This is probably my last autumn photo of the year. I sure didn’t make this tree, but I did work to save its life one year during a terrible drought that pushed it to the brink. Taking extra steps to keep this pretty piece of Creation around seemed the least I could do for the sake of nature in general and our backyard in particular.
See what the keen folks at WordPress put together? Feel free to use this tool to move your voting plans forward so you, too, can add your voice to the fray, maybe make a difference, and help topple incumbents left and right!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover 2012:
After being raised in a household free of overt political discussion, I never had any idea which political party was mine. A moment of clarity arrived in eleventh-grade Physics class when a fellow student named Jeff sought to offer me personal definition: he asked me my views on abortion. I gave him an answer. He told me which party was mine. To him, it was as simple as that. I decided then and there that the two-party monopoly left a lot to be desired. Thus was my head sent spinning into years of aimless political apathy, college-campus pluralism, irritatingly noncommittal neutrality, alternative-newspaper perusal, and Jello Biafra spoken-word albums. Truly it was a time of intellectual isolation for me, though the accompanying music could be cool at times.
Two decades later, I’m no more into taking arbitrary sides, generalizing entire parties based on the actions of a single faction, or collecting campaign buttons than I was in my misanthropic youth. However, at least now I can say I’m participating in the voting process anyway, because the small local elections are close enough to home that the votes really can make a difference, free of interference from unhelpful interlopers like the Electoral College. Also, just because I can.
Right this way for thoughts on my local races and the podium-gladiators who crave them!
Pictured: the view from our hotel room at the Westin O’Hare in Rosemont, IL, during the weekend of this year’s Wizard World Chicago. It’s nestled next to I-190 and minutes away from the large, famous airport you may have heard name-checked in all the headline news today. Between the airport traffic and the stream of endless events at the Stephens Center, Rosemont is a sparkly yet reserved town, wired for entertainment and insomnia.
Most convention attendees spend their evenings indulging in the after-dark events such as film screenings or NSFW panels, networking, fraternizing, carousing, generally partying to the break of dawn. Meanwhile for us sensible, old-time squares, nighttime is our signal to retreat from the hubbub, skip all the alcohol that everyone else cherishes, settle into the plush confines of our accommodations, exploit all the amenities that don’t incur surprise room charges, and recharge all manner of batteries.
I took this shot on a whim while standing between the curtain panels and the windows, letting the cooler air near the glass creep around me and waft away the day’s tensions, worries, and cumulative physical strains. It was an oasis of momentary serenity in a bustling, bristling weekend.
Then my wife turned on the TV. Because all those basic-cable channels weren’t gonna inventory themselves. Meditative tranquility gave way to the screeching cacophony of a thousand know-it-all talking heads, upon whom I wished immediate whooping cough.
I’m revisiting this moment (the sedate part, not the screeching part) during a week when multi-tasking has stretched me thin, morale has been shakier than usual, and feedback signals of doubt and indifference have obscured my concentration. I could use another few minutes like these to stare through the dark horizons, seek the pinpoints of light, pause for an ethereal refresher, and remind myself of the dawns yet to come, the brighter lights ahead, and the promises behind why we do what we do.
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.
I can think of four or five things wrong with that sign.
After five months without a chronic back-pain incident, I wake up this morning with slight, tender stiffness. Clock in at 7 a.m. Twenty minutes later my back begins to throb a little. I grab cafeteria breakfast at 7:30. Five minutes and three bites after sitting back down at my desk, the throbbing promotes itself to full-on spasms. Waves of pain roil outward from my lower back, on and off for thirty to forty minutes. So much for this week’s overtime.
Back pain and I are no strangers. It’s a recurring issue for me caused by, I’m told, years of poor posture plus the weight I’ve regained over time in the years after my diet. Some bouts last a day or two; some, only an hour before the pain dissipates at the mercy of ibuprofen. Not every incident requires a medical intervention.
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.
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!
