Tag Archives: Indiana

Indiana State Fair 2016 Photos #1: Our Year in Food

August 9, 2016 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Double Barrel Burger!

We called it the “Goodbye Cruel World Burger”.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians that other people love, and farm animals competing for cash prizes and herd bragging rights. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. At least 70% of our quest is always food.

Right this way for a look at this year’s “Taste of the Fair” contestants!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 5 of 5: Random Acts of State-Fairing

August 20, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tractor Wife!

Tractors! Farming! Farming accessories! Farming science! Giant things!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing…

…and now it all comes down to this: the grand finale, in which we lump together a bunch of photos of other whatchamacallits to finish defining what the Indiana State Fair experience means to us aging Hoosier geeks.

Right this way for one last round of photos with animals, crafts, mascots, and slightly more!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 4 of 5: The Art of the Fair

August 20, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

State Fair Clonetrooper!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing…

ART! It’s everywhere at the State Fair! It’s in the buildings or along the streets, it’s made by kids or by adults, it’s made of traditional media or of food, it expresses a thought or teaches a lesson or celebrates an idol or all of the above. These, then, are random examples of those very things that caught our eye.

Naturally we had to lead with Clonetrooper helmet. Its display-case roommate looks vaguely Legoesque, but I could be wrong.

Right this way for more things made by people! For things’ sake!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 3 of 5: Canned Characters

August 18, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Aminion Gothic!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing…

Another fun annual event is the Canstruction contest, which isn’t necessarily intended for local 4-H youngsters. Canstruction is a charitable organization that holds nationwide events in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other in building the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not lazy Impressionist piles with titles like “Cleanup on Aisle 6”. After the judging and the public displaying are over, all those meticulously planned figures are torn down and the components are donated to local hunger relief charities, who in turn forward them to needy families totally unaware their next few meals used to be Art.

Exhibit A, picture above: Minions recreating Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”. The makers called it “FARMinions” as if the farming were the most important part. Begging to differ, I must insist this piece’s true name is “Aminion Gothic” whether they accept it or not.

Right this way for more familiar faces…in cans!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 2 of 5: The Year in Lego

August 18, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Lego SHIELD Helicarrier!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

We’re not as thrilled about carnival rides as we used to be, and the State Fair almost never invites musicians I like. In between snacking experiments, our day at the fair tends to be all about sightseeing, particularly in the area of Stuff Young People Made. As you’d expect, year in, year out, those young craftspeople love them some Lego.

Under the auspices of 4-H, kids statewide have the chance to compete in building competitions of varying categories. Sometimes it’s all about what they can create from scratch. Sometimes it’s about who can follow manufacturers’ directions best. Sometimes I wonder if kids put together sets like this Lego SHIELD Helicarrier, tell the non-geek judges they totally made it up, collect their purple Grand Prize ribbons, and look like construction wizards to everyone they know. All I know is on Lego.com this set is priced twice as much as my used PS3 was. Gotta admit, though, it looks much cooler.

Right this way for lots of blocky goodness!

Indiana State Fair 2015 Photos, Part 1 of 5: Our Year in Food

August 16, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , 5 Comments
Lamb Parfait!

This is not ice cream. That’s not chocolate.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. Usually, 70% of our quest is food.

Each year the State Fair announces the annual theme of a single ingredient and holds a contest daring all the vendors to create a new dish around it, like a sort of Food Network cooking show except I think the grand prize is just “for exposure”. Recent history has brought us the Year of the Tomato, the Year of Corn, the Year of Soy, the Year of Popcorn, and last year’s disappointingly non-food-based Year of the Coliseum, in honor of the longtime event venue that had reopened after a two-year closure for extensive renovations. This year’s theme was “the Year of the Farmer”, a.k.a. “the Year We Ran Out of Food Themes”. For anyone who thought “the Year of the Coliseum” wasn’t directionless enough, 2015 had only a handful of the many vendors offering a random, disconnected assortment of ostensibly new dishes, at least one of which was flat-out pretending to be new.

We tried to make the most of it anyway and found a few items worth actual dollars.

Right this way for pics of our 2015 in State Fair food!

More Than Flowers at the Indiana Flower & Patio Show 2015

March 24, 2015 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

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.

Flowers Are Pretty III: the Freshening

March 22, 2015 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments
Purple's a Flower!

Purple! Purple’s a flower.

It’s that time again! Spring has seen fit to return to the land, and my wife and I have a new batch of photos from the Indiana Flower and Patio Show, a delicate rush of fresh spring air to dispel the morose ugliness of winter and remind us of life waiting for us outside.

Right this way for more flowery flowering flowers!

Indiana State Fair 2014 Photos, Part 5 of 5: Random Acts of State-Fairing

October 3, 2014 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Not Killdozer.

The volunteers running the photo booth at the Glass Barn wouldn’t let us design our own border or write our own captions. Otherwise this would’ve been our poster advertising the Syfy Original Movie Killdozer Origins: the Prequeling.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

And now, the conclusion to our frivolous saga. Because sometimes you need a random photo gallery as a change of pace from repetition and drudgery. Also, miniseries closure.

Right this way for the grand finale!

