Tag Archives: photography

Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 7: The Year in Antiques

August 14, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space: the album.

Featuring such timeless classics as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Earth”, “Beyond Antares”, and “Music to Watch Space Girls By”. Yes, really.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

One of the fair’s regular features is the antiques competition, chiefly displayed on the second floor of the Indiana Arts Building. No one’s ever posted the rules, criteria, rankings, or anything expository beyond signage implying, “Here are some antiques not for sale.” Contestants bring in ancient items they unearthed somewhere, a secret council convenes far from inquisitive eyes, prize ribbons are placed next to some of them, yadda yadda yadda, they’re at your Indiana State Fair.

Amid the quilts and ’50s baby dolls and blue-and-white dishware, a few items with historical value and/or pop culture cachet will catch our attention. We congratulate the winners of this year’s Antiques We Looked At for More Than Three Seconds Contest, sponsored by ConHugeCo, Inc.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 6: The Year in Lego

August 12, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Lego Pokemon!

Lego Pokemon! Lego Pikachu, Lego Geodude, and Lego Snorlax.**

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Lego is a frequent sight at our State Fair. 4-H kids and competitors in other art contests routinely turn in works of Lego as their favorite sculpting medium. There’s nothing emphatically Hoosier about them. To my knowledge we have no Lego factory and no Legoland theme park. Indiana was not a beachhead for Danish explorers. The Lego Indiana Jones sets have nothing to do with Indiana per se, much as we might wish to contrive otherwise. But at our state fair there’s always room for Lego.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 5: Food for Displaying, Not Devouring

August 11, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Bluey made of cans, next to the letters NDY also made of cans.

Canned Bluey! Standing next to an Indianapolis “N-D-Y” photo-op setup.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Our favorite part is the new food, but some of their most ingenious uses of food are available neither for purchase nor consumption. Exhibit A: the annual Canstruction contest! The charitable organization holds eponymous events nationwide in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other to build the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not ordinary stacks with boring titles like “We Bought an Aldi”. After the judging and the public displaying are over, all those meticulously planned figures are torn down and the components are donated to local hunger relief charities, who in turn forward them to needy families. Thus these temporary installations live on only if everyone takes pictures of them.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 4: Land of the Glowing Giants

August 11, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Side view of a T-Rex lying down with its mouth open and its tail sticking straight out horizontally.

Flee from the mighty T-Rex that gapes to all comers with its muscular jaws! Or relax at the table and chairs under its butt.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

As if Artscape and the chainsaw sculptures weren’t enough art: on the north end of the fairgrounds, the relatively new space known as The Backyard — which in 2023 was covered in basketball courts and dubbed Hoopfest — hosted an exhibit called Illuminate, comprising a collection of giant-sized organisms that look impressive in daylight but are actually huge lanterns activated at night. Online sources allege this is its second annual occurrence, except the previous works were Asian-themed and those same sources swear they were stationed in Expo Hall. Considering our 2023 visit to Expo Hall turned up only caged critters, I’d be curious to know the building’s exhibition timeline. It sucks to discover just now that we missed something cool.

Not this year, though. Behold: Illuminate! In daylight! I haven’t been to the State Fair at night in 23 years, and there’s no way we’d’ve had enough energy to stay awake and mobile from opening to closing time, so please enjoy some giant unlit lanterns in sunshine! With neon paint that’s, like, a kind of glowing!

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 3: Where the Art Museum Meets the Chainsaw

August 11, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Blue cube suspended in midair with a light in the middle of it. Each metallic cube side is intricately patterned to project shadows on the surfaces surrounding it.

What if the Cosmic Cube were bigger so it’s harder to steal, prettier than a 6-sided die, and held a more enlightening kind of power?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Every MCC miniseries devoted to the fair has at least one chapter devoted to the works of art we encounter in the various exhibit halls. Art took center stage this year courtesy of Newfields (f/k/a the Indianapolis Museum of Art), who stepped into the role of “presenting sponsor” and brought new flourishes to old spaces.

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 2: Let’s Pretend We’re Influencers

August 10, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anne and I doing jazz hands on a fake Olympics pedestal. The wall behind us is an ad for WTHR's local Olympics coverage with a photo of the Eiffel Tower filling the empty space where a bronze medalist should be standing.