My wife and I are now at home recuperating after spending the last two days at Wizard World Chicago. As usual it was a whirlwind cavalcade of comics, costumes, actors, fans, merchandise, art, commerce, geek glee, exhaustion, frustration, and disappointment. All of those elements, for better or worse, are unavoidable in the average convention experience. Some pleasures make us giddier than others; some situations grieve us more than others.
To its credit, we’re not knee-jerk Wizard World haters. For all the flak they draw online for a variety of reasons, they get a lot of things right that other fledgling convention companies take years to figure out. We’ve personally attended conventions where management was poor, tempers were boiling, and mutinies were nigh and not entirely unjustified. We’ve heard still other horror stores from other Midwest cons. Numerous entertainment companies are out there competing for the chance to become the San Diego of the American heartland. Wizard World is not in last place.
As expected, MCC will be providing you, the Viewers at Home, with copious photos from our Wizard World Chicago 2014 experience over the next few days, though I honestly have no idea how many entries in all. I haven’t yet uploaded my pics or looked at my wife’s as of the moment I’m typing this sentence, and we still have a Doctor Who season premiere to watch On Demand. Also, there are adult, non-internet chores begging for my attention. I’m pretty sure some of you will be pleased with the results, even though we skipped the costume contest. We had our reasons, some of them logistical.
In general, this weekend was successful on a number of levels for us. But not on every level. Pictured here are Exhibits A and B for the prosecution — the front of one card, and the front and back of another. Together these limited-edition artifacts cost us $40.00 to bring home unredeemed.
Who North America is a regular staple at our regular cons. They seem to be doing okay, even though they have to pay for four or five times the space.
This past Wednesday I walked into my comic shop and waded into the middle of a conversation about booth space prices. Awesome Con is staging their first Indianapolis show in October, and the guys weren’t too keen on what was being asked, how much extra a corner booth would cost over an endcap, and why the con’s rep promised them a “locals” discount over the phone that appeared nowhere in the marketing materials. Much snickering ensued.
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.
This is how everyone spends their tenth wedding anniversary, right? Because my wife and I sure wouldn’t want to look out of place or anything.
Remember the ancient times of the mid-to-late twentieth century, when long trips to unfamiliar places couldn’t be navigated by squinting at a computer the size of a deck of cards? If you needed to get from point A to point B, your first hope was that an elderly relative could give you directions that used no street names and depended on visual landmarks such as specific gas stations or funny-shaped trees. Plan B was to wander in the general direction until your wife got mad enough to make you stop the car and ask the locals for pointers. Plan C was to stay home and find something else to do.
Plan D was maps. Giant-sized maps that didn’t fit in your pocket unless you wadded them into a ball first, or wore overalls with enormous pockets. They unfolded into thirty or forty sections and covered your entire dining room table. If you were improvising on the run, they covered your dashboard, steering wheel, and most of your line of sight. Driving while mapping was, much like driving while texting, a fun way to terrorize your passengers and the drivers in the other lanes, adding new levels of stuntman risk to even the calmest Sunday outing.
Sometimes a lazy summer strikes when you least expect it. For a few random days at a time, you’re surrounded by quiet, relaxing doldrums. Your TV schedule loses its pulse. Theater screens are usurped by movies clearly rated NFY (Not For You). Headline news is, if not slow per se, more irrelevant to you than usual. Sometimes a muffin with too many ingredients is the most exciting thing that’s happened to you.
Remember those old Peanuts strips where Snoopy impersonated a vulture? Based on a true story.
That’s right, kids! Friday, June 20, 2014, sees the return of Take Your Dog to Work Day, that annual festivity in which lovers of pets and pet-shaped things invite their trusty companions into the workplace and spend eight to ten more hours with them than usual. It can be a wondrous bonding experience, a welcome break in your routine, and a fun opportunity to talk about the joys of pet ownership to other lonely souls who have neither pets nor joy. I’m sure Take Your Dog to Work Day is already marked on your Garfield calendar and my gentle reminder is superfluous, but I’d hate to see anyone miss out and waking up kicking themselves on the 21st.
