Tag: owned

Imagine how much it sucks being Asian and living in this high school zone

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC NY: high school in Long Island has 21 valedictorians

When I came across this story, the very first thing I noticed was the supporting image of the 21 kids all slated to be valedictorians of Jericho High School’s 2026 graduation class, was the obvious fact that there wasn’t a single, non-Asian continent face among them

I phrase my terminology deliberately because they’re not all just East Asians, but some that are from Central Asian countries, but the point is that it’s low hanging fruit to solely point out the obvious notion that when it comes to tryharding, nobody does it better than those from Asia. 

But then I thought to myself, man, how much does it suck to live in the Jericho High school zone; from the students’ perspective, it’s like no matter how good you think you were, there were 21 uber-achievers who never for a second let their foot off the gas since starting high school, and purportedly all somehow managed to get nearly identical perfect marks throughout their HS careers.

Among the 21 valedictorians, there’s got to be a tremendous amount of angst, jealousy, frustration and general animosity that none of them would admit to, but probably feels, on account of the fact that they worked their asses off for four years, and not only were they denied the honor of being the sole valedictorian, but gave to share it with not just one or two other achievers, but twenty other motherfuckers who tryharded just as much as they did.

And of course, let’s not forget the parents of these 21 tryhards, all of them being of various Asian descents, all of them wanting to be able to brag and micro-aggress to their peers and relatives over the intelligence and success of their kids, and being completely unable to, because thanks to the news and stories like this, most are probably innately aware that their outstanding child is nothing special because twenty other tryhards matched them in their abilities to tryhard.

All the same, I feel like I have to call bullshit on this whole thing. I have a hard time believing that 21 kids all got the exact same grade, and I feel like even if they did, there should’ve been all sorts of tiebreakers in place to weed out one true deserving valedictorian instead of crowning 21 nerds with participation trophies.

Like maybe the bar is lower than suspected, but there’s no way 21 kids all got like 97.83% on their aggregate grades, and even if they did, surely some of them had to have various extracurriculars and affiliations that would make them stand out among their academic peers.  Like if Johnny Tran and Vindaloo Nagrani both had exact grades, but Tran was a part of two clubs while  Nagrani wasn’t, then it’s an easy tie breaker in my opinion there.

No way everyone had identical qualifications to that granularity, and I feel like naming 21 kids all as valedictorians is a lazy and diluted honor, and none of these kids should really feel special because if they’re all valedictorians, then nobody is.

It makes me think of the episode of Saved by the Bell, where Jessie Spano thought she was a shoe-in for valedictorian but it turned out that Screech actually had a few decimal points on her, and until he ceded the role to her, he was the de facto valedictorian. Of course, the episode ends with somehow hidden genius Zack Morris speaking at the podium because of course he did but the point remains that when it comes to selecting a valedictorian, it really is serious business to the very end.

But speaking of these 21 kids, talk about how disappointing of a life it must have been, work hard, all gas no brakes, only to be lumped in with a bunch of others.  21 kids all living lives generally forfeit of high school hijinx, social lives, and being general teenagers, only to be stonewalled at the finish line because there were a bunch of others doing the exact same thing.

Makes me think of that film Booksmart, where the main girl who ends up valedictorian after basically living her life like these 21 tryhard kids, discovers that some of the other students in her class that are among the biggest slackers and underachievers, also managed to get into Stanford, Yale or got immediate jobs with Google, without the need to give up their lives entirely to get there.

Like I said earlier, they may all be buddy-buddy for the sake of the story, but there’s no way some of them aren’t harboring some deep seeded hater vibes for their fellow valedictorians, because one or two co-‘s would be understandable and plausible, but 21 is just pure bullshit coddling.

So dismissive, kind of callous, I can’t help but respect it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how my birthday this year was basically borked on account of being endlessly sick throughout the entire month of April, I didn’t really celebrate at all.  I actually still have some gifts that I haven’t even opened, yet, because I’ve been in such a dour plcae over the last few weeks, I want to make sure that I’m in a positive headspace before opening anything that’s meant to be a pick-me-up, and I really don’t think I’ve gotten to that point just yet.

