Tag: ohatlanta

I guess too much salt can be a health violation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There is a remote possibility that at some point in the life of the brog, that I may have posted about this place in the past.  Either here, or on one of my social profiles when I was probably trying to be funny.

Either way, the thing is, I know exactly where this place is, seeing as how I used to be a resident of the south side of Metro Atlanta.  I used to live within reasonable driving distance to this place, and I in fact used to shop at the grocery store that was in the same plaza occasionally.

That being said, aside from the fact that the place is clearly named after the legendary WWE superstar/manager, it’s my familiarity with the place that adds to my general amusement of the fact that Mr. Fuji Japanese Steak House somehow managed to get a staggering 18 U rating on their State of Georgia Food and Safety Inspection score.

I mean, it seems pretty apparent that the food rating grading scale isn’t that far off from general public school grading scales.  100 the obvious goal, 90-99 is generally positively looked upon,* 80-89 being that solid B that lets patrons know that they’re still mostly safe, 70-79** being that dreaded C grade that might make a patron reconsider their choices, and anything below that would probably have someone who walked in the door turn around and leave immediately.  Frankly, that latter rating probably means the business has to shut down and address all transgressions until they’re legally allowed to operate again, but I don’t care enough to verify.

*unless your parents are Asian in which you’ve disappointed them for not just being perfect, but that you were probably 1-2 careless errors away from it

**writing this all out makes me realize that restaurant grading scales really is more Asian than American, because once you hit that C or below, it might as well be first-degree murder

So with all that in consideration, massive props to Mr. Fuji for violating so much shit that they got an almost unbelievable 18 score.  I remember back when I was in the 3rd grade and really struggling to get my multiplication tables, we had these daily drill worksheets that had like 100 math problems, and we all had 3 minutes to do as many of them as we could.  And the class had this board with every student’s name on it, and upon successful completion (80% or higher), students would get a sticker and advance to the next level.

I’m not sure how much this would be deemed acceptable in today’s standards, but like I said I struggled tremendously, and I got hung up on the third worksheet for the longest time.  One can imagine the number it was doing to my self-esteem to see the class chart when I was the last student stuck on level 3, while the rest of my class was pulling more and more ahead with each successive day. 

Eventually, multiplication just clicked for me and I would eventually go on a heater where I smashed #3, caught up to the rest of my class, and actually surpassed some of my peers before the entire introduction to multiplication drills came to a conclusion.

However, unnecessary as it was for me to write out that last paragraph beyond trying to ensure that any of my zero readers doesn’t think I’m still a mathematical luddite, backing back up to the point of why I brought up that nostalgia in the first place, there was once a day where while I was still struggling on #3 for probably the 11th time, I had bombed so badly that the teacher X’ed out the first ten or so wrong answers, and then just scrawled a giant red X throughout the rest of my worksheet, even though I did have 9×9=81 correct, because for whatever reason that one always stuck with me.

My teacher was that disgusted with my performance, that they basically threw in the towel on my worksheet that day, in exasperation.

I feel like whatever inspector came into Mr. Fuji to do their safety check, probably had to have hit a point throughout their visit, and just scrawled a giant red X on their checklist, before remembering that they were doing a state-mandated task, and then being thorough with their inspection, and writing down all the infractions as ticky-tack as “employee’s personal effects too close to food service area” to “entire planet of mutant cockroaches discovered in food storage areas.”

But 18 is a pretty legendary score of futility.  I remember teachers in the past would tell all the delinquent students who had a tendency to not do their work or turn things in outright, that a 60 F was still better than a zero in the grade book; sure 18 is going to be better than a zero for state safety inspections, but in this case, not by a whole fucking lot.  It’s like doing the SATs, writing down your name and banking those 100 points, but then turning in a blank scantron at the end.

Either way, pour one out for Mr. Fuji, as well as Peachtree City.  As a former resident there, I can tell you that there’s almost no diversity when it comes to eateries down there, and Mr. Fuji was probably one of the only places down there to get anything remotely tasting close to a flavor of the wondrous Orient, short of making it one’s self or befriending any of the Japanese residents that worked in the area.

lol MARTA #437

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AJC: (Paywall, but headline tells the story) Days away from the start of the FIFA World Cup, the new, state-of-the-art MARTA trains of tomorrow have not passed mandatory safety tests, and remains possible that they will not be ready for the largest sporting event in the world

There’s really not a whole lot to add to this story.  I figure to most people who live in the Atlanta area and are familiar with MARTA’s history, this is pretty much the least surprising thing in the world that Atlanta and MARTA fumbled the bag and in all likelihood won’t be ready for the World Cup despite having years to get shit done.

Progress in Atlanta moves at a snail’s pace, and frankly the metaphor is an insult to the speed of snails across the planet, because Atlanta routinely falls short of expectations unless there are millions of dollars in a treasure chest at the end of a rainbow to incentivize expediency, like when they miraculously rebuild I-85 three weeks ahead of schedule, which was still about like six weeks slower than the time it took Fukuoka, Japan to repair a sinkhole the size of a crater in a weekend.