Indiana State Fair 2014 Photos, Part 4 of 5: Geek Handicraft

September 19, 2014 By in Indiana, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
geek signpost!

Welcome to the Nexus of All Geek Realities!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

When Mom took me to the fair back in the day, I hated, hated, hated walking around the exhibit halls. For me the carnival rides, games, and snacks were the only reasons for its existence. I had no use wandering the 4-H Building looking at posters drawn and pasted together by other children. The farm-product contest entries in the Agricultural/Horticultural Building were mostly vegetables and therefore The Enemy. The dresses on display in the Home & Family Arts Building were obviously not my thing. Sometimes the art and the photography were okay, but only if they painted or took pictures of really cool things such as super-heroes or toys. But the adults were in charge and I followed my marching orders, in exchange for promises of actual fun and games.

My adult perspective has flip-flopped. Rides hurt now. All the games are scams except the water-pistol races, but I don’t have much use for stuffed animals anymore. The State Fair hasn’t brought in a video arcade in years. Meanwhile, sometimes in those formerly boring buildings are lovingly crafted, inspired little treasures if you know where to look.

Right this way for fun acts of artfulness!

Indiana State Fair 2014 Photos, Part 3: The Great Local-Celeb Milking Contest

September 12, 2014 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

State Fair Milk!

The winner’s cup. MILK: what it’s all about.


Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

In our previous episode I touched on the variety of shows and competitions happening around the fairgrounds. One of the events we usually miss is the annual Celebrity Milking Contest. In this context the “celebrities” are local personalities unfamiliar to anyone living outside Indianapolis and to some of us lifelong citizens. We’d only watched the contest once before, a few years ago when the winner was the then-governor’s wife. Sure, they may not be movie stars or even YouTube headliners, but how often do we have the chance to watch cow-milking competitions? Besides, it was free.

Right this way for your 2014 contestants!

Our Annual Family Reunion Adventure

September 8, 2014 By in Indiana, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Turkey Run!

For fifty-seven years my wife’s family has held their annual reunions at Turkey Run State Park, a ninety-minute drive from our suburban HQ and well outside the range of my phone carrier’s disappointing 4G coverage. For the space of one Sunday afternoon it’s an opportunity to unplug from the internet and all its problems, experience fresh air, enjoy good weather live and in person (Lord willing), catch up with loved ones that we’ve been too preoccupied to visit, exchange pleasantries with distant relatives whose names we’ll never remember, test which family members will still commit to a long drive for any of these purposes, and remember how to mingle in large, awkward groups without access to Words with Friends as our consolation playmate.

Or, while everyone else is talking, you can escape the shindig for a while and go explore the best part of Turkey Run, the beautiful forests crisscrossed with several miles of nature-trail adventure.

Continue reading →

Indiana State Fair 2014 Photos, Part 2: Normal-Gator vs. Manasaurus

September 7, 2014 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Man v. Gator!

Steel wading pool exhibition match. Two vertebrates enter; two vertebrates leave.


Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

The State Fair also brings in entertainers from around the globe at various levels. Top-40 musicians play at the Coliseum; former Top-40 musicians play the large, free main stage; local acts play an even smaller stage; and a few touring entertainers perform in the farm-equipment areas, around the animal-education section, or near the 4-H Building. The latter charge no admission, earning only the intake from whatever merchandise they sell after their performance.

One of this year’s freebies was a traveling roadshow called “Kachunga and the Alligator”. The basic premise was several minutes of stage patter about swampland conservation and animal rights, followed by a few minutes of a man tussling with a modest alligator.

Continue reading →

Indiana State Fair 2014 Photos, Part 1: the Year in Food

August 15, 2014 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. Usually, 70% of our quest is food.

Each year the State Fair announces the annual theme of a single ingredient and holds a contest daring all the vendors to create a new dish around it, like a sort of Food Network cooking show except I think the grand prize is just “for exposure”. Recent history has brought us the Year of the Tomato, the Year of Corn, the Year of Soy, the Year of Popcorn, and so on. This year’s theme was the disappointingly non-food-based Year of the Coliseum, in honor of the longtime event venue that reopened this year after a two-year closure for major, modernizing renovations. Some reverence is to be expected for the Pepsi Coliseum as an integral part of the fairground experience for many attendees. Just the same, this break from thematic tradition left the vendors a bit directionless and less inspired to whip up new concoctions for us. We managed to find a couple.

Meet the donut that killed me.

Giant Amish Donut!

Right this way for more food, if you have any appetite left!

Indy 500 Festival Parade 2014 Photos, Part 3 of 5: Some of Your Qualifying Drivers

May 25, 2014 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This year marked the fourth time my wife and I attended the Indy 500 Festival Parade in downtown Indianapolis. The next five entries (to be posted over the next three days as quickly as time and endurance permit) represent a fraction of the pics my wife and I snapped. In many cases, encores and additional takes of specific subjects may be available if anyone out there is interested in seeing more, or is looking for a loved one who was in one of the many marching bands that day. For first-time MCC visitors, please note my wife and I are relative amateurs, obviously not trained professional photographers, sharing these from a hobbyist standpoint because fun and joy.