Either way, this is something that I’ve wanted to write about but just didn’t get a chance to and it kept getting pushed back in the queue of things that pique my interest or inspire words to formulate, but I noticed something in the soulless, mostly obligated birthday card that I received from my colleagues at work.

Among the generic and canned-corn hand written messages from my colleagues, I noticed that one person signed via a rubber stamp that simply said “Happy Birthday -Michael”

My brow furrowed, and numerous emotions went through my head at seeing such.  The fact that Michael had a rubber stamp created with the most generic of greetings, was such a sign of dismissal, a lack of genuine care, and an acknowledgment that office colleague birthday cards really are tedious, forced and things that we as people really don’t care about, but feel obligated to participate, for optics.

However, at the same time, I found it to be absolutely hilarious that Michael here had the wherewithal to understand that office colleague cards really are tedious, forced and things we don’t care about, that he created a solution that absolved him of even the littlest of thought necessary to hand write a generic greeting.

Responses from people in my circles whom I shared this with were varied, from wooooowww, to laughing, and if anything at all like me, kind of in admiration for Michael for having such a brilliant idea to have a dismissive and informal stamp to just slap on a soulless Happy Birthday greeting, which includes his name on it, so that everyone who sees it, can see, that Michael feels all of the above.

All the same, regardless of how anyone feels about it, it elicited enough of a reaction from me to where I felt inspired to write about it.  And frankly, that in itself is a gift that’s invaluable, at least to me, and Michael has no idea he accomplished such. 

I kind of want my own generic greeting rubber stamp now.

Proposing a modification to best of sevens

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously I didn’t watch the game, but when I saw the score, I wasn’t the least bit surprised that not only did the Knicks beat the 76ers to complete the sweep, they won by a large margin.  And not only did the Knicks knock the Sixers out of the playoffs, Philadelphia got completely owned (again) by the legions of New Yorkers who made the jaunt down to Philly to watch the conclusion to the series, completely taking over the Whatever Name Arena that the Sixers call home.

Man, I don’t know what’s the deal in Philly, because I normally have this begrudging respect for their sports fans, but outside of the Eagles, it feels like Philly sports fans have completely lost their reputation, seeing as how the Phillies, Sixers and even the Flyers who were also just swept out of the NHL playoffs are all showing poorly, and their supposed, die-hard fans, aren’t showing much better either.

But anyway, back to the subject of this post, I have a proposal that would absolutely, never, ever come to fruition because a lot of parties stand to lose money if it were to happen, and regardless of if the athletes themselves would love the idea, The Man absolutely refuses to yield any money under any circumstances, logical or not.

Regardless; my proposal would be that in a best-of-seven matchup, should any team go up 3-0, the series is over, without the need to get a fourth win.  My hypothetical eye test has observed throughout my life as a sports fan, that not only has historically a 3-0 all but guaranteed a series win, in most cases, a 3-0 has a high chance of being a sweep.

Most every sports fans know that a comeback from 0-3 is practically impossible, with there being legitimately just three recognized instances in history; two in the NHL, one in MLB, and zero in the NBA.  Sure, there have been many instances where be it pride, a fluke, or a good old fashioned college try, where a team down 0-3 has scraped out a win, maybe two, with only a few times in history where they managed to force a game 7, but the ultimate comeback has literally only happened three times in the three big sports that utilize best-of-sevens.

And the thing is, the numbers actually back up my observation; with teams that are up 3-0, their win percentages in game 4 are all ranging from 60-70%, with MLB teams completing the sweep 77.5% of the time, NHL teams closing out at 62.5%, and NBA teams putting the finishing touches at a rate of 69.3%.

So that being said, zeroing in on the NBA, since it’s never happened before, why even bother anymore with playing out a series once a team goes up 3-0?  Not only has it been proven to be impossible for a team down 0-3 to comeback, it seems like in most cases that not only do they get swept, but they also get blown the fuck out in the finale too.

