Tag Archives: photography

Indiana Comic Con 2016 Photos #3 of 4: Saturday Cosplay

May 1, 2016 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Medusa!

Best headgear of the year: Medusa from Clash of the Titans, giving me flashbacks to when I got scared watching the original at the drive-in.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Friday and Saturday, my wife and I attended the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. In Part One you saw every viable costume photo we took on Friday, with the emphasis once again leaning toward Deadpool because that’s what we’re running into, other than hordes of intricate anime characters we oldsters don’t recognize. Part Two was a Saturday selection featuring Bat-related characters and, one last time, all the Deadpools fit to print.

In today’s gallery: cosplay, cosplay, cosplay! All the other costumes we saw on Saturday that looked great and didn’t evade or outrun us. Obviously this is far from comprehensive and I’m still kicking myself with all my mental strength for missing one lady dressed as someone I recognized from the Authority. At one point I dwelt on this weird idea of renting booth space next year and offering to take free pics of any cosplayers who feel they weren’t photographed often enough, just for free posting here as a fun public service — no judging, no body-shaming, no rejecting just because Anne and I have no idea who they are. But I’m not sure how many cosplayers experience that kind of letdown at such shows anymore. Social media operating as it does today, every con probably now has ten “photographers” in attendance for every cosplayer. My idea was a fun pipe dream for the few minutes it lasted. Ah, well.

Anyway: enjoy!
Continue reading →

Indiana Comic Con 2016 Photos #2: Batman v. Deadpool: Dawn of Cosplay

April 30, 2016 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Batwoman!

Maybe Batwoman could take Deadpool alone, but if Wonder Woman wants to cameo, no one’s gonna tell her no.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Friday and Saturday, my wife and I attended the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. In Part One you saw every viable costume photo we took on Friday. We caught so many cosplayers in action today that the Saturday results will be split into two (maybe three) entries.

In tonight’s gallery: another batch of Deadpool variants, which we suspect will be a thing for years to come, and heroes and villains from the Batman family, which kept catching our eye more than usual this time around. Enjoy!

Right this way for more fun with Gotham’s most wanted and the Merc with a Mouth!

Indiana Comic Con 2016 Photos #1: Friday Cosplay

April 29, 2016 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Assassin's Creedpool!

The wrong cosplayers to mess with: Assassin’s Creedpool hanging out with Harley Quinn and the Red Hood.

This weekend my wife and I are attending the third annual Indiana Comic Con at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis. Though the first two ICCs had more than their share of growing pains, he wrote with diplomacy wrapped in understatement topped with a Jim Halpert pretend-blank expression, Anne and I found a few names on the guest list irresistible and prayed the showrunners had been taking notes, accepting constructive criticism, and borrowing standard crowd-control procedures from other cons. So far, so good — Friday for us was a rousing success in a number of ways, except for the part where we had too much fun and I’m now typing under considerable fatigue.

While we rest and prepare for a ridiculously early Saturday wake-up, please enjoy this collection of cosplayers who brightened our day and improved quality-of-life around the show floor on Friday, the trial run before the rest of the crowds arrive Saturday and the real test of the showrunners’ mettle begins. The actors, comics artists, and nifty object collections will be shared in a forthcoming entry in this special series. Enjoy!

Right this way for cosplay. Cosplay! COSPLAY!

American Ninja War Zone: Indianapolis

April 27, 2016 By in Indiana, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
American Ninja Warrior!

I assume this is called the Treacherous Tower of Tremendous Terror or something.

Fun event here in Indianapolis this week: the NBC reality series American Ninja Warrior is filming an episode on Monument Circle in the very heart of downtown. They’re filming the initial challenges in the wee hours of Wednesday night/Thursday morning from a crowd of thirty competitors, and it’s my understanding semifinalists will continue competing Thursday night/Friday morning. If you’re a local night owl who has no use for crowing roosters or morning-drive DJs, this event was made just for you.

I don’t watch the show. I was just trying to take my weekly walk to the comic shop at lunchtime and their sets were in my way. But I captured a few images for the fans out there.

Right this way for more photos, plus a bonus superfluous political rally pic!

2015 Road Trip Photos #51: Season Finale, Last Call for Outtakes

April 24, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Queen Anne!

Queen Anne dons her royal attire at Mardi Gras World. Photo by her humbled consort.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we guided you through our annual road trip in fifty episodes, driven July 11-17, 2015, from Indianapolis to Louisville to Birmingham to New Orleans to Biloxi to Mobile to Monroeville to Montgomery to Nashville to home again. Our previous outtake gallery gave you one last look at our Alabama explorations. Here, then, in our grand finale: outtakes from everywhere and everything else we saw, with an emphasis on New Orleans, the ostensible centerpiece of our vacation. A few were alternate versions of previously shared pics; a few were skipped by dumb oversight; and a few were left behind due to insufficient pizzazz.

