Tag Archives: photography

Ticketmaster Class Action Settlement Theatre Presents Bush and Chevelle

July 28, 2016 By in Indiana, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Farm Bureau Lawn Sunset!

The Farm Bureau Lawn stage at Indianapolis’ White River State Park, at sunset and between bands.

Dateline: July 26, 2016 — Tuesday night marked the first time I ever attended two concerts in the same calendar year. MCC followers may recall my previous outing to see Bloc Party and the Vaccines back in May, an enjoyable experience for this old man as long as he didn’t dwell on the negatives of being alone in a crowd.

Once again I found myself out of the house for an evening, surrounded by youngsters, and beset by mammoth rhythmic sound waves, some of which belonged to songs I liked. Full disclosure, though: this show wasn’t a first-choice activity. In fact, I forgot I even had the tickets till a few days prior.

Right this way for photos, set lists, and ticket-wrangling fun!

Our 2011 Road Trip #16: Bright On Broadway

July 26, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Lion King Mask!

“MUFASA WELCOMES YOU AND REMINDS YOU TO TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES.”

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

After plumbing the depths of Grant’s Tomb we had an afternoon appointment for our very first Broadway show: The Lion King. But first we had to get there. The trip down from 122nd Street to 45th Street wasn’t a short one.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #15: Grant’s Tomb Raider

July 22, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Grant's Tomb!

Literally the closest we’ve ever been to Harlem, which was a few blocks northeast of here.

There’s that wife of mine, once again on her quest to catch ALL the dead Presidents. It would require our longest subway ride of the week, but a special treat was waiting for us at the end of the line.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

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Rainbows Have Nothing to Hide

July 20, 2016 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Rainbow!

It’s rare to open the garage first thing in the morning and walk right into a sign that says, “It’s okay to leave the house today.” And yet there I was, face to face with this surprise rainbow. Perfect timing. I needed a rainbow this week.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #14: Chinatown!

July 19, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Lin Ze Xu!

Lin Ze Xu welcomes you to the south end of Chinatown, but not your opium. His 19th-century version of the War on Drugs happened long before Nancy Reagan taught us all to just say no.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Chinatown was like nothing we’d ever stepped into before — block after block of overpacked mom-‘n’-pop shops, restaurants with all-paper signage, dingy dives with no English names out front, and respectable businesses stacked atop businesses with even more businesses crammed under and between them, their streets teeming with life and bootleg lady-shopper bait (useless against my wife, who’s not into fashion shopping) and the worst smells we hope we’ll ever know, whether from the deadliest spices known to man or from all the endless displays of fresh-slaughtered seafood, some of it still writhing. My son wanted to see every single block of it, even the blocks ruled by Vietnamese or Thai shopkeepers instead of Chinese.

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Not Put Asunder, 12 Years and Counting

July 17, 2016 By in Indiana, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Midlife Crisis Crossover!

The writer with his primary collaborator, his #1 fan, and his most vocal fact-checker.

Usually we’re out of town on one of our road trips when our anniversary passes, but today was the first time in years that we were in-state for the occasion. We appreciate the inventors of the calendar finally working out the timing in our favor. It was nice to mark the occasion with a nice meal and greeting cards exchanged on our own turf for a change.

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Ads of Darkness, Ads of Light

July 14, 2016 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Suicide Squad!

Some movie posters want to sell you happy fun times using all the colors of the rainbow. In terrible times like these, not everyone wants to embrace the dark side. Sometimes even our creepiest antiheroes are redrawn to radiate with kaleidoscopic pop-art joy in hopes of convincing tourists and natives alike that our next trips to the theater will leave us smiling and cheering while murderers and other malcontents save the day. Apparently that’s why the Suicide Squad now stands tall above Times Square looking as far removed from murky Zack Snyder dystopia as possible.

Meanwhile in other universes, other antiheroes couldn’t care less whether you smile or shudder.

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New Jersey from a Minimum Safe Distance

July 13, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
One Anne!

I can see Springsteen from here!

Flying to this year’s vacation destination had its advantages — faster travel time; free tiny snacks; no road construction delays; no rental car to return afterward while we’re all exhausted; and no danger of accidentally winding up in Newark again on our way to Manhattan. Sure, they could’ve diverted our plane to the wrong airport, but thankfully that didn’t happen. We also reviewed the New Jersey hotel options that we took advantage of in 2011, but price variances in both states over the past five years leveled the playing field in our absence. So this faraway glimpse is as close as we got to New Jersey this year.

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Our View for Six Nights in Hell’s Kitchen

July 10, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Hell's Kitchen!

Please enjoy this evening view from our NYC hotel where we’re staying for this year’s family vacation, on a one-lane street a few blocks southwest of Times Square, a few blocks north of the Port Authority, and inside the boundaries of Hell’s Kitchen, the neighborhood famous for having a Gordon Ramsey show named after it and for going down the tubes every time Matt Murdock is too busy recuperating from fatal wounds or being Elektra’s lapdog to come save the day. A coworker back in Indiana who once worked on Broadway for years recommended this hotel, and when we get home I have questions for him.

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Board Games and Breaking Away

July 8, 2016 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Star Wars Monopoly!

On a board far, far away…

My son has been staying with us this week, getting away from his isolated college apartment for a bit to enjoy better cooking and some human contact. Twice this week we plowed into our stash of board games and had ourselves some old-fashioned family quality time. While we were immersing ourselves in other, tinier worlds and their simpler structures of governance, obviously we couldn’t know this would end up an atrocious week for American civilization beyond our cozy, secluded walls.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #13: The Brooklyn Bridge and Enough Gold to Buy It

July 6, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Brooklyn Bridge!

