Tag: eulogy

Happy Trails, Bobby

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ESPN: Legendary Braves manager, Bobby Cox, passes away at the age of 84

As the years passed, long after his retirement in 2010, occasionally I did have the thought of this eventuality, when Bobby Cox would one day leave us; usually whenever he’d pop up sporadically throughout the years, be it as the novelty guest manager for an exhibition game, or just appearing at the ballpark for some special occasion.  But Bobby Cox was no exception to the rule of Father Time, and as his age continued to rise, it was always a matter of when and not if, and curiosity on how the sports world would receive the sad news.

And now, that hypothetical has become reality, and at the age of 84, Bobby Cox has sadly passed away, leaving a void in the hearts of Braves fans, and to varying degrees, fans of baseball, fans of sport, and the people of Atlanta who had a modicum of local pride to the Braves that repped them.

Naturally, I am very sad to hear this as well, at 84, it can’t be said that it was too soon, and he lived quite the full life, but still it’s sad to hear that ‘ol Bobby has finally left the party.  In a way, he was kind of like everyone’s dad, who grew up watching the Braves, and not just to the players themselves. 

I’m not going to wax too much poetic and recite a lot of the same statistics and career numbers that anyone can read about on the countless other obituaries that are already posted all over the internet, but I was always amused at the fact that he had been ejected from nearly an entire regular season’s worth of games (158).  Although I definitely recall a few times where he trudged out of the dugout to get in the face of an umpire, what I always remembered more were the times where TV cameras and mics don’t necessarily pick up what he’s saying, but we just see the umpire react and throw out his finger and send Bobby off, without anyone but commentators really knowing what was being said.

But that’s what Bobby did, he got his ass tossed out of games, always in defense of his boys.  He was this totem of steady respect and support, and I like to imagine Braves fans everywhere wished for the levels of support and sticking up for his team from their own parents as Bobby did for his players throughout his entire career, and imagined how much better life could be if they did.

What was always amazing to me was how Bobby Cox seemed to be immune to the criticism, from even the most staunch and stubborn of newer baseball fans who prioritized statistics and analysis over the old school, touch-and-feel managing style that Bobby Cox exercised, and what made Bobby, Bobby.  Sure, there would be some grumblings of critique over some of his old school game tactics, but at the same time, nobody would complain when he’d get a feeling, and suddenly Brooks Conrad is hitting a pinch-hit home run of the go-ahead variety and the Braves would win a nailbiter.

I think one of my favorite memories of Bobby was when it was somewhere in between 2011 and 2013, but he would emerge out of retirement at the end of most Spring Trainings, and he would manage the Braves’ minor league all-stars for an exhibition game against the final 25-man Atlanta Braves roster, usually at the home of one of their affiliates.  There was one year, where the game took place in sleepy small Rome, Georgia, and the Bobby Cox-led minor league Baby Braves ended up stomping the Jesus out of the Atlanta Braves by like a score of like 10-3.

Every year, I’d always make jokes about how whether it was at these exhibition games, or whenever Bobby showed up to the ballpark, about the umpires should single him out and eject him from the premises, just for old time’s sake, and every time I’d make the joke, it would get avalanches of likes and thumbs ups from the masses, and it always brought me comfort that others shared the same humor and got the joke.

Either way, it is truly a sad, sad day in Atlanta and the baseball landscape, that Bobby Cox has passed.  No hyperbole, the man was genuinely one of the greatest baseball managers in the history of the game, and Major League Baseball is in a position where tomorrow is not going to be a better day than the last because of the magnitude of the loss of one of its greatest alumni.

What’s crazy is that Bobby’s passing was just days after Ted Turner’s, because the two were very closely intertwined, between the former owner and the former manager-turned GM-turned back to manager.  Already, the morbid hypothesis has already been posed about the brutal rule of threes, and seeing as how one and two were Atlanta icons, those legends in my city need to be on high alert over the next coming days into weeks.

Fare thee well, Bobby Cox.  This one genuinely does hurt, and I’m sad to see that this day has finally become reality, and if this were a magic fairy tale baseball season, there’s no more better reason for the Braves to win it all, than, For Bobby, and what the hell, for Ted too.

