Tag: old man

Waynesboro, Virginia, the land where professional wrestling stood still

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I recently went to an indy wrestling show out in the sticks of Virginia.  Waynesboro, to be exact.  This was actually the impetus for a trip I made in order to spend some time with my family, since I frankly don’t really spend nearly enough time with them.

The decision to go to this show was really quite an easy one, because when it first came onto my radar, Juventud Guerrera was listed to be on the card, among a pretty star-studded guest list, especially for an indy show as this one was; guys like Sting, Lex Luger, Vader, Ron Simmons, and the Rock ’n Roll Express were also slated to be at this show.

But as legendary as some of those guys are, I have this ironic love for the weird, and the jobbers, and the guys that don’t get nearly the credit they deserve, like Juventud Guerrera.  Plus, I really wanted a Juvi mask to essentially complete my collection of luchador masks on my shelf, since the Juice is somehow considered “too old” in Mexico itself, to have his masks for sale on the streets of la Playa del Carmen. Without question, Juvi was really the only reason that I wanted to go to this show at all.

So plans were made, flights were purchased, tickets were acquired, and I was on my way back to Virginia for a long weekend of family, friends and Juvi Juice.  I was looking forward to it greatly.

And then as the show neared, I went to the promotion’s website to refresh my memory of what else was in store; and noticed that Juventud’s profile was no longer a part of the promotional banner.  To make matters worse, all mention of Juvi was gone from the site.  My friend messaged them on Facebook, but because they’re a yokel backwater promotion, they never responded, but all signs were pointing to the idea that Juventud was no longer going to be a part of it.

“Card subject to change” is one of the bigger tropes of the business, and because professional wrestling is full of flakes and bums, it’s the thing said to easily Mentos out of just about any sort of card changing, like Juventud Guerrera not being a part of it.  Unfortunately for those of us outside of the business, the real world doesn’t work as conveniently as the scripted one inside of it.  I still had plane tickets and vacation time punched out at work.  Juvi or no Juvi, I was still going to be going to this show, disappointed as hell that I wouldn’t get to meet the Juice and pick up la maskara for the colleccíon.

Oh yeah and Vader died, so that was another blow to the card that was going to be hard to cover up.

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Man, the League scene has certainly changed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It might sound like something that might’ve never happened, but I haven’t played League of Legends in nearly a month.  While mythical gf was out of the country, I spent most of that time doing little projects around the house to try and surprise her with some cosmetic changes here and there, and because I was on permanent dog duty that whole time, I didn’t feel good about hiding out in my office playing League for hours for the sake of the dogs.

I don’t really miss it, or have any anxiety at not having earned any IP blue essence in that time; considering that among my friends I’m the only one who’s been the closest to having been the most regular player, it’s easier to have walked away, considering I haven’t been leaving anyone behind in the process.

But I don’t intend on staying away, since ultimately I still did enjoy the game, it’s just that I found other things to do with my spare time than play League, but until that time comes, it’s almost been a full month since the last time I queued up on the Abyss, and there are sure to have been a hundred little tweaks and changes that will blindside me the next time I log in.

However, as long as it’s been since I last played, it’s been nearly triple that, that I’ve paid any attention to the League esports scene.  It’s funny to think that like 2-3 years ago, I was really into the weekly standings and looking up videos and recaps afterwards, to get the condensed action minus all the mundane boring farming and laning phases of the games, and I’d care about who was on top in NA, all the way to trying to figure out what darkhorse secondary region was doing what.

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They were never uncool, you hipster douches

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
full disclosure, this is a 2020 photo, since I left photo direction on the original word doc, which explains my quarantine hair that’s all white.

Impetus: Instagram losers start community dedicated to photos taken with older digital cameras, claiming they’re cool again; but the question is, were they ever uncool in the first place?

It’s articles like this disenchant me from photography.  Some arrogant photography snobs on the internet dictate on what’s cool and what’s not, and thousands of idiot sheep with no capability of independent thought buy in, and because perception is reality, it perpetuates this cycle where others fall in place, and suddenly things are cool, and things are uncool at the drop of a hat. 

For lack of a better term in context of the related link, I’ll go ahead and call them digicams: portable, brick-sized-or-less, point-and-shoot cameras.  Not DSLRs, the big, clunky cameras with detachable lenses that cost more than car payments, or any other cameras that act like Polaroids without actually being called Polaroids.

But anyway, there’s apparently an Instagram community dedicated to photography shot on old digicams, and how they’re declaring that they’re cool again.  Leading me to beg the question, when were they ever uncool in the first place?

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Back in my day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this article about parents who not only encourage their children to get good at Fortnite, but they’re actually paying “tutors” to “coach” them to become better at it, and I’m not entirely quite sure how I feel about it.  In one hand, we have a microcosm of how much the world has changed in which video games aren’t just more accepted than they used to be, gaming itself has become a viable occupation for people to strive for and a platform in which real, legitimate earnings can be made through.  But in the other hand, we have the basically the direct antithesis of the ideals and mentalities that people in my generation and older grew up through, where gaming was a waste of time, source of rotting for brains, and a definitive negative influence on our lives.

After reading this article, the question that popped into my head that I’ll probably query people on theFacebook about is whether they’d wish if they were a kid today, where video games are accepted and viable career options, but the world around them is psychotic, we live in a borderline police state, and school shootings are almost a reoccurring lottery in which one unlucky school seems to get chosen every few months for a tragedy.  Or, if they were content with the lives past lived, where video games were frowned upon by our parents, but we still played them anyways, and the world was slightly less psychotic and was for lack of a better term, safer.

