Happy 10th Anniversary to a Website Worth Slightly Under $44 Billion
April 29, 2022 By Randall A. Golden in Meta Tags: blog, blog celebration, blog milestone, blogging, Internet, Midlife Crisis Crossover, musings, stream of consciousness, writing 2 Comments
I kept this in my files for over a year and let it simmer to just the right level of finely aged irrelevance.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: 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 unless social media points them there.
Basically it's me me me me me, plus special appearances and other invaluable contributions from Anne, my wife of 17 years and #1 fan. This unpaid quasi-boutique hobby-job was built on a thin foundation with no claim to fame, virtually no preexisting fandom, no networking skills, no books to sell, no merch with my face on it to hawk, no funding from the Chubb Group, no patience for marketing (and pretty please never ever offer to provide me some for a price, because if you think I'm worth it, then by all means go share my works with your social pals for free, same as you do with anything else you genuinely like), and no educated grasp of "SEO" except to know that it rhymes with Vern Tessio, the Stand by Me kid played by Jerry O'Connell, who grew up to costar in Star Trek: Lower Decks, of which Anne and I have six episodes left to watch as of this writing, and watching those might be a more productive use of my time than registering my thoughts online for whomever to see, but it's late and she's asleep, which is the general household ambiance during my prime posting hours, so here I am.
Reaching Out Through the Zoom Lens
April 28, 2020 By Randall A. Golden in Misc. Media, Mundane Tags: chats, communication, Community, computers, family, friendship, Internet, social media, socializing, technology, Zoom Leave a comment
As you'd expect, our most requested pose. Special thanks to my sister-in-law for the screen shot.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: for the duration of the interim normal, all other human bodies are to be treated as walking land mines, held at a remove, and if one approaches you, go hide and let them detonate in someone else's face instead.
In these extreme circumstances we've sometimes found ourselves doing things far outside the old, complacent, pre-fatality routines. Letting our hair grow into shaggy 1970s grotesquerie. Taking early morning walks around our neighborhood. Calling elderly relatives before they call us first. Posting on Facebook.
Our latest deviation from the norm: hopping on a communication technology bandwagon.
Twitter Minus Twitter
April 18, 2020 By Randall A. Golden in Misc. Media Tags: entertainment, humor, Internet, musings, politics, self-care, social media, Twitter Leave a comment
What was he thinking about? I'll never know.
Twitter isn't for everyone, but the designers have created a number of tools that allow users to shape their experience, curate their input streams, intertwine narratives, choose overall reading tone, defend themselves against the forces of evil, hide from polite disagreements, and, in my case, remove irritants. The tools aren't perfect, but I appreciate their usefulness when it comes to surgically removing unnecessary ugliness and repetitive stresses that damage my calm. For me, internet moderation is a form of self-care.
Sometimes the results amuse me more than I'd intended.
Memo from the MCC Errors & Omissions Department
August 6, 2019 By Randall A. Golden in Meta Tags: blog, blogging, humor, Internet, mistakes, musings, satire, writing 3 Comments
File photo of a souvenir my wife picked up from Indy PopCon 2015, where the special guests included Charles Nelson Reilly, TV's Charo, and Joan Embry from the San Diego Zoo along with her amazing thirty to fifty feral pigs.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I wrote at length about a six-part miniseries that my wife and I watched on Crackle called The Final Tsars, in which I couldn't be bothered to open an extra browser tab and verify the full name of the ruler at the heart of the story. The next morning, our first conversation after "Good morning" was a firm reminder that his official stage name was, in fact, "Czar Nicholas II". MCC regrets the oversight and is sorry if any Russian historians were offended, but we don't feel like editing the affected entry because it would undermine one of its underlying points and two of its jokes.
Yes, There Are Scenes During AND After the "Ralph Breaks the Internet" End Credits
November 26, 2018 By Randall A. Golden in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: animation, Disney, entertainment, Internet, John C. Reilly, movies, Ralph Breaks the Internet, reviews, Sarah Silverman, social media, video games, Wreck-It Ralph Leave a comment
Fun in-joke scene for the eight people over 40 who ever loved AskJeeves.