Happy Trails, Ted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WABE: Ted Turner, unofficial godfather of the City of Atlanta, passes away at the age of 87

As a (for lack of a better term) Atlanta Braves fan, the passing of Ted Turner does mean something to me.  As a professional wrestling fan who witnessed the rise and eventual fall of World Championship Wrestling, the passing of Ted Turner does mean something to me.  As a resident of the Metro Atlanta area for over half of my life, the passing of Ted Turner does mean something to me.

Frankly, whether or not they were fans of the guy, not a fan, or just somewhere in the middle, I feel like it’s accurate to say that if you lived in the Metro Atlanta area, it’s kind of hard to say that Ted Turner, or more accurately, one of his endeavors didn’t affect you in some way, shape, or fashion.

I know that in today’s twisted, demented, politically charged state of America, Ted Turner equals CNN which equals information source for the filthy gross fake news Democrats which equals Ted Turner being trash to an unfortunate majority of the unwashed right-leaning troglodytes of the country, but I would wager that the life and business dealings of Uncle Ted affected even those shitheads in a positive way, whether he provided employment, entertainment, or through some of the many philanthropic endeavors he was a part of, and in spite of the fact that people these days tend to dislike those with wealth, I can’t really run off many scandalous and negative things about Ted Turner off the top of my head.

Personally, it’s one of those things that I never really thought about, as far as whether or not I was a fan of the guy or not.  In one hand, he has money and is rich therefore I should be inclined to lean towards disliking the man, but in the other hand, other than the day he decided to cede control over his own company and sell to AOL Time Warner, which ultimately killed WCW and made the Braves into the soulless corporation it is now, there’s really nothing that I found particularly offensive about the man.

The man put Braves baseball into the national spotlight, force-feeding the country through TBS, contributing almost entirely to why the Braves have such strong brand recognition and pockets of fandom throughout the entire country and beyond.  Ted Turner was one of the only people in the world to really go toe-to-toe with Vince McMahon and not only challenge him in the wrestling industry, but punch him and draw blood, before the pendulum would eventually swing in the other direction, but let the record show Ted Turner’s success.

And of course, like many who live in the Atlanta area, I too had my stint(s) with the Turner company, having worked for Cartoon Network for two of the more noteworthy years of my career, as well stints with Turner Sports as well as NCAA.com.  Many in Atlanta joke about how you can’t really say you’ve ever lived in Atlanta unless you’ve worked for some of the big dawgs of town, like Coca-Cola, Delta, The Home Depot, or Turner, and I remember the feeling of professional pride I had when I was issued my first @turner.com email address when I was brought into Cartoon Network.

Rich as he was, Ted Turner never seemed to be of that devilish, moustache-twirling kind of evil asshole as many rich white guys are often seen.  The man seemed to genuinely care about the City of Atlanta, and dumped tons of money into the arts, culture, city projects, and was always reliable to find a way to get his name on all sorts of charitable causes throughout the city.

Whenever I’d have friends in the car, it was night, and we were headed southbound towards Midtown, I’d always refer to the 17th Street bridge, going under it, and when you emerge and the Atlanta skyline is unveiled to your eyes, as the mouth of Ted Turner, because there’s just something about seeing all the high rises and lit up buildings as you emerge from underneath a bridge that always seems kind of magical when you see it.

I actually saw Ted Turner once, a long time ago, when I was at a Ted’s Montana Grill; naturally I saw a strikingly attractive older woman, but then right behind her was a man with white hair and a white moustache, and it dawned on me that it was Ted Turner.  I remember thinking, man, he’s way shorter than I thought he was, because whenever he was on television, he was always in his power suits and framed real tight to make him look like a massive, giant man, but in reality, Ted couldn’t have been more than like 5’8.  But all the same, for a rich guy that most snarky people would assume would be too good to eat amongst pleebs, even at a joint named after him, it was refreshing to see him actually at one of his own restaurant’s locations.

Unsurprising, there’s not really anything substantial about this post, but I guess what it really all sums up is that Ted Turner was Atlanta, and his passing really means something to Atlanta, whether or not people want to admit it, and I just wanted to share some not-negative words about a guy that had a lot of contributions to things that were important in my life, and that I appreciated who he was, and what he meant to the city I live in.

Happy trails, Jeff

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Runner’s World: Olympian, legendary runner, Jeff Galloway passes away at the age of 80

I know that most people would look at me and not think I’m remotely what they expected to see when I say that I’m a runner, but I can confidently say at this stage of my life, that I’ve been steadily running for nearly half of my life. 

