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Tag Archives: super-heroes

Indiana State Fair 2019 Encore: Last Day, Last Call

August 13, 2019 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
FAIR us!

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

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…

But then four days later we drove once more out to the east side and enjoyed a 4-hour whirlwind do-over. It all comes down to this: one final gallery of what else we did at this year’s Indiana State Fair — the superheroes, the animals, and the one ride we rode. Enjoy!

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Indiana State Fair 2019 Photos, Part 3 of 6: The Marvel/DC CAN-ematic Universe

August 8, 2019 By in Comics/Lit, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
CAN Black Panther!

Black CANther welcomes you to WaCANda, homeland of King TIN’Challa. (Look, I didn’t start it, okay?)

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 many creative events each year is the Canstruction contest, which isn’t necessarily exclusive to local 4-H youngsters. Canstruction is a charitable organization that holds nationwide events in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other in building the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not ordinary stacks with boring titles like “Can Do!” 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 totally unaware their next few meals used to be Art.

In keeping with this year’s “Heroes in the Heartland” theme and its inclusion of beloved mainstream superheroes, contestants were asked to make superheroes out of cans. The results were amusing for all but the most cantankerous.

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Indiana State Fair 2019 Photos, Part 2 of 6: The Heroes Theme

August 7, 2019 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
FAIR me!

FAIR. Just like a superhero should be!

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…

Each year they used to celebrate a specific food theme. For 2019 they took a different direction and declared the fair’s overall theme “Heroes in the Heartland”. In the Midwest “hero” can mean many things, though first responders come immediately to mind for many. Being that this is a Midwest state fair, the definition had to have enough latitude to include farmers. As explained further on the official site:

“This year we will pay serious tribute to the heroism of everyday Hoosiers whose exceptional commitment and caring enrich our lives without the benefit of capes, costumes or superpowers. They are our nurturers, protectors, guardians, and guides –- our support and our strength. They grow our food. They feed our minds. They keep us safe and free.

“Here’s to our Hoosier farmers, first responders, teachers, law officers, firefighters, and Armed Forces members past and present — our Heroes in the Heartland!”

Many participants approached the theme with a different idea in mind: superheroes!

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“Dark Phoenix”: X-huming and X-amining the End of the Ex-Series

July 2, 2019 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Dark Phoenix!

The all-new Firestar from a grim-and-gritty Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

Remember the glory days when the prospect of a new X-Men film excited anyone who’d previously thrilled to their greatest spectacles, and not just the unconditional superfans?

Dark Phoenix isn’t the worst superhero film I’ve seen this year, but after the waste of resources that was X-Men: Apocalypse, I was fine with waiting until its fourth weekend to see it using free passes, sitting in a theater with half a dozen other viewers who likewise couldn’t be bothered to rush out to the not-quite-grand finale to Fox’s X-Men era (unless we keep holding our breath waiting for New Mutants). Their 19-year run had its highlights, but writer/director/producer Simon Kinberg’s Hail Mary of a retread isn’t one of them.

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“Avengers: Endgame”: The All-Spoiler Entry

April 28, 2019 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Rocket War Machine!

Bow before the combined might of ROCKET MACHINE!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Avengers: Endgame is here! You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, an audience roughly one-third the size of Thanos’ human casualties has seen it. I was fine with cranking out the obligatory “I liked it, it was much better than Cats” entry, but as with a few past blockbusters, I’m in the mood to type more paragraphs about its pros, its cons, and the questions it begs that could go either way depending on how sensible or stupid the answers are.

Random thoughts in very little particular order ahead. COURTESY SPOILER WARNING FOR THE WHOLE THREE-HOUR SHEBANG.

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“Avengers: Endgame”: It. Is. FINISHED.

April 28, 2019 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Rocket Raccoon!

Thanos made this cute, fuzzy antihero cry. Now he must PAY.

One of the most exhilarating parts of seeing highly anticipated event films ASAP is the firm pivot point you pass between “before” and “after”. Once you’ve seen it, spoilers can no longer damage your viewer experience. Months and years of news sites hazarding half-baked guesses to the film’s content see all their handiwork either rendered obsolete and worthless or proven right but ultimately irrelevant once the thing becomes a reality rather than a theoretical construct in quantum-superpositional flux. Once the film “is”, the number of possibilities of how it “might be” dwindles ever downward toward one (1).

That’s not to say everyone has seen it yet, though Entertainment Weekly and other ill-mannered organizations live or die on the operating principle that every popular thing is instantly consumed now-now-NOW by the smartest, coolest readerships who are the only humans in the universe that matter. For folks who know how to use the word “courtesy” in a sentence, it means being careful with blaring spoilers in the faces of everyone who might glance in our direction. (When it comes to movies, at least. As someone who live-tweets the occasional CW super-hero show, I’ll own up to some hypocrisy here.)

It’s in that spirit of keeping up the spoiler-free environment for what’s left of this weekend that our obligatory Avengers: Endgame write-up was composed to the best of my ability. Fair warning: if you were so hardcore about no-spoiler purity that you’ve even avoided all the trailers and TV spots, I’m not sure I can help you at quite that level of dedication.

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