The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 10 of 10: An Epilogue of Film, Fowl, and Facades

Several dishes on a wood table in a hardwood restaurant. Meal details are described later in the entry.

Welcome to The Eagle! That’s the name of the restaurant, not the main dish.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a short-term road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas we’ve never experienced before. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do…

Thanks very much to those of you who’ve followed along with my eight previous, glacially posted galleries that comprised our October journey around Indiana’s original state capital Corydon. Whereas the first chapter was a prologue about a donut shop we tried along the way, so too is our epilogue connected to the main storyline only by our timing and our desire to add still more festivities to Anne’s autumn birthday weekend. As a capper, we spent Saturday on Massachusetts Avenue, downtown Indianapolis’ premier upscale restaurant hub. On one end of Mass Ave we planned for lunch; on the other, a film for a special occasion. All told, the meal was better than the movie.

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Our C2E2 2023 Epilogue: Chicago!

Piles and piles of baked goods on a restaurant counter behind glass.

A plethora of pretty pastries yearning to be free at Goddess and the Baker.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

My wife Anne and I just got home from the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. After its 2010 inception, we attended every year from 2011 to 2019, then took a break due partly to the pandemic and partly due to guest lists outside our circles of interest. This year’s strong lineup lured us back in, much to our delight…

…and speaking of delight, it was great to be back in the Windy City once more after Fan Expo Chicago last July. That show was up in Rosemont and didn’t lend itself to a lot of new extracurricular activities away from the exhibit hall. For our C2E2 experience we arranged our accommodations with an eye toward offsite exploration….partly because the hotels near McCormick Place were either sold out or priced beyond what we felt like paying this time. Up in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, we found a suitable compromise and a variety of dining options surrounding us on all sides.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #23: Moseying Around Montpelier

Downtown Montpelier as seen from the highway bridge coming into town. An above-average number of steeples poke upward.

We’d had plans to get a better view of Montpelier, but that didn’t work out.

We’re not high-end shoppers who get caught anywhere near boutiques, jewelers, perfumeries, fashion trendsetters, or home decor artisans unless they happen to be next door to the retailers we’d rather visit. And by “we” I especially mean “I”. Anne’s collecting habits are modest bordering on spartan, whereas I’m the one on the lookout for brick-and-mortar purveyors who cater to my hobbies and pop culture interests. Fortunately Montpelier had just the district for us.

Apropos of Vermont, that entire paragraph is recycled from the downtown Burlington chapter from the day before. The sentiments nonetheless apply here. If it ain’t broke, and so on.

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The Ex-Capital Birthday Weekend, Part 6 of 10: Cozy Corydon Cuisine

Open-faced meatloaf sandwich on a wooden table in noonday sunlight. See caption.

An open-faced meat loaf sandwich made from ground beef and duck, wrapped in bacon, served on sourdough, doused in bourbon brown gravy, and topped with white American cheese, greens, and fried leeks a la Skyrim.

Of course there’s a chapter for the good foods we found. The gallery is a quickie that could’ve been squeezed into one of the other chapters, but then that chapter would’ve been too long, you wouldn’t have clicked on it, and you’d have missed more cute pics of my wife who’s perfectly happy being 52 now.

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“The Menu”: Tonight’s Special is a 10-Course Massacre

Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes face off as diner and chef in "The Menu".

“No, miss, I will not recite today’s specials in Voldemort’s voice.”

Speaking as someone who’s been in customer service for 34years and counting: when everything goes well, the symbiosis between a service team and their customer — whether a singular exchange or a recurring relationship — makes for a heartening occasion that both sides can appreciate. They pull off the quid pro quo between creator/provider and receiver/consumer, and everybody wins.

When things go wrong between the two parties, the results can be anywhere from mild disappointment to small-scale war. The customer gets full of themselves, or the employees show up in a foul mood, or there’s a miscommunication between the sides that could be resolved with some calm negotiation, yet isn’t. No one wins, everyone’s miserable, and it’s another round of cringing when they look back on That One Time years later.

The Menu falls in the latter column as an extreme worst-case scenario. An evening gone wrong becomes no mere comedy of errors, but an all-out class-war ambush where no one is innocent.

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GalaxyCon Columbus 2022 Photos, Part 4 of 4: Columbus Is Our New Chicago

A bunch of toys glued to a car roof; downtown Columbus is hazy in the distant background.

A toy army prepared to march the streets of downtown Columbus.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year when there isn’t a pandemic fully raging, my wife Anne and I love attending entertainment and comic conventions throughout the Midwest and occasionally a bit beyond. We’re fascinated by the spectacle of each and every in-person nexus of geek cultures that presents a confluence of comics, artists, cosplayers, hobby artifacts, rare collectibles, IP-inspired handicrafts, talented performers and celebrity guests with fandom connections of varying levels of dedication and/or awesomeness.

This past weekend’s inaugural GalaxyCon Columbus (the one in Ohio) set out more than enough bait within reasonable road-trip range that the two of us were lured out of the house once more after previous 2022 outings to Star Trek: Mission Chicago, Indiana Comic Con, and Fan Expo Chicago. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

We’ve already shared all our stories from the Convention Center grounds apart from a few photo outtakes, but we’d be remiss to neglect the fun times we had in and around the neighborhood. Our third stop in town this year was at least as stimulating as the first two. Longtime MCC readers will recall when we used to find ourselves at Chicago cons a few times every year, up until the pandemic ruined everything for a while. This year Columbus has gone above and beyond in catching our straying eyes and luring us eastward instead of northward.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #18: Champlain Happy

Champy and Anne!

Anne meets Champy, the local celebrity mythical water monster.

By the time we reached Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, we’d seen Lake Champlain from a mountaintop, from the roadside, and from a small pier jutting into the middle of it. At lunchtime on Day Four, we were okay with seeing it yet again, but tried slowing down long enough to traipse around it and bask for a while.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #14: A Night at the Old “Newhart” Place

Waybury Inn west side!

Some ’80s kids saw the front of this place on TV, though the owners have had new windows installed since then.

Vermont! At last! Naturally our first stop was a pop culture reference from our childhoods.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #8: Stylin’ Syracuse Sustenance

Korean Breakfast Corn Dog!

These treats were billed as Korean Breakfast Corn Dogs — dipped in Cinnamon Toast Crunch pancake batter, drizzled with a hot honey ‘n’ sweet cream sauce,

Not all the food we had on this trip need to be raised on their own commemorative pedestals, but Syracuse, NY, earned bonus points for providing us with not one, but two of the best meals of the week. That’s worth a single-entry shout-out.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #1: The Accidental Convention

Schwarzenegger and Anne!

Dey are Arnie und Anne, und dey are going to pump [*CLAP*] you up!

Since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip each year 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. We grew up in families that couldn’t afford annual out-of-state vacations. We’re geeks more accustomed to vicarious life through the windows of pop culture than through in-person adventures. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any surrounding areas that also had comics and toy shops, we chucked 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, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own, from the horizons of nature to the limits of imagination, from history’s greatest hits to humanity’s deepest regrets and the sometimes quotidian, sometimes quirky stopovers in between.

We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

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