Right this way for the season finale!

2015 Road Trip Photos #50: Outtakes, Alabama

April 23, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
USS Alabama!

My favorite shot of the top deck of the USS Alabama…starring some complete stranger who wandered in the way.

With each year’s travelogue we like to conclude with a second-chance review through the hundreds of photos we took to see which photos were unfairly cut from the final roster, which ones didn’t fit into the narrative but possess their own merit, and/or which ones slipped through the cracks for no valid reason. The twelve pics in this first of two outtake sets were all taken in Alabama, arguably the state where we spent the most time this week, racked up the most driving mileage, and learned the most about through historical immersion.

(As always, photos are clickable for enlargement and resolution and such.)

Right this way for eleven more honorable mentions!

The Springs in Fall — 2015 Photos #26: Mission in Manitou Springs

April 22, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Manitou Springs!

One last time in the shadow of Pikes Peak.

The week was winding down before we knew it. Anne got off work so late on Thursday that we had time only for dinner and an all-new Sleepy Hollow before she faced one last earl bedtime and one last shift in Colorado Springs. Friday is usually a time for rejoicing in the work week’s end, but this one would prove bittersweet. We loved the mountains and the culinary forays, but we missed our home and our dog, and I’d crossed all the high-ranking attractions off my to-do list. The remaining options ranged in curiosity level from “maybe” to “meh”. Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas have a lot to see and do for a variety of interests and tourists. Not all of them were for me, but I tried to keep an open mind.

I spent the morning of Day Six as a lot of normal travelers might: I lounged around the hotel room for a few hours and did virtually nothing. I procrastinated the MCC Sleepy Hollow recap in favor of reading, relaxing, and catching reruns of Supernatural on TNT. I’d never watched a single episode before, and perhaps it was a bizarre choice to begin my viewership with the season-7 finale and the season-8 premiere, but that’s the beauty of vacation: you get to have fun and break some rules no matter what kind of looks people give you for it.

Eventually I snapped out of my lazy doldrums and came up with a plan. I checked out of the hotel, leaving behind ten of the twenty-four bottled waters that I’d picked up on my way to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and taking three with me for the road. Just as the previous guests had left us a fresh half-gallon of milk and a box of breakfast Hot Pockets that neither of us could bear to touch, so did we pay it forward to the next guests in our own way.

Then I launched myself on a side quest of sorts to cross a few items off Anne’s own to-do list. This wouldn’t just be a time-killer or selfish indulgence: it would be an act of service for someone I loved, frivolous though the targeted treasures might be.

And that’s how I wound up once again in Manitou Springs for my final close-ups of the Rocky Mountains.

Right this way for one last walkabout before heading home!

Jimmy John’s Offers One. One Dollar. One Dollar Four-Hour Eight-Inch.

April 21, 2016 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Jimmy John's Vito!

For today only, the cookie cost me more than the sub did.

Today in one-time wacky sales gimmicks: American submarine sandwich chain Jimmy John’s announced a Customer Appreciation day in which they’re selling eight-inch sub sandwiches from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. And I was there. I wasn’t even supposed to be here today.

Right this way for limited-time-only details!

2015 Road Trip Photos #49: The Week in Cityscapes

April 18, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
NOLA via WWII!

The New Orleans business district skyline as viewed from the fourth floor of the National WWII Museum’s Boeing Center. At left, one of the exhibit halls; at right, the theater where we watched Beyond All Boundaries.

Throughout our drive from Indianapolis to New Orleans and back again, my wife took pics of each major metropolis as we passed through them. During our walks and our detours we found a few other neat vantage points that let us gaze upon these cities and wonder if the life bustling along their streets is that much different from our own. In most cases probably, but it was fun to contemplate.

Right this way for a few shots on the road and the sight that greeted us at home!

The Springs in Fall — 2015 Photos #25: Colorado Cookery II, or “Snacks and a Plane”

April 17, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Airplane Restaurant!

Usually when an airplane is lodged halfway inside a building, it’s called a disaster. The Airplane Restaurant proves they can achieve peaceful symbiosis.

As with our July road trip to the South, I was determined to find places to eat in Colorado Springs that we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. Here we backtrack a bit to recap a couple of culinary experiences we had in the margins between the last several chapters in this series. Not all of them were trendsetting, but two of them were more creative than anyplace I’ve seen in Indianapolis.

