating and shaming you over your home entertainment choices.

Meanwhile, their comparatively classy competitors over at Comcast/Xfinity bought one (1) booth and, instead of practicing gotcha salesmanship, invited a celebrity spokesperson to hang out with them and sign autographs: Blue, the official mascot for the Indianapolis Colts!

(At left in the first photo above, that’s my wife’s grandmother being smothered with fuzzy showbiz love. And in case you’re wondering, I have no idea why Blue has streamers in his nose. As a chronic sufferer of sinus problems myself, I say any technique that keeps the airways free is fair game. Ignore the gawkers and run with it.)

Right this way for more photos of not-flowers! And, okay, a few more flowers that got in the way, too.

My Super Awesome Cinderella Reboot Pitch

Walt Disney's Cinderella

The young woman whose life was changed forever by a first date and some pretty shoes.

[It’s a hidden gem from the MCC Archives! The following entry was originally posted on November 19, 2012, with zero awareness that Disney would someday do something new-not-new with Cinderella. Fast-forward two years, and their live-action remake is coming to theaters this Friday, March 13th. The prophecy has come to pass!

I have no plans to see their version unless someone mails me a ticket, but it’d be great if they totally followed my outline and proved me a genius out of time. Based on the last trailer I saw, they declined my pitch and theirs will instead be a Gus van Sant shot-for-shot homage with no twists allowed. This entry, then, captures the marketable joy of What Might Have Been.]

* * * * *

This weekend I revisited Walt Disney’s twelfth animated classic Cinderella for the first time since the late 1990s. Of all the numerous Disney films our family has owned in multiple formats, this is one of several that rarely saw repeat viewings even when my son was a toddler who insisted on watching every animated movie over and over again until I hated it.

As with many older Disney films, parts of it have aged better than others. I’ll admit I had trouble staying conscious all the way through. Even if I’m alone in this struggle, the film is now over sixty years old and therefore in need of a gratuitous overhaul on shallow principle. In the spirit of today’s remake-happy medium that thrives on second-hand ideas, the following notes are my suggestions to downconvert this one-time children’s favorite for the modern, unsophisticated audience that Hollywood executives so dearly crave.

Right this way for notes to make the greatest Cinderella of all times!

Technically Easy Ceiling Repair for Hopeless Amateurs

Say! You, there!

Has this ever happened to you?

Ceiling Hole!

You’re at home trying to live or rest or hobby or whatever other normal things you do when you’re not working, unless you work from home and every day is an existential struggle over the Duality of Man, and then suddenly one day you realize you have a hole in your ceiling. Sometimes if you’re lucky, you’re present in the room when the hole is punched and you know exactly what to blame and how to swear vengeance properly. Most of the time, it’s a gradual process that may or may not have begun with a water stain that turned malignant. Still other times, you’d swear that hole wasn’t there when you left for work that morning, but now there’s a surprise ceiling hole and an innocent-looking family holding a football with everyone’s fingerprints on it. Whatever the cause, no two ceiling holes are the same, but the heartbreak is universal.

If you’re a renter, ceiling hole repair is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Call landlord.
2. Complain about hole.
3. Watch your stories till hole is gone.

If you’re a homeowner with a home-improvement skill set, it’s not so simple, but you’ve probably got it covered. If you’re a homeowner without a clue like me, it’s a conscientious burden, it’s a drain on your heating bills, it’s an eyesore that has to be hidden from guests, and it might as well be a geotechnical engineering project for all you know. What do you do?

There’s the highway (i.e., abandon the house)…or my way.

Here’s what I did in too many embarrassing steps!

Top 10 Best Parts of Tonight’s State of the Union Address

SOTU 2015!

