Tag: cashmoney

WWEShop fail

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In 2000, the WWE changed from the WWF to the WWE because the World Wildlife Fund out in Europe kept suing them over the acronym WWF, or something along those lines, I don’t really care to cross-research the whole story in order to sound smart.  Either way, the WWE ran this whole campaign for about a month afterward, where they showed all these bumpers about how the WWE was “getting the F out” on a sophomoric play on words, but also literally, explaining that they were eliminating the F from the company’s name effective immediately.

Well, if it were up to me, I’d like to give the WWE their F back, mostly as it pertains to WWEShop.com, because their selection of replica title belts, fucking fails.

Despite the fact that the number of championship belts in my collection continues to grow and mythical wife continues to ask me how many more belts I need, there’s one belt in particular that I would really like to get my hands on: an NXT UK Tag Team championship belt.  It’s the one belt in all of NXT UK that I like the most, and it would kind of put a nice cap on my collection of NXT belts in general, as I have the NXT Championship, the NXT North American Championship, and the NXT UK Tag would represent the one tag title for the NXT brand outright.

But for whatever reason, the WWE and WWEShop have yet to make the NXT UK Tag Team championship belt available in their shop of replica belts.  As it stands right now, it is the only active championship belt in all of the WWE that they are not selling replicas of currently, and I don’t really know why.  The excuse of it being the newest belt doesn’t apply anymore, since the WWE introduced the 24/7 Championship, which once R-Truth isn’t in the picture holds any importance, but WWEShop is selling replicas of it already.

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The week of new shit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t want to hijack my swan song for my former Kia, but I don’t think I could’ve made it more obvious that I got a new car earlier this week.  A 2019 Mazda CX-5 is what my ride will be  hopefully for the next decade or so, and I’m really hoping that me having this car from the very start will exorcise and wash away the demons of the rotten chicken lemon I had years ago that also happened to be a Mazda. 

I’m confident in my capabilities as a car owner to take good care of this car, and considering it was purchased fully knowing that it will also be a kid taxi throughout the vast majority of its life, I am hoping to be as satisfied and sad when I unload it in hopefully a decade, as I was with my previous Kia.

During the car search, it really turned out to be a two-horse race between the Mazda CX-5 and the Hyundai Tucson.  Both cars fell into the specific criteria that I was looking for, but in the end, it turned into a game of price as well as perception.  And as good of a car that I think the Tucson would’ve made, the CX-5 just felt a little more high-end and aesthetically refined, and when the day was over, Hyundai had already rolled out their 2020 vehicles, whereas Mazda was still selling 2019s, so in this instance, the Korean car was actually a little more expensive than the Japanese maker.

Either way, I am excited to have a new car again, and it’s always a fun time whenever I hop into my vehicle that still has the new car smell, and ease my way on the roads, getting used to the feel and size of a larger vehicle, and the thoughts of all the future potential it’ll be used for in the years to come.

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A car manufacturer’s reputation is only as good as their product’s owners

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After nearly ten full years, I’ve said goodbye to my Kia Forte.  It’s still a little bittersweet at the time I’m writing this, in spite of the excitement of having a new car after nearly ten years.  But with a sliver under 150,000 miles, degrading brakes, a baby on the way, and just the fact that I simply wanted a new, larger vehicle, I felt that the time was right for me to make a switch.

I wanted to capitalize on being in a position to where I had the luxury of time to do research, test drive multiple cars, and play a little bit of negotiation, as well as have the ability to sit on the bench and wait things out if things weren’t looking promising.  I wasn’t as fortunate the last time I was in the market for a car, but things still worked out well for me, seeing as how it was then in which I drove off in my Forte, and it served me extremely well over the last 9+ years.

But the point of this entire post was that I wanted to give an appropriate swan song for my former car, because throughout their entire existence, Kia has often been perceived as a below-average car manufacturer, but seeing as how I just traded in one that had nearly 150,000 miles on it, never had any mechanical problems, and where I did pretty much no maintenance other than oil changes and new tires whenever they were needed, I can confidently vouch for the quality of Kia cars, and can proudly say that I owned one for the better part of a decade.

When I was in the market last, I was in a pretty bad situation.  I had a lemon of a Mazda that I still owed money on, but I was fed up to hell repairing it and willing to punt on the rest of the financing just to be free of it and have a car that was just plain reliable.  I wasn’t working full-time and was still in my life of freelance, so I couldn’t afford to get something that I’d risk being unable to pay the financing on it, so I had to accept the fact that I probably wouldn’t be getting a dream car or anything of the such this time around, and that I just needed something that could be relied upon.

The Ford Fiesta was actually my top pick going into my search back then, but I told myself to drive anything and everything that was in my limited budget, and put aside all previous stereotypes and perceptions, and think of the greater good of getting a reliable car.  I took a weekend day to go to a part of town that had a large number of dealerships, and I went on a spree test driving cars.  Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, Chevy Cobalt, whatever was a compact car that I could make the numbers work.

Eventually, I found a Ford dealership that had a Fiesta that was also a stick shift, and I looked forward to getting in and taking it for a whirl.  But from the moment I sat down, my expectations were immediately souring.  The seats felt small and cheap, and the interior was cheap-looking, plasticky, and everything I touched from the console to the door handle felt shoddy and sub-par.  When I took the car off the lot, I shift from feel and sound, and I realized that I was revving to like 5,500 rpm before shifting, because the car just had no power and needed that much juice in order to get moving.  There was a lot of body roll, and the brakes felt soft and uninspired, and frankly I was ready to get the fuck off the lot when I was done with this.

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Oh Atlanta #886

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Kroger grocery stores in select (read: predominantly black) Metro Atlanta areas have implemented enclosed aisles in order to reduce theft; shoppers feel the motivation behind them are racist

Kudos to CBS46 for such a captivating screen grab that made this so easy to get sucked in.  But yeah, shoppers accusing Kroger for making them shop “in cages,” because these particular stores are in predominantly black areas, totally legit motivation.

It’s kind of funny to me the sheer persecution complexes of the people who are complaining about having to shop in enclosures.  And while I don’t disagree that the optics are poor, and it does suck when you’re a law-abiding citizen, having to suffer the indignity of having to shop inside a cage because of the shitheads that steal, when the day is over, Kroger and any other business with the goal of making money, are going to make choices that protect profit, over slighting anyone’s collective feelings.

But I’m going to go ahead and take the side of Kroger in this situation, and deem the whole allegations of racism as bullshit baloney.  Kroger isn’t trying to be racist as much as it’s more likely that they’re acting on statistics and numbers; it’s unfortunate that there’s a strong correlation between high theft and the stores that are in predominantly black neighborhoods, but if the numbers say that enclosures are necessary to implement, they’re going to implement them, regardless of the demographic of the area.

If there were high theft rates in Kroger stores in Peachtree City or Roswell, you better believe Kroger would implement the enclosures in those stores, and make Karen, Susan and Carl shop inside cages too.  It just so happens to be the case that the stores in South Fulton, Forest Park and Covington have the theft rates that warrant implementing the enclosures in those particular stores.

So everyone mouthing off about how Kroger is being racist needs to stfu and take a minute to understand why there are enclosures in their stores instead of knee-jerk whipping out race cards and expecting anyone to give a shit.  The numbers are all that matter, and the only color that influences any decision is green.

Hoarders: office leftovers edition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout my career, I’ve worked primarily in office environments.  After around 20 years of this kind of professional lifestyle, it’s safe to say that I’ve been inside of them to know that if you’ve worked in one, you’ve kind of worked in all of them.  Otherwise, shows like The Office or movies like Office Space don’t exist, because anyone’s who’s ever been in office life can immediately relate.

One of the more fascinating sociological observations there are in an office environment is the introduction of communal food; namely the inevitable leftovers that typically occur, because in most cases, office environments almost always end up with more food than there are people capable of eating it all.  Typically, in most places I’ve been, leftovers are often times placed in a break room or somewhere publicly communal, and then some admin sends a wide-reaching mass email to notify everyone that there’s free food leftover.  Cue the chargers.

My current workplace is no exception to this practice.  If anyone on my floor has any sort of catering, the leftovers are often put in the breakroom and the floor admin emails the whole floor to let all teams know that there’s free food available, and then the same people stampede en masse to pick at the remains, and even worse, there are some who simply just collect and hoard, effectively denying those who might actually want to eat immediately.

The thing is, my current workplace is a gargantuan office campus, so there are tons of floors potentially doing the same thing on any given day.  It’s gotten to the point where there’s a Slack channel dedicated to people all sharing information on where there are leftovers somewhere on the campus, prompting people to be going to some odd and unrelated to their jobs corners of the property in order to get some free leftovers.

But among these level-5 scavengers are the aforementioned hoarders who don’t just go hunting for leftovers, but like they do on their own floor, go to hoard and save them, for later consumption.  It’s these particular people that serve as the impetus to this post, because as I’m sure everyone’s seen the office scavengers in their own respective offices, I have to wonder how many people have come across such office hoarders, who go around hunting for leftovers not just for instant gratification, but for preparation for future meals on a larger scale.

Case in point, these particular individuals go as far as to have a stockpile of Tupperware, saran wraps and aluminum foil in their desks, with the intent of hoarding leftover food from around the campus.

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When the venue becomes more notorious than the team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apple News seems to know to look more for stories that have the capability to entertain instead of just depress me with the shitty way the world is.  That being said, I came across this story about how the American Airlines Arena in Miami were foregoing their partnership with the venue, and that the naming rights for the building were up for grabs.  And among the numerous companies that would love to slap their name on a building and be THE home of the Miami Heat, one rose to the top of the heap, in terms of intrigue, interest and sheer entertainment potential.