…
…wait, no, actually, I’ve never heard of it.
The photo at left was taken by my mom back in 2002. The original is surely stuck inside one of her many photo albums. All I have is this poorly scanned, cropped version that I once used as my LiveJournal profile pic. My son was seven, maybe eight years old. To this day it’s one of my favorite pics of the two of us, despite the distance and the low-res haze. Something about our shadowy faces and that sunbeam between us strikes a certain poignancy for me.
Like most all-purpose bloggers, I’ve written about various holidays at length in the past. Father’s Day is one of those for which I wish I could present you with something warm, fuzzy, life-affirming, and role-model-ish. Truth is, he and I play the day so low-key that I imagine some relatives probably worry about us. He’s not the most expressive or enthusiastic when it comes to holidays, family gatherings, or mushy moments, and I’m not one to force hugs and pleasantries from others. That’s my wife’s zealous area of expertise.
For us Father’s Day typically means dining out, doing something fun together (either video games or a movie, typically), and calling it a day. He’s now living up at college year-round, but this year’s get-together will look similar, a benign combination of food and entertainment. I love him and I always look forward to spending time with him, but cards and presents aren’t a part of the process. I wouldn’t turn down free stuff if he offered it, but I’m not the kind of Dudley Dursley to demand it.
Welcome! Turn back! Welcome back! Hie thee hence! Join us! Shoo! Whichever!
If you’re just joining us or recently discovered the site, you may be a bit disoriented, even after reading the “About” page I wrote two years ago and have amended a few times since then. That version contains the “in-story” reasoning behind the site name without confessing that it was contrived using the Wheel of Fortune “Before and After” method. I’m sure it sounds like rubbish if you’re not a comics fan who knows what a “Crisis Crossover” was. The bottom-line truth is I needed a name that no other writer, blogger, or sensible creative type would want. That’s one objective met, then.
In the days of yore, comics writers followed a helpful rule of thumb: “Every issue is someone’s first.” New readers appreciate accessibility. Most sites use the “About” Page to catch visitors up to speed and don’t look back. (I offered baseline advice on this one time.) While mine does its job to a certain extent, it doesn’t summarize every version of me that readers have seen in these pages. Sometimes each me can act as though they exist on a different Earth apart from my other selves. Sometimes those worlds drift apart. Sometimes the me of two worlds vibrates in harmony as one. Sometimes worlds collide.
Right this way for the Unofficial Handbook of the Midlife Crisis Crossover Universe!…
I thought I was getting funnier looks than usual today when I returned to work from my routine Wednesday lunchtime walk. It took me a few minutes to figure out why.
I have a special pattern on Wednesdays. I arrive earlier at work than usual; I spend my lunch break walking to my local comic shop to pick up the week’s new releases; I hurry back to my desk so I can finish out my early day and enjoy an extended evening. Pretty much like clockwork. My coworkers know me just enough to think nothing of it.
I paid for my hobby fix and got lost in thought while the clerk placed them inside the usual translucent bag. I remained pretty much on autopilot during the brisk walk back, through the heart of downtown, into the lobby, and up the elevator, passing a few distractingly odd expressions along the way.
When I sat down at my desk and began shuffling things around, that’s when I focused and really looked at what I’d been carrying.
Continue here for pics I normally wouldn’t post here, probably NSFW by some employers’ standards…
Sample message from a classmate written in one of my old yearbooks. Somehow I read platonic well-wishing like this and did not convince myself they were subliminally asking me to ravish them.
I’ve never understood normal men, let alone the broken ones. Let’s get that out of the way up front.
Maybe it’s because I read the right books and lucked into the right role models. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a sufficiently damaged home life. Maybe I’m lucky that my father wasn’t an active part of my life. Maybe it’s a good thing I never kept too many macho friends for long, or belonged to any particularly masculine cliques. Maybe it’s because I figured out a way for logic and empathy to share harmonic coexistence in my brain. I’m funny that way, maybe.