I ran intermittently between the ages of 18-23, but around the age of 24, I’ve been running very consistently since then.  I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had a stretch where I did no running that was longer than a week, and one of them coincided with both my first daughter’s birth and the arrival of COVID.  I’ve probably run more miles in my life than Forrest Gump had in the film, despite the fact that I look like a pretty unimpressive schlub on account of the fact that as much as I exercise, I still enjoy food and it’s safe to say that I exercise so that I can, eat like a shithead every now and then, and not have to put too much restriction on the stuff I eat.

I’ll be honest, other than seeing the guy’s name on a local annual run, I wasn’t actually really that familiar with Jeff Galloway until then-mythical gf got into running and wanted to train up for a runDisney race.  It was training with her did I learn what the Jeff Galloway Run-Walk Method was, and mythical gf was living proof of its effectiveness, considering she was starting from a pretty bare starting point in her running journey.

As I got older and the mileage started piling up on my knees and legs, I began implementing a little bit of run-walk into my own methods, and when mythical gf wanted to go runDisney again, I joined her, and trained up to run the half, officially.  Typically when I got real ham into running, my goal was always to be able to run the Peachtree (10K) without needing to resort to walking, which I did accomplish a few times, and although I was adamant about not being so regimented to going run-walk from start to finish, my general policy was to run as long as I could, and once I began to feel the initial fatigue, switch up to run-walk.

Needless to say, in my first few forays into half-marathon running, I was able to achieve my goals of staying under 2:30 times, and someone as undisciplined as me probably wouldn’t have been able to without learning and implementing run-walk.

So all that said, especially as a runner, I e-pour one out for the passing of Jeff Galloway, a man who strived to make the world a better and healthier place by giving the community the knowledge of run-walk, and helping inspire thousands of people who thought they couldn’t ever run distances, the knowledge, support and inspiration that they too could.

Although I wasn’t that familiar with him originally, his knowledge still made its mark on my own runner’s journey, and without adopting his methods into my own, I probably never would have been able to achieve the longer runs I’ve done in my life, and for that alone, I am grateful for his existence, the knowledge he graciously shared, and the impact he had on the community of runners and exercise enthusiasts across the globe.

The world is a less fit and healthy place without him on it.

Happy Trails, Roy Hobbs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AP: Actor and activist, Robert Redford dies at the age of 89

Throughout the long history of the brog, I’ve been saddened by the passing of many notable figures and shared my words and thoughts for those whom have meant the most to my general existence.  I’ve stated numerous names, of individuals who really had massive imprints on my general state of life, those whom help mold, shape or have a permanent residence at the forefront of my brain.

Guys like Sonny Chiba, Dikembe Mutombo, Kevin Conroy emerge quickly, as people for whatever reason or contributions to the shit I’ve seen in my life, always maintained permanent resident status in my head, and even to this day, guys whom I’ll make references to or think about when it comes to the countless analogies and metaphors and comparisons that I make when thinking about things around the world.

Well, Robert Redford is up there on that echelon of individuals in the world that left an indelible mark in my life, and I’m feeling melancholy about hearing about his passing.  I can’t really say that I’m so much sad about it considering he was 89 years old and had clearly lived a full and prosperous life, but for those that will miss him the most, my heart goes out to.

However, I should be more specific, that my general fandom and appreciation for Robert Redford stems from a role he played in a film, based on a book that also left an indelible impression in my life, which is The Natural by Bernard Malamud.  After falling in love with the book, the movie was enjoyable, which really opened my eyes to who Robert Redford was, as he was portraying the intrepid Roy Hobbs, the former pitcher turned old rookie wunderkind, crushing home runs all over the place with this homemade baseball bat.

And although the film didn’t portray it like the book did, Roy Hobbs was a human vacuum cleaner of a legendary eater, prompting one of my oldest friend groups and I to use his name as inspiration for whenever we wanted to destroy buffets all across Northern Virginia and eat like Roy Hobbs was trying to fill the void left in his heart from the early baseball career he never had.

Furthermore, Roy Hobbs became something of a pseudonym for me through a variety of online endeavors, like the pen name I wrote through on Talking Chop and a variety of other Vox websites, and was usually my go-to when it came to utilizing an online handle on gaming platforms like Xbox Live or League of Legends.

