2015 Road Trip Photos #23: Southern Cooking Showdown, Round 2

Redfish Beignets!

Redfish beignets at the Royal House in New Orleans.

Day Three of our seven-day road trip was our first full day in the city of New Orleans. We already covered our musical breakfast at Cafe Beignet. As noted previously, “Going into this year’s vacation, we hoped the cuisine would be a highlight at our various stops — be it good ol’ Southern kitchen cookin’, Gulf-sourced fresh seafood, or, really, anything outside of international franchisees.” In that vein, lunch and dinner each had their own approach.

Right this way for another foodie episode, but without using the word “foodie”!

2015 Road Trip Photos #22: Everything Floats Down Here

Spongebob Squarepants!

Spongebob Squarepants! Spongebob Squarepants! Spongebob Squarepants! Spongey-boooooob Squarepaaaaaaants!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I visited Mardi Gras World, a giant-sized warehouse-shaped museum in New Orleans in which floats are constructed, painted, stored, disassembled, reassembled, repainted, reconfigured, and displayed for guests who want to take a long walk through local party-time history.

As promised last time, here’s a sampling of the many heads, bodies, persons, places, and things on display that have entertained generations and enthralled the sober and the drunken alike.

Right this way for famous big heads from Marvel, Star Wars, history, and more!

2015 Road Trip Photos #21: Mardi Gras in July

Mardi Gras Chef!

When it’s Mardi Gras, even the gator and the lobster set aside their differences and party all night together in the same gumbo pot. Meanwhile in the shadows, Burger King bides his time and plots his next sinister move.

When people ’round our parts think “New Orleans”, once they get past the memories of Hurricane Katrina, the next thing that pops into their head is Mardi Gras. Other cities and countries may honor the grand finale of every annual “Carnival” multi-part holiday, but the way it’s talked about, you’d think “Mardi Gras” was French for “New Orleans party”. For all I know, maybe it is.

Anne and I don’t drink, party, observe Carnival, or socialize while our clothes are missing, but we thought it wouldn’t hurt to look into the prettier, safer element of those shindigs: the famous parades and their scintillating floats. So that’s what lured us to Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World.

Right this way for an introduction to floating!

Ordinary Groceries, Extraordinary Cause

COOKIES!

Sorry, folks. None of these are for you. If it makes you feel better, I couldn’t have any, either.

Right this way for a mini-sequel to an event from last year!

I’m a Clabber Girl in a Clabber World

Donuts for Dimes!

Sorry, folks: these dime donuts are for historical display purposes only.

For the last several years, my wife Anne and I have spent our respective birthdays together finding some new place or attraction to visit as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on this most wondrous day, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2015 birthday destination of choice was the city of Fort Wayne, two hours north of home. Her 2015 choice last Saturday was Terre Haute, an hour west of here. In Part 1 of this three-part miniseries, you saw our final stop of the day, the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, which absolutely made her day.

Our first stop of the day was something completely different: the Clabber Girl Museum and Bake Shop. The longtime purveyors of baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, and other products under assorted brand names have their factory and corporate HQ in downtown Terre Haute. We happen to be fans of baked goods, and this wouldn’t be our first trip to a museum about baking ingredients (cf. the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis). It didn’t hurt that the museum is free.

Right this way for the grand Clabber Tour!

An Afternoon with the Woman Who Forgave Josef Mengele

Eva Mozes Kor.

This past Saturday afternoon my wife Anne and I paid a visit to the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, located a mere hour west of Indianapolis and a mile down the road from Indiana State University. The Museum’s Founding Director, pictured above, is Eva Mozes Kor. You might have seen her in such films as the 2006 documentary Forgiving Dr. Mengele or in the occasional special about the Holocaust. Eva survived the horrors of Auschwitz as a preteen and, today at age 81, lives to share the tale of her extraordinary life with new generations.

