Tag Archives: self-promotion

MCC Housekeeping Notes: The “Mentions” and “About” Pages

April 6, 2020 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Randall A. Golden, Midlife Crisis Crossover

The previous outdated photo from my “About” page, taken at Starbase Indy 2011.

In this time of uncertainty and depression and aimless meandering around the house, sometimes it’s a good idea to pause, take a hard look at our surroundings, and change things up a bit, especially those things that haven’t been reevaluated in years. It’s not much of an overhaul, but with MCC’s forthcoming eighth anniversary, some mild effort seemed in order.

I’ve spent this evening tinkering with the reference pages linked at the top of every MCC entry. The mandatory “About” page, a common stop for fleeting passersby, has been half-rewritten with new material that clarifies the basics of MCC a little better, in a way that hopefully makes more sense to non-geeks while alienating anyone who works in online marketing. I’ve replaced the photo with a much better one from 2018 that longtime readers may recognize. Please don’t roll your eyes at me for sharing it again. It’s a treasured keepsake and we’re determined to get our money’s worth out of it.

I’ve created a new “Mentions” page that lists other, larger sites that have shared past entries to much larger audiences, with my utmost appreciation and incredulity. Comics news sites, creators, and historic SF fanzines are among those who nodded in our direction like Farmer Hoggett in Babe.

The old “100 Bullet Points” page has been deleted because no one had clicked on it in years. A link to the original entry has been preserved for historical safekeeping, but its value as a feature attraction has plunged to near-zilch.

Enjoy! Comments and questions welcome as always, even though I don’t always come out and say it because I thought it was implied by virtue of having a comments section.

The Official MCC Guide to Finding Joy in Blogging All Wrong

September 21, 2015 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments
Lucky!

If you’re pressed for time, please feel free to pretend this photo of our dog Lucky wearing a bandanna is today’s entire MCC entry, toss him a happy “Like”, and read no further. He’s used to that kind of fleeting attention from strangers.

Welcome to Midlife Crisis Crossover’s 1100th entry! In the grand tradition of comic books and The Simpsons, every 100 entries we mark the occasion as a sort of accomplishment and sometimes celebrate it. Those 1100 moments have been an interesting way to spend the last 3½ years of my internet time, but odds are it’ll take another two or three hundred years of consistent blogging before I stand a chance at becoming a household name. By then I’ll be more renowned for my refusal to die than for any paragraph I’ve ever written.

Every blogger who somehow makes a living off it has their official list of blogging tips that you’re supposed to follow in order to achieve fame, success, impact, and/or income. I’m happy for them and I wish them well as they make lasting contributions to the world at large and change the course of mighty rivers. Meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum, stubborn folks like me keep plugging away at their sites without regard for conventional wisdom, official procedures, or dime-a-dozen “Blogging for Dummies” articles. My approach to the game can be summed up in two words: “low-key” and “counterintuitive”.

Wanna blog like me? Here’s ten tips for how it works in my world, through happy times or blah:

Right this way for the official “Be Like MCC” list!

Indy Pop Con 2015 Photos, Part 3 of 3: What We Did and Who We Met

June 30, 2015 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
The Shirt!

My wife’s caption: “To those who know the pain of being a geek in a non-geek world…”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend the second annual Indy PopCon once again overtook our Indiana Convention Center with a festive mix of comics, gaming, voice actors, established actors, animation, podcasting, and various other manifestations of pop and geek culture in general. This year’s guest list also encroached upon a new entertainment frontier: the rapidly expanding world of YouTube stars. My wife and I had never heard of any of those who were invited, but we were outnumbered several thousand to one in that regard.

We attended Saturday only for a limited time for a number of reasons with a short itinerary and modest expectations, but we took photos as usual for You, the Viewers at Home.

Part One was some costumes. Part Two was some more costumes. Part Three is some not-costumes, unless my wife’s new favorite T-shirt counts.

Continue reading →

Midlife Crisis Crossover #0: the One-Man Dramatis Personae

June 12, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Welcome! Turn Back!

Welcome! Turn back! Welcome back! Hie thee hence! Join us! Shoo! Whichever!

Welcome to entry #733 here at Midlife Crisis Crossover! If this were a mainstream comic book, I would’ve already stopped and relaunched a new site with a new #1 at least thirty-seven times by now. Fortunately, I have no marketing department giving me marching orders. Unfortunately, I have no marketing department spreading word of me to the four corners of the planet. The compromise is so aggravating.

If you’re just joining us or recently discovered the site, you may be a bit disoriented, even after reading the “About” page I wrote two years ago and have amended a few times since then. That version contains the “in-story” reasoning behind the site name without confessing that it was contrived using the Wheel of Fortune “Before and After” method. I’m sure it sounds like rubbish if you’re not a comics fan who knows what a “Crisis Crossover” was. The bottom-line truth is I needed a name that no other writer, blogger, or sensible creative type would want. That’s one objective met, then.

In the days of yore, comics writers followed a helpful rule of thumb: “Every issue is someone’s first.” New readers appreciate accessibility. Most sites use the “About” Page to catch visitors up to speed and don’t look back. (I offered baseline advice on this one time.) While mine does its job to a certain extent, it doesn’t summarize every version of me that readers have seen in these pages. Sometimes each me can act as though they exist on a different Earth apart from my other selves. Sometimes those worlds drift apart. Sometimes the me of two worlds vibrates in harmony as one. Sometimes worlds collide.