President Barack Obama delivered tonight’s State of the Union address with a cartoon angel and devil at either shoulder.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, Indiana:

10. Biden blinking in Morse code “BIDEN/BEYONCE 2016”
9. One lone applauding Republican getting tased by the Senator next to him
8. A frustrated John Boehner wishing his bottled rage could turn him into Red Hulk
7. Ambassadors from Iran and Cuba giving each other cutesy quizzical Jim-and-Pam looks
6. Three-minute ovation every time Obama took a selfie
5. Special guest Sidney Poitier awarding nine honorary Oscars to Selma
4. Anointing of Anita Sarkeesian as head of newly formed Department of Gamer Tolerance
3. Preview footage from The Force Awakens in which Jedi Knight Obama and John Boyega fight Imperial ninjatroopers
2. Sheepish apology for preempting Marvel’s Agent Carter

And the number one Best Part of Tonight’s State of the Union Address:

1. Scene after the end credits: all-Democrat conga line while speakers blare “Everything is Awesome!!!”

42 Bath & Body Works Rejects for Last-Minute Christmas Shoppers

Bath & Body Works!

This photo contains SPOILERS for some of our relatives, but they never visit this site. Lucky me!

I don’t know if your local strip malls have Bath & Body Works stores, but ’round these parts they’re the uncontested champions of creating and marketing soaps, shampoo, shower gels, lotions, sprays, and other assorted cleansing liquids in imaginative flavors, scents, or made-up poetic themes. You can’t buy just one B&BW item in a given kind such as Juniper Breeze, Country Apple, Twilight Woods, Midnight Pomegranate, Dancing Waters, or Warm Vanilla Sugar. You have to collect the entire set or else your bathroom cabinet contents won’t match and all your showers and baths will go horribly wrong. Other customers can just tell, and their concerned glares will heap shame upon you and your failure to treat hygiene as pretty-smelling Serious Business.

The women in my wife’s family love, love, love their B&BW products. Every one of them has a favorite flavor or scent from the vast catalog of personal cleansing products. Amazingly, my wife has memorized the favorites of every single relative so she’ll know exactly which stocking stuffers to buy. I’ve never once seen her swap their gels by accident, nor vice versa. Somehow they all have a system and it works for them. This sort of thing doesn’t have to be divided among gender lines, but my son, my brothers-in-law, my nephews, and I are united in our befuddlement while this part of the annual gift exchange goes on. We figure as long as we’re clean, or at least clean-ish, we’re good to go.

Right this way for your last, best, most desperate holiday gift-giving guide!

My Super Awesome “Frosty the Snowman” Reboot Pitch

Frosty the Snowman!

Millions of viewers used to love watching Frosty the Snowman every year when it aired around Christmastime. The beloved 1969 animated special was one of several perennial favorites in my childhood household. We knew the song, we knew most of the lines, we recognized those familiar cartoon voices, and we knew every beat of the story, from the flop magician to the snowman’s parting promise. Frosty was common knowledge among us kids.

See that face up there, full of angst and pathos and magic? That classic hero just turned 45 years old. Isn’t it time for his 21st-century reboot?

I don’t mean as a feature film, because that declining box office is depressing. I also don’t mean another one-time TV Christmas special, because that’s thinking too small. See, I’m thinking live-action regular series. So many facets of this undervalued intellectual property yearn for a modern update with better fashions, extra pizzazz, hipper attitudes, and supernatural warfare. Frosty himself could stay CG, but there’s no reason Karen, her friends, the other townspeople, and most of the town scoundrels couldn’t be played by real actors so we can crank out episodes more quickly and minimize our animation needs. Unless we send this proposal to Fox, animating it will get us nowhere. I say it’s time for Frosty to start over, but this time keep it real.

I’ve taken the liberty of mapping out a hypothetical thirteen-episode first season that would rebuild the Frosty universe from the ground up and make it relevant and “sick” to a whole new generation of impressionable prime-time viewers. This, then, is what my preliminary episode guide looks like for…

SNOWMAN: THE SERIES!

Right this way for capsule summaries of all thirteen season-one episodes and a sneak preview of future storylines!

Excerpts from “The Grand Jury Jokebook”

Jury Duty!