Thanks to Indianapolis’ NBC affiliate WTHR, we can pretend we’re Olympians! Everyone loves the Olympics, we’re told!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Our photo galleries typically showcase the places we’ve been, the things we’ve seen, or the events we experienced — i.e., the memories I want to retain that are also hopefully interesting and/or useful to anyone else in the universe besides just Anne. Sometimes we forget to take pics of each other, or I simply skip posting them because I already know what we look like. That’s the exact opposite of 99% of the entire internet; hence our perennially low traffic stats, apparently. I don’t get the whole “me me me” thing that constitutes a viable career for some folks, but I’m told that’s totally a thing and that an entire Insta-feed of selfies is in fact a form of psychologically responsible behavior and they have the tax forms to prove it.

For once, let’s give in to peer pressure from internetters half our age and compile an entire gallery of us and only us. As it happens, during our fairground day-date we wound up taking more photos of each other than usual (or having strangers snap the two of us), so here’s what it looks like when we’re enjoying each other’s company without worrying what anyone else thinks of us. Please enjoy! Smash those buttons! Share with your 50,000 nearest friends! If you don’t, you’re a judgmental, ageist hypocrite who enables body-shaming and you’re on the same side as the shallow, dump-worthy exes in every rom-com ever! It’d sure be a real shame if your S.O. ever found out! Cheers!

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Indiana State Fair 2024 Photos, Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour

August 8, 2024 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Pulled pork marinated with rich barbecue sauce, served on a sugary biscuit.

All four State Fair food groups in one sandwich: meat, sugar, dough, and fruit.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

Most years, we’re all about the food. Each time our favorite part is the “Taste of the Fair” competition, in which vendors showcase ostensibly new dishes in hopes of enticing foodies and/or impressing attendees who seek more to fair-life than eating the same corn dog again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) The TotF lineup is announced weeks in advance so everyone can plan their meals and experiments accordingly.

This year’s Taste of the Fair dishes and drinks number a staggering 46 in all, a 50+% jump over last year’s assortment. We tried 10 of them across our 7½-hour stayand walked off several of those cumulative calories around the fairgrounds and the exhibit halls, whose contents we’ll cover in subsequent chapters. I was tempted to rank these in a gratuitous listicle, but I’m not in the mood to pit vendors against each other and right now cannot think hard about any of this because I am so exhausted. To keep things simple, everything’s presented in our purchasing order from 9:40 a.m. to 4:45 EDT.

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Disney World! Part 30: The Last Sunrise and the Character Breakfast

August 7, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A Princess Tiana cast member in a yellow ballroom dress and tiara poses regally while Anne and I do jazz hands on either side of her.

A royal meet-‘n’-greet with Princess Tiana!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…but the rest of the time was ours for frolicking around Disney World and our Disney Resort. Sadly, the magic eventually had to end. We had one more bit of mixed business and pleasure on the itinerary before takeoff.

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Disney World! Part 29: Magic Meals and Mouse Food

August 4, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two Dole Whip floats sitting on a shaded wooden shelf, refer to caption.

Disney World superfans love Dole Whips! At left, the basic pineapple soft-serve float. At right, the Tropical Serenade — pineapple-orange-guava juice, coconut ice cream, and a pineapple upside-down cake pop.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…and the handlers kept the winners well fed during the employees-only Tuesday night meet-and-greet beach party, Wednesday morning’s mandatory hours-long business-related seminars, and the Wednesday night company dinner party-trap. As you can imagine, we were much more excited to sample concessions and cuisine from the actual Disney World parks on our own recognizance.

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Disney World! Part 28: Magic Kingdom After Dark

August 3, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Disney's Cinderella Castle lit up all over at night, lots of blue and mostly purple.

Color me floored by Cinderella Castle’s surprising nighttime resemblance to the current Walt Disney Pictures title card.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…and time was running out in her one free day. We had less 90 minutes to spend before we had to leave the Magic Kingdom for an appointment. We tried to make them count.

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Disney World! Part 27: The Magic Kingdom Beyond the Castle

July 20, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Bronze Lincoln bust on a pedestal in front of a black-and-white painting of Walt Disney.

We found their miniature American history museum! And you can’t have one of those without a bust of Lincoln.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except the one day she didn’t have to, so we could do actual tourism together in this supernaturally fun place where our families could never afford to visit in childhood, unlike all the other, more well-off whitebread kids who outnumbered us tens-of-millions-to-2. Thus we spent our afternoon in the Magic Kingdom wandering more than riding, gawking more than waiting in lines, and feeling dumbstruck at sights that surely would’ve blown our minds if we’d come here as kids. It was impossible to hold onto our Gen-X jadedness here.