Right this way for the Unofficial Handbook of the Midlife Crisis Crossover Universe!…

“Turbo”: Routine Underdog Learns Lessons about Perseverance, Self-Promotion

July 22, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Turbo, DreamWorks

Reynolds. Giamatti. Turbo.

Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Turbo the Best Indianapolis Tourism Ad of the Year!

That was my first impression, anyway. It’s rare that Hollywood sets a big-budget motion picture in my hometown. The last film to use us, Eagle Eye for a single action scene, couldn’t be bothered to research our geography on Google Maps and pretended that 72 West 56th Street is a crowded financial district like downtown Boston. Local pro tip for future filmmakers: 72 West 56th puts you in a highly tree-filled residential area between the wooded Butler University campus and the trendy bars of Broad Ripple.

Continue reading →

“Freshly Pressed” Post Saves Earth, Foils Millennia-Old Mayan Armageddon Scheme

December 21, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Tomazooma

If there were a Mayan Galactus, he would dress exactly like Tomazooma.

One of the first things I noticed when I woke up December 21, 2012, is that I woke up December 21, 2012, a day that The Powerless Who Wish They Were The Powers That Be duly notified us years in advance would not exist. In direct defiance of this premonition, there I was, groggy, breathing, existent, and hearing my wife out in the living room yelling at our dog. None of these things could possibly be happening. Pundits had told me so.

Clearly someone had meddled in the long-term machinations of those pesky Mayans. Who could have saved the day, and all the days after it? Did God smite them? Was their forbidden stronghold located and smashed to pieces by a South American super-hero team? Did a suspicious policeman stumble upon their ringleaders and call in reinforcements? Did their primitive doomsday device slip a cog? Or did their sleeper agents forget to set their alarm clocks for the right time to rise up and decimate?

I was clueless. My mostly ordinary work day failed to shed any light or unearth new evidence to this mystery…for the first half of the day, anyway. At lunchtime I found my answer.

Continue reading →

NaBloPoMo Success Celebrated with New URL, Facebook Page, Self-High-Five

December 3, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

NaBloPoMo 2012 Badge

My NaBloPoMo 2012 Merit Badge

Congratulations to any and all bloggers of the universe who succeeded in their thirty-day posting spree for NaBloPoMo 2012. I’m two days late commemorating the completion of my own marathon because I wanted to use the final day to move one step closer to the end of our long, drawn-out vacation saga, which a lot of people abandoned as soon as Kansas returned to the forefront like a much-dreaded super-villain. As for yesterday, NaBloPoMo went likewise unmentioned because I was too partied out to celebrate anymore. I’m feeling much better now.

For the record, NaBloPoMo on Midlife Crisis Crossover remained on target and on schedule, with 31 posts in 30 days that broke down as follows:

vacation photos: 7
things about movies: 6
Things containing Thanksgiving or Black Friday: 4
Revolution recaps: 4
convention photos: 3
random photo collections: 1
Geek Demerits: 1
MCC Request Line: 1
family anecdote: 1
fiction: 1
political griping: 1
NaBloPoMo iambic pentameter: 1

When I began November, I somehow thought the results would be more random by the end. Too late to diversify now, I suppose.

About that bonus 31st post: I usually limit myself to one post per day, but two converging events demanded equal time within the same narrow time frame. I was glad to finish them both for the sake of the readers interested in each respective piece, but it was not the most pleasant experience of my November.

In addition to “Yay NaBloPoMo!”, we have two more MCC announcements:

1. I’ve taken the plunge and officially purchased the domain name, just to see what happens. https://midlifecrisiscrossover.wordpress.com and all contents should now redirect to http://midlifecrisiscrossover.com. The speed of DNS propagation to other ISPs as a result of the URL update may vary, so the site may act uncooperative for some readers for a short time. I’m told this should pass in a few days.

2. MCC now has its very own Facebook page! Readers who Like MCC on Facebook will enjoy numerous benefits, including but not limited to:

* Instant notice whenever new entries are published! (Twitter already does this for me, but my Facebook involvement trumps my Twitter use by a wide margin.)

* The ability to Like and/or comment on each MCC entry without using the Web-based WordPress Like button or comments section! (For those who prefer one set of tools over the other, now you have more options for validating or refuting me.)

* Access to exclusive MCC Facebook content! (Whatever form that may take. Stay tuned!)

* Another “Like” to throw on your Facebook “Like” pile! Who doesn’t need dozens more of those?

As always, thanks for reading and supporting. Questions and requests always welcome.

Area Man Marks Six Months of Consecutive Daily Blogging with Self-Promotional Solipsism

October 29, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Midlife Crisis Crossover magical happening placeAfter long deliberation and some preparation, I launched Midlife Crisis Crossover on April 28, 2012, with “The Train Job“, my satirical plan to unite all the incongruous neighborhoods of Indianapolis with a haphazard subway plan that would still be more functional than the marginal mass-transit options of our reality. With that entry serving as my ribbon-cutting ceremony, I committed myself to creating one new piece every day for as long I could keep finding reasons to write and ways to test myself. If I were ever to be serious about finding a purpose for this alleged writing talent, then I needed to knuckle down and see if I could activate it on a regular basis without waiting for other Internet users to provoke or co-opt it.

Continue reading →

%d bloggers like this: