“Marty Supreme”: The King Kong of Ping-Pong Is a Ding-Dong

Timothee Chalamet in period-piece mustache holding ping-pong paddle with American flag design, standing amid other players with paddles bearing their own homeland's flags.

Preening Putz Proud of Patriotic Paddle.

Everybody loves narcissists! They’re everywhere today! They’re an evergreen industry and a dominant species and we can’t stop throwing money and attention at them! They rule our reality shows, win our sports, determine our politics, influence our social media, hoard our headlines and flood our feeds! We’re posting about them nonstop and letting them live rent-free in our heads, comping them on head-utilities and buying them head-groceries! We just can’t stop talking, thinking, mocking, or mentioning and mentioning and mentioning and mentioning one of the most self-aggrandized narcissists of them all! We never seem to shut up about him in particular! And by “we” and “our”, I mean you ‘n’ yours — constantly feeding the troll, day-in day-out, exactly what Usenet newsgroups taught us never to do way back in the 20th century. I sure can’t wait for this century’s students to catch up.

Now’s the perfect era for a story like Marty Supreme — a slick all-American anti-fairy tale about an entitled motormouth who almost always gets his way thanks to his unspoken magical self-help affirmation, “Because I said so!” and tries to steamroll over every “NO” like the nice-guy twin to Ben Kingsley’s Sexy Beast human monster. It doesn’t hurt that he’s played by Academy Award Nominee Timothee Chalamet, that beloved Manic Pixie Dream Boy idol of millions who just turned 30 last month. Who wants to be mad at that face, as long as we viewers aren’t the ones suffering in his character’s self-absorbed path of destruction?

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The OSU McDonald’s and More: A GalaxyCon Columbus 2025 Epilogue

Statue of a red and gray college sports mascot with a buckeye nut for a head, standing in the corner of a McDonald's.

Brutus Buckeye, Ohio State University’s official mascot. His buckeye-headed self is right at home in the domain of Mayor McCheese.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: once again we went to Columbus, Ohio! In a failed effort to shorten the verbiage in that four-part, 5900-word saga, I held back all our non-convention-related pics from that weekend for their own separate gallery. I didn’t think our brief influx of visiting cosplay fans would notice the omission.

As it happens, most of our outtakes come from a single location. After we checked out of our hotel Saturday morning, we stopped for breakfast at a McDonald’s down the street, which usually wouldn’t rate a mention here. To our surprise, their lobby held an unexpected museum of sorts — several displays celebrating the assorted sports teams of nearby Ohio State University. We normally stay at hotels in and around the OSU campus whenever we’re in town for GCC, but somehow we’d missed this spot and their collection till now.

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Indiana State Fair 2023 Photos, Part 3 of 9: The Year of Basketball

One side of the Midway's gateway arch surrounded by basketballs, greenery, and one creepy clown head.

A veritable garden of basketballs growing at the Midway entrance, guarded by a creepy clown head.

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 we mentioned last time, this year’s fair theme was The Year of Basketball. We aren’t sports fans, but we realize we’re vastly outnumbered in this state. I’ve seen a few basketball films, we attended a Pacers game exactly once, and a high school buddy once took me to an early-’90s Butler/Purdue game where the players spent more time beating on each other than shooting the ball. Otherwise, this chapter was assembled for You, The Viewers At Home, or at least those among you who can better appreciate the exhibits and nods than we did. At least we got to see some authentic props from one film we’ve seen, so there’s that.

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Our 2022 Road Trip #2: A Night Off for Steel City Sports

Willie Stargell statue!

Ladies and gentlemen, Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Famer Willie Stargell!

Longtime MCC readers are well aware we’re not into sports. We don’t actively hate them, but they’re not among our hobbies and we only attend games if we’re handed free tickets. Sports-related tourism pops up on rare occasions in our trips — like that time we loitered around Camden Yards back in 2017 — but we don’t go out of our way for it. When it’s directly in our path and we have the free time…eh, why not take a gander.

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Indianapolis Super Bowl XLVI Memories, Part 3: The Village and the City

JW Marriott, Super Bowl 46!

The J.W. Marriott was a recent addition to the downtown skyline and clearly marked where the party started,

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Once upon a time, and exactly once, Indianapolis hosted a Super Bowl. Back in 2012 our li’l city earned its first chance to host the big game. Thanks to tremendous teamwork among numerous organization and bodies cooperating under Mayor Greg Ballard, the Circle City welcomed untold thousands of visitors for a super-sized weekend of football mania, Hoosier tourism, and limited-time-only activities that welcomed all brought our downtown alive. It was a unique occasion that everyone in town could appreciate, including those of us who aren’t into sports, have never watched an entire football game — nary a Super Bowl, not even for the ads — and have never been invited to a Super Bowl party. We found ways to get into the spirit of the proceedings anyway.

All of this happened three months before Midlife Crisis Crossover launched. At the time I simply shared pics and stories with online friends, then reused a tiny selection of that material here on MCC one year later. I can’t remember why I was so stingy and only reposted eleven photos from among the dozens of relevant ones, including an entire quest involving citywide art. This past week our local media outlets have been holding their tenth-anniversary celebrations of that time we all did a Super Bowl together. That means it’s the perfect time for a remastered version of the tale of how we spent January 27-28, 2012, the weekend before Super Bowl 46…this time in trilogy form!

It all comes down to this: the other stuff we saw in and around downtown Indy in those momentous days when hometown pride was at an all-time high and football fervor dwarfed the local loves of auto racing and our precious basketball for just a bit.

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Super Bowl XLVI Indianapolis Memories, Part 1 of 3: The NFL Experience

Indianapolis giant football!

Giant inflatable football poised over a small-scale simulated football field. Neither was in use but could’ve made a fun combination.

Once upon a time, and exactly once, Indianapolis hosted a Super Bowl. Back in 2012 our li’l city earned its first chance to host the big game. Thanks to tremendous teamwork among numerous organization and bodies cooperating under Mayor Greg Ballard, the Circle City welcomed untold thousands of visitors for a super-sized weekend of football mania, Hoosier tourism, and limited-time-only activities that welcomed all brought our downtown alive. It was a unique occasion that everyone in town could appreciate, including those of us who aren’t into sports, have never watched an entire football game — nary a Super Bowl, not even for the ads — and have never been invited to a Super Bowl party. We found ways to get into the spirit of the proceedings anyway.

All of this happened three months before Midlife Crisis Crossover launched. At the time I simply shared pics and stories with online friends, then reused a tiny selection of that material here on MCC one year later. I can’t remember why I was so stingy and only reposted eleven photos from among the dozens of relevant ones, including an entire quest involving citywide art. This past week our local media outlets have been holding their tenth-anniversary celebrations of that time we all did a Super Bowl together. That means it’s the perfect time for a remastered version of the tale of how we spent January 27-28, 2012, the weekend before Super Bowl 46…this time in trilogy form!

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My 2021 Reading Stacks #5

George Takei and Gene Luen Yang!

Once again, patterns emerge from this year’s pile: in this case, Asian-American graphic memoirs.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place.

I’ve previously written why I don’t do eBooks. Perhaps someday I’ll also explain why these capsules are exclusive to MCC and not shared on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites where their authors might prefer I’d share them. In the meantime, here’s me and my recent reading results…

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“Uncut Gems”: Baubles, Balls, Bets, Beats and Beatings

Uncut Gems!

“Howard Ratner sent away to Africa / For a gem to pay for Hanukkah…!”

Prior to checking out the gritty new drama Uncut Gems, my total Adam Sandler film experiences ranked best to worst like so:

1. The Wedding Singer

End of list.

Now Uncut Gems makes two. I tossed The Meyerowitz Stories into my Netflix queue after the same director’s Marriage Story lanced my heart. Someday that’ll make three.

I admit Sandler was okay on Saturday Night Live (“The Hanukkah Song” was a keeper and Opera Man had his moments), but his post-SNL comedy brand has never been my thing. The Wedding Singer benefited at the time from above-average reviews for a Sandler film and a brief run at a second-run theater that used to be a couple miles down the road from us. It was nice to save a buck whenever we could.

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Our 2019 Road Trip, Part 5: It Was the Summer of ’96

Olympic rings!

Erected in December 2018, “The Spectacular” is 5000 pounds of aluminum standing 11 feet tall and begging visitors for some selfie love.

Remember that time Atlanta hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics? They certainly do. They’re one of only three American cities ever to hose the Summer Olympics (an exclusive club they share with Los Angeles and St. Louis), and they will never, ever let anyone forget it.

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Our 2017 Road Trip, Part 23: Camden Yards on $0.00 a Day

Babe's Dream!

“Babe’s Dream” commemorates baseball legend Babe Ruth, who was born in Baltimore and who’s among the very, very few players I read about during my short-lived baseball phase back in third grade.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 my wife Anne and I have taken a trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. For 2017 our ultimate destination of choice was the city of Baltimore, Maryland. You might remember it from such TV shows as Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire, not exactly the most enticing showcases to lure in prospective tourists. Though folks who know me best know I’m one of those guys who won’t shut up about The Wire, a Baltimore walkabout was Anne’s idea. Setting aside my fandom, as a major history buff she was first to remind skeptics who made worried faces at us for this plan that Maryland was one of the original thirteen American colonies and, urban decay notwithstanding, remains packed with notable history and architecture from ye olde Founding Father times. In the course of our research we were surprised to discover Baltimore also has an entire designated tourist-trap section covered with things to do. And if we just so happened to run across former filming locations without getting shot, happy bonus…

Longtime MC readers know my wife and I aren’t sports fans. We’ll attend games, matches, or races if an employer holds an event at one of our local venues, such as that time we saw a Pacers game from the Bankers Life Fieldhouse cheap seats, or that time we took in a July 4th Indians game at Victory Field, or that time I spent an afternoon at Indy 500 practice. But when it comes to our independent leisure time or our vacations, sports arenas — even the famous ones — almost never factor into our planning. If they’re a convenient neighbor or backdrop to the attraction we actually came to visit, we’ll include them if they catch our eye.

Since 1992 Oriole Park at Camden Yards has been the home of the Baltimore Orioles. Their 2017 season recently ended in depressing fashion, but their stomping grounds seemed nice. The Orioles were out of town while we were in Baltimore, but Anne and I had two other reasons for dropping in. The park was next door to the next tourist attraction I wanted to see. More importantly, Anne’s sources told her there was a smashed-penny machine on the premises. Smashed pennies are kind of her thing.

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