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On the Unthinkable Occasion of Our 20th Wedding Anniversary

July 18, 2024 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Us doing jazz hands in front of an enlarged photo of George Washington's mansion.

Fun times at George Washington’s Mount Vernon on our 2024 road trip.

It’s that time again! Another year of blessed bliss married to the amazing Anne, another “Happy Anniversary to Us!” entry, another dinner to celebrate, and another nearly unrelated lead image. This year’s milestone is also a multiple of 5, so society says it’s worth extra skill points!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

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Disney World! Part 26: It’s a Small, Small, Small, Small World

July 14, 2024 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Three cutesy singing animatronic figurines with tribal face paints, two mushroom-shaped and one shaped like a thumb. Everything's blue and purple.

Welcome to animatronic Africa with mood lighting!

I ask you, what better time than right now for a shiny happy feel-good gallery of an alternate Earth in which everyone sets aside their differences, concedes they were all cranked out by the same animatronic manufacturer, celebrates mutual captivity on the same indoor canal, welcomes outsiders without fear of mass shootings or assassinations, and drowns out any concerns by singing the same catchy jingle over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN?

…sorry, what were we talking about?

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Disney World! Part 25: Adventure Friends Cavalcade

July 5, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Disney World parade cast members: Mary Poppins and Stitch, dancing. Mary's eyes are closed. Bert the chimney sweep is nearly offscreen, aghast at something.

If Mary Poppins thinks those Banks whelps were a handful, wait’ll she gets a load of Stitch.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except the one day she didn’t. We didn’t leave ourselves a lot of time to explore the Magic Kingdom park — i.e., the one with the world-famous castle in it — but we encountered plenty of surprises in the short time allotted.

Case in point: the Disney Adventure Friends Cavalcade! There we were, wandering toward the northern border of Frontierland when we ran into a newly formed roadblock, which made way for a slew of Disney characters to emerge from a gate on our left. An even mix of popular favorites and deep-dive obscurities merrily danced, pranced, strolled, fed upon adulation, and maybe taught us a lesson that sometimes there are good reasons to stop traffic.

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Disney World! Part 24: Dance Party at Cinderella Castle

June 30, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Hundreds of guests walking up to the fancy magic castle on a bright spring day.

This was the wallpaper on my work computer for the next several months.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except for a single day off, free of company business and responsibilities, so we could at last spend quality time together at The Most Magical Place on Earth™. After indulging for a couple hours back at the resort to recuperate from our intergalactic morning at Hollywood Studios, we followed our Park Hopper pass to the one place where sixteen billion Disney World blogs say you’re supposed to start your travelogue, rather than holding it back till Chapter 24: at Disney’s Magic Kingdom park, starring the iconic Cinderella Castle.

(My stubborn insistence on burying the lede in its exact position in the narrative might explain why this miniseries’ traffic has been demoralizingly negligible, which in turn is why I haven’t bothered rushing it. Or maybe it’s because everyone on Earth already read those first sixteen billion Disney World blogs and has zero interest in giving pity-clicks to #16,000,000,001. Or everyone’s richer than we are and you’ve already been there six times and I’m boring you with what you’ve already seen for yourself. Nevertheless, here we are!)

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Disney World! Part 23: Hurray for Hollywood Studios

June 25, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Disney World cast member in Daisy Duck costume standing on a picnic blanket in the grass, pointing way off to our left. Behind her is a large square arch with a Disney's Hollywood Studios sign.

Daisy Duck doing her best Babe Ruth impression.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except for a single day off, which we began at Hollywood Studios because, apropos of us, that’s where Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was. We didn’t ride any more rides that morning, but we found plenty to photograph beyond the worlds of Star Wars, Toy Story and the Muppets. ‘Tis a magical place!

(Especially the palm trees, which were everywhere we turned. We don’t have those back home in Indiana, but judging by these pics, you’d think they were the only things we were excited to see.)

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Disney World! Part 22: It’s the Muppet Show!

June 20, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
On the side of a colorful exterior hodgepodge wall is a large clock with Kermit's face in the middle and twelve circled stars instead of numbers. The hands point to 2:00.

