Thinking Like a “Chopped” Contestant Can Save Any Dull Pitch-In

CrowBurger!

The picture and my plate both looked too plain, so I added Crow for garnish. Maybe it’s not something you would do, but I’m an otherwise reasonable adult and I’m perfectly happy with my garnish choices.

Pictured above is my newest creation, inspired by frustrated circumstances. It’s a stale Marsh donut sliced in half bun-wise, filled with one layer of chipped-beef-‘n’-cream-cheese from the best kind of cheese ball, one layer of Ritz crackers, and one layer of plain cream cheese. I dubbed it the Good Afternoon Burger. It would’ve been even better if someone had thought ahead and brought in some rich, creamery butter to use as dressing. They had veggie dip, but that’s the absolute opposite.

And this wasn’t the worst thing I tried today…

Top 10 Signs You’re One of Those People Who’ll Never Shut Up About “The Wire”

Slim Charles!

Life and headlines won’t let you put The Wire out of your mind for long. If you’re not spotting its alumni in shows like Community or The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones or True Blood, they’re randomly resurfacing in your daily headlines, such as Sunday’s news that Anwan Glover, a.k.a. Slim Charles (pictured above), was attacked at a Washington nightclub (but he’s doing better now). The worst is when you catch their obituaries, as with last year’s passing of Robert F. Chew, a.k.a. Proposition Joe. They’re kind of everywhere if you know who you’re looking for

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t looking because your refuse to stop. You don’t want to live in the here-and-now, and move on to shows that haven’t been dead for six years. You’re afraid you’ll begin forgetting all those intricate, internecine subplots. You’ll forget the exact moment when you began hating McNulty. You’ll lose track of the names of all of Marlo Stanfield’s crew. You’ll convince yourself you never saw Amy Ryan in anything before The Office. You’ll think of Baltimore as just another city, maybe even plan a road trip there. On purpose.

It’s hard, I know, but if you don’t get over it, other internet users will track you down and stage an intervention. And no one wants that, because airfare is expensive and interventions take valuable time away from tweeting or Netflixing.

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These Aren’t the Guardians You’re Looking For

You’ve heard about that new movie that just opened in theaters this weekend, right? The one where Chris Pratt from Parks & Rec uses those hunky new abs he began sculpting for Zero Dark Thirty and puts them toward attaining leading-man status? And we meet the best CG characters since Caesar and Gollum? And there are about forty other characters you get to meet from the deepest corners of the Marvel universe?

If you believe 25% of my site traffic over the past two days, that movie is called…

Rise of the Guardians!

Rise of the Guardians!

On a related note, 25% of my site traffic is wrong. Right this way for more practical advice…

MCC Live-Tweeting: “Sharknado 2: the Second One”

Sharknado! Two!

Shark and Tornado. Tornado and Shark. Who’s the master and who’s the servant?

Because too many viewers patronized the first one! Thanks to America’s unreasonable groundswell of bemused support of the original Sharknado, Syfy and The Asylum felt emboldened enough to scrape together a few more quarters, call in some former celebrities for cameos, clear the browser cache in their visual-effects software, and make Sharknado 2: the Second One on purpose.

I can’t imagine why anyone would write a straightforward review of this, not even if you were a paid TV critic, unless you’re keen to address the arguments for or against the concept of meta-grade-Z flicks. I see both sides of the debate over which is morally superior, mocking unintentionally bad films versus mocking intentionally bad films, but I opted out of the debate and launched into an evening of fun, carefree live-tweeting without contemplating my justifications or pondering the ramifications of encouraging Syfy’s agenda.

Collected below for posterity or whatever are the results of that experience. MAJOR SPOILERS ahead…

Your August 2014 Anniversary-Party-a-Day Guide!

Princess Diaries 2!

The Princess Diaries 2 turns 10 this August! But you already knew that, right? The stars, left to right: Callum Blue, a.k.a. Zod from Smallville; Academy Award Winner Anne Hathaway; and Starfleet Captain Chris Pine.

Forty-five years since the moon landing! Twenty-five years since Ghostbusters II! Fifty years since this battle! Ten years since that album! Eighty years since this one comic! Thirty-five years since that one thing happened that we wouldn’t mention if this weren’t a slow news day!

Now more than ever, you can count on your favorite sites to devote bandwidth every week to someone’s memories of events that occurred exactly on This Day in History multiples-of-five years ago. If it happened nine, thirteen, or twenty-two years ago, don’t waste our time. But fifteen years ago? Those precious moments need to be documented. Interviews need to be conducted. Reviews and opinions from that year need to be revisited and recontextualized. The important thing is that we need to be writing about stuff everyone loved way back when, instead of wasting a lot of time searching for new stuff in the world of today. Nostalgia rules! Discovery drools!

For once, I’m getting a few steps ahead of their game. Instead of waiting for them to tell me what to celebrate, like some kind of chump who doesn’t own a calendar or know how to Google, I’m planning my own social schedule in advance so I can be first in line to define “the Good Ol’ Days” for everyone else with a big, boiling bowl of Remember When bouillabaisse. And you can join me!

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“Weird Al” Yankovic’s 8 New Videos in 8 Days: the Full Rundown

Weird Al with Foil!

He’s back! And this time, he’s still weird. Duh.

For those just joining us: last week saw the daily release of eight new videos from the great “Weird Al” Yankovic, whose three-decade music-parody career is cherished by my generation and responsible for inspiring roughly 104% of all internet musical humorists. These and a few other tracks are now available on his latest album, Mandatory Fun, which is on my want-list for immediate purchase as soon as I dig up some spending money.

Right this way for Weird Al’s Top 8 videos of 2014!

MCC No-Reason Live-Tweeting: “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”

Ghost Rider: Spirits of Vengeance!

How much of this mid-transformation shot is CG and how much is the real Nicolas Cage? I’m not asking him. YOU ask him.

While my son is off living at college and my wife finds other things to amuse herself, my Wednesday nights have become one-man movie nights at home. I work an earlier shift that day, arrive home mid-afternoon, and watch stuff and things for a while. It’s a pleasure I’ve rarely afforded myself, as evidenced by the towering pile of unwatched DVDs and my slowly lengthening Netflix queue.

On Twitter I’ve not been one for constant live-tweeting, but a few months ago I spent one Wednesday live-tweeting my viewing displeasure of Batman and Robin at a friend’s suggestion. This past Wednesday I repeated the experience at absolutely no one’s suggestion with a fifty-cent Blu-ray rental of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, starring Idris Elba, Ciaran Hinds, exactly one female, and Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage as the notorious Marvel antihero. Collected below for posterity or whatever are the results of that experience.

Right this way for another fun MCC exercise!

Top 10 Exhibits We Won’t See at George Lucas’ Chicago Museum

Millennium Falcon!

One of many unreleased pics from our 8/31/2013 visit to the Indiana State Museum to see the “Star Wars: Where Science Meets the Imagination” traveling exhibit. It belongs in a museum!

Midwest Star Wars fans were elated to catch last night’s announcement from the AP wire that The George Lucas is moving forward with plans to establish a “museum of arts and movie memorabilia” in his wife’s hometown of Chicago, where current Mayor Rahm Emanuel is wisely welcoming this fabulous opportunity for local commerce and geek voters. Assuming local aesthetics sticklers can be appeased, the museum will be situated off Lake Michigan, along Burnham Harbor between Soldier Field and the North Building of McCormick Place, home of C2E2.

Lucas is scheduled to present preliminary architectural plans to the proper committees in the fall, so we may have a long wait until we can storm the gates and take in the sights. Whenever it’s ready for us, we’re prepared for a certain lack of objectivity. Considering the media have refrained from calling it a “Star Wars Museum” it’s reasonable to assume we’ll see cameos from Lucas’ other works in addition to that one galactic-sized phenomenon. But we have to wonder: how much of his own history will Lucas leave out? Will we be allowed to see any flaws or signs of the stresses he’s endured in his forty-year career, or will his biography be subject to a selective “Special Edition” treatment?

Right this way for the countdown…

“Breakfast Supper Nights”: a Tribute to EXTRA Breakfast for Dinner

Breakfast for dinner!

Behold one of the greatest pleasures of my work month: that very special occasion known as “breakfast for dinner”, or in some circles “breakfast for supper”. Always consult your local linguist for proper lingo before discussing cool things.

Tonight was that night for us, a bit of perfect timing for me since I’d had salad for lunch. Don’t get me wrong: fine salad, varied ingredients, fresh quality, but it only whets the appetite through part of the afternoon. Come three p.m. I’m already scrounging through my desk for emergency cheese-‘n’-crackers or stale chips left over from previous months’ birthday pitch-ins. But the premature hunger pangs are worth it if you know there’ll be a feast waiting for you when you eventually get home once you’re done working too much overtime yet again. Thankfully my wife has taken to making each breakfast-for-supper event an extra hearty meal — extra scrambled eggs, extra bacon, just extra, extra, extra. She’s stellar that way.