We knew the museum told her story and exemplified the principles that helped her transition from victim to survivor over the decades. We didn’t expect her to actually be there in person.

Continue reading

2015 Road Trip Photos #19: War Wings

B25 Mitchell!

The B25 Mitchell is the kind of bomber used in the 1942 Doolittle Raid, as seen near the conclusion of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor and probably some other, better films.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our road trip to New Orleans continued as my wife and I spent much of Day 3 touring the National WWII Museum. Of all the buildings in the complex, the tallest was the most fascinating and contained the largest objects of all: half a dozen military airplanes suspended in midair.

(See that yellow-and-orange dot in the faraway window that kinda looks like a Ms. Pac-Man fruit? That’s my lovely wife.)

Right this way for the conclusion of a four-part photo-gallery miniseries!

2015 Road Trip Photos #18: War Wheels

Tank!

A Sherman Tank! I first saw one of these in the forgotten James Garner film Tank, which played at the drive-in when I was a kid. This encounter was much better than that film.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our road trip to New Orleans continued as my wife and I spent much of Day 3 touring the National WWII Museum — four super-sized buildings and one smaller, locked gallery used for restoration work. With all that square footage and so many high ceilings, the Museum has plenty of space to display the largest wartime souvenirs: the vehicles that men drove into combat.

Right this way for Part 3 of a photo-gallery miniseries!

2015 Road Trip Photos #17: War Ordnance

Guns.

Hi, we’re guns! You may remember us from such films as Every Men’s Adventure Film Ever, The Complete Chuck Norris Catalog, and Bowling for Columbine!

Considering recent headlines, maybe I picked the wrong week to share photos of guns. Or the perfect week, if you’re on the other side. Blame World War II for the wide selection here.

Right this way for Part 2 of a photo-gallery miniseries!

2015 Road Trip Photos #16: War Relics

War News.

The front page of a special Honolulu Star-Bulletin Extra published December 7, 1941, three hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

When I first suggested driving to New Orleans for this year’s road trip, my wife was hesitant because most online tourism resources summed up the general ambiance as HERE THERE BE MANIACS. No matter where you stay, how brightly the sun shines, how large your group is, or how tall and muscular you are, message boards and review sites and travel books and Fodor’s agree sooner or later a tag team of America’s Most Wanted will come gunning for you.

Then we found out New Orleans is the home of the National WWII Museum. Not a WWII museum — the National WWII Museum, as duly designated by Congress in 2003. Anne knows stuff about WWII. Longtime MCC readers might recall the story of how we first met:

[Anne had] been a WWII buff for years, and read extensively about Germany in general and Hitler in particular. I still remember the time when the teacher (one Frau Schmitz by name) basically turned the class over to Anne and let her give us a speech about Hitler. Anne proceeded to do so…with no notes, and no real preparation beforehand. As I recall, her extemporaneous speech filled two solid class periods over two days — roughly 100 minutes total — with what she knew about Hitler before Frau Schmitz finally stepped in and resumed teaching.

She’s always up for learning more about WWII, above and beyond what she’s already accumulated over the course of decades. When she learned the National WWII Museum was in New Orleans…well. Murderers, schmurderers.

Right this way for Part 1 of a photo-gallery miniseries!

A Cavalcade of Comics and Cartoons in Columbus

CXC Banner!

This weekend ushered in the inaugural Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, an intentionally different comics show from what we’re used to seeing here in Indianapolis. As conceived and executed by Bone creator Jeff Smith, Comics Reporter journalist Tom Spurgeon, and no doubt a sturdy support network of other talents, CXC promised no actors or celebrities, no mainstream publishers, no costume contest, no cosplay, no gaming, no super-sized convention center, no inedible convention center food, no back-issue longboxes, no action figures, and no bobbleheads. CXC was an aesthetically purified form of literary/art show about comics, featuring a lot of people who make comics better, from within the local community as well as from distant parts.