Much like the rest of the world, the NBA today has a lot of players who fall into this complete defeatist mentality, and watching teams that know history is against them, with a monumental task in front of them, you can just see their will to try and give effort is just not there.  I don’t care enough to really pore through the numbers, but I’d wager that a noticeable number of 3-0 game 4’s in history have resulted in not just a sweep, but a sweep by virtue of a big embarrassing blowout.

That being said, I propose to eliminate game 4s once a team is up 3-0, and declare it a series victory, because frankly, it just seems like a foregone conclusion that’s formally just a waste of time.

Obviously, this would never fly, because television broadcast money, advertiser money, venue money, ticket money, concessions money, all the money that circulates on account of one singular basketball game, would be forfeit with this idea, and nobody wants to lose out on getting paid.

But I feel like players would be over the moon if this idea were to become reality, and it would create all sorts of interesting new dynamics if this were the case.  A team up 2-0 starts to really play with their balls out in game 3, knowing that they can close out the series immediately, and potentially get a few extra days to rest before the following round. 

A team down 0-2 really now needs to kick that desperation gear in motion, because 0-2 now becomes the 0-3 in a way, but the difference is if they can stave off 0-3, they not only stay alive, but mathematically 1-2 comebacks don’t mean the end of the world, and even 1-3 comebacks are not impossible either.

Plus there’s a number of not-so altruistic factors that come into play, because if a team closes out a series at 3-0, and have to wait on an opponent in another series that goes the distance, there’s a potential for a long layoff, and almost every sport has demonstrated the perils of too much time off, and it could creates for some interesting outcomes if a hot team that won a 3-0 sits for 13 days, while their opponent who went 7 games to move on is battle tested, hardened, and still has momentum on their side; or they could be exhausted, and the team that won 3-0 got some much-needed rest, and then they overpower their opponents.

Above all else, basketball is a physically grueling sport.  Probably more running than any other sport outside of futbol, and last year especially, we saw an NBA playoffs where like 3-4 different guys tore their ACLs, most notably Tyrese Haliburton in game 7 of the Finals.  Players would probably be thrilled at the possibility of gaining some extra rest time, should they close an opponent out 3-0, and something like this could be critical at allowing for players to get some much needed rest and recovery, and strategically lead to some more compelling basketball.

But again, it boils down to the fact that game 4s now, where a team is down 0-3 are just boring as fuck.  The losing team not only almost doesn’t ever win, they also get embarrassed, when they get blown out to complete their sweeps.  The NBA playoffs are already long enough, why not make some tweaks to the format to help spice some things up?

eBay has the chance to do the funniest, probably most satisfying, thing in the world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Engadget: GameStop reportedly trying to purchase eBay, with reports of offer being $56 billion dollars

I’m not going to pretend like I have any modicum of care of what’s really going on with this whole story, except that I think it’s really weird that a general small coffer company like GameStop is in any position to acquire a much larger company like eBay, but I think most of the world has seen stranger things and about as improbable takeovers in history.

But as the subject of this post says, I think eBay has the chance to do the funniest thing ever, and that’s telling GameStop that their $56B offer, has not met the reserve.

It would be satisfying to probably everyone remotely following this story, because I feel like every gamer in the history of existence has probably been fucked over or at least been insultingly low-ball offered by GameStop, and it would probably bring great joy to see eBay, much less any large conglomerate, basically tell GameStop something they’ve been telling their customers for decades.

Seriously though, how the fuck does GameStop have the gall to offer to buy eBay?  Their company is valued at like $9-11B, and where the fuck are they getting the extra $45B+ needed for their offer?  Store credit??

When the day is over, I really don’t give a fuck what happens with this.  I don’t shop at GameStop, and my eBay usage is pretty minimal, beyond impulsive niche purposes; however, I have recently learned about the CIB retro game market, and I’ve come across some clean and potentially lucrative games with boxes in my old belongings, and it would suck if a GameStop-ified eBay comes to fruition and manages to fuck up my potential earning.

All the more reason why I hope eBay tells GameStop to fuck on outta here with their offer.

Is there anyone who doesn’t know how to be a pro-athlete more than Kelsey Plum?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo Sports: WNBA star Kelsey Plum demonstrates a critical lack of understanding of tax knowledge, embarrassing herself and whatever representation she claims with her proud proclamation of avoiding a tax clause but being completely wrong about it

The fact that a brogger like me is once against writing about anything related to the WNBA at all goes to show how much the sport has risen over the last few years or so, but it should be noted that once again, it is about Kelsey Plum, whom I’m inclined to believe seems to have no idea of what it takes to be a professional athlete.

A year ago, she made the news because she crashed out on an autograph hound that was camping outside of her team’s hotel, and sure, the dude was obviously one of those cretin fans that just wanted autographs with the intention to flip and profit, but from what I saw, the guy wasn’t pushy, maintained a safe and respectful distance, was out in public, and it was during the daytime.  As far as anyone seeking autographs, this person was pretty respectful, and not necessarily deserving of the criticism and combative approach from Plum.

But frankly, my general take was that the fact that someone was there seeking WNBA players, kind of goes to show how much the awareness of women’s pro basketball has risen, and that at least to me, there’s a degree of “we’ve made it” that should be considered when autograph seekers start seeking their players out.  And that Plum had a poor showing on professional athlete conduct with how she basically verbally dunked on a fan just tryna get some autos.

And here we go again, with Kelsey Plum making some niche news again, and once again the Magic 8 ball says outlook not good.

TL;DR the WNBA renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement, and it was a huge win for all the women in the WNBA because it came with a massive pay bump, leaps and bounds better than the paltry $74,000 minimum salary that was in place prior to.

Kelsey Plum, being a good basketball player, somewhat still in the prime of her career, was eligible for a $1.4M supermax contract, which again, considering the top players of the league were making less than 90% that a year prior, was due to make some big bank.  However, she ultimately signed with the LA Sparks for an approximate value of $999,999, notably one dollar shy of a cool million bucks.

She would go on to boast about how that one dollar would prevent her from hitting a threshold that would make her eligible for what’s known as the California Mental Health Services Act, AKA “the millionaire’s tax.”  To her knowledge, signing for $999,999 instead of $1M meant she would save $13,000 in taxes.

However, tax experts were quick to correct and educate the rest of the viewing world that Plum’s belief on how the millionaire’s tax worked was not accurate, and that the tax would only affect any dollars that were $1M and above. 

Had she signed for a $1M, she would have owed 13¢ in taxes on that solitary dollar that pushed her to $1M.  Had she signed the $1.4M supermax deal with the Sparks that she was entitled to, she would have had to have eaten $182,000 in taxes, but if we’re doing math over here, she would have still netted $1,218,000, which is $218,001 more than the $999,999 she signed for.  Sure, she would have had to have eaten a tax hit, but it’s funny that in her belief she was saving $13K, she ended up losing $218K.

The best part about all of this was Plum’s sheer cockiness in her belief that she had gamed some system.  Because fewer things are more hilarious than someone being so sure that they’re right about something, only to be completely wrong about it.

That being said, I’m more inclined to believe that there’s no professional athlete more ill-suited to being a professional athlete than Kelsey Plum is, because she doesn’t seem to like autograph seekers, and whether she was using an agent or not, she completely bombed at playing the salary game, and these are just kind of things that seem to be everyday life for other professional athletes.

Act like you’ve been there before, not like you have absolutely no clue to how the culture of privilege works.

I’ve never had an April that has sucked more than this year’s has

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even in the most curmudgeon periods of my life, I’ve always kind of held my breath and walked on eggshells whenever it’s come to the month of April.  Seeing as how it’s the month in which my birthday is, I’m always cautiously optimistic that they can’t possibly suck that much, seeing as how there’s a very concrete day in which the world is obligated to not be too much of a dick to me on, and I always hope that the grace of a birthday has a tendency to permeate through as much of the rest of the month as the fates are willing to grace.

Sure, I’ve had some shitty things happen in Aprils before, and history has shown a predisposition for some real bad shit to usually happen around the time of my birthday, but save for large swaths of the world crying, memorializing or mourning the departed, most of the time I can usually rely on my birthdays themselves to not be the worst days in the world.