My first date wasn’t till age 19. My age at the time of you-know-what was years beyond that. In junior high and high school, I never bothered asking any girls out. I knew my odds were slim for a variety of reasons, some but not all of them related to appearance. I wasn’t happy with it. I had my bouts of depression and crushed self-esteem. Eighth grade in particular remains a mental and emotional nadir in my life. I couldn’t figure a way out of it on my own, other than to hope that “This, too, shall pass” would apply to my situation someday before I died.
And yet…for all my dissatisfaction with my lot in life back then, for all my innocuous interactions with the ladies in my young-stupid-male years, none of the following sentences ever popped into my head:
* “That girl was nice to me. I expect sex from her now.”
* “The world owes me a chick.”
* “I know I’m perfect, so it’s clearly not my fault.”
* “Top-40 songs about love and sex are most wise.”
* “Maybe if I insult all women a lot, one will step forward and claim me.”
* “The world owes me a hot chick.”
* “Without sex I’m nothing.”
* “Women love a guy who’s bitter and snarling.”
* “Killing will solve anything.”
…and I’m grateful to the Lord every day that I never adopted anything from this list as my personal catchphrase.
Your official 2nd-anniversary notification from WordPress looks like this. Printing, framing, embossing, and/or enlarging to poster size are optional at the writer’s expense.
For those interested in reliving the creation of MCC and/or time-traveling to key points in its distant past, the following moments are recommended for historical purposes:
* The first official MCC entry, basically a satire of the Indianapolis majority’s unseemly, senseless hatred of mass transit. I spent a full week writing and refining this launch post, researching blogging platforms, and experimenting with the control panel once I’d made my decision. After going live on April 28th, it had maybe seven whole views in its first week of existence. With almost no promotion and nothing in mind resembling a quote-unquote “marketing strategy”, I like to think that’s seven more views than I had any right to expect.
My quiz results don’t tell me how many other geeks I outrank and are therefore useless to include on my resumé.
My Facebook friends love sharing internet quizzes out of the boredom of their heart, but I generally skip them on standoffish principle. Of those few I click on, I rarely finish because sooner or later I encounter a question with no right answer, no close answer, not even an answer I would pretend is right just to finish out the page. Alas, I’ll never know which Frozen character I am, which Hogwarts house would have me, how hipster I am, or which member of One Direction is my secret twin. I don’t want to know these answers, because knowing is half the defeat.
Then someone somewhere in the underground internet clickbait factories switched gears and decided to tempt us with checklists instead of quizzes, because they sound less like schoolwork. As a lifelong list junkie, I have a harder time walking past a checklist without ticking a few boxes, especially if I can pretend it’s for statistical science. And when Buzzfeed posted a checklist called “What’s Your Geek Number?” I’ll admit I was an easy mark. I gave it a whirl and wasn’t surprised at the results, or at the questionable test construction and the myth it perpetuates.
Art by Val Mayerik, co-creator of Howard the Duck. I promise he’s done far, far better work in his time.
Most collectors who consider themselves organized and serious about collecting certain collectible things for their collection have a want list. Sure, you could attend conventions or flea markets and simply buy random issues from whatever boxes lay in your path. The dealers and older collectors who have hundreds of pounds of pamphlets to unload won’t stop you.
There’s something to be said for spontaneous browsing and impulse buys up to a certain point. By adding the element of goal-setting, though, suddenly your hobby becomes a full-fledged quest. Now you have bragging rights because you’ve made it all seem so noble.
I’ve been reading comic books since age six. I’d say I began Collecting with a capital C around age twelve, when I first discovered comic dealers at a local antique show. I was used to buying comics off the spinner racks at Marsh or Hook Drugs, but the dealer’s approach was a radical new paradigm to me. All the comics stood in longboxes, were alphabetized by title, were filed in order by issue number, and went back several years. It was a mind-blowing moment to discover that I could buy old comics that went with my new comics. Years’ worth of them, even.
Not long after, my comics want list was born.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 