Tag: PF

Reality redefined

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What an Asian household is like for little Hyun-Soo Choo, now that League of Legends players are going to now be recognized as professional athletes.

Hyun-Soo Choo sits in his room playing the piano, practising The Moonlight Sonata. His head is rhythmically rolling from side to side as he lets his mind get lost in the melody and the slow, methodical strokes of the ivory keys.

Mom: (Screaming from downstairs) Hyun-Soooooo!  [Time for League of Legends practice!]*

*[Translated from the Korean – dh]

Hyun-Soo:  Ommaaaa (“Mom” in Korean) I don’t want to play Leagueeee!!
Mom:  Hyun-Soo!  [Right now!]
Hyun-Soo:  Ommmaaaaaa…….
Mom:  HYUN-SOO!!!

Defeated, Hyun-Soo closes the cover to the keys of his piano and begins stomping his way downstairs, begrudgingly.  His mother is waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her hands on her hips, with a handheld dust brush in her left hand.  She has a stern and fierce look on her face.

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The most valuable parking space

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It should come as no surprise, but I’m very much a creature of habit. Repetition doesn’t really faze me like it fazes others, and I can go numerous periods of time eating the same things, doing the same activities and seeing the same programs for probably more than the average person does. I like routine, and I like there to be some degree of normalcy and repetition in my life; it’s comforting, effortless, and once engrained, simply a part of daily living. Maybe this is to say that I’ve got a facet of my brain that’s possibly autistic or at least obsessive-compulsive, due to this desire for routines and repetition.

This is no more obvious than the fact that I’m bothered probably way more than I should be when things nudge me off my routine or my expected courses of actions. Whether it’s another person’s complete lack of spatial awareness that causes them to aimlessly walk and consume space which encroaches on my line, or a person that coincidentally happens to be at the workout station that I was planning on using next, and I’ve already accomplished all my other lifts, people that disrupt my rhythm aggravate the ever living shit out of me.

But the worst of all perpetrators to me are the people that insist on taking the parking space that I’ve been trying to park in consistently for almost three years now. It is evident now that my preferred parking space is clearly the most valuable parking space in the entire fucking lot, based on how many people insist on having it now. But seriously, my days become monumental emotional uphill battles on mornings in which I can’t get my parking spot. Nothing infuriates me worse or faster than seeing that some motherfucker has gotten to it before I did, and I feel nothing but unadulterated anger for the few minutes it takes me to find another not-as-adequate-but-passable parking space.

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I do my best thinking in the car

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I really do. It’s like I do my best typing when I’ve got my feet kicked up on my desk, and I have the wireless keyboard in my lap. I don’t know why that is, but I feel like my fingers fly along the keys when it’s in this position. But back to the topic of thinking, I guess “best” isn’t necessarily the best word, but it’s true that I do some of my deepest thinking while I’m driving in my car.

Lately, something that pops into my head a lot, which is probably obvious given my age and life’s status, but I’m kind of a lonely person. I’m probably being more earnest than I really should be, given the fairly public status of my brog, but to put it out there, I’m 31 years old, and I haven’t been on a date in about two years now. Ultimately, there’s nobody to blame for such circumstances except for myself, but to be perfectly honest, I kind of don’t even know where to begin.

It’s not like I can go to Publix and be all like “oh, you’ve got one item? Please, go ahead” in the checkout line, and strike up a scintillating conversation with a random stranger, culminating with the birth of a blossoming relationship. No, it would result in us holding up the checkout line, people behind us getting pissed, the cashier getting impatient with our inconsiderate behavior, and a girl, who capitalized on my generosity getting the fuck out of the place even sooner because I was being a mush.

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Yeah, no regrets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My last post over at Talking Chop went up yesterday, and I thought that I would feel a little bit emotional over it, since it was my primary sports writing-related outlet I had over the last four years, but I really didn’t.  To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really remember to check it until late last night, so in some respects that kind of was indicative of how much I had already kind of checked out when it came to the whole site entirely.  I probably felt more emotions while in the process of writing my farewell statement, which I started on Tuesday and re-read and edited throughout the course of the week.

I’ve got no regrets in doing it, now that it’s done.  It’ll really sink in on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, when I’ll be sitting at my desk thinking “oh shit, I have to write my column,” but then realize that I actually don’t, and then I’ll feel a sense of relief wash over my like an awesome wave.

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I think this is currently my favorite song

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Two of the Lucky Ones, by The Droge & Summers Blend

Most people know this song, because it was played in Zombieland in the part where Mark Zuckerberg is trying to work up the courage to kiss Emma Stone while slow dancing at Bill Murray’s mansion. It’s a song that relaxes me, and is just really easy to listen to. I can listen to it at pretty much any mood, and it helps cheer me up, reel me back, or just feel mellow and imagine myself outside in nature with a cold drink nearby.

My listening habits are pretty temperamental and change at the drop of a hat depending on how I’m feeling, but this is a song that I can’t really say that I’ve ever skipped whenever it’s popped up on my iTunes. Without certainty, that means it’s one of my favorite songs, and currently the one at the very top.

A melancholy feeling of change

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Typically, I tend to leave most sports talk out of my brog, because frankly I know that the majority of the 12 people that actually read my swill aren’t necessarily sports fans, or even care to read about sports related things.  Typically, I also never really felt the necessity to use my brog as an outlet for sports talk, because I’ve always had an outlet for talking about sports; and by sports, I mean baseball, because other athletic contests are second fiddle anyway.

Over the span of the last four years, I wrote for a Braves blog, Talking Chop.  I went under a pseudonym over these years because I’m skeptical like that and wished to keep my identity somewhat separated from the rest of my life, but it’s not like anyone paying attention didn’t discover my real name at some point.  Writing for TC was an enjoyable experience as I was able to interact with baseball fans all over the place, and share thoughts and ideas, as well as expand my horizons as it came to baseball statistics, analysis and the minor leagues.

I’m leaving Talking Chop.  This coming Saturday is my last scheduled post, and I’m leaving on my own fruition.  I know most of my brog readers probably couldn’t give two shits about this, but to me, having done this consistently over the span of the last four years, leaves me with this melancholy feeling of change; separation from a long and consistent routine.  I’m glad to be freed up from the occasional feelings of obligation to write about baseball, but at the same time, I now really have no true outlet to ramble on about baseball if I ever felt like it.

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Photos: Clearwater, Hogan Beach and baseball

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I made a spontaneous trip down to Tampa, Florida, because my boy James said he was going to make the trip up to Clearwater to visit the Hulk Hogan Beach Store.  Frankly, I couldn’t see myself visiting on my own and I’m not sure to who I would be able to force come along, so this was an opportunity that I was not willing to pass up.

As for the store itself, it was pretty much the Hulk Hogan Nostalgia Center located on the Beach for all intents and purposes, filled to the brim with Hogan-related memorabilia, souvenirs, crap on the wall, as well as a huge variety of t-shirts and other chintzy things that all have Hogan’s likeness all over it.  And tons of yellow, it was like Asian camouflage in there.

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