Bang Bros, the pornographic website, has apparently put together a very serious proposal and ponied up a ten million dollar bid in order to acquire the rights to the venue, hoping to name the place the Bang Bros Center.  To which it doesn’t take a 17-year old to realize that that would make it the BBC, which most certainly doesn’t represent the acronym for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Needless to say, despite the fact that there is probably a 100% chance this will never happen, no matter how seriously and legitimately Bang Bros presents their proposal, I have to say that this one of the more funny and classic attempts for a pornographic company trying to crawl out of the dark and dirty recesses of the internet and into something physical and tangible, and in this case, really, really huge.

The funny thing to me is that there aren’t a ton of cities that could probably be more likely to get away with smut like this, but I’d have to put Miami up there as one that could.  It’s a city full of vapid and superficial people, a ton of men and women who look like they’d be in Bang Bros’s library somewhere, and the general culture of Miami is pretty loose and probably where a ton of porn is shot anyway.  And the majority of people who go to Heat games are probably a more concentrated sample of the culture, considering the ludicrous price of going to NBA games, and that they’re places for people to show off more than actually watch basketball.

But of course this isn’t going to happen.  No city in their right mind would sell out their treasured sports venue to a pornographic website, no matter how much money they’d offer up.  Primarily due to antiquated beliefs like “for the kids” and general integrity, and not just the fact that aside from Bang Bros, there are probably other, more boring and square companies with deep pockets are probably more than willing to +$1 anything Bang Bros comes to the table with.

But let’s be real here; there is a rare opportunity in this where a venue could become way more newsworthy than the team(s) that play in it.  Like, it wouldn’t matter if the Miami Heat had the 1992 Dream Team starting or the shitty roster called Team USA that just lost two straight international games, the product on the court wouldn’t come close to garnering the attention that the name outside the building would.  And in that regard, that’s about the greatest blessing a franchise could possibly want, where it wouldn’t matter if the Heat had to hit the ceiling of the salary cap or not, people would still show up to the BBC, just because all dudes and their bimbo dates just want the kick of going to a place called the BBC.

Shit, even I’d considering actually going back down to Miami and foregoing a baseball game for a night, just so I could go to the BBC and take a hundred sniggering Boooker T mugshot face selfies, just so I could boast on social media and/or my brog about how I visited the BBC.  And surely, I can’t be the only dude on the planet that would feel the same way.

As far as I’m concerned, the fact that this is all but guaranteed to fall through, seems like one of the more tragic decisions of foregoing great profitability in the name trying to operate business with a modicum of integrity.  Last time I checked, I didn’t realize those things were so mutually exclusive.

Not surprising, but still sad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I found out recently that the Hooters Casino & Hotel in Las Vegas is going under, and I can’t help but feel a little melancholy at the thought of that.  It was definitely not the most glitzy and must-see destination of all of the Las Vegas casinos, but it was still one of the casinos that seemed like it might actually have some staying power, based on its fairly decent location at the south end of the Strip and just the general fact that they were Hooters, a company powered primarily on one of the staples of Las Vegas’s commerce: boobs.

Then again, the south end of the Strip hasn’t always been that advantageous, especially looking at the sad state of properties like the Tropicana, Excalibur, and the revolving door of identities that Hooters was before it was Hooters, and it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that even the mighty titty-centric Hooters is even failing.  Especially considering that in comparison to the many casinos that employ go-go dancers and lingerie dealers, Hooters’ signature uniforms have become somewhat tame and daresay conservative, and their business model has grown stale in a city that’s always changing, in the name of making money.

It was a few years ago in which I went to Hooters last, when mythical wife was still mythical gf and it was her first trip out to Las Vegas ever.  We were staying at the neighboring MGM Grand, so we wandered over to Hooters, just so she could get the full gamut of casinos, seeing as how the night prior, we had wandered around through bougie joints like the Cosmopolitan, Aria and City Center, so now it was an opportunity to see some of the more tired and less-than-glamorous joints.  And walking into Hooters, it was the very definition of tired and defeated, with carpets that looked like they haven’t been changed since 2000, the odor of stale cigarettes, defeat and desperation, and barely any dealers working the floor.  Granted, it was a little earlier in the day, but it was still kind of a reminder of the harsh reality that not everything in Las Vegas is glitz and glamour.

Ultimately, it’s of no consequence to me that Hooters Casino & Hotel is getting shut down, because I’ve only ever stayed there once, and I don’t always go there whenever I go out to Vegas.  When the day is over, the emotion I feel is mostly based on the simple fact that it’s a change to something that I’d grown accustomed to, and there’s no secret that change itself is one of the chief evokers of emotion these days.

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