Every Academy Award Winner and Nominee We’ve Met So Far: A Special MCC Clip Show

Richard Dreyfuss doing jazz hands with us.

Academy Award Winner Richard Dreyfuss (Best Actor, The Goodbye Girl, 1977; and nominated again for 1995’s Mr. Holland’s Opus) at Galaxycon Columbus 2022.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I visit entertainment conventions together! As a married couple 21 years and counting, and best friends for years before that, we’ve attended everything from cozy local gatherings to small-town festivals to large-scale comic-cons in some of America’s largest convention centers — three Star Wars Celebrations, four Dragon Cons, four Superman Celebrations, a couple dozen Chicago events, and several other Midwest shows easily reachable from our Indianapolis hometown. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Our most recent show was last weekend’s Indiana Comic Convention, where the headliner was Nicolas Cage, kind of a big deal to the national mainstream media who reported this was his first-ever appearance at an American comic-con. He spawned some controversy among online geeks when most of his photo ops bore the same dumbstruck-hangdog expression, which, to be fair, he’s sported in most of his movies. The unintentional running gag became troll-fodder for days afterward, whether as an inroad to complain about his high fees in particular or to complain about the very concept of paying to meet celebrities for autographs and pics, in this economy or any other.

Regardless, longtime MCC readers are well aware it’s something Anne and I have long enjoyed doing together, especially our jazz-hands poses. If none of this is your thing, then hey, cool, but maybe spend your online life joining chats about what does bring you joy personally? And in exchange, I won’t subscribe to 600 sports-based Facebook groups and keep replying to every single thread, “SPORTS SUCK LOL!” or follow you around and flame you anytime you mention how much you love alcohol, which I cannot stand. Seem fair?

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Indiana Comic Convention 2026 Photos, Part 3 of 3: Con Life Before and After Nicolas Cage

Artists sitting on floor, working on complicated chalk art of an Alien Queen, Ripley and Newt.

The latest live-drawing work-in-progress from The Chalk Girl, as of Sunday afternoon.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the twelfth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis — a fun opportunity for fans to look at walls covered with old comics, build lightsabers, buy 3D-printed knickknacks, overstock on Funko Pops, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, avoid AI “art”, and scratch their heads at the inexplicable comeback of the 19th-century rubber-duck fad.

Rather than dump all our pics into a single omnibus entry, we’re mercifully splitting them into a trilogy of galleries…

…concluding with anything and everything involving neither celebrities nor cosplay. Meeting Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage may have been the sensational headline news, but he’s not all we saw during our two days onsite.

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Indiana Comic Convention 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 3: Nicolas Cage and Friends!

Us doing jazz hands with Nicolas Cage, who seems a bit too stricken by something to smile.

Our next guest needs no introduction! About that expression, though…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the twelfth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis — a fun opportunity for fans to look at walls covered with old comics, build lightsabers, buy 3D-printed knickknacks, overstock on Funko Pops, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, avoid AI “art”, and scratch their heads at the inexplicable comeback of the 19th-century rubber-duck fad.

Rather than dump all our pics into a single omnibus entry, we’re mercifully splitting them into a trilogy of galleries…

Rare are the opportunities when a Midwest comic-con signs a guest who’s such a significant household name that local news outlets treat it as a major headline event. Usually our cons are relegated to a Thursday morning sidebar to the effect of, “Looking for something to do this weekend? Lee Greenwood will be performing at the Fieldhouse, here’s a list of fifteen different farmers’ markets, our state parks are still pretty, and Hoosier Comic Expo is bringing in three Yellow Rangers, a canceled stand-up comic, and…uh, sorry, those are the only names we recognize and our Google’s broken.” Not so this time: ICC waited till a mere week before showtime to announce they’d scored Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage’s Very First Appearance at an American Convention. This became a BIG DEAL. For once our journalists had something to write about besides sports.

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Indiana Comic Convention 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 3: Very Tiny Cosplay Sampler!

three cosplayers, refer to caption

The Nightmare Before Christmas role call: Sally! Jack Skellington! Oogie Boogie!

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the twelfth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis, and by “scenic” I mean “overcrowded with more construction equipment than a Tonka Truck factory”. ICC 2026 was a fun opportunity for fans to look at walls covered with old comics, build lightsabers, buy 3D-printed knickknacks, overstock on Funko Pops, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, avoid AI “art”, and scratch their heads at the inexplicable comeback of the 19th-century rubber-duck fad. The showrunners added still more square footage to their dominion, on track to match Gen Con’s imperial sprawl if they can keep up the pace for another 20-30 years or so. Apart from a few bottlenecked aisles, geek life had ample elbow room to thrive and sometimes enjoy breathing space in these hallowed halls of pop-culture commerce.

Rather than dump all our pics into a single omnibus entry, we’re mercifully splitting them into a trilogy of galleries. Up first: mandatory cosplay pics! We regret ours is such a measly collection, but: (a) we spent a lot of time in lines; (b) we tend to gravitate toward characters we recognize, and our recognition rate drops as the youngsters insist on liking different shows and comics than we do; and (c) everyone walks so fast and we’re old and tired and it’s all hot and it hurts an’ stuff. Even if we don’t capture them all on our own devices, we really do appreciate the cosplayers who brighten everyone’s experience.

The jazz-hands photo ops and other sights will be shared in the other chapters. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a sliver of an iota of a fraction of the total costumed wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun. Enjoy! Corrections are humbly welcomed for any we didn’t recognize or might’ve misidentified!

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Our 2023 Road Trip #25: Intro to Pigeon Forge and/or Gatlinburg

Dragon-themed water park with no customers.

Here there be dragons!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

Wisconsin Dells! Virginia Beach! Niagara Falls! And so on! We’ve visited our share of kitschy, tacky, larger-than-life tourist traps over the years. If they happen to be in our path, that’s cool, but we don’t necessarily make them the star of any given trip. Maybe someday we’ll plan a big expedition to Branson, that gold standard east of the Rockies, which was a popular annual vacation choice among the grandmothers and near-retirees I used to work with at the office. We’re not quite that old yet.

Other coworkers used to love taking their families down to Gatlinburg and/or Pigeon Forge, often for camping in or around the Great Smoky Mountains, enjoying affordable nature-based activities, and/or romping around country-fried faux-Western attractions. While we were in the vicinity anyway, we figured why not spend a night in the area and glance at a few of their outlandish constructs. Admittedly we weren’t clear where Gatlinburg ended and Pigeon Forge began. They’re not advertised as twin cities, but any boundary between their realities was paper-thin and imperceptible.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #24: The Apex Formerly Known as Clingmans Dome

Anne and me atop Clingmans Dome!

I posted an alternate take of this moment on the occasion of our 19th anniversary.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

One of the drawbacks of posting less often than I used to, while remaining stubbornly committed to long-form miniseries such as this one, is that sometimes it takes me so long to share our experiences that a status quo can change dramatically between then and now, and I have to insert updates from our past’s future.

Case in point: upon our visit to Great Smoky Mountain National Park on June 29, 2023, the highest point in the park and in all of Tennessee — and, while we’re at it, the third-highest point on the Appalachian Trail — was a mountain called Clingmans Dome, standing an impressive 6,643 feet. (Not the tallest mountain we’ve ever stood atop, but still!) It was named after Thomas L. Clingman, a North Carolina politician who explored the area quite a bit according to the geographer friend who picked the name. Clingman served as a state senator, a U.S. Congressman, and a Confederate general. Yep, you can guess where this is going.

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“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” Presents Baby Yoda: The Motion Picture

Baby Yoda stands on sand and salutes you. Standing next to him are Din Djarin's shiny boots.

IT’S GROGIN’ TIME!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: We watch Star Wars movies and shows! My wife Anne and I have kept up with most of the Disney+ series, for better or worse. We aren’t unconditional superfans preaching, “If it says Star Wars on it, it’s A+++!” in a glassy-eyed haze, nor do we hate-watch it and share high-strung “cave-geek shakes impotent angry fist at toy line” harangues for hollow YouTube bucks while our souls decompose into gnarled, oily nubs.