I've always had a soft spot for the original Wreck-It Ralph. Not only did John C. Reilly's layered performance hit me squarely in the heart with that big act of would-be noble sacrifice in the climax, but it later inspired me to write a jokey Top Ten-style follow-up that remains one of the site's most enduring "evergreen" entries to this day. 2012 was a fun year for me in a lot of ways, and it tickles me to remember that Ralph was no small part of that.
Alas, with great success comes the threat of sequels. Disney Animation hasn't released a theatrical sequel since Fantasia 2000 graced IMAX screens 18 years ago. Someone up high decided it was time to break the streak with Ralph Breaks the Internet, which, to be fair, tops very nearly every direct-to-video Disney sequel ever. I would have to see Aladdin and the King of Thieves again to decide between the two. That's faint praise, though. Even as I dwell on the phrase "direct-to-video Disney", memories of Dan Castellaneta's Genie, Princess Ariel's daughter, and The Fox and the Hound 2 return and make me wince.
My Entry in the Internet Peanut-Gallery Database
November 8, 2018 By Randall A. Golden in Meta Tags: blog milestone, blogging, Internet, lists, Midlife Crisis Crossover, musings, publishing, writing Leave a comment
It's cool to see your name in print even when you don't understand all the words around it.
When you make a longtime hobby out of turning words and pictures into hopefully entertaining compositions, more for the sake of self-satisfaction and human interaction than for lofty aspirations to widespread fame and/or corruptive fortune, it's always a pleasant surprise when something you did — no matter how tiny or inconsequential it seemed at the time — somehow catches the eye of just the right person and creates an unusual opportunity you've never had before, never saw coming, have trouble explaining to others, but draw a bit of pride from anyway.
I've had a few such occasions pop up in my life. Another one of those odd little things recently happened for me. I think I now have enough to assemble my own checklist. It's not long or dignified enough to call a bibliography, but if there were an Internet Peanut Gallery Database — like IMDb, but for nobodies like me — then my IPGDb page would presently look something like this:
Our Privacy Practices Have Changed! Please Come Back Now, Europe?
May 26, 2018 By Randall A. Golden in Meta, Misc. Media Tags: blogging, Europe, GDPR, Internet, privacy, privacy practices, social media, WordPress Leave a comment
We did it! We did it! Now someone tell our European readers we're safe and legal again.
Over the past few days, internet users have been flooded with notifications from various websites, apps, and mailing lists they signed up for in a previous millennium, all declaring the official implementation of new updates to their privacy practices as mandated by the General Data Protection Regulation, Europe's latest tool in the war on online shenanigans. At the core, it's a good thing — European residents using computing gadgets should now have more insight and control into how their personal data is collected, stored, used, abused, and repurposed into fuel for the corporate engines that rely on us to be their consumer puppets. On a certain level it feels like an annoying form of paranoia, but this is the kind of response that occurs when multi-billion-dollar companies can't give straight, morally upright answers to basic questions about what they do with all the 1s and 0s they harvest from our keystrokes.
As is wont to happen in the wake of radical societal upheavals, Comedy Twitter has been having a field day with the wave of emails, notifications, and pop-ups they've been receiving from organizations and proprietors desperate to comply and eager to keep their traffic from European visitors uninterrupted. I've laughed at too many to relay here without diminishing the effect, but some responses have been comedy gold.
"OUR PRIVACY POLICY HAS CHANGED."
"I don't care." pic.twitter.com/DJaeElU4lY
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) May 26, 2018
Then tonight I found out even my own site was affected. I didn't see that coming.
Is There Room at the Table for the Fake Followers Among Us?
January 31, 2018 By Randall A. Golden in Meta Tags: blog, blog milestone, blogging, fame, followers, Internet, marketing, musings, popularity, self-immolation, social media, Twitter, writing 2 Comments
One of many robo-concierges polluting Twitter and willing to assist with your shallow self-image needs.
My favorite piece of journalism so far this year was just published January 27th over at the New York Times and struck a nerve in a number of places. In an epic-length article entitled "The Follower Factory", the NYT plumbed the wobbly world of Twitter and those peculiar, insecure users who boost their Follower head count by paying a company actual money to bless them with hundreds of thousands of automated "bot" accounts that pretend they're fans clinging on to their every tweet, for the purpose of making the paying customers look more popular. Some are piecemeal accounts, with profiles barely filled out. Quite a few are the product of surface-level identity theft, cribbing photos and usernames but with a character altered to make it unique (relatively speaking). They don't praise you, go forth in your name, act as your "street team", or interact with you or other humans in any meaningful way. They just Follow. They sit there, shut up, and act like you rule.