Throw all that shit out the window this year, because not only was a really fucking sick on my birthday this year, it’s not a far stretch to say that I’ve basically been sick all throughout the month, and the fact that I can’t seem to get back to being 100% healthy has been mentally challenging, frustrating and demoralizing, especially since I feel like I could handle or have handled a lot of the frustrations of the month better than I have, had I had my health to rely upon to be in good standing through it all.

It’s like, #2 and I caught a cold of some sort early on in the month, that I remember taking almost an entire week off from the office and worked remote, and I kind of got better.  But it’s like neither of us truly got fully recovered from that sickness, and by the time I hobbled back home after my week of exile back up in Northern Virginia to clean up my old joint, both my kids had ear infections, and within a week, such had passed onto me, leading to me spending my actual birthday in a lot of pain and misery of having an ear infection that went undiagnosed by the first urgent care I went to because they suck, leading to me to suffer throughout it for several days afterward before I went to get a second opinion, and confirmation that I had some shit going on.

I’ve never had an ear infection in my life before, so let me just say how much it sucks to get one for the first time.  The feeling of a swollen or burst ear drum, the constant throbbing and being able to hear my heartbeat, the sensation that it’s like I permanently have an AirPod in the ear with noise cancellation on, because I’m hard of hearing through it.  And before I got put on antibiotics, the main was just so dull and persistent, and was absolutely handicapping when I wasn’t on some sort of painkillers.

Furthermore, ear infections are usually byproduct of bad colds, and it’s like I’ve had this one, or maybe two colds all month long, and although I mostly feel fine, it’s one of those bugs where it’s left a Chinese Great Wall of mucus in my chest and sinuses, that is taking its dear sweet fucking time in going away, resulting in a lot of aggravated coughing spells, which is wreaking havoc on my sleep and my wife’s sleep, and I haven’t felt like I’ve gotten adequate sleep almost throughout the entire month.  It’s been like an entire decade since I’ve had this kind of phlegmy misery, because I remember how much is sucked back then, and how much it sucks to have it again now.

The bottom line is that I just can’t seem to get healthy, and it sucks that basically the entire month of April has come and gone with me being sick throughout most of it.  And to add insult to injury, there’s been all sorts of bullshit happenings between my dad, the workload at work, my dad, all of the shit I have to do for my dad, the disappointment of trying to accomplish things but relying on the responses and communication of others, and of course, my dad.

As is often the case, I feel as if I’m being pulled from all sides from everyone in my life, leading me to grow frustrated and wish people would just take the reins and run without having to review everything with me first, and that I’m taken for granted on such a monumental level by pretty much everyone in my life.

And because as much as I’d like to memorialize these folks with individual posts but don’t really feel like I have the energy to do it in remotely a time-sensitive manner, some dudes I enjoyed or revered kicked the bucket this month, just to hammer down the notion that April this year sucked goat ball sacks.  But Darrell Sheets from Storage Wars apparently killed himself, with there being tremendous speculation that it came at the urging of a psychotic online bully stalker.

And although there wasn’t as much scandal behind a 91-year old man with dementia passing, Roger Sweet, the creator of He-Man passed as well, and this is one of those situations where there’s no hyperbole when I say a piece of my childhood just died, because I lived, died and breathed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe growing up, and it is truly sad to learn that that creator of such an iconic property of my childhood has left us.

Needless to say, this April has sucked colossally, and I’m relieved to see it nearing its end.  I try to not put too much stock into arbitrary windows of time, because there’s no guarantee May will be better than April for no other reason than it not being April anymore, but this past month has sucked so much that I’m willing to set my pessimism aside for just a little bit and hope that May doesn’t blow half as much as April of this year has.

More than anything, I just want my health back, and for my ear to stop ringing and to be able to hear like a normal functional adult again.  I feel like if I’m at least physically healthy, it will only help in enduring any other bullshit that might come along and is immediately made worse by my not feeling well.

I still want a re-do on my birthday though.  I haven’t opened any of the gifts I received yet, because I’ve been in such a negative headspace, that I don’t want the good intentions of any presents to be soiled by my negative headspace.