The far-faraway galaxy is large; it contains multitudes. Granted, that’s more of a four-quadrant marketing design than a magnanimous diversity credo. Billion-dollar corporations don’t stay megalithic by catering exclusively to any singular faction. The universe that began with the classic Jedi lightsaber battles of your sacrosanct childhood memories — or your children’s, if you’ve passed down your pop-culture heritage to them! — also includes the protracted Clone Wars continuity, the politically charged Andor, the kiddie-cartoon-to-steely-drama evolution of Star Wars Rebels, the cosmopolitan artistic experiments of Star Wars Visions, the books and comics that can matter but usually don’t, in-story toyetic adverts, nostalgia-pandering, Morals of the Story, super awesome EXPLOSIONS, the aesthetic sins and redemptive apologia of Jar-Jar Binks, spaceships, Halloween masks, clothing lines, infrequent moments of This Is Cinema, and, yes, the character we knew for years as Baby Yoda till The Powers That Be eventually bothered to name him.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #23: Great Smoky Mountain Bear Watch

Me and Anne posing behind a wooden sign on a mountain road: "North Carolina - Tennessee state line, elevation 5046 feet, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Newfound Gap Overlook at Great Smoky Mountain National Park: no bears.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

In all our southern travels throughout the years, the only time we’d ever laid eyes upon the Great Smoky Mountains was at a faraway remove from Knoxville, Tennessee. We’d seen them blocking the horizon, but had never made time to add Great Smoky Mountain National Park to the list of national parks we’ve sauntered into, despite recommendations from some of my coworkers who made the Smokies and the nearby cities of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge their families’ annual getaways. Maybe that’s why we resisted for so long: going the same place every year for vacation has never been our thing as a couple (unless you count comic-cons) and it felt weird to follow their footsteps too closely, if that makes any sense.

This year we agreed it was time. We knew they’d be beautiful, maybe we’d catch a few unusual sights, and — kind of an in-joke between the two of us — maybe we’d spot our very first bear in the wild. Longtime MCC readers may recall our 2021 visit to Yellowstone National Park, which we’d heard had bears but contained exactly zero of them throughout our day there. Plenty of other four-legged creatures frolicked and gamboled and/or stood motionlessly in the shade, but the place was bear-free. We began to wonder if bears didn’t actually exist in America or were a myth invented by zoos to sell more tickets and toys.

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54-14 or Write: Another Back-to-Back Blog Anniversary and Birthday

me doing jazz hands in front of a giant replica of Derpy the magic blue cat from "KPop Demon Hunters".

Derpy and Derpy, coming this fall to The CW! Taken the previous weekend at PopCon Indy 2026.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we have annual traditions ’round these parts! Two such occasions fall three weeks apart each year, often but not always receiving separate entries of incredulous self-congratulation. In this attention-deficit we once again offer two for the bandwidth of one, a pretty sweet deal in any economy, not just this one.

I launched this wee blog on April 28, 2012, three weeks before my 40th birthday as a means of charting the effects of the aging process on my opinions of, enthusiasm for, offense at, and/or detailed nitpicking of various works of art, expression, humanity, inhumanity, glory, love, idolatry, inspiration, hollowness, geek lifestyles, food, and Deep Thoughts. MCC has also served as a digital scrapbook for our annual road trips, comic cons, birthday expeditions, and other modest travels. It’s a general repository for any other content that comes to mind and feels worth the time and effort to type up, proofread, and release unto a world-at-large that rarely visits websites anymore because social-media angst is the sole reading matter of choice among today’s average digital participant. The best part about entertaining myself here in my own little hermit shack is that I own the place and I don’t have to worry about moderators editing or deleting my posts, which is nice.

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PopCon Indy 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 2: The Brave and the Bold Starring Batman and the Tick!

us doing jazz hands with Diedrich Bader, who's wearing glasses and awesome.

Hi, it’s Diedrich Bader! You might remember him from The Drew Carey Show, Office Space, and plenty more!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of PopCon Indy, an entertainment convention locally owned and run here in our own hometown of Indianapolis. And we do love the convenience of events practically in our backyard so we can save on hotel costs and park for free at my workplace if the weather’s nice. We attended their first three shows (2014-2016), but began feeling out-of-place as the guest lists began targeting much younger geek demographics. Ten years later, here we are again! We only attended Saturday, but we accomplished our modest goals, such as “have a blast”…

…not to mention “meet new faces” and “buy stuff”. For extra credit, we also attended a panel! Hopefully that makes up for us losing an entire letter grade by eating lunch at the convention center even though we know better.