“Ha! I can do this grand-jurying thing with my eyes shut! In fact, I think I will!”

Q: How many grand jurors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The bulb is burned out, but they’ve ruled it doesn’t need to be changed

Q: Why did the grand jury cross the road?
A: To get to the wrong conclusion

Q: How can a grand jury tell that an elephant has been in their fridge?
A: Those giant footprints in the peanut butter could belong to some other animal, so we have no idea

Q: Why do firemen wear red suspenders?
A: The grand jury has heard insufficient testimony proving that suspenders are a thing

Q: Knock, knock!
A: Who’s there?
Q: Grand jury.
A: We’re not home.
Q: Oh, okay, bye.

Q: What’s black and white and red all over?
A: A grand jury with a checkerboard

Q: Why is a raven like a grand jury?
A: Both invoke sadness, grief, and parody

Q: Why is a grand jury like a writing desk?
A: You can use both to write whatever narrative you want

(If you think these are terrible jokes, by all means, let us speak of things that are like a terrible joke…)

Top 10 Best Scientific Inaccuracies in “Interstellar”

Interstellar!

The stars of Zero Dark Thirty and Gone Baby Gone spent months crafting an accurate portrayal of apocalyptic farm life.

[Courtesy Spoiler Warning. Plot points ahead.]

So you and your friends have turned Interstellar nitpicking into your new favorite spectator sport? You say you’re not content with forgiving the movie its flaws, or with engaging in the more challenging activity of brainstorming reasons why they’re maybe not flaws? Or you’re possibly dissatisfied because Christopher Nolan’s new movie barely passes the Bechdel test and only scores 1/3 on the Blackdel Test. (The latter is of course rarer and tougher, requiring a movie to contain (1) at least 2 black characters (2) who talk to each other (3) about anything except race. And a 1/3 is an amazing score compared to most other major-studio films.)

Internet users have had no shortage of axes to grind over the movie, and it’s telling that Interstellar has pulled in over $120 million at the U.S. box office without winning the #1 position in its first three weeks of release. It’s on track to become Nolan’s lowest-grossing film since The Prestige, possibly because everyone has been quick to dissect it and find faults since it doesn’t meet their narrow expectations of what a film about spaceflight should look like. Or everyone’s still bitter about The Dark Knight Rises. Hard to say.

Personally, I liked what Interstellar tried to do and appreciated what it accomplished, even if it may not become The Film That Saved NASA. I embraced it despite its problems, theorized why some viewers may have been overthinking it, and thought that some of its errors, omissions, and outrageous fallacies were actually pretty cool.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Best Scientific Inaccuracies in Interstellar:

10. Tom eating a giant dust burrito and exclaiming, “Mmmmm, farm-to-table dust!”
9. The tap-dance shoe-clicking in Anne Hathaway’s zero-G musical number
8. McConaughey insisting he needs to lose forty pounds
7. The ship slingshots around the black hole and reappears in the Enterprise‘s 1986 humpback-whale tank
6. Waterworld suspiciously free of the wreckage of Kevin Costner’s career
5. Reciting the same poem three times somehow does not summon the ghost of Dylan Thomas
4. Fifth Dimension ruled by a black gay female Mr. Mxyzptlk
3. Rocket fuel magically synthesized from used copies of Failure to Launch
2. Matt Damon in a movie without top billing

And the number one Scientific Inaccuracy in Interstellar:

1. God appears to the crew; reveals His true name is Oscar Consideration.

Them Apples: the E! True Hollywood Story

Apples!

The Apples in Stereo!

In a modest Indiana town called Danville, there’s a place called Beasley’s Orchard where parents can bring their children to let them experience the natural resource of fresh air, and older couples can wander around as a birthday date and/or happy excuse for light exercise. During certain times of the year, visitors to Beasley’s can peruse a farmer-food shop, walk quickly through a small-business sales-tent, get lost for years in a corn maze, or lay traps for the Great Pumpkin in their rather sincere pumpkin patch.