As a longtime comics fan who needs more than super-heroes in his reading list, I found their guest list intriguing and populated with the kind of principled names we’re likely never to see at a Wizard World show. I deeply regret we had a limited time frame to spend there, but my wife, who only recognized one name on the entire guest list, was happy to tag along and let me immerse myself for a few hours, even though it meant a three-hour drive each way through an unsightly rainy day. We met several creators, we attended one Q&A, I came away with a potentially fascinating reading pile, and we had just enough time left over for some bonus comics sightseeing a few miles up the road.

Right this way for a selection of pics from our experience!

2015 Road Trip Photos #15: Jazz After Sunrise

Three Amigos!

We are…the Three Amigos!

Day Three, we awoke in New Orleans before 7 a.m., excited and peppy and ready to go. Sadly, most of the French Quarter was still asleep, but we found a place to hang out while we waited for them to catch up with us. No matter where you go, Mondays are Mondays.

Right this way for breakfast and a jazz trio!

Live Under a Blood Red Speck

Super Blood Moon!

10:51 pm.. EDT — See that tiny, funny-colored dot at upper right? That’s no space station.

No, the above photo was not necessarily my best attempt at capturing the soul of tonight’s much-ballyhooed “super blood moon” very special astronomical event, but it’s the first one I took when I discovered my Canon PowerShot ELPH 340 HS has a setting called “Handheld NightScene”. The moon is visible in that shot, but wasn’t for long. Here in Indianapolis we’ve been under cloud cover all weekend long, and they refused to let up even for something as unusual as a lunar eclipse, let alone an oddly hued one. I’d describe this as “once in a blue moon”, but I’m not sure which moon color is rarer and I’d rather not spark any sky-science semantics squabbles over this.

I didn’t take the greatest SuperBloodMoon photos of all time, but at the very least, the pics leading up to the feature presentation were the best moon pics I’ve ever taken in my life. For a thoroughly amateur photographer, I’ll take that little victory.

Here’s the best takes on what we saw before the clouds solidified the gaps between each other and ruined an otherwise cool evening. All time stamps are Eastern Daylight Time, and for once I’ve resisted the urge to crop or resize any of them.

Right this way for the light of the silvery moon! Featuring cameos by the color red!

2015 Road Trip Photos #14: The Road to New Orleans

Bourbon Street!

One of the G-rated stretches of notorious Bourbon Street on a Sunday evening. Even Party Central needs its downtime.

There she was at long last — New Orleans!

We reached our primary objective at the end of Day Two, thankfully before sundown. All the post-Katrina tourism resources we consulted in our vacation research (books, travel sites, AAA brochures, message boards with supporting posts from wary New Orleans residents) seemed unanimous on one important message: anyone caught outside in New Orleans at night will be swiftly, repeatedly murdered. Perhaps that’s not the reality, but we weren’t prepared to call Fodor’s bluff during our first hours in town. No matter how long we spent in Alabama or at stops along the way, we wanted to be in New Orleans and checked in at our hotel while the sun was still on our side.

We met our objective, and all it took was a long, nearly featureless drive through an unrelated state, braving the cramped hallways that pass for roads in the French Quarter, and cutting a major stop from our itinerary.

Right this way to, at long last, New Orleans! Eventually!

2015 Road Trip Photos #13: Up the Mountain to the God of Fire

Approaching Vulcan!

The southbound road from downtown Birmingham led us up a ridge called Red Mountain, so named for its red iron deposits and the suitably colored surfaces. Atop one particular crest there’s a park centered around what’s billed as the world’s largest cast-iron statue, molded in the likeness of Mount Olympus’ most underrated resident, the Roman god Vulcan.

Right this way for a closer look at the Hephaestus of Earth-2!

2015 Road Trip Photos #12: Southern Seafood Showdown, Round 1

Shrimp and Grits!

