Tag: PF

I’m kind of in Sports Illustrated

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And here I thought that I wouldn’t have anything to write about today.  A few weeks ago, I volunteered to write a review for a Sports Illustrated article about ballpark foods, with my task being a brief blurb of Turner Field’s Hammerin’ Hank sandwich.

Being the wordy, long-winded writer I tend to be, my original submission ended up being four paragraphs, explaining the rationale behind chicken and waffles, the greatness of Hank Aaron, and the slightly egregious price of the sandwich itself.  I was politely asked to reduce my blurb, and I ended up narrowing it down to a single paragraph.  But apparently that was still a little much too in the end, and it was apparently reduced to the above-seen cherry-picked sentence in the end.

No worries though, because I’m just glad to have my name appear in Sports Illustrated.  Not that I expect it to actually make it into any print edition or anything, but it’s still a small pleasing achievement for a sports geek like myself, and I’m also pleasantly glad to see a lot of familiar colleague names from other teams’ blogs doing similarly for their home parks.

Since there is a part of me that’s a little dissatisfied with the shortness of my published work, I feel it is an obligation to myself to share the real words behind the review.

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This is a story about a girl

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I sit down to write, and I am aware that it is a volatile state of mind in which I do so.  I brog a fairly open glimpse into the happenings of my life, for whom, I am not quite sure.  I do not know if four people read my site on a regular basis, or if it there are fifty, or if there are a hundred.  Mostly, I do this for myself, because it’s something I picked up in 2001, and after this much time of fairly regular writing, I just can’t bring myself to ever stop completely.  It’s like a pet, that no matter what, I can’t neglect it, even if it pisses me off.

For those of you who actually do read my writing, and have had difficulty reading in between the lines, here is a brief summary: a girl showed up on my long-dormant radar, there was a spark, a brief period of burning, and then it was subdued; and slowly suffocated.  And today, eight weeks later, extinguished.

And writing about it seems like a good idea, for some reason.  This is one thing I’m doing to cope with it, and move on.

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The Kung Fu Kid vs. The Karate Kid

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At first, I had wanted nothing to do with the idea of Will Smith using his influence and pull to recreate one of the greatest movies of all time, in The Karate Kid, but using his own kid as the titular role. And then when the premise of the plot was butchered to where instead of being in the United States, but instead China, I was a little beside myself; obviously from the get-go anyone with half a brain knows that it’s no longer karate. I thought the idea for the film was utter crap. However, that ended up changing somewhere down the line.

And that was when I found out that Jackie Chan was the actor chosen to essentially be “The Mr. Miyagi” of the film, and then suddenly, my tune began to change real quick. I’m a huge admirer of Jackie Chan, not just for the entertainment of all his acting, acrobatics, and martial arts, but I really admire the guy’s intelligence. He speaks so many different languages, has a massive fanbase both in the United States as well as Asia, and there’s something about the guy that seems genuine and that he truly puts himself into all his roles. With him as part of the flick, suddenly the movie didn’t seem like it could be that bad.

In conclusion? I was right. The Kung Fu Kid wasn’t bad at all . . . Mostly because pretty much, we’ve already seen the entire movie before. (Potential spoilers, plot summaries ahead)

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The swan song of Miss Racial Profiler

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Dear Miss Racial Profiler,

It is my last day on assignment, so I do not feel any remorse for this approach.  But if you thought your weak verbal apology was sufficient for your blatantly ignorant assumption that I was delivering food menus to the hotel because I am Asian, then you are horribly mistaken. You should, and I hope you are ashamed of yourself.  You have no idea how offended I was by your ignorance.  People like YOU disgust me.

And such is the culmination of what turned out to be pretty fun last few days.  The yellow sheet of paper actually has those words written on it.  I could’ve taken the high road and not done any of this, but it’s too good of a story to pass up. This’ll be the last mention of the racial profiler story . . .  I hope.

Turnabout is fair play

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This car belongs to the woman whom a few days ago decided that she was going to falsely accuse me of being some minimum-wage working chink Uncle Tom who went around hotels, delivering Chinese food menus to hapless hotel rooms.  Racially profiling me because I’m Asian and carrying a black messenger bag does not automatically mean that I am all of the above.

Needless to say, I am not a person that easily offended, but I was pretty offended, disappointed, and bothered by the very real instance of profiling thrown in my direction.  And this is how I deal with it.

She wanted to take a picture of my car to report, so it’s only fair that I return the favor.  She gets off lucky in the fact that I only report it as mindless, brogging content, instead of attempting to accuse me of solicitation (Although I’m sure a woman has been on the news within the last seven minutes/hours/days for committing a crime that I could falsely accuse her of doing). Normally, I’m courteous enough to blur/marquee out license plate information, but I absolve from such courtesies in this instance.  Now granted, I don’t think there’s anyone who reads my brog who has the DMV powers to pinpoint identify whom this car belongs to, let alone visits my site, but I simply like the idea of putting out in plain sight, that “the person who drives this Acura 3.5RL with Virginia tags is an ignorant person.”

What happened to me today? Oh, just a little racial profiling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So today I was leaving work today, already feeling a hair disappointed, and I notice this African-American woman getting into her own car.  She’s staring at me, but I don’t think anything of it.  I sit down in my car, and fire up the ignition, and in my peripheral vision, I see movement in my rear-view mirror, and suddenly the lady is standing behind my car, evidently taking a picture of my car, likely the plates.

I quickly get out of my car and say “excuse me.”  No response.  Oh, this better be good.  “Hello?”  No response.  “HEY.  Can I know why you took a picture of my car?”

“Weren’t you the one delivering menus in the hotel?”

Oh, I get it!  The Chinaman, despite wearing a dress shirt, and pin-striped slacks, like 90% of the people in my work complex, is obviously in disguise, to deliver Chinese food menus in the hotel also in the complex!

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