If you don’t get the magic of the whole “breakfast for dinner” concept, there’s not much I could do to persuade you. Either your eyes sparkle when it happens or they don’t. All I can tell you is it’s the kind of meal that puts a song in a man’s heart.

In fact, I think I feel a song coming on right now…

Why I Shouldn’t Be Around Memes

Family and some friends may have noticed I’m not on Facebook often nowadays. Or maybe they haven’t noticed because so many other people aren’t on Facebook often nowadays, including said family and friends. Naturally I have a long list of reasons for this, because having long lists is this thing I do, but one of the more benign reasons in the middle of that list is I begin to have issues whenever I’m around memes, Photoshop jokes, partisan pie charts, Buzzfeed quizzes, and fake Morgan Freeman quotes. Since this is now 90% of what Facebook is, abstinence becomes a sort of self-defense.

Sometimes I can keep to myself while I’m catching up on recent events. Sometimes I lose control and make things worse. This most recent example was shared by a friend today:

The Doctor v. Twilight v. Harry Potter

Whoever made this doesn’t understand how lucky we were.

Right this way to see things go south!

Top 10 Greatest “Star Wars Episode VII” Leaked Set Photos

The filmmaking process for every Star Wars movie in the modern era has its traditions, and none refuse to die more irritatingly than the part where professional paparazzi, busybody neighbors, and travel-happy geeks pool together their collective talents and impatience, set up base camps all around the official closed sets, take pictures of everything that moves, and hope they catch a glimpse of something that’ll ruin the entire movie for everyone.

These photos are usually out of focus, distantly shot, wildly off-center, totally out of context, filled with restless inaction, and/or bereft of the CG work and color timing that’ll make the up-close, unadorned reality look watchable and actually interesting on the big screen a year later. Many movie sites treat such unauthorized, amateurish, slapdash, eminently deletable results as useful content. Every time without fail, enough fans and enough clicks reinforce their theory. Goody.

Now that Star Wars Episode VII finally hired a cast to act out its hopefully finished script and has allegedly begun shooting, it’s only a matter of minutes before we begin seeing photos of stunt doubles in Jedi robes, puppeteers catching a cigarette break outside a rear entrance, or empty yogurt cups that some muckraking blogger scavenged from Carrie Fisher’s trash. We, the public, will be expected to treat these offerings as Movie News.

So why not go with the flow? We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover gave in to peer pressure, did some digging without due diligence, and came across a stash of photos that we’re 30% certain were recently, surreptitiously snapped on location in London while J.J. Abrams and his spoiler sentries weren’t looking. Seems like a reasonable ploy. They have to sleep sometime, right? So we’re kinda sure these are legit. By the time we’re all done overanalyzing them, we can skip watching Episode VII altogether and move on to overanalyzing blurry set pics from The Justice League Movie instead.

From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Greatest Star Wars Episode VII Leaked Set Photos:

10. Peter Mayhew, a.k.a. Chewbacca, hanging out between takes with his manager. Or the head of his entourage. Or the guy who’s playing his son Lumpy, which would mean Abrams’ team has decided The Star Wars Holiday Special should be canonized by unpopular demand. Maybe now it’ll see a long-overdue Blu-ray release that will include much-needed extras such as a commentary by all the actors taking turns explaining exactly what the heck.

The Real Peter Mayhew, a.k.a. Chewbacca!

This way for nine more spoilers! Or probably not!

MCC Request Line: Live-Tweeting “Batman & Robin”

Batman and Robin

That time when Batman, Robin, and Batgirl started wearing black…black like the studio executives’ hearts.

Fish in a barrel? Sure. But sometimes it’s nice to relax for one evening with some frivolous writing that breaks no new ground, fails to expand the creative boundaries of the internet, but relieves the typical tensions that dogpile on you in adulthood.

Wednesdays are one-man movie nights for me, a chance to spend time watching whatever while my wife busies herself with her own pursuits. This week I decided on an unusual direction. Anyone who follows me on Twitter (@RandallGolden) was given a short window of opportunity to stage an intervention:

Batman and Robin has been on my shelf for months. It was part of a four-pack, and geek completism forbade me from giving it to Goodwill and leaving the set 25% incomplete. I haven’t relived it in its entirety since the original, degrading theatrical experience. My plan was merely to see if I could watch it a second time without suffering a breakdown. Then a longtime friend asked me to live-tweet it, and a different kind of survival game was afoot.