The poor Chick Fil-A recruiting class

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, there was a Chick Fil-A that then-mythical gf and I went to pretty regularly.  There was a guy that managed the place, who we called Sam; whether that was actually his name or not is irrelevant at this point, but Sam was one of those guys that had an explosively bubbly personality, was always smiling, always happy, and clearly had an 11 on his attribute slider when it came to people skills.

One time, he saw us in the drive-thru line and addressed the two of us by name, and after we had left, we had one of those collective moments that both found it a little weird that he clearly learned, us, and that we probably come by too often, to where it’s gotten to this point.

All the same, as slightly uncomfortable as it felt to be learned by Sam, there was no mistaking the fact that he ran a really tight ship, and this particular location was always firing on all cylinders.  The line moved fast, orders were almost never inaccurate, and the place had to be among the leaders or the region in terms of profit and satisfaction.

Any time mythical wife and I come across any sort of business, whether it’s another Chick Fil-A or not, where the customer service and general quality of employee performance seems below par, we often remark about how this place could use a Sam.  He’s basically become the measuring stick of effective leadership, regardless of it it’s in the fast food space or not.

Anyway, I’ve made no secret of my general love of the Chick Fil-A app, and locations that utilize an app-only lane.  The app is one of the greatest apps in the history of mobile application development, and I love how it gives me access to the app-only lanes of certain CFA locations, because fewer things in the world tickles my fancy than checking in with the app, and then bypassing at least five cars, slowly ordering and waiting in the pleeb line, multiplied only by how fast I get my food and am on my way versus how many cars are still waiting in pleeb class.

One of the greatest days of my fat guy life was when the CFA location that my house frequents the most, underwent renovations in order to implement a dedicated app lane.  Sure, when they re-opened, there were some growing pains and some training needing to be done by the restaurant and to the idiot customers, but eventually we got to a point where it became business as usual; I could whiz into the app lane, check in, pass by 3-7 pleebs in the old people manual ordering line, and be on my merry way.

However, over the course of the last contemporary school year, it has been noticed how ineffective the local CFA has become.  Long waits, frequency of inaccuracies rising.  It didn’t matter if I were using the app or not, the kitchen would get backed up and overwhelmed from what seemed like fairly predictable and busy periods that should be relatively easy to anticipate.  The app lane did very little to change things, and the gleeful text messages I’d send mythical wife of how many cars I passed in the pleeb lane were often replaced by frustrated texts detailing how long I’ve been waiting, and how generally annoyed I was feeling from this experience.

The coup de grace was when I was coming to pick up some food from the CFA, and I noticed that although the drive-thru still began with two lanes, with one of them being solely for app users, prior to reaching the pickup point, the lanes forcibly merge.  And in some cases, in a twist of irony, by the sheer nature of zipper merges, occasional pleebs who ordered with sticks, nuts and pebbles get to jump in front of the savvier app users, and conversely, few things annoy me as much as that.

Naturally, when inane bullshit like this begins to go tits up, I often ponder, how?  I began to think about how the whole school year, performance has been relatively on the lower-tier of output, and I concluded with the notion that my local CFA just simply had, a bad recruiting class. 

Much like in the same vein of when a college has a poor recruiting class, resulting in poor performance throughout the season, and an eventual sense of wanting this to be over with so that they can possibly retool and rebuild for the following year.

I suppose the people in my community and I have been taking for granted the general strong yearly performance of our local CFA, seeing as how when it’s actually bad, it’s really noticeable, but it’s still disheartening that they seem to operate much like a college program, where if you’re bogged down with marginal talent, you’re stuck with it until they all graduate out, and hopefully a more talented class takes their places afterward.

But make no mistake, the problems at my local CFA definitely stem from the fact that they had a very poor recruiting class for the 25-26 season, that can’t handle the kitchen, which in turns taxes the runners, which in turn slows down the drive thru lines, which unfortunately results in the deactivation of the app-only line in order to drop the general speed to something that the kitchen is capable of handling.

All I’m saying is, if Sam were in charge of this CFA location, none of this bullshit would even be a part of the discussion.

Every business out there, regardless of if it’s a Chick Fil-A or not, could only benefit from having a Sam of their own.