You’re surely familiar with one of the orchard’s biggest superstars: Them Apples.

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“The Night Before Awesome Con”: a Poetic Live-Tweet Distraction

Awesome Con Indy 2014! Woo!

Awesome Con Indy! October 3-5, 2014. Tickets still available!

Saturday my wife and I will be checking out the inaugural Awesome Con Indianapolis down at the Indiana Convention Center. Awesome Con will be our sixth convention this year, but we have high hopes that this experience will find its own positive form of uniqueness. The guest list isn’t too lengthy or overwhelming, and contains quite a few names we’re excited to meet. We presume there’ll be nifty new things to buy, too.

Now it’s Friday night and I’m still not ready. I’ve had a busy week (not all of it was my fault) and my attention span has been stretched to its limits in myriad directions. I’m really trying to concentrate and prepare for our big, fantabulous day of walking, shopping, walking, meeting, walking, cosplayers, walking, potentially talking to someone, and after that some more walking because my free parking is several blocks away. But I needed to unwind first before I could resume researching.

Right this way for tonight’s short, special presentation!

Top 10 Lay’s Potato Chip Flavors Coming in 2015

Lay's!

Actual potato chip flavors as of today. I’m saving this as a reminder for myself five years after I’ve forgotten they were a thing once.

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. So far I’ve tried two of the four ostensibly brazen offerings. Our first contestant, their festive Mango Salsa variety, tasted like authentic dried fruit from the health food store, but crispier so they’re less depressing, and with a pound of salt to help tone down the overwhelming potpourri-basket sensation. I imagine these are what astronaut fruitcake would be like if NASA hated astronauts enough to invent it.

Last weekend we picked up a bag of their Cappuccino chips, which tasted bizarre but not offensive. I suspect this fugitive product hails from an alternate Earth where coffee-flavored sweet cream is a common topping for baked potatoes. The sweetness seems out of place, though it contains zero grams of sugar, only fake flavors. From that standpoint it’s a healthier option than dunking them in HFCS-laden ketchup. Call it a Pyrrhic potato victory.

(Of the other two new flavors, Bacon Mac ‘n’ Cheese sounds perfectly in tune with today’s America and therefore wasn’t abnormal enough for my testing purposes; and I’m flat-out afraid to try the Wasabi Ginger flavor. If they’re terrible, there’s no one else around who’d finish the rest of the bag for me.)

For those who can’t eat just one…

Pacifying the Pumpkin Police

Pumpkin Donut!

The scene above was part of today’s breakfast: a pumpkin donut. Only because it’s that time of year when every American has a pumpkin quota to fulfill. My part is done. I’m legally free to move on and go back to eating normal food in the flavors I like.

Every year the same product wave pummels all consumer shorelines: pumpkins are in, everything else is out. Pumpkin flavors permeate and overwhelm every conceivable grocery item, restaurant dish, and miscellaneous product or service. Looking away or hiding are futile defenses because pumpkin surrounds you in every direction from your personal space to the horizon. You’ll never be allowed to exit autumn until and unless you surrender to the will of Big Pumpkin.

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President Obama’s Top 10 Secret Winning ISIL Strategies

President Barack Obama!

Our Commander-in-Chief gears up for conflict as part of Operation: Desert Suavé.

The past several years have not been America’s best in the realm of foreign policy. All that never-ending awkwardness, tension, and/or bitter feuding wasn’t exactly alleviated this week when President Barack Obama delivered a special address Wednesday night outlining our military’s proposed strategies for tackling the Eastern-Hemisphere forces of ISIL or ISIS or whatever this week’s code-acronym is for headline news’ newest bad guys.