Part One featured the singers, actors, and other celebrities who joined this year’s parade. Part Two featured glimpses of all the marching bands who rocked the streets. Here in Part Three, some of the thirty-three drivers in this year’s Indy 500. Since today was too busy for me to complete this entry before the race finished, the following is our collection of driver photos that came out least-worst, organized in the order in which they finished the 2014 Indianapolis 500.

This year’s winner: Ryan Hunter-Reay! This was his first Indy 500 victory.

Ryan Hunter-Reay

Click here for more drivers, their families, their hats and their sunglasses!

Indy 500 Festival Parade Photos 2014, Part 2 of 5: Marching Bands and Other Groups

May 24, 2014 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This year marked the fourth time my wife and I attended the Indy 500 Festival Parade in downtown Indianapolis. The next five entries (to be posted over the next three days as quickly as time and endurance permit) represent a fraction of the pics my wife and I snapped. In many cases, encores and additional takes of specific subjects may be available if anyone out there is interested in seeing more, or is looking for a loved one who was in one of the many marching bands that day. For first-time MCC visitors, please note my wife and I are relative amateurs, obviously not trained professional photographers, sharing these from a hobbyist standpoint because fun and joy.

Part One featured the singers, actors, and other celebrities who joined this year’s parade. Here in Part Two: a sampling of each of the marching bands who brought us the gift of music and the sacrifice of wearing heavy uniforms in rising temperatures. My wife knows your pain from experience, folks.

Repeated for special emphasis in the case of this particular entry: if you’re in, or know someone who’s in, one of the following bands and would like to see more photos of them, please let us know. Either leave me a note in the comments section below or use the MCC Contact form located up in the masthead. We’re used to receiving a few such requests every year and we’re more than happy to help out band members and their supporters. Between the two of us, though, we took nearly four hundred photos today. I’m not going into photo overkill mode for this entry until I know someone besides us is genuinely interested.

That being said: the following marching bands performed at the 2014 Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade:

* The Spirit of Muncie Band and Guard from Muncie Central High School. They’re leading off this entry along with a knowing nod from myself to regular MCC readers who’ve been following along with our recent Muncie photo series.

The Spirit of Muncie!

Right this way for eleven more bands and one Walking Flag!

Indy 500 Festival Parade 2014 Photos, Part 1 of 5: the Special Guests

May 24, 2014 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Florence Henderson!

Florence Henderson, TV’s Carol Brady, Hoosier and patron saint of the Indy 500 Festival Parade.

This year marked the fourth time my wife and I attended the Indy 500 Festival Parade in downtown Indianapolis. It’s become an annual date tradition for us — partly to see the floats and high school marching bands (including our own alma mater), partly for the famous names (even if we’ve never heard of them), and partly because I love the sight of a bustling downtown Indianapolis (which needs to happen a lot more often).

The next five entries (to be posted over the next three days as quickly as time and endurance permit) represent a fraction of the pics my wife and I snapped. In many cases, encores and additional takes of specific subjects may be available if anyone out there is interested in seeing more, or is looking for a loved one who was in one of the many marching bands that day. For first-time MCC visitors, please note my wife and I are relative amateurs, obviously not trained professional photographers, sharing these from a hobbyist standpoint because fun and joy.

First up: publicly known faces who came to town for the occasion. Indianapolis was most excited to see the quickly appointed Grand Marshal of the Parade, Indianapolis resident Josh Kaufman, winner of the sixth and most recent season of NBC’s The Voice.

Josh Kaufman!

Click here for athletes, reality stars, singers, and more Mrs. Brady!

More Than Flowers at the Indiana Flower & Patio Show

March 10, 2014 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

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…

I’m Told Flowers are Still Pretty

March 8, 2014 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Twice per year my wife and I escort her grandmother to one of two special events at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Each November we visit the Indiana Christmas Gift and Hobby Show. Each March the highlight of her month is the Indiana Flower & Patio Show, which features numerous displays of colorful flora, booths where gardeners and homeowners can peruse and pick out their new seeds, plants, implements, and accoutrements for tending and cultivating their yards in the forthcoming spring and summer. Assorted horticulturists and lawn care companies show off bouquets, sample gardens, and ostentatious flowers you’ll wish you owned.

It’s that time of year again! Today we three traipsed around the fairgrounds and gazed upon tiny, fragile parts of God’s creation, manifest through the works of people with much greener thumbs than ours.

red flower, Indiana Flower and Patio Show, Indianapolis

This way for more flowers, harbingers of winter’s demise!

I Remember When Winter Was Charming Once

February 21, 2014 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Thanks to unseasonably warmer temperatures this week and a raging thunderstorm last night, the feet of snow that we accumulated over the last several weeks have now been effectively disintegrated. The only remaining clues that anything happened are the new, deadly craters on my commute and the enormous puddles drowning everyone’s lawns. Looking out my window, you’d think we relocated to the Black Lagoon.

Winter isn’t always our wicked nemesis. Back in the days before “polar vortex” became a thing and public schools were open for business five full days per week, sometimes winter could be enchanting. Ah, distant memories.

My wondrous wife, walking in a winter wonderland.

Flashback: January 2009…