Regardless, through Roy Hobbs I learned Robert Redford, and although Roy Hobbs was but just a single role played in a legendary career, whenever the thought of Roy Hobbs emerges in my brain, it’s Robert Redford that I see, and for that alone, made me a fan of Robert Redford.

It’s funny, because as learned of his existence was I made aware of just how much work he’s done in Hollywood, for Hollywood, and the film industry in general, but it wasn’t until really reading several obituaries and tributes to the man did I realize just how much more he did, as far as his support for independents beyond just Sundance, as well as his activism, trying to make the world a lesser pile of shit than it is on the regular.

Robert Redford was truly an extraordinary human being, and it’s like I discovered him in a reverse order sort of fashion; gravitating towards him on account of a singular role, but then learning more about him after the fact, as opposed to the other way around.

It’s a sad day in Hollywood, film and even literature to hear about the passing of Robert Redford, but at least as far as I’m concerned, he’ll always be relevant and worth mentioning, if for anything at all, being the guy who was Roy Hobbs.

Happy trails, Hulkamania

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Meeting the Hulkster in 2005 at a car show, coincidentally wearing this shirt. He greeted me “nice shirt, brother”

Countless sauces: “Hulk Hogan” Terry Bollea passes away at the age of 71

  1. Long ago, one of my closest friends and I were bullshitting about the random things that bros do, and at one point we talked about, how would we feel when Hulk Hogan inevitably dies? Nobody lives forever, and although we weren’t really so much die-hard Hulkamaniacs so much as we more or less liked him in this ironic manner because he was just so over-the-top and often larger than life,  we still were fans of the guy that basically embodied professional wrestling.

We knew that his time would eventually come, and although we’ve witnessed countless professional wrestlers from our childhood pass away from various reasons, there weren’t many who were going to be at the tier, that of someone on the echelon of the industry as Hulk Hogan was, and we pondered on what would happen around the business, and how we might possibly feel when it inevitably happens.

  1. Over the span of the last week, the world saw the passing of Malcolm-Jamal Warner AKA Theo Huxtable, and days later, Ozzy Osbourne, the so-called Prince of Darkness. And is often popularly murmured upon hearing the deaths of celebrities, it always comes in threes.

In one of the group chats I share with many of my closest friends, I specifically mentioned that a probable high likelihood name to be the third, was Hulk Hogan.  Leading up to today, it was known that he had gone to the hospital, but it was very ambiguous and this kind of gross game of information being spread on his condition, where some parties were spreading that he was on his death bed and didn’t have long to live, while others proclaimed that all was well and that recovery was oncoming; but when a 71-year old former professional wrestler of the rockin’ 80’s era goes to the hospital, there’s always the possibility that things are going to go tits up.

Unfortunately for me, wrestling fans, and all those whom might be interested, I just so happened to be right in this case.  And as much as I often extol the wondrous feeling of being right, this is one of those cases where I don’t feel any sense of satisfaction at it because in the end, the world lost an icon, whether people were a fan of him or not.

  1. As is often times the case whenever someone of a degree of celebrity passes away, I become fairly judgmental towards the parties that spout their condolences and keep them in their thoughts and prayers, primarily when I know that at some point(s), they’ve turned their backs on the departed. To me, their sudden returns to grace come off as disingenuous and attempts to piggy back sympathy and attention to themselves and it often disgusts me when I see people pulling 180s on guys like Hulk Hogan, just because they passed away.

I understand why a lot of people cancelled Hulk Hogan over the years; him getting caught dropping the hard-R on a recording was enough for many.  His absolute shitshow lawsuit against Gawker Media, revolving around the fact that he was involved in some bizarre cuckolding scenario with a Tampa shock-jock and a sex tape “leaked” didn’t really help his general public image.  And of course, who could forget him pledging his allegiance to the orange turd in the 2024 election, complete with him showing up to the RNC, cutting a pro-turd promo, and ripping his shirt off on stage.

I get it, man hasn’t been remotely close to the bastion of a paragon that prime 80’s Hulk Hogan was, encouraging children to take their vitamins and say their prayers, since his retirement, and I wouldn’t challenge or argue with anyone who decided to cancel post-career Hulk Hogan.