Depending on where you stand with him and/or this escalating conflict, the speech was either too long, too short, too detailed, too vague, too overdue, or too Obama and you’re not listening no matter what LALALALALALALALA. Rest assured, our President and his speechwriters know better than to provide sensitive information to all listeners equally. We three hundred million onlookers will never know the full story behind all the extensive plans being concocted and implemented by our top officials, officers, politicians, diplomats, advisers, think-tankers, and other various hangers-on with useful knowledge or arsenals at the ready. Whatever they’re coming up with, the best we can do is hope it doesn’t blow up in our faces like an explosive cigar from a third-world novelty factory.

This realization, then, begs a question. Given that his speech was merely a superficial overview to assure Americans that they do indeed have concrete plans afoot, even if they can’t share blueprints or instruction booklets with us; assuming they aren’t just trying to save face and feign confidence in the face of roiling international controversy; knowing that the U.S. hasn’t exactly been scoring A-pluses in overseas negotiations over the past several years; I ask, then, because I can’t possibly be the only one who wants to know: What does Obama really have in mind here? How much is he not allowed to tell us, either to withhold info from enemy hands or to forestall embarrassment at the parts that might not work?

Right this way for tonight’s list!

Top 10 Ways I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry

Sundae in Salem!

I had no idea how to illustrate this entry. After 28 months I still have no site branding to showcase. I’m not in the mood for anything prideful. Please randomly enjoy this outtake from our 2013 road trip — me eating a sundae at the Witch’s Brew Cafe in Salem, MA. Why not.

We interrupt our Wizard World Chicago 2014 galleries to bring you this brief intermission noting the occasion of Midlife Crisis Crossover’s 800th post!

Neither writer’s block nor Hollywood’s siren call nor reckless abandon nor typing-finger tumors have stayed me from my appointed fixation yet. If and when MCC crashes and burns someday, I hope I can think of reasons to blame anyone and everything except myself.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Ways I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry:

10. 10,000-word all-star salute to me, myself, and I

9. Have a WordPress “Freshly Pressed” banner tattooed across my chest

8. Reprint a past entry no one else liked except me; grovel for pity-Likes

7. Eight-hour scenes-after-end-credits marathon

6. Saccharine love letter to my wife that makes all other readers nauseous

5. Write epic fanfic crossover “Bunheads Go to Sleepy Hollow”

4. Buy a PS4 and one game; play until my gamer-cred upticks; then go settle every Quinn/Sarkeesian rage-war single-handedly

3. Prize drawing to get rid of all my unwanted DC New 52 comics

2. Live-tweet a Dog with a Blog rerun

And the number one Way I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry:

1. Family road trip to Ferguson!

Top 10 Rejected “Doctor Who” Battle Cries

The 12th Doctor!

The Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, had “ALLONS-Y!” The Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, had “GERONIMO!” or sometimes “YOWZA!” The Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, had…well, mostly he said “Hello!” with a silly grin. For my wife and I, he was our first Doctor, so he gets a free pass.

The last two men to bear the Doctor Who mantle rallied us to their cause as they leaped into various forays with a flick of the sonic screwdriver, a fierce look in their eyes, and a snappy catchphrase to mark the exact moment at which their enemies’ downfall began. With one week to go until the August 23rd season premiere, plenty of questions remain for those of us who didn’t already rush to devour the Season 8 materials that were leaked prematurely onto the internet by impatient killjoys. To me, one question is most intriguing: what words will Peter Capaldi, the Twelfth Doctor, use to inspire us and his allies before running headlong into conflict?

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Rejected Doctor Who Battle Cries:

10. “NORM!”

9. “WHO-WHO-KA-JOOB!”

8. “HASHTAG-VICTORY!”

7. “YES, WE CAN!”

6. “FRIES ARE UP!”

5. “WINNER GETS THIRTY MINUTES IN THE BALL PIT!”

4. “NO MORE DALEKS!”

3. “ASK ME HOW YOU CAN SAVE 15% ON CAR INSURANCE!”

2. “TEQUILA!”

And the number one Rejected Doctor Who Battle Cry:

1. “DOCTOR SMASH!”