I vaguely remember a similar situation way back when the College Football National Championship was being hosted in Atlanta, the city really wanted to get the Atlanta Streetcar up and running, mostly for appearances on a national level, because the little ass street car wasn’t going to be realistically moving more than a few hundred people for an event the size of the Natty.

But they failed, and didn’t complete it on time, and when they did finally get it up and operational, nobody cared, nobody rode it, and it’s about as much of an afterthought to the city as much as the Dallas Austin-produced ATL Anthem that was supposed to be the city’s song, akin to Sinatra singing New York, New York, but still cost taxpayers around $5M to make.

So it’s not the surprise of the century that Atlanta and MARTA are on a one-way crash course to yet another failure, and more than likely won’t have the purported trains of the future ready in time for the World Cup.  And even if they did miraculously pull off the impossible, there’s no way that they would have passed the mandatory safety checks and requirements, and I could see a situation where a shiny new Cerberus-looking train car, packed to the gills full of Spaniards* and the motherfucker goes off the rails and causes some tragic accident.

*I double-checked Atlanta’s guaranteed match list, and holy fuck did we get the shaft on country draw, where Spain is pretty much the only powerhouse country playing here, with the rest of the field being Czechia, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Haiti, Cabo Verde (?), and Congo; I didn’t even know many of these places even had national teams, much less ones good enough to qualify for the World Cup

Alternatively, once the festivities begin, futbol fans will be subjected to the old and busted, urine-smelling incumbent trains, where local bums and panhandlers are probably rubbing their hands together at the opportunity to grief and harass riders from various other parts of the world, who just want to get to Mercedes-Benz Arena (that’s not allowed to have their own logo in sight, lmao).

Either way, I heard that thanks to the political situation in ‘Murica, there was a lot of reconsideration of would-be fans, travelers and futbol enthusiasts, as far as hotels, tickets and the promised influx of money that an event the caliber of the World Cup is capable of bringing in, and I thought to myself, even if Korea isn’t going to get a match here, it might still be a cool thing to go to a World Cup match, and maybe even take my dad with me.  But then I discovered that the duration of the entire Group Stage, I will be out of the country, and by the time I get back, will be only critical knockout futbol matches, where the cost of those tickets will probably be back up to $FuckYou.99/each.

Perhaps I might luck into some watch events in Seoul for when Korea takes the pitch, I can’t imagine that even remote, they could be any less chaotically disorganized as Atlanta and MARTA are.  But thank goodness I won’t be around in the city for when the World Cup will inevitably be causing all sorts of chaos around town, and no thanks to MARTA.

The whitest problem since desegregation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: City of Alpharetta proposing ordinance to provide residents relief from pickleball noise

Imagine the shit-eating grin on my face when I read just the headline of this article, and immediately trying to think of the words to best ironically describe the inhumanity of pickleball noise, ruining the lives of residents in Alpharetta, a lily-white suburb 30-80 minutes away from actual City of Atlanta, depending on the traffic.

I mean, there’s really not much to add, the headline does a pretty succinct job of painting the picture of the problem that is about as peak white people problems since Bad Bunny performing at the halftime show at the Super Bowl.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve posted specifically about Alpharetta; a few years back, there was a situation where residents got really salty about a change in policy that meant that they weren’t allowed to fly Confederate flags during a Veteran’s Day Parade, so the city opted to just cancel the parade outright.

Even in the year, two thousand and twenty-six, shit like this actually is, written and reported on.

Still though, it’s entertaining to me that pickleball is about as white people sport as lacrosse and calling cops on colored folks, but it’s gotten so overly popular to the point where the goofy-ass sounds of pickleballs getting whacked have turned heel on the people that brought them into existence, and instead of trying to fix the game, white people are doing what white people do best – try and transmogrify the laws to where they can deal with the issue while avoiding any conflict at all.

It’s basically Atlanta’s version of The Grudge

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that any loss of life is any laughing matter, within the span of the last month, there have been two incidents that have resulted in a dead bodies being involved.  The thing is, both of them happened to happen at different Kroger grocery store locations within the Metro Atlanta area, and for those of us that live in the Metro area, whenever there’s news of death and Kroger being in the same sentence, the first thing that pops up in the minds of most of us is, Murder Kroger.

Now for those who don’t know, Murder Kroger was a specific Kroger located very central to the City of Atlanta proper, off of Ponce de Leon Ave, right between where Downtown and Midtown are divided.  It gained its unfortunate nickname, based on the fact that there were multiple incidents on the premises that resulted in people getting killed, or dead bodies being discovered.

In 2016, the physical location of Murder Kroger was torn down, and replaced with a state-of-the-art new Kroger, tied to the Jesus sidewalk ITP and ITB snobs know as the Atlanta Beltline.  Reconstruction seems to have done the trick at exorcising the demons that kept murders from happening at 725 Ponce, seeing as how there have been no (reported) deaths there since its rebirth as ‘Beltline Kroger.’

But for long time Atlantