Tag: cashmoney

Completing the blet wall: time to get a new house

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What we have here, are the newest additions to my collection: blet #24 – the 2014 PG-era WWE World Heavyweight Championship, and #25 – the John Cena Spinner US Championship.

As has been the case with the last nine blets I’ve purchased, these have been primarily financed by money earned through doing online surveys.  Which is great in the sense that I haven’t used any of my earned income in order to purchase such frivolities, but when I write out that I’ve basically bought 11 blets, I’m trying not to add up the dollar amount and not wince at what maybe a little more productive or substantiative things I might’ve been able to have done with such a slice of coin but whatever no regrets

The thing is with #24, I never really thought about getting another WWE World Championship blet, since I had the Attitude-era winged eagle blet, but whether it’s just random blet itch scratching, or when I was happy when Big E won the championship, the idea of getting one didn’t seem that unappealing.  That’s sometimes all it really takes for me to want to get a blet; acceptance of a current holder, a good deal, or just plain wanting a new blet for the sake of getting a new one.

Also, I was sitting on a small cache of Amazon gift card and gift card codes, and instead of putting myself through the rigors of I don’t know what to spend this onnnnn, once I learned that WWE actually sells some things through Amazon, including blets, and makes them subject to Prime benefits, I knew what I would be saving up towards, instead of bullshit consumables like soaps and socks.  So once I hit the price threshold for a 2014 WWE World, I pulled the trigger and here we are.

The bigger story though, would be the John Cena US Spinner that I had long been waiting out.  For years, friends would “troll” me and tell me that my collection would never be complete if I didn’t have this blet, and truth be it, when it was actually on TV way back when, I wasn’t a fan of it.  I didn’t think it was cool for John Cena to be above everyone else and have his own edition of the historic United States championship, and I was up on a purist high-horse scoffing down on a spinner blet in the first place.

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It only took me 21 years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was a wee lad, obsessed with cars and Initial D, I wanted little else than a really fast Japanese car.  One to become a drifter with, or just plain go fast. 

Although Initial D shit on them, I really was fond of turbo-charged cars that were all-wheel drive.  Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions, Subaru Imprezas, Nissan Skyline GT-Rs, etc. Obviously the latter would never be available in America but I really would have liked to have gotten my hands on an Evo or an Impreza at some point in my life.

Well it’s been like 21 years since those days, but I’ve finally got my turbo-charged, AWD Japanese car.  A Mazda CX-9.

Not quite the same thing, huh?  But yet it does fall possess those variables I wanted when I was a kid.

Regardless, this is the culmination of my recent car search where I decided to capitalize on the fucked up car market, and upgrade to the larger car that my famiry will ultimately command, while the opportunity was hot.

Sure, most people are innately aware that car values are bloated like an HP computer out of the box, but at the same time trade-in values are also insane as well.  My new car’s MSRP is well north of $40,000 and more so due to current market bloat, but when I had my previous ride appraised, it was insanely high and that’s what got the wheels in motion.

Yes, all numbers were pretty all over the place, but I like to look at it from the perspective of the facts that I don’t think I would’ve been in a position of having nearly $9,000 in positive equity to put towards a new car in three years when my previous one would’ve been paid off.  Yes, the sticker price of my new car was a little bit bloated, but my total out-the-door cost was substantially lower than the MSRP of it, so I take solace in that above all else.

But most importantly, I’ve filled the anticipated need of having a large famiry vehicle for my famiry to grow into, as opposed to feeling progressively more and more cramped from my prior car as my kids grow and their needs evolve and they start amassing tons of shit.

And now I can make the dad-like jokes about how I have the AWD turbo car that I’ve been pining for, for over two decades.  Nobody has to know that it’s also 4,400 lbs and can seat seven.  Might as well be the Evo that beat Tiff Needell, even though he was cheating.

Figures

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Figures Freddie’s Freeman’s first Dodger home run comes against his former frugal fiscally fixated failure of a franchise that he was the face of.

No knock on Matt Olson; I’m sure he’s an okay dude, who is doing his job of starting off positively with the Braves, but I can’t help but feel it’s poetic looking at this picture of Freddie Freeman home run trotting past his replacement after hitting his first homer for the Dodgers.

Yes, I will be salty about this for a little while.

The Braves didn’t deserve Freddie Freeman, anyway

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: Braves’ Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman takes a second out of a game to share a moment of compassion and empathy for an opposing player with a hug and comforting words upon finding out that his dad had recently passed away

If people outside of Braves Country® were not that familiar with the kind of human being Freddie Freeman was, playing in big fuck you market Los Angeles will definitely help spread the word, of just how loveable and more or less perfect of a human being that he is.  It took all of what, 5-6 games into the season for Freddie Freeman to already get noticed for, being the Freddie Freeman who was the heart and face of the Atlanta Braves over the last decade?

Just like that, Freddie Freeman reminds everyone that baseball is still just a kid’s game, and that it’s okay to have fun, but also the importance of sportsmanship, humanity and just being a good person.