Going into this year’s vacation, we hoped the cuisine would be a highlight at our various stops — be it good ol’ Southern kitchen cookin’, Gulf-sourced fresh seafood, or, really, anything outside of international franchisees. We received our first recommendation from the friendly guide at the Alabama Welcome Center, who insisted that during our road trip we had to try genuine shrimp-‘n’-grits somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line at least once. For lunch on Day Two, I trusted her and gave it a shot.

Right this way for fish!

2015 Road Trip Photos #11: Lights of Birmingham

Electra!

“Electra” has stood atop the Alabama Power Building downtown since 1926. Her origins lie closer to Greek mythology than to any similarly named Marvel characters.

Our two-hour walk around downtown Birmingham on a Sunday morning took us from Kelly Ingram Park to Linn Park to the Art Museum and to other parts here and there. We also stopped at their bus station because Anne had it good authority that they had one of those smashed-penny machines. I don’t mention those often in our travelogues, but those are a big, BIG thing for her. You’d be surprised how many of our stops over the years appeared on her smashed-penny machine master list months before they appeared on our finalized itineraries. This time, though, either her informant was misinformed or the bus station management hid it in some far-off back room. We weren’t prepared to go that deeply into the heart of bleakness.

We took zero photographs of the bus station, but other curiosities caught our eye as we traipsed around town. Electra up there, for example.

Right this way for downtown Birmingham potpourri!

The 60-Minute Speed-Conventioning Challenge

Lance Henriksen!

We had an idea in mind of how today would go. A small Indianapolis convention had brought in a handful of actors of varying levels of fame and importance. In my mind one of the biggest was Lance Henriksen — Bishop from Aliens and Alien³, one of several cops from The Terminator, star of the X-Files spinoff Millennium, costar of the southern-vampire cult classic Near Dark, and other stuff I’m forgetting. With a geek resumé like that, I anticipated waiting a few hours or more for the chance to say hi.

VIPs could enter the con at 10 a.m. When the general public was ushered in promptly at 11, we were third in his line. That seemed wrong. If we had known how quickly we’d finish the rest of my to-do list, maybe we would’ve taken a closer look at the photo, noticed his blinking, and asked humbly for a retake. Who knew.

Right this way for photos and a super-short convention round-up!

2015 Road Trip Photos #10: Birmingham’s Art Museum on $0.00 a Day

Steelworker!

“Steelworker” by Luis Jimenez, 1990.

Our Day Two morning walk through the desolate streets of downtown Birmingham took us across the street from the north end of Linn Park and toward the Birmingham Museum of Art. We’ve visited art museums in other cities on past vacations, but we regrettably missed out on BMA admittance because they don’t open till noon on Sundays. We had a busy schedule ahead of us and not much margin for immersing ourselves in the local culture beyond the first few hours.

Luckily for us, the contents of the BMA extend beyond its mere walls and enjoy grassy display space all around the block. We enjoyed what we could on the lap we took. ADVANCE DISCLAIMER: Please disregard our situational example and give money to arts. Thank you.

Right this way for festive lawn arts!

Star Wars Celebration 2005 Memories, Part 3 of 3: Costumes!

Jedi M&Ms!

Jedi M&Ms: they melt on Mustafar, not in your hand.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: a flashback to our four-day weekend at 2005’s Star Wars Celebration III in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Part 1 was nearly three thousand words’ worth of anecdotes, bullet points, actors, friends, Star Wars creators, popes, and the worst line we’ve ever endured in our entire lives. Part 2 was a basic photo gallery of stuff ‘n’ things that were pretty exciting to us at the time. Now it’s all standard convention decor, but we were younger and easily impressed.

And now we reach the grand finale to this very special all-35mm MCC miniseries in a predictable fashion with predictable fashions. It’s vintage cosplay time! Here’s what the Star Wars fans of yesteryear were wearing before cosplayers divided sharply into two camps: those spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on painstakingly self-tailored tributes; and dudes in store-bought Halloween costumes. Enjoy!

Right this way for Star Wars cosplay, 2005 style!