Yeah, I don’t dig the hard-R, and his over-the-top alignment to the right.  The Gawker trial was personally endlessly amusing, and I probably made no less than 13 posts about it during its lifespan.  Honestly, Hulk Hogan, or Terry Bollea, or whatever you want to call him, clearly wasn’t a perfect human being, but quite frankly neither are any of us.

If I decided to cancel every single celebrity that had done something offensive, then I probably wouldn’t be a fan of anyone.  If I decided to cancel any random people that I know, friends, colleagues or otherwise, for something that they’ve done that’s slighted me, I’d probably become a bigger island of a man than I already feel like sometimes.  And if I held myself to the same criteria as those I should be cancelling, I’d have cancelled myself probably 168 times.

The point is, yes some of the shit that Terry Bollea has done has been less than socially acceptable to people like minded to me, but there’s always been this part of me that always gave Hulk Hogan, as well as lots of other people a little more leeway and resistance to cancellation than others might, because I often think about people in the aggregate, and if I cancel a Hulk Hogan, then I probably ought to cancel 58 other guys that might have similar rap sheets.

I’m not saying what bad discretions that Hulk Hogan may have done are okay or acceptable, but I’m just not going to crucify and cancel everyone who conducts themselves in manners that I disagree with, because we’re all imperfect human beings and frankly I don’t want to expend the energy to consciously cancel other people.

Furthermore, a guy like Hulk Hogan, he’s built some equity with me personally, in the sense that he was basically the living embodiment of the professional wrestling industry.  Yeah, the whole business used to be something that I kept my fandom about under wraps, but it’s something that has outlasted countless other interests in my life, and I take some joy in how much more acceptable and mainstream it is these days, and the whole carny shitshow of an industry never would have gotten to where it did without the contributions of Hulk Hogan. 

So yeah, I’m not going to turn my back on him for discretions that I think a lot more people might have in common than they’d care to admit, and it did punch me in the gut when I found out about it, and it has been living rent-free in my head all fucking day, to where I was itching to be able to sit down and get to write this in real time, and not a post where I write it as retroactively as I can.

I’m not going to say that I was the biggest Hulkamaniac in the world, but I was still a fan.  As a kid, I ate his shit up, believing that he was getting his ass beat by Andre the Giant, Earthquake, Sgt. Slaughter and everyone else he ever feuded with, and was always blindsided when he kicked out of their finishers, Hulked up and ended the match three punches, a big boot and a leg drop later.

Even as I grew and learned, I was still amused by his whole schtick, and even though it was kind of lame, there was a comfort in familiarity in seeing him do it again and again throughout the years.

The nWo and the birth of Hollywood Hogan was pretty groundbreaking for me to digest, and it really was something of a renaissance, as he worked evil for the first time in history, but by then, I was older and wiser and more cynical, and well, Hulk Hogan was older then too. His whole sinking with WCW was an ironically hilarious ride, as he reverted back to yellow and red Hulkamania, FUNB Hogan, and back to nWo for sporadic stints.

His later years in wrestling were pretty awful, but there was still something to be said about a man who kept lacing up his boots and getting in the ring and taking F5s from Brock Lesnar, or giving an extremely rare tapout L to Kurt Angle.  As much as he was accused of gatekeeping and being selfish, man did give back to those who were the most worthy of getting his rubs.

I didn’t really follow his TNA career into ultimately true retirement, and by then, shit like his hard-R scandal, and then Gawker overshadowed his wrestling legacy.  But I was always amazed at how the man simply knew how to stay relevant and not stray from the spotlight for ever too long, and even up to his passing, the man always managed to popup somewhere, every few months, and kept reminding the world of who he was and that he still existed.  Whether it was his clown show at the RNC, the debut of Real American Beer, or his hilarious bomb at the Netflix premiere of RAW, if there was one absolute truth, it was that Hulk Hogan always knew how to remain relevant.

In the end, you didn’t really have to like the guy, but I do believe that it was pretty undeniable that he was a force of nature when it came to his footprints on wrestling, pop-culture, and celebrity status.  The man was truly larger than life, and especially in the professional wrestling industry, I would say, is one of the most monumental passings of an icon there could be, for at least three different generations.

Rest in peace, Terry Bollea.  Hulkamania will live forever.  Brother.