Special thanks goes to the instigator, Nanci over at Tosche Station, a highly commendable site for anyone who’s a fan of Star Wars in general and the SW Expanded Universe in particular, and they’re your new best friends if you think JJ Abrams’ Star Wars Episode VII should star Mara Jade as the main character. (For the record, I would not oppose this.)

And then it began. Right this way…

Top 13 Ways “Revolution” Hopes to Improve Its Ratings

Aaron and Priscilla Pittman

15 years after the blackout, Aaron and Priscilla Pittman attend a reunion for the few remaining Revolution fans. Or maybe this is a month from now.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Quick programming note for those MCC readers who follow along with NBC’s Revolution: as previously suspected, the show will be taking three consecutive Wednesdays off so NBC can regale us with an unsightly lineup of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit reruns they think Nielsen commoners would rather watch instead.

We’re now in the second week of its three-week unpaid suspension from the TV force. It’s no secret the ratings have been floating downward pretty much from the pilot onward. Every news outlet remains skeptical about its renewal chances, though I take small comfort in the fact that NBC already renewed the lower-rated Parks & Rec and therefore nothing is foregone. Granted, Parks & Rec is surely cheaper to produce, especially after losing two cast members this season. I’m not convinced the way forward for Revolution is to trim the roster down and shoot twenty-two straight bottle episodes of just Miles, Bass, and Tom arguing in rooms. That tactic isn’t helping Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it won’t help here.

This way for the surefire keys to winning at Nielsens!

Top 10 April 1st Headlines to Skip for Your Own Good

Grumpy Cat Hates Being Your Punchline

The unwilling special guest from our April Fools 2013 entry is still not amused.

Yes, Americans, it’s that time of year again. April Fools Day is back and still not abolished. That special day you’ll spend trusting no one, suspecting every good deed, indulging every paranoia, checking every inanimate object twice for spring-loaded traps, fasting to avoid surprise hot sauce or rat poison, narrowing your eyes at every internet headline and wondering which spawn of The Onion will be the one to catch you off-guard, damage your calm, and embarrass you in front of cute people. We here at MCC tried to warn you last year, and yet here you are again, trying to live through April Fools like a stubborn mule. I just don’t get you.

But would you at least take some precautions? You’ll feel much better about your day if you quash someone else’s pranks, dodge a few attempted pratfalls, and skip over your favorite news site’s fake headlines. With your sanity in check and your anxieties unprovoked, you’ll be cackling and preening while those annoying little rascals starve without the site traffic. Someone ought to teach them a lesson, so I’m dumping all the burden on you.

This way for your not-reading scorecard!

Top 10 Worst Additions to “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” Extended Edition

Martin Freeman, The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey

Even Bilbo sleeps through his bonus scenic tour of Rivendell.

With NBC’s Revolution skipping this week and my Wednesdays otherwise free, I spent tonight wading through the extended edition of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey, which was released last November for enthusiasts who wanted to make sure none of the deleted scenes were from the best obscure nooks of Tolkien canon. Although the Extended Edition only includes 7.7% more footage than the theatrical version, the resulting saga feels twice as long.

Other websites have annotated the bonus moments to exhaustion, but I’m pretty sure they missed a few things. I can’t blame them for napping, letting their phones distract them, or immediately forgetting what they just saw. That’s why little guys like me exist: just in case the pros are slacking.

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Please Crowdfund My Awesome New Project So I Can Pretend to Make Cool Stuff

Napkins Begone, Ultracausal Hygiene Science

Every good campaign has a catchy slogan. Pretend this is one.

Finally, after minutes of brainstorming ways to make a difference in this broken world, leave a lasting legacy, and accept money from strangers in exchange for pleasant-sounding promises, something has popped into my head that’s hopefully the magic bullet everyone needs, and by “everyone” I mean my bill collectors and I. I hope you’ll hear me out and then shower me with gifts so I can make my brand new dream come true if I work hard enough, the stars align, miracles happen, and no one stops to think anything through.

The Premise:

We can be certain of few things in life, but three of those things are these:

1. People want to kill fewer trees.
2. People will always be sloppy eaters.
3. People want phone apps to do everything for them.