Companies such as Devumi cheerfully offer low-price options for ordinary web-surfing rabble like me, but they also bank some major cash selling bot followings by the hundreds of thousands to B-list celebrities, politicians, creators, reality TV dwellers, and others at varying levels of fame. The NYT named a few names I recognize — actor John Leguizamo, Chef Michael Symon, onetime MST3K guest star Kathy Ireland, and film critic Richard Roeper, whose Chicago Sun-Times reviews have been suspended pending their internal review. Of those who responded to requests for comment, a few buyers insisted it wasn't them personally pushing the buttons, but an assistant or social media manager who bought a hollow audience on their behalf for PR strategy or whatever. Whether their deflections are true or not, boosts of fake fame are kind of sad. Granted, some personalities receive perks and bonuses from their corporate overlords based on the looks of their social media metrics, which means a return on their invidious investment is entirely possible. To them I imagine it's all part of the Game.
Our 2002 Road Trip, Part 1 of 5: A Special Sojourn for Star Wars
February 2, 2017 By Randall A. Golden in Movies/Films/Flicks, Travel Tags: Attack of the Clones, entertainment, geeks, Internet, internet community, memories, nostalgia, road trip, Star Wars, travel Leave a comment
Anne with our companions Shannon and Katrina in a movie theater far, far away. Well, okay, admittedly it wasn't far for them…
Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen 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. My son rode along from 2003 until 2013 when he ventured off to college. From 2004 to 2011 we recounted our experiences online at length for a close circle of friends. From 2012 to the present we've presented our annual travelogues here on this modest website for You, the Viewers at Home, which I'm grateful includes some of those same friends who haven't quit us yet.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, we told the stories of our first three road trips together: Wizard World Chicago in 1999; a St. Louis science fiction convention in 2000; and the 2001 Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois. In 2002 we continued our convention streak with Star Wars Celebration II, which was held here in Indianapolis and saved us the hassle and joy of a road trip. We had a ball, stood in lines for actors from the first five movies, and were pleased to meet a dozen-plus friends we knew from the Star Wars message board that was like a second home to us for years. Great time, but not a road trip.
We remedied that two weeks later with an idea that combined elements from our first three outings: a major cultural event plus Star Wars plus internet friends plus driving hours away from home. Add a dash of MST3K and a bit more standard tourism than usual, and that's the story of how we planned a five-hour drive for a four-day getaway to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to hang out with fellow fans and see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on opening day. Twice.
Road Trip Origins Year 2, Part 1 of 3: Internet Fandom Rendezvous 2000
January 26, 2017 By Randall A. Golden in Conventions & Events, Travel Tags: entertainment, Gateway Sci-Fi Con, Internet, internet community, memories, Mystery Science Theater 3000, nostalgia, photos, road trip, sci fi conventions, social media, travel Leave a comment
If you recognize the logo that this program cover is aping, then you may appreciate who we met that year…
Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken a road trip to a different part of the United States and seen 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. My son rode along from 2003 until 2013 when he ventured off to college. From 2004 to 2011 we recounted our experiences online at length for a close circle of friends. From 2012 to the present we've presented our annual travelogues here on this modest website for You, the Viewers at Home, which I'm grateful includes some of those same friends. Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, we told the story of our very first road trip together, an amateur expedition to Wizard World Chicago 1999.
Fast-forward one year later to July 14-16, 2000. While we remained best-of-the-best friends in separate apartments, we had begun pooling resources on select line items and seen our situations improve when she left McDonald's after a ten-year stint and switched to an adjacent, much better-paying career track — call-center work for a major mail-order club. It was still customer service, but with 100% less grease and 0% chance of having to stand for hours at open drive-thru windows in zero-degree weather. Overall we were in slightly better standings one year after WWC when an idea for a second road trip walked right up, pinched my cheeks, and wouldn't let go.
As with our inaugural outing, this would be another geek convention in a state beyond our own, with a guest list of well-known media personalities and hotel accommodations required. However, the proposal was far more ambitious in one groundbreaking respect: it would be our first time meeting people we knew only from the internet.