For one of those establishments, the creativity was in the structure itself. Pictured above is my lunch option for Day 5 — the Airplane Restaurant, a perfect companion to the National Museum of WWII Aviation down the street. This 13-year-old eatery is attached to a Radisson Hotel, housed partly inside a normal building, and partly inside a Boeing KC-97. Once a refueling tanker for other planes, now it refuels people.

Right this way for more about the Airplane, plus donuts!

Dinnertime Down the Street at Lola’s

April 15, 2016 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Turon!

When restaurateurs want to make their mark on Indianapolis, they rarely glance in the direction of the west side. They flock to the upper-class north suburbs and their adjacent cities, they swarm around downtown’s millennial-professional boom, they move to the increasingly trendy near-southside neighborhoods of Fountain Square and Fletcher Place, or they take their chances in old-school-hipster Broad Ripple. We west-siders notice articles in the Indianapolis Star or in Indianapolis Monthly boasting about new restaurants and talented chefs, cross our fingers hoping someone will give us a chance, and find ourselves let down every time, feeling neglected and déclassé while they brag about marching in lockstep toward the only compass directions that matter to the Hoosier jet set.

When I read that a new place called Lola’s Bowl and Bistro opened suspiciously close to our house, serving fine Filipino cuisine, I wondered if it was a hoax, a dream, or an imaginary story. Or, y’know, journalism made of LIES. But no, Lola’s is real and they’re on our side of the Circle City, next to the one stoplight in Clermont.

I’m already talking too much. I’ll pause here so you can stare at our dessert for a few minutes. It’s also my desktop wallpaper at work.

Right this way for details about that dessert and also our entrees, I guess…

2015 Road Trip Photos #48: Noontime in Nashville

April 14, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Nashville State Capitol!

Twelve American state capitals have State Capitols without domes. Tennessee’s 1859 version is one of them.

When last we left Nashville, we’d stopped there for lunch on the first day of our 2005 road trip to San Antonio. We ate at our first Jack in the Box nearly a decade before they finally came to Indianapolis; we saw their version of the Parthenon, a World’s Fair tribute to their old nickname “the Athens of the South”; and then we moved on. Ten years later, we returned once again for lunch and spent slightly longer there this time than last time.

One last state capital before returning home to our own. One last Presidential burial site. One last sign of Confederacy fandom. One last pretty garden. One last Andrew Jackson statue. One last official Southern meal. Our midday stroll around downtown Nashville was like a symbolic highlight reel of our entire road trip.

Right this way for the final city walkabout of the series!

The Springs in Fall — 2015 Photos #23: War Relics II

April 12, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Fuselage!

Some airplane restoration jobs take a tad more paint than others.

Visiting the National Museum of WWII Aviation without my wife was a bizarre experience. She’s the one who’s a WWII aficionado, the one who aced history classes left and right, the one with the PoliSci degree, and the one who doesn’t need a tour guide through museums like this. While she spent another Colorado Springs morning fulfilling the company business obligations that made this trip possible, I did the best I could to take photos and notes of what she was missing. Maybe she already knows it all, but if I could bring her just one new trivia tidbit, then this tourist’s mission was a success.

Continue reading →

2015 Road Trip Photos #47: The Dukes of Hazzard Confederate History Month Holiday Special

April 8, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Dukes Memorabilia!

Back in the ’80s, this vintage merchandise used to make the perfect Christmas gifts, stocking stuffers, birthday presents, and Hannukah surprises.

We’d seen a lot of moving, emotionally charged sites throughout our trip through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana — remembrances of Hurricane Katrina, souvenirs from world wars, paths where civil rights protestors once marched, places where people were beaten or died senselessly, tributes to immigrants, signposts of American progress, and new sides to areas we knew only from their embarrassing stereotypes. It was a week we found at turns educational, sobering, revelatory, alarming, grievous, yet uplifting at a number of key points when recounting the victories against racism and oppression wherever we found them.

Meanwhile in Nashville, on July 17, 2015, exactly one month after the senseless tragedy at Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina, y’all could still come on down to Cooter’s Place, take a gander through the Dukes of Hazzard Museum, and then head to the backroom and stock up on all the Confederate flag accessories you’ll ever need to celebrate all your favorite Confederate States of America holidays. If you plan ahead, you’ll be all set to celebrate April as Confederate History Month, which is a very real thing in several southern states. Yee-haw!

Continue reading →

The Springs in Fall — 2015 Photos #22: War Wings II

April 7, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Douglas A-1 Skyraider Missiles!

The wing of a Douglas A-1 Skyraider housing presumably unarmed missiles.

Last July my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting the National World War II Museum in scenic New Orleans, Louisiana. Anne is the big, big WWII buff in the family, but I enjoyed myself well enough to devote four chapters to it in our nearly completed July 2015 road trip series (here, here, here, and especially here). Four months later, I was surprised to discover Colorado Springs has a place that’s the perfect sequel — the National Museum of WWII Aviation.

I previously posted about my Day Five visit later that evening from the hotel and used up most of my intro material in that one sitting. The single plane pictured in that entry, their F7F Tigercat, was hardly the only aircraft on the premises. The museum is 30% display cases and 70% actual war planes in various states of disrepair, restoration, and flight capability. Tonight’s presentation, then: another batch of World War II fighter planes to go with our July set.

Right this way for another lineup of America’s WWII airborne warcraft!

2015 Road Trip Photos #46: Presidential Flowers Are Prettiest

April 2, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Hermitage Garden!

When we planned our visit to Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage in Nashville, we expected American history, Presidential burial sites, preserved or simulated 19th-century living quarters, honest acknowledgment of slavery, and maybe a few war props. We didn’t expect so many pretty flowers.

Rachel Jackson’s sudden death in December 1828 mere weeks before her husband’s first inauguration means she was never officially a First Lady of the United States. Up to that point, one of her prize works was the one-acre garden on their estate, which remains in place to this day with many descendants of the original flora as living, blooming legacies. For longtime MCC readers familiar with our annual spring “Flowers Are Pretty” entries (follow the saga here, here, here, and here) may agree this walk around the Hermitage works well as a bonus chapter in that series.

Continue reading →

The Springs in Fall — 2015 Photos #21: Lithic Landscape Lollygagging

April 1, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Palmer Park!

Day Five was the last full day of our week in Colorado Springs. I had a late-morning appointment that left me with an hour or so to waste after hotel breakfast #4. I scoped out my options on the east side of town and decided to hang out at Palmer Park, nothing I’d heard of before my vacation research. It’s a plot of land slightly smaller than Central Park, but encapsulating all the Rocky Mountain scenery I’d been exploring and driving around all week. The best part was, the petite peaks of Palmer Park were a picnic to perambulate.

Right this way for nature and scenery and panoramas and such!

This One’s for Her: An Evening With Barry Manilow

March 31, 2016 By in Indiana, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Anne!

My wife and I have many things in common, but our musical tastes diverge more widely than our interests in any other medium. Most musical acts that bother to include Indianapolis in their tours are so far off her radar that, until last night, she’d never been to a full-fledged capital-C Concert by a nationally famous musical act. My own concert history has been intermittent over the years (still kicking myself for skipping Social Distortion when they were in town last year), but I get out there every so often.

Then I found out Barry Manilow was coming to Indy, one of the big names on Anne’s list since childhood. As I said: divergent tastes. But I’m her husband and I love her thiiiiiiiis much and not all outings need to be about me me me. Also, my mom used to listen to local AM radio all the time when I was a kid, so it’s not as though he’s an utter stranger to me. So I cashed in all my internet cred, exchanged it for Good Husband points, and took the woman I love to her first concert, because that’s the kind of off-the-wall thing a happy, blessed marriage inspires a guy to do.

Right this way for the setlist and select photos!

2015 Road Trip Photos #45: The Twenty Dollar Man

March 29, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
$20 Bill Y'all!

Anne takes her rightful place in the American economy just as soon as I’m appointed Secretary of All the Monies. But we’re cool with Hamilton keeping the $10 bill.

Day 7. The grand finale of our 2015 road trip. All that stood between us and home was five hours and a handful of stops. We woke up in Nashville with one last to-do list before we’d let I-65 guide us home.

We’d hoped to see a thing or two the evening before, but traffic coming into Tennessee on Day 6 had been stop-‘n’-go most of the way, made all the more disconcerting as we listened to radio reports of that day’s tragic shootings in Chattanooga, just a couple hours southeast of us. So we weren’t at our best on Friday morning. That buzz to keep seeking out new experiences was playing tug-‘o’-war with our yearning to return home to comfort and familiarity.

First stop: following in the footsteps of President Andrew Jackson. Old Hickory. King Mob. The Hero of New Orleans. He tied our week together nicely.

Continue reading →

Happy Easter from MCC!

March 27, 2016 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Easter Service!

Our view of church this morning at 8 a.m., remembering and worshiping before the crowds who’ll be flocking in for the 9:15 and 11 a.m. services. We sat in the back with Anne’s grandmother and enjoyed the message, in which our lead pastor skillfully worked in a brief but topical detour to refute Lex Luthor’s flawed theology in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Apt timing.

Happy Easter to you ‘n’ yours from Midlife Crisis Crossover, and may you have a truly blessed day.