I haven’t followed baseball enough over the last few years, but I do know who Jose Iglesias is, primarily an elite glove guy, which at a premium position like shortstop is usually adequate to always have a job in the big leagues, but already my heart goes out to him, for hearing of the news of his father’s passing.

Freeman is no stranger to being everyone’s best friend, regardless of if they’re a teammate or not, and upon finding out about Iglesias’s dad, and his general reaction, he wasted no time in Freddie being Freddie, and offering up a hug and comfort, regardless of if it were an opponent.

This right here, is what Freddie Freeman brings to the table, regardless of his batting average, slash stats, WAR and other tangible evidence of baseball talent.  Aside from being a legitimate MVP-caliber player, he’s just a guy that gets the game of life, and that there are always things that are bigger than just baseball.

As for the Braves, they just didn’t deserve him.  Yes, I’ve read a lot of the scuttlebutt about how the whole thing transpired, and all the of the actual salt and fabricated sugar at the end of the journey.  But the reality is that the Braves really could’ve tried harder prior to free agency, but they didn’t, because they’re the Braves and everything the team does has to be fiscal this and shareholders that and it always boils down to money, in spite of the fact that baseball is a ridiculously lucrative venture that has revenues in the legitimate billions on a yearly basis.

No disrespect to Matt Olson, who is doing his job and starting his career with the Braves as the successor to Freddie Freeman pretty hot, but there’s not a single part of me that still wouldn’t wish to have Freddie Freeman on the team instead.  But the Braves couldn’t get over all the numbers swirling around Freddie, as far his age versus Olson’s age, the dollars, and the years asked for, and this is where we are as a result.  Short of winning a Roberto Clemente Award for exemplary citizenship, I can’t imagine there’s much Olson can do to replace all the intangible and little things that Freeman brought to the Braves for all his years.

I know it happens to every sports fan at some point(s) in their lives when they have to watch a beloved player go elsewhere, and sure the Braves are primed for potential success all the same, but losing Freeman, a guy I legitimately watched grow up with the team, all the way in the minor leagues, all the way to a World Series championship, that’s one that the sting is going to linger a long time.

lol baseball: paying for luck

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I saw some highlights from a Rays game where an outfielder was pitching, which meant that the score was already way out of hand, and the team just wanted to save the bullpen as well as have a little bit of fun.  I’m not sure if the guy was deliberately trying to make a mockery of pitching, but it was still interesting to watch his goofy forward leg kick push off the mound while he lobbed 46 mph lollipops.

And just a day later, the Braves were blowing out the Nationals so badly that the Nats sent Dee Gordon whom I had no idea was even on the Nationals now, to pitch.  And in one of the already iconic moments of the year, he accidentally plunked Travis d’Arnaud with a 52 mph soft pitch who flopped like a World Cup-level futbol player, bringing laughter, joy and entertainment to everyone who had seen it.

We’re not even 4-5 games into the season, and teams are already getting blown out to the point where position players are coming in to save the games, as in give us something to be entertained about, other than an embarrassingly lopsided score. 

lol baseball indeed.

The thing is, despite the fact that these position players are hurling these slow-ass meatballs, they are still accomplishing the job of keeping the game moving forward, and generating outs.  To some high-level logic, you’d think that Major League Baseball players, the supposed crème of the crop when it comes to baseball talent in the world, should have a field day with all these garbage pitches, and sometimes they do, but still, a lot of the time, the guys are still running into outs via groundballs or some hard-hit flyballs.

Like, I’m fairly confident that if I myself, took the mound at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and faced a prime Albert Pujols ten times, sure he’d probably knock six home runs off of me, but I’d probably still manage to get him to smash some hard hit grounders or flyballs and make four outs.  On the greatest player of a generation.

What I’m getting at is the reality that baseball is still a tremendously difficult sport, and no matter the level of skill an MVP-caliber player has, they’re still failing 70% of the time to not make an out, and when you see major leaguers going up against a hapless position player on the mound, this is where it’s more prevalent than ever just how much luck is still involved in playing baseball.

Launch angle, squaring up, weather, wind conditions, temperature, the stadium; there are so many variables involved when a batter swings the bat, that have nothing to do with playing baseball except they have everything to do with playing baseball, because they still have influence over the outcome of a ball in play.

Yet, the vast majority of Major League organizations pay out the nose for guys who might defy luck just a little bit more than their counterparts might.  I haven’t said much about the resolution to the strike, primarily because of time, but naturally I hit the nail on the head when it came to the obvious fact that it was all about rich assholes trying to make more money, in all parties involved.

Guys are paid for luck basically, which seems pretty sill in the grand spectrum of things.  Even the league minimum was raised to an absurd $700,000, so that means the last guy on the bench, who’s usually the worst hitter on a 25-28 man roster, is clearing more than half a million dollars to succumb to luck more than everyone else.  Bless this country for having so much wealth distribution to where shitty ballplayers can make more than medical heroes and world class educators.