The man who figures out how to combine those three arbitrarily chosen certainties will be the next man to rule the world. I agree with the puzzled look on your face that my path to world domination and self-esteem is littered with several obstacles, including but not limited to the laws of physics.

Intrigued so far? What do you mean no? Click here and learn more about it anyway!

More Than Flowers at the Indiana Flower & Patio Show

In our previous installment, you saw signs of the forthcoming spring as heralded through the exhibits at the 2014 Indiana Flower and Patio Show. While flowers were the star attraction, they weren’t the only uncommon objects on site. The two buildings that contained this year’s show were filled with various examples of gardens, patios, spas, tools, local repairmen, self-employed salespeople, As Seen on TV hucksters, chocolate stands, and concrete constructions we’ll never be able to afford.

Also, someone turned a piano into a fountain. See, music lovers, this is what happens when you walk away from your talent and abandon your instrument: someone jams a hose in it and turns it into their patio centerpiece.

piano fountain, Indiana Flower and Patio Show, Indianapolis

This way for more curiosities…

Top 10 Even More Shocking Surprises in the Next “Fantastic Four” Film

Fantastic Four

Left to right: Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Michael B. Jordan

Today the internet exploded once again (it seems to do that a lot) after hearing the news that Fox had completed casting of the primary roles for their Fantastic Four reboot, scheduled to hit theaters June 19, 2015. Unfortunately Fox forgot to ask the fans to approve their choices first and decided to make its own decisions like an independent adult. The internet responded by leaving nasty notes in Fox’s locker and spitting on its cafeteria pizza at lunchtime.

Fans who feel sole ownership of an intellectual property that’s been around for fifty years unanimously agreed everything about the four actors seen above is wrong. Reed Richards absolutely, positively must be middle-aged. Ben Grimm must begin as a muscular guy, because medical science has proven cosmic rays can’t possibly turn a short, thin guy into a giant rock monster. Johnny Storm has to be white, because all siblings in all Creation have identical skin tones. Sure, Jessica Alba wasn’t white in the last two movies either, but This Is Different. Thanks to these complaints, Fantastic Four has already been given a 5% Rotten rating on the Tomatometer sixteen months before release. That’ll show ’em.

This way for more thoughts about the stars of the series formerly known as the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!

“O Candy Hearts”: Valentine’s Day Carol #1

Sally Brown, Linus Van Pelt, Peanuts

It’s Valentine’s Day once again! That special day of the year when sweeties are sweeter on each other than their normal level of sweet, sugary sweetness. That controversial day when Hallmark brings out the best and the worst in your local internet users. That long-standing tradition that inspires fun cartoons, bad movies, and a pointless sequel in Sweethearts Day.

And yet, there are no Valentine’s Day carols. The level-headed among you might think, “Silly typing guy! Every love song is a Valentine’s Day carol!” I’m reminded of that classic anecdote in which kids burdened by the twin responsibilities of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day ask when their mythical Kids’ Day might be, but are rebuffed with the hollow promise that “Every day is Kids’ Day!” No self-respecting kid buys this answer for a second. Otherwise they’d be swimming in 365 new Kids’ Day presents every year. Remember, they’re younger than you, but they can still do math.

Anyway. My point is, unless they contain direct allusions to the day and/or its trappings, love songs are not automatically Valentine carols. To fill that entertainment void, please enjoy this meager initial foray into this brave new subgenre, just to get the ball rolling for all of America. Hopefully enough songwriting hermits are inspired by my sterling example to emerge from hiding, add their voices to the mix, and someday accumulate enough of a Valentine’s Day song catalog to warrant a compilation album that generates perennial royalties for all of us so we can retire early.

Even if we don’t reach that goal this year, have a Happy Valentine’s Day anyway!

This way for that crazy new holiday tune all the kids will be digging!

Top 10 Signs “Puppy Bowl” Has Jumped the Shark

Puppy Bowl X, Animal Planet

Blatant corporate sponsorship is the least of Puppy Bowl’s worries.

Some of us cantankerous contrarians don’t spend Super Bowl Sunday drinking, partying, enjoying sports, or watching expensive commercials starring strippers. Animal Planet has carved itself a healthy, annual counterprogramming niche with its beloved Puppy Bowl, a repeating, two-hour pageant of puppies frolicking on a doggy-sized football field, competing over fuzzy toys, and listening to a human referee recite painful doggy puns aimed at the channel’s coveted grade-school viewer demographic. It’s predictable, lovable, huggable, non-sports comfort food.

At least, it was.

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