It’s Kermit o’clock somewhere!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except for a single day off, when we ran straight to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and went crazy Broadway-style. Several blocks’ worth of Star Wars bazaar and flight simulators had taken our breath away, and the Toy Story section had turned Andy’s bedroom floor into a veritable sculpture garden, but deep down in the geeky grade-schooler in me, all of them take a back seat to the Muppets, who were first to plant their freak-flag in his heart

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Disney World! Part 21: Toy Story Land

June 13, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Roller coaster shaped like Slinky Dog rides 20+ feet in the air over a walkway that looks like a video game racetrack. It has circular arches; the front one says "GO!"

The Slinky Dog Dash coaster! No, we aren’t on it.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except for a single day to do whatever we wanted in Disney World vicinity, whether it was riding rides or just wandering around them. Other options included Disney Springs or just wallowing at the Grand Floridian’s spa facility. Some options were more tempting than others.

We’d dallied for so long in Galaxy’s Edge that everyplace else in Hollywood Studios had crowded up in the meantime. We next sauntered north to Toy Story Land, Star Wars’ next-door neighbor geographically and corporate-family-wise. Much of the area is for the kiddos, but grown-ups have options, too. After escaping the First Order and piloting the Millennium Falcon our inner whirligiggish sens-o-meters were at max capacity for a while. We middle-agers were plenty entertained walking around this alt-universe showcase of what Andy’s bedroom might’ve looked like at worm’s-eye-view if he’d been jointly cloned from Frank Lloyd Wright and Pee-Wee Herman.

We loved the designs of the rides, the buildings, the statues, the muchness of it all. We were intoxicated with that long-lost sensation we used to get every time Pixar made a new film.

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Disney World! Part 20: The Museum of Star Wars

June 9, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Full Rey desert costume including goggles and face mask, plus big fictional speeder parked behind her. Exhibit backdrop is a nighttime desert with a rich, bluish-purple sky.

One of Daisy Ridley’s Rey costumes and her speeder.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…except for a single day off to enjoy together from dawn to dusk. Galaxy’s Edge was of course our feature presentation and favorite part of the entire vacation, but it wasn’t the only place to find Star Wars in Hollywood Studios. Up on the northwest side of the park, their Animation Courtyard section held Star Wars Launch Bay, a low-key gallery of props, vehicles, posters, miniatures, and other arts sprung forth from the collective Lucasfilm imagination. The building itself was removed from the main thoroughfares and a bit depressing with its all-black walls and minimalist adornment apart from the objets d’art themselves. It was a stark contrast from the rest of the uniformly eye-popping park and sparsely attended. It was arguably a good place for a time-out for guests who could use mental-health intermissions away from overpopulated theme-park hubbub.

On the “pro” side: it was more sights to see from, of, and about the Star Wars. Consider it extra credit to the interactive Galaxy’s Edge experience, albeit a few blocks down the road from all those superior, more lavishly exhibited areas.

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Disney World! Part 19: Postcards from Galaxy’s Edge

June 8, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Anne standing in front of the Galaxy's Edge area that looks like a bunch of alien shops influenced by Asian designs.

A bazaar of the bizarre!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work…

…but we absolutely made the most of her one day off, starting with the fabulous space neighborhood of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We never thought we’d see it person, yet here we were. The Millennium Falcon ride was pretty great and Rise of the Resistance was THE BEST, but Galaxy’s Edge is more than just a souped-up space carnival. It’s…well, okay, it’s an extremely souped-up space carnival. It’s an opportunity for Star Wars fans like us (rather noticeable on this site throughout the years) to feel transported to that one galaxy out there and explore its worlds up close like a window-shopping anthropologist.

Well, some of its worlds, anyway. We saw no signs of Dagobah, Kamino, or Mustafar. Sand was in far shorter supply than on Tatooine, though the architecture was similar. Maybe they hired the same design firms as Jakku and Scarif. And the buildings were a little too short and scruffy for Coruscant. I also doubt Florida would’ve been the proper place to recreate Hoth, unless this was a faithful rendition of Hoth in summertime. We’ve all just assumed the entirety of Hoth was Space Antarctica for however many months its years have, but what if we only saw it in wintertime and it in fact offers some wondrous tropical vacation climes in some other hemisphere that Lucas didn’t bother to show us? Then again, maybe there used to be a Hoth section, but they pulled the plug on it sometime before March 2023 because it was using too much freon and Disney needed some funds freed up to hire more lawyers to punch Ron DeSantis in the face. I’m sorry we missed it.

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