But that’s baseball, and well, professional sports in general.  A bunch of guys living the dream, of being marginally better at not failing than other people, to where they can make gobs and gobs of money to play children’s games.

lol baseball indeed.

Morbius bad film??  How can that be??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker of the century: Morbius starring Jared Leto is not garnering favorable reviews

Who would’ve imagined that??  (Me)  That a film based on Morbius the Living Vampire, a D-class Spider-Man villain would have any modicum of success, especially in a film universe where it will have nothing to do with, Spider-Man?

I mean Jesus Christ, this was about as predictable as the internet exploding over Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars.  Anyone who had any inkling of idea of what these properties originated from, or even just followed comic books or movies in general probably knew that Morbius was a terrible idea from the start. 

It was the very definition of scraping the barrel looking for ideas to make into films, and someone over at Sony was probably like, “eh, who’s this Morbius guy?  He’s in Spider-Man, and he’s a vampire!  People like Spider-Man and maybe people are still into shit like Twilight, so let’s green light this!”  But having zero idea that Morbius is a fifth-rate villain and basically was more of a vehicle for Blade to come in than anything else.

Regardless, the project survived the pitch and concepting and actually came into fruition.  And to nobody’s surprise, the reviews are not doing so hot, and are currently at the time I’m writing this, on a historically bad pace, but again, it’s more surprising that gas prices have actually dropped below a leading 4, than finding out that Morbius is garbage.

In the past, I used to makes jokes about how I wouldn’t see this thing even if it were pirated, or I’d watch something pirated and state how I wanted my money back despite seeing it for free.  But with as little time I have these days, it would be a tremendous offense for me to even consider wasting any bit of my precious free time on a turd like Morbius.

But this post still must come to fruition to point out the obvious fact that I called this two years ago when it was announced, but Hollywood most certainly doesn’t let perception, facts or just plain bad ideas stand in their way of their pursuit for a buck here and there.

Just because it’s a Marvel property doesn’t automatically make it a key to the money printer.  And as more and more major properties get gobbled up by the film industry, there are bound to be more and more Morbius-shaped turds to come into existence in the future.  The bar appears to have been re-set by Morbius and it’s anyone’s guess to what the next shitty Marvel installment will be; but at least Jared Leto is off the table for a little while.

I’m sure this is going to go over very well

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a popular narrative that the National Football League is basically incapable of doing anything right.  And that the financial bulldozer that they ultimately still are, is completely in spite of the general lack of ethics, competent leadership and all of the just in general inability to not keep doing stupid shit.

Players want to celebrate touchdowns and look like they’re having fun?  Those are penalties.  A player who is on injured inactive status wants to bet on some football games?  That’s an exiling.  But multiple players who were caught, have video evidence, or were found guilty of domestic violence?  2-4 game suspension.  A Muslim player kneels after a touchdown?  Penalty.  Tim Tebow kneels after scoring a touchdown?  Hero.

I mean, the list can go on for an embarrassingly long time, regardless of the fact that the NFL is a veritable money printer.  Regardless of the fact that I don’t have the time to indulge in as much sports as I used to or liked to, the NFL doesn’t exactly make itself particularly compelling or attractive to want to pay any attention to, even if I had the capacities to.

Recently, the NFL made a public amendment to what has been called the Rooney Rule, which was already basically the NFL’s version of Affirmative Action, where teams are basically PR strong-armed into having minorities somewhere on the coaching staff.  And up until this amendment, just about every person of color ends up being a defensive coordinator, which depending on the reputation of the team, might either be a really important role, or a really insignificant one.

But the amendment states basically, that a minority must be added to the offensive staff, and also now includes that women can be implemented in order to fulfill these obligated positions.

So just like that, the NFL has basically admitted that defensive coordinators are mostly patsy positions, and that they’ve been stashing all of their mandatory minorities in them.  And now they’re trying to rectify it, as well as backhand placate women, by amending the Rooney Rule, to include more minorities and/or women onto the more glamorous offensive side of coaching.

Already, the public acknowledgment of all this is embarrassing enough, but because the NFL can’t do anything right, I can already see what’s going to happen: a whole lot of bogus bullshit positions are going to magically materialize, and they’re going to immediately be filled by minorities and/or women.  Or, there will be some team that’s extra ambitious, and fill them with black women, and go for that double whammy of Rooney Requirements:

  • Head Quarterback Football Asset Return Specialist (ball boy or girl)
  • Running Backs Nutrition Management Coach (personal chef)
  • Receivers’ Public Relations Coach (social media manager)

By labeling these with specific offensive positions, they’re now parts of the offensive coaching staffs, meant to fulfill the Rooney Rule.  And make no mistake, as hyperbolic and snarky as some of these things might appear for the sake of being brog material, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if we see some surreptitiously new coaching titles start to appear on the coaching staffs of teams in the very near future.