To learn more about the Brooklyn Bridge, MCC recommends you check out David McCullough’s The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Brooklyn Bridge. I’d loan you my wife’s copy if you lived nearby and we thought you could be trusted.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The World Trade Center Visitors Center offered more emotions to explore and lessons to impart, but we had to skip their basement displays because we had an appointment to keep. The walk down Liberty Street, as with numerous other neighboring streets, was made of claustrophobia. I can’t imagine Storm of the X-Men flying through some of those passages without hyperventilating.

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MCC Live-Tweeting: July 4th Sportsball

July 5, 2016 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Fireworks!

Longtime MCC readers know I’m not the world’s biggest sports fan. I probably wouldn’t rank among the top 2 billion sports fans alive. I know more about baseball than any other sport by a slim margin because in third grade I read a book about baseball that contained a thorough glossary. I learned; I tried to stick with it; I fell away quickly. The passion never developed, but the vocabulary remained.

From time to time I’ll find opportunities to attend ballgames anyway. Our hometown minor league team, the Indianapolis Indians, provide occasional diversions, free tickets, and/or reasons to get out of the house. For tonight’s feature presentation, the primary objective was to get my mom some fresh air and holiday spirit. She hasn’t been out of the house much since her retirement at the end of May, but she does love some good old-fashioned fireworks displays. Anne and I could take or leave ’em. Nevertheless, we figured the outing would do her some good.

Occasionally, though, I got bored. Or in a mood. Some light phone usage may have occurred.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #12: Freedom Under Reconstruction

July 3, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Freedom Tower!

One World Trade Center as of July 2011. Reboot in progress.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The E train took us south from the Port Authority to the world-famous World Trade Center complex, a week after Independence Day and ten years after 9/11. Someday the area will be usable and photogenic again. At this point, unless your idea of photogenic is lifesize Tonka Truck construction playsets, no such luck. But it’s interesting to dream what’ll be made of the place.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #11: Seeing Hamilton for Free

July 1, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Alexander Hamilton!

You, too, can see Alexander Hamilton in Manhattan without tickets.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Hey, kids! It’s Hamilton! And some other special guests from previous centuries.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #10: If Only Central Park Had Central Air

June 29, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Central Park!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The east side of the Natural History Museum faces Central Park, one of the larger stops on our brainstorming list. This felt convenient enough that we sashayed on in to see what we could see before we succumbed to the summer heat.

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For a Happy Retirement After a 50-Year Run

June 27, 2016 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Gift Basket!

For fifteen years my mom and I worked at the same company in different departments. She retired May 31st after nearly fifty years in the rat race. This was the gift basket her coworkers assembled to help kick off her next era and keep her busy with creature comforts for the short term till she gets settled into a new daily groove. At least one of these items is outside her bailiwick, but such special occasions aren’t the right moment for nitpicking. I appreciate that they took to heart most of the ideas I gave them. Maybe she’ll surprise me and give those untested things a try. Or maybe she’ll hang on to them till Christmas and then hand them off to me or my wife. Whatever works for her.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #9: Natural History Repeats Itself

June 25, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Stuffed Octopus!

Unda da sea! Unda da sea! Pretty you betcha, until they getcha! You’d betta flee!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

The B train carried us from Rockefeller Center underground up north to the American Museum of Natural History. Our primary motive wasn’t to search for correlations between the real museum and its counterpart in Night at the Museum. We’ve previously visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC in 2003 and Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History in 2009. Checking out NYC’s own Natural History museum seemed a logical step to continue that tradition.

Right this way for mandatory fossil pics, plus my weight on a comet!

Partners! The Musical!

June 24, 2016 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Goldens!

Maybe not really. Anne and I do have our sing-a-long moments, whether we’re busting out hymns in the same church service or indulging secret nostalgia on road trips passing through towns where ’80s Top-40 still lives, which describes nearly every small town today outside Footlooseburg. I’m not convinced we could carry our own Broadway show, off-Broadway vanity production, or community performance-art stunt, but if we tried, it would look like this except you could see our jazz hands better on stage. Also, it might be nice if we found a talented stylist to hide all that stately gray that’s overtaking my beard. Nagging aging defects like that can lead to bouts of vain grumpiness and haunting incidents like the time we went to a Red Lobster and the waitress asked me non-jokingly if my daughter would like a children’s menu. True, unfair story.

Right this way for a quick note on another MCC blogging milestone!

Our 2011 Road Trip #8: Shadows of the Empire

June 23, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Anne + ESB!

Tourist Anne can tourist like no tourist ever touristed before. I love you, Tourist Anne!

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

“See the Empire State Building!” all the travel guides say. “Ride to the top of the Empire State Building!” they say. “The Empire State Building was in good movies! See NYC from the Empire State Building! Empty your wallet inside Empire State Building!” Getting a scenic view of Manhattan is a must, but the Empire State Building isn’t the only skyscraper in town. And what luck that we had one next door with public elevator access…for a price.

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Our 2011 Road Trip, Part 7: Not Necessarily the NBC News

June 20, 2016 By in Travel, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anchorman!

“America’s Most Trusted Newsman” are four words that appear nowhere in this chapter.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Once we’d had our fill of the Today set, many of the remaining minutes before our 9:45 appointment were wasted on scrounging up a meal for my son, who hates breakfast food and had refused any solids at the Bouchon Bakery because his appetite never awakens till an hour or two after he does. Some tunneling through the underground Rockefeller Center shops brought us to an everyday Subway franchise, thankfully willing and equipped to serve lunch before 10 a.m. While we strode back to where we needed to be, he did his best to cram an entire five-five-dollar-five-dollar-footlong chicken teriyaki sub into his gullet as quickly as possible without choking.

He had only a few bites left of his special-needs meal when we arrived at the NBC Studios Store to kick off our official NBC Studios tour.

Right this way for the no-photos tour, a never-before-shared video, and then a few photos!