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PopCon Indy 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Tiny Cosplay Gallery!

John Jones cosplayer with accurate detective clothing and very specific sunglasses, carrying cardboard replica of psychedelic Absolute Martian Manhunter

Detective John Jones and the psychedelic alien in his head from DC Comics’ deeply trippy Absolute Martian Manhunter.

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of PopCon Indy, an entertainment convention locally owned and run here in our own hometown of Indianapolis. Their inaugural 2014 shindig (under the original moniker “Indy PopCon”) was a massive undertaking and a phenomenal experience, where we met actors from some of our favorite works and were pretty impressed at a first-time comic-con being so well-run. And we do love the convenience of events practically in our backyard so we can save on hotel costs and park for free at my workplace if the weather’s nice.

We also attended the next two years’ shows, but began feeling out-of-place as the guest lists began targeting much younger geek demographics — fewer actors under 50, far more anime voice actors, YouTubers, and other influencers and fields outside our Gen-X spheres. We can’t blame them for giving the people what they want, especially after 2015’s special guest Markiplier brought in, by my conservative estimate, 630 million fans dying to meet him and willing to wait the rest of their lives in line if necessary. Some of them may still be there to this day, perhaps a bit miffed that he took such a long break to go film Iron Lung for a while before he resumed signing. His lines were quite the rodeo to witness from the outside, but it wasn’t our rodeo.

IPC 2016 held a few highlights for us, such as the only YouTuber I’ve ever wanted to meet, one of the most awkward comics panels I’ve ever asked a question in, and the height of Deadpool variant cosplay mania. But we bowed out for a while after that. It’s not them, it’s us. (Well, mostly us. It also didn’t help that sometimes their biggest guests were actors we’d already met at other cons.) But hey! Ten years later, here we are again! We only attended Saturday, but we accomplished our modest goals, such as “have a blast”.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #22: Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit

Us in summer wear doing jazz hands in front of a giant prop can of Bush's Baked Beans, lying on its side in a visitor center.

Baked beans and jazz hands! Probably great together and totally not a volatile mix! What’s the worst that could happen?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

…though nearly every trip ends with return drives through states we’ve visited plenty of times. And yet, our neighboring states rarely run out of new misadventures, often involving foods and their manufacturing processes.

We’ve braked for beans before, including the Jelly Belly factory tour on our 2006 drive through Wisconsin and that time we saw real cacao beans in the South Bend Chocolate Company‘s delightfully fragrant backrooms in 2016. Sometimes beans are serious business and sometimes they’re comedy gold, depending on the context. Down in Tennessee we found a bit of both in the affable visitor center of another bean empire.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #21: The Andrew Johnson Fan Club

Anne in sun hat posing neutrally next to a tall Andrew Johnson statue. Behind them are a beige brick building and a couple of thin trees.

Fun trivia: Andrew Johnson statues are nowhere near as common as Lincoln statues.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited…

…which we exited after breakfast on Day Six. We spent the rest of our last full day in Tennessee, where we checked off an item on another to-do list of ours. On past trips we’d visited the graves, tombs, mausoleums and virtual posthumous palaces of the Presidents of the United States of America with varying accommodations and budgets. As our sole long-distance driver and a part-time retro-gamer who’s a fan of side quests, I’ve enjoyed those little jaunts so much that we’ve been planning our recent vacations around them. We don’t know if we’ll get to every dead President, but it’s fun trying.

And that means every American President, not just your fan-favorites. We’ve seen James Buchanan’s in southern Pennsylvania, Chester A. Arthur’s in Albany, and even Warren Harding’s giant Greek temple in Ohio. They can’t all be Best Presidents Ever, and they’re all interred somewhere. Some are fancier than others, but nary a President has ended up in a potter’s field. So far, so good.

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Easter Sunday in the Park With a Kid Astronaut

25-foot statue of a Black boy wearing an astronaut helmet, sitting in a city park and gazing toward the sky.

Plainfield’s latest art installation The Dream Gazer, dedicated March 7th.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in between our conventions and road trips, sometimes my wife Anne and I find new sights in our own Indianapolis backyard. On this very Easter morning we discovered a new park in nearby Plainfield that we’d heard nothing about until I looked it up just now. In light of the ongoing saga of the ambitious Artemis II Moon-orbiting mission that’s been a promising endeavor and a welcome distraction from everyday headline hysteria, it was fun to spend a few minutes with a super-sized astronaut of sorts.

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Mere Minutes of Magnificent Mile Mealtime: A C2E2 2026 Epilogue

Nighttime view of multiple Chicago skyscrapers lit up.

The view from our hotel at night.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…

…and sometimes we even take a break from photographing cosplayers and leave some margin in our schedule so we can see at least a little of Chicago beyond McCormick Place. In all the times we’ve traveled out of our Indianapolis hometown, it’s the one city we’ve visited out-of-state more than any other. Obviously all those conventions are 90% of our incentives, but Chicago has other sights to see and it’s much closer than NYC.

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C2E2 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 2: Jessica Jones, The West Wing, and a Cavalcade of Comics

Dule Hill and Martin Sheen from "The West Wing" and two geeks wearing shirts that say "jazz hands enthusiasts".

Fun times with The West Wing stars Dule Hill and Martin Sheen, plus two operators from the Butterball Turkey hotline.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…

…although we dragged our feet on committing to this year’s edition as we waited for them to invite actors that we hadn’t already met and who’ve performed in shows and/or movies we really enjoyed. Less than a month before showtime, we were finally feeling it and bought tickets. But we planned for a less epic adventure than usual. It was still fun! We have fewer anecdotes than usual, though. On the bright side, that means less typing for me and a shorter read for You, The Viewers At Home! (Not counting the next several paragraphs.)

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C2E2 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Cosplay!

cosplay: Doctor Strange with impossibly huge head

“DORMAMMU, CHIBI DOCTOR STRANGE HAS COME TO BARGAIN!”

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer.

While we recuperate and wait for our feet to forgive us for their punishment, please enjoy this collection of cosplayers who brightened our day around the show floor. The jazz-hands photo ops and other details will be shared in the other chapter because everyone loves costumes. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re clearly not professional photographers, journalists, costume designers, or Oscars red carpet commentators. We’re just an aging geek couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun.

Enjoy! Please feel free to identify any characters we failed at recognizing!

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Our 2023 Road Trip #20: Appetites for Asheville

Me doing jazz hands in front of Double D's Coffee and Desserts, housed in a red double-decker bus

Coffee shop jazz hands!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited…

…which are now crossed off our list. We enjoyed our stroll around downtown Asheville, North Carolina, though we had no idea of the dark events in its future. At the time, all we know is we had fun and found quite a few eateries to our liking — two local establishments and one eastern-U.S. chain we’d never encountered before. After Hurricane Helene hit in September 2024 their staffs scattered to the four winds as they had to seek refuge elsewhere until things got better. More than one of them had GoFundMe campaigns going for a time while they waited weeks for power and water to be reconnected. As of March 2026 I’m happy to see all three are still going strong today.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #19: Asheville Before Hurricane Helene

Outdoor pavilion with Asheville Art Museum sign on a low, curved wall. In the middle is a sculpture of a light blue, ridged sphere atop a large, uneven rock.

The Asheville Art Museum as of June 2023.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited…

…and with South Carolina behind us, at long last it was North Carolina’s turn for a visit. Our Tarheel State itinerary, not nearly as long as our Charleston checklist, began with spending a cozy Wednesday night in Asheville. Little did we know the catastrophe to come fifteen months later.

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Valentine’s Day Morning in the Carmel Arts & Design District

Anne sitting in a very pink restaurant, holding a mug that says "Love is love". Baskets hang from the ceiling.

Milady enjoys hot chocolate and her companion for the day.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: sometimes we celebrate holidays! Sometimes we leave the house! Sometimes we celebrate holidays by leaving the house!

With Valentine’s Day on a Saturday this year and our schedules cleared, my wife Anne and I made plans to grab an early breakfast before the rest of the world woke up and packed every restaurant in central Indiana for the next eighteen hours. We put our heads together, looked up places that we hadn’t been to before, and loved where we wound up. We didn’t cross-index our search results for sightseeing options in the vicinity, but were pleasantly surprised to wander into some. We ended up taking many more pics than we’d expected that day.

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