Happy Trails, Jonathan Joss

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AP: Actor Jonathan Joss, shot and killed at the age of 59

Although falling through the ceiling of my attic really sucked, in retrospect it was nothing compared to finding out that Jonathan Joss was tragically shot and murdered.

And it’s not just because of the freshness of the incident that I say this, but the man was legitimately part of two shows that I hold in the highest esteem, in Parks and Recreation as well as King of the Hill, with the latter being where I knew him from the best, but then being super stoked when I got into Parks and Rec, and finding out that the guy behind Ken Hotate was John Redcorn.

Needless to say, my sadness is legitimate sadness, and not just sad that someone in showbusiness I liked is gone kind of way.  I didn’t need a refresher on the roles he played when I saw his name in the news as being a murder victim, and it’s all just really sad and tragic and fucked up in a variety of ways, and it boils down to the fact that guns in America are long past out of control, and shit like this happens way too frequently.

Frankly, I didn’t even know that Joss was gay, not that it matters at all to me, but seeing as how it’s Pride Month, and learning that the shooter was using homophobic slurs just adds to the infuriating tragedy of the whole scenario.  He was clearly a proud representative of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the oft-overlooked indigenous community, both of which take a sad hit in the loss of Jonathan Joss.

At this point, I don’t really have anything much else to say.  It’s just he was a guy whose work I loved so much, making me a fan of his by proxy, and I felt like I had to at least put some words down to express my grief at this senseless and tragic passing.

The whole John Redcorn joke was pretty much my favorite subplot on King of the Hill, and it was always a treat to see whenever he appeared on Parks and Rec, playing white people like a fiddle.  It’s all just a fucking shame that the world will never get to see him pop up anything else anymore, because aside from being such a strong advocate, man was just such an iconic talent.

RIP four years late, Bradley Allan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While scrolling through my phone instead of doing absolutely anything more constructively satisfying, I came across a clip of the 1998 Jackie Chan film, Gorgeous, notable for its incredible fight sequences, namely two fights between “CN” and this foreign fighter brought to HK to humble CN, introduced only as “Alan,” played by Jackie Chan stunt team member, Bradley Allan.

While the video brought back a lot of nostalgia of watching endless hours of kung-fu and martial arts films, I happened to notice a comment in the video that said, RIP Brad Allan.  Naturally, my brow furrowed and my mind went wtf??  Allan was a young guy in 1998, no reason he wouldn’t be alive and thriving just 27 years later, so I looked him up, and sure enough, Bradley Allan passed away in 2021 due to a heart attack, at the not-old age of 48.

This learned knowledge immediately made me very sad.  The fact that I’m even posting about it goes to show just how much I care about this information upon learning about it.

The above scene and quote from Gorgeous is a line that I still use on a fairly regular basis, when I want to no-sell any sort of pain or anxiety that the world tries to inflict on us, because much like Alan does to Jackie in the film, he’s dropped by a haymaker, acknowledges that it was a good hit… but not enough power.  He then proceeds to get back up and whoop Jackie’s ass in front of his adult star love interest, sending his character into a downward spiral of realizing that he works too much and sucks at fighting, and inspiring him to get better.

Metaphorically, and perhaps a little literally, this is what that quote means to me, and when shit is constantly hitting the fan, and I conclude that I don’t want to be defeated, by anything, I simply remind the opposition in my life, not enough power, and do my best to get back up and keep on fighting forward.

But aside from a single line from a single film, the loss of Bradley Allan really is palpable.  A lot of people don’t know who he even was, but aside from a few parts in a handful of films, his work as an action, fight and stunt choreographer was vastly more immense, having been involved in the productions of big name films and series like Avatar, Scott Pilgrim, Wonder Woman, Shang-Chi, and pretty much the entire Kingsman series.

I remember watching Argylle on the last cruise I was on, while mythical wife and I were just lounging in the room relaxing.  I had no idea that he was even involved in it, as the stunt coordinator, and I didn’t even catch in the credits that he is given a dedication, as it was the final film he ever worked on, released long after he had actually passed.

But Father Time is undefeated, and despite living by his quote from Gorgeous, eventually everyone gets hit with something that finally does have enough power.  Happy trails, Bradley Allan, I’m sad to have learned of your passing years late, but I hope you’ve been resting in peace all the same.