All I can think of is that if I were a kid in today’s world, my parents would probably very much encourage my gaming habits, especially since it’s already been demonstrated, primarily in Korea, just how lucrative video gaming careers could possibly get.  Instead, I grew up in the 80s when Atari and Nintendo invented basically cancer machines that distracted, deviated and held back appropriate childhood upbringing, and was blamed for just about every negative behavior that children could possibly exhibit.

I remember reading in like GamePro or EGM, an interview by a Street Fighter II pro, that may or may not have been Justin Wong.  They talked about how they had a manager, and how they practiced SF2 for 3-4 hours a day, and all I could think about was if my mom found out I played video games for 3-4 straight, she would yell at me and tell me to go read a book.  No, this is precisely what occurred when I first got my Super Nintendo and was playing Super Mario World non-stop from when she went to work and came home, and I was in exactly the same place, still playing.

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Contrary to Cobra Kai logic

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The best defense is not always more offense.  Sometimes the best defense, is actually defense.

Now if you told me that the Houston Rockets lost to the Golden State Warriors by 41 points, I’d have just kind of gone ‘meh.’  Everyone gets blown out by the Golden State Warriors these days, and seldom are there any final scores that aren’t a 1-2 point nail-biter or a 20+ point blowout.  The Memphis Grizzlies lost a game by 61 points earlier this year, so 41 sounds like a tight contest in comparison.

But add in the fact that this happened in the Western Conference Finals and that the Houston Rockets were the #1 seed getting throttled by the #2 Warriors, and now it’s (sort of) worth talking about how pathetic the NBA is once again.

The Rockets and Warriors aren’t just the #1 and #2 in the Western Conference, they’re pretty much the #1 and #2 teams in all of the NBA.  The Boston Celtics are somehow managing to win and play well in spite of all their injuries, and the Cleveland Cavaliers are where they are because they’re always at this point every year mostly on the sheer will of LeBron James, but neither is remotely a threat to the championship.

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Cobra Kai was good, but can only go downhill from here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first heard news about Cobra Kai, I cringed.  The phrases “spin-off” and “reboot” have become so frequent and so often yielding in sub-satisfactory product, that I’ve become somewhat sensitive and triggered whenever I hear them.  Worse, when they’re attached to a property I’ve loved for nearly my entire life, The Karate Kid franchise.  I felt immediate dread and a grave concern that The Karate Kid was next in line to become bastardized by the Hollywood machine that feels the need to bilk and ruin everything that was once successful, in order to attempt to cash in on nostalgia, and feast upon the wallets of the past, in the present.

The pessimistic feelings intensified when I heard that the show had been green lit, and then was actually in production.  And then the press releases emerged with actual drop dates and that it was going to be a YouTube:RedTube exclusive, and the reality started to sink in that this was actually going to happen.  I avoided all teasers and preview trailers, and tried to unsee whenever I caught any glimpses of any promotional materials, because frankly I didn’t want to accept that Cobra Kai was actually going to happen.

A friend of mine began telling me how pumped up he was that the show was coming, and how it was going to get him to actually pay actual money in order to get a RedTube subscription so that he could watch it.  When I said that I didn’t really want to watch it, he called me a hipster that was being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and that I should be more open minded.  I leveled with him, and told me that if he legitimately thought it was good, then I would give it a chance, but his judgment would be on the line if that were to be the case.

When the show dropped, my friend started texting me about how good it was.  It’s easy to get caught up in the early episodes, but I didn’t want to watch something that was going to disappoint me in the long haul.  The texts kept coming, spoiling some non-essential situational plot points that admittedly intrigued me.  And then the next day, I get a text detailing how tired he was at work, because he had stayed up to just watch the whole series.  Then my brother texts me asking me if I’d started watching yet. 

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I didn’t know they lasted this long

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fun fact: my first ever job, as in real W-2 actual paycheck with taxes deducted from it job, was at a Bertucci’s, as a bus boy.  I had just gotten my license, so I was told to get a job immediately, and considering that I wanted money, I was more than willing to comply.  I applied just about everywhere, and Bertucci’s was the place that pretty much hired me first, so it was there did I get my feet wet in the official working world.

I learned about Friday dinner rushes, shitty management, asshole servers who lied about their tip reporting in order to short the tip out to the bussers, that dishwashing paid better than bussing and kept you away from the customers, and that in the food service industry it’s everyone versus management amid the patrons.

It was similar to Waiting… the film, long before the film ever came to fruition.  Despite the fact that I knew how often they lied on their tip declarations, thus screwing me out of my share of tips, I had a decent relationship with several of the servers, one of whom died while I was working there from a hard-living life of alcohol and obesity while not at work (he fell down some stairs to his death).  But we all hated the managers, Larry (the Fairy (he wasn’t gay (I think)), just kind of fruity) and the asshole assistant manager named Enio who blatantly tried to short peoples’ pay, probably stole tips, and was just generally a piece of shit, and it was through this unity that made work not suck all the time.

Either way, I worked there for three months, saving up money for Anime Expo 1998, and then the Sunday before I left for California, I got a frantic phone call from Larry the Fairy, demanding that I come in to work, despite not being on the schedule.  At the time, I was sharing a car with my sister, and she had it and was out, not to mention that I didn’t want to fucking work on a day I wasn’t scheduled for, so I explained that I had no car, and thus could not come in.  Larry the Fairy yelled that I needed to come in regardless and hung up on me, and I shrugged and sat back down at my computer and didn’t go in to work.

Two weeks later, I rolled into Bertucci’s for my Saturday shift, and didn’t see my name on the calendar, or any other future dates.  I asked Larry the Fairy what was up, and he brusquely told me that my no-showing my unscheduled demand to come to work was interpreted as my resignation from employment.  I kind of scrunched my brow, but remembered that working at Bertucci’s absolutely blew and just said “okay,” went into the office to get my last paycheck, and walked out without any shits left to give.

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