…I would try very kindly not to make a big deal because you’re one of the only six people on Planet Earth named “Randi”. Despite your rarity, whenever someone writes my name down on a form, application, sign-in sheet, Starbucks cup, or speeding ticket, your kind is the reason I’m too frequently asked, “Is that with a ‘y’ or an ‘i’?” I try to keep an open mind here in the 21st century, but I’ve been fielding that largely nonexistent dichotomy since the 20th.
Photo by loyal wife and granddaughter Anne Golden, taken at the 2016 Indiana Christmas Gift & Hobby Show.
Pictured above is my wife’s Mamaw, one of the most resilient people we know. When she was born, Calvin Coolidge reigned as the 30th President of the United States of America. Her husband, who served as an ambulance driver in WWII and refused to discuss the experience with the grandkids, passed away in 1996. To this day she lives in the two-story house he built for them decades ago, with assistance from family as needed for transportation, errands, groundskeeping, major repairs, and her biennial special outings — the Indiana Flower & Patio Show and the Indiana Christmas Gift & Hobby Show. Each year they’re her World Series and Super Bowl.
May: a rare selfie with my wife Anne on Monument Circle downtown on the day of the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade.
Hey-ho, reader! Welcome to the fifth annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review. This unassuming site was launched on April 28, 2012, as a cathartic experiment in writing whatever came to mind without waiting for other people to start my conversations for me, and so far it’s been a fulfilling use of galleries and essays that might otherwise either languish unwritten in my head or collect endless rejection emails from every professional website ever. Sometime this spring we’ll be reaching our 1,500th entry, reflecting once more on the hundreds of man-hours expended to date on this self-expressive non-profit project, and rationalizing new excuses not to stop, even if by the time I die it’s just me and ad-bots posting harsh emojis at each other down inside the spam filter.
Right this way for our rundown of MCC’s best and worst of 2016!
The centerpiece of the Indiana State Museum lobby is the “Indiana Obelisk” –at just under fifty feet. the tallest sculpture to date by artist Robert Indiana.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: throughout 2016 my wife and I spotted and compiled a number of sights related to the 200th anniversary of our own Indiana earning statehood, nineteenth in a series of fifty, after Louisiana but before Mississippi, Illinois, and Alabama. Between this year’s State Fair and the one-time Hoosier Homecoming, we had ample opportunities to learn more about our heritage, celebrate the achievers who paved paths for generations ahead, reassert reasons for hometown pride, and transcend that one time Indiana Beach amusement park actually had as its official ad slogan, “There’s More Than Corn in Indiana!” Because once upon a time, that was a thing we had to insist.
Earlier in December we attended one last commemorative event: a temporary exhibit at the Indiana State Museum called “Indiana in 200 Objects” assembling artifacts and souvenirs from Hoosier celebrities, businesses, industries, and moments both famous and infamous. Presented here is just over one-tenth of the available displays — a selection of those that caught our eye, spoke to us on some level, and posed properly for our amateur cameras. Not every sight was a wellspring of unlimited positivity (one could argue for trigger warnings on two of these images for more sensitive souls), but even the darkest relics can illustrate how far we’ve come and help us gauge how much farther we have to go.
The prettiest among my in-laws’ Nativity scenes, a handicraft find on one of their small-town expeditions, which they’ve surrounded with a selection of this year’s Christmas cards. I didn’t realize till a few minutes ago that the card we sent them tried to sneak into the shot.
Christmastime is here, basically! With last-minute shopping to do, relatives to visit, presents to give, and fresh-baked cookies to overdose upon, sleeping in heavenly peace may be an unattainable luxury during our three-day weekend. As we’re finalizing our plans and preparing to dive in, please enjoy this gallery of memories from our past four weeks foreshadowing the upcoming celebrations of Jesus’ birth (observed) and all those’ll entail, Lord willing.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Wondrous Weekend from the staff here at Midlife Crisis Crossover.
Drivers, start your string lights!
We have a few neighbors shaming us with their scintillating Christmas light displays, reminiscent of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation minus the buffoonery and severe injuries. We spent one evening this week getting out of the house for a bit and taking a scenic drive through the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the world-famous Indy 500 and host of a holiday attraction brand new for the 2016 holiday season.
Courtesy of my workplace, I came home today after a long, draining week bearing a glass jar of merry Christmas benevolence. Some assembly required.
Our hotel room’s view of downtown Cincinnati high above the nightlife.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s convention time yet again! This weekend my wife Anne and I have driven two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend a show we’ve never done before, the seventh annual Cincinnati Comic Expo. With her birthday coming up in a few weeks, which usually means a one-day road trip somewhere, we agreed this would count as her early celebration.
Growing up in Indiana, we Hoosiers rarely had reasons to visit next-door Ohio until and unless it was time for another one-day family road trip to Kings Island Amusement Park, a few miles north of Cincinnati. If you believe the movie Anomalisa, the only two reasons to visit Cincinnati itself are the Cincinnati Zoo and Skyline Chili. After we wrapped up our Cincinnati Comic Expo experience, we did none of those things and found a few reasons not to be bored anyway.
Honesty up front: “The Genius of Water” is the name of a fancy fountain, not a movie or a pet name for whoever invented Evian.
Sometimes when it’s freezing outside and newly dangerous open air stings at every uncovered part of you, it’s therapeutic to look back on warmer, prettier times and remember what sunshine and comfortable temperatures felt like. The past few days’ weather advisories had me yearning for flashbacks to our September visit to downtown Cincinnati, where, among other points of interest, my wife and I dawdling in scenic Fountain Square, one of the prettiest city blocks the Queen City had to offer.
Also, sometimes it’s good to finish a project you started two months ago and then suspended halfway through for no quantifiable reason. Triple bonus points to any readers out there who noticed and were kinda wondering. Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
It’s convention time yet again! This weekend my wife Anne and I have driven two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend a show we’ve never done before, the seventh annual Cincinnati Comic Expo. With her birthday coming up in a few weeks, which usually means a one-day road trip somewhere, we agreed this would count as her early celebration.
(Anne subsequently spent the birthday itself hanging out at home. It was a bit anticlimactic, but on the upside she still looks half her age.)
Day Seven. Early morning. The Comfort Inn had already shut off our cable TV, in case we were entertaining any notions of dawdling. Morning news was far from our thoughts, with a noon flight ahead and without knowing whether or not LaGuardia was one of those airports where passengers should expect mile-long lines worse than what we’re used to comic conventions. Sightseeing was over; now was the time to escape from New York.
Vendor booths? Check. Creative bling? Check. Famous movie characters? Check!
Each November my wife and I take her grandmother to Indianapolis’ own Christmas Gift & Hobby Show at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. When we checked out this year’s model last month, the event was on its 67th year; Mamaw is on her 91st and still going strong. The Show provides a variety of shopping opportunities and entertainment activities, some of which began to remind us in not-so-subtle ways of our favorite geek conventions. This show doesn’t have nearly the scope or the attendance of C2E2 or the Indiana Comic Con, but we had to wonder if the new showrunners picked up an influence or two from our scene.
Day Two: our endurance walk through Central Park included a rest stop at the Chess & Checkers House, moments before the clouds began sprinkling.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we guided you through the first six days of our second trip to New York City in twenty-eight episodes —- Sunday through Thursday, July 9-14,2016, our second time flying anywhere and my son’s first. Between the flights there and back again, we saw lots more New York we hadn’t seen our first time around when we drove out there from Indianapolis in 2011.
Here, in our penultimate chapter: a selection of outtakes from previous scenes — a couple skipped by dumb oversight; a few that captured isolated moments disconnected from the rest of the narrative; one or two alternate shots of cool objects and places; and a few left behind due to inadequate wow factor. We may be aging amateurs who don’t have thousands of unconditional superfans, but we do have light standards.
Right this way for more art, architecture, animals, and aircraft!
I took a four-day staycation the week before Thanksgiving, but any therapeutic benefits were nullified days ago by the nonstop holiday weekend, the long work week that followed, and the little family dramas encroaching on various fronts. I’m under orders from my wife to get some rest this weekend after three straight nights of failing at proper sleep. Our dog Lucky, the master of power naps in our household, makes relaxation look sooooo simple.
Mini-pastry appetizer at Junior’s, one of the better experiences from the second half of our week.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…
On our vacations the meals trend in the same direction throughout our week: at first tentative while we’re exploring new territory. After a day or two we’re emboldened enough to experiment with places more imaginative or just more expensive. After peaking midweek with the greatest meals of the year, our dinners then begin to descend in either quality or excitement level as we reach the far end of our budget and tap into our last reserves of energy just to finish out the trip. We try to keep finding gems among the dross, whether the results impress our friends back home or not.
New York City’s uniquely hard-coded DNA is everywhere around if you know where to look. Sometimes it’s right over your head and ridiculously literal.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…
When you’re gallivanting around Manhattan and exploring the same sights everyone tells you are must-sees, it’s easy to forget New York City has more than one borough. Unless we find reasons to visit them of our own accord, we outsiders are happy to stay latched on to the biased mental images that movies and TV gave us. The Bronx has tough guys and a zoo; Staten Island has the only ferry in New York and not much else; Brooklyn has either the trendy food or the most colorful TV shows, depending on your preferred channels; and Queens is the other one. A handful of us remember Peter Parker is from Forest Hill in Queens, but otherwise it’s the baseline Big Apple stand-in. Queens is to New York City what Vancouver is to all the other major cities. Or so we out-of-towners think, because sometimes we can be uninformed simpletons.
I promised myself five months ago I wouldn’t hop on the “2016 SUCKS” bandwagon, but celebrity passings dominated this weekend’s apolitical headlines, at least two of which merit a few personal side notes.
It’s mind-boggling to me that one of the greatest bands from the original American punk rock scene released their self-titled debut album a full forty years ago. When I learned the Queens Museum was hosting a temporary exhibit commemorating the anniversary of their recording career, it shot straight to the Top 5 on my vacation to-do list. Fortunately my wife and son were generous enough to allow this fan’s diversion.
Funko Pop presents Chibi-head Academy Award Winner Jared Leto, all yours…for a price.
It’s not this time of year without too much shopping! Or so I hear frequently from the media, TV ads, all surrounding retail shops, our local newspaper, the voices in my head that like buying new stuff for loved ones and myself, sometimes in that order. The true Black Friday experience — getting up ridiculously early the day after Thanksgiving and not one day earlier to compete for the privilege of loss-leader pricing on either understocked new merchandise or obsolete shelf-filler — lost my commitment when corporations decided a Friday should be fourteen days long.
The increasingly charmless holiday event notwithstanding, I usually have free time to spare that particular day regardless, so it’s still a good opportunity to leave my family behind for a few hours without guilt and go take care of my share of the Christmas season. This year I spent much of my morning at Indianapolis’ own Castleton Square Mall, where I usually don’t have a lot to do since women’s clothing and designer shoe shops aren’t my thing. This year, more than ever, quite a few stores were aiming specifically for my geek dollars with the kind of merchandise we normally see only at our annual comic and entertainment conventions. Suddenly “geek chic” is a thing and proprietors hope the masses will buy in.
Hi, I’m the Unisphere! You might remember be from such films as Men in Black and Iron Man 2!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Every year from 1999 to 2015 my wife Anne and I took a road trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. With my son’s senior year in college imminent and next summer likely to be one of major upheaval for him (Lord willing), the summer of 2016 seemed like a good time to get the old trio back together again for one last family vacation before he heads off into adulthood and forgets we’re still here. In honor of one of our all-time favorite vacations to date, we scheduled our long-awaited return to New York City…
Our second trip to Queens brought us to a convergence of historical attractions in scenic Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. The Queens Zoo was an incidental delight, but we had to walk quite a few more blocks east through a sunny July day to reach two of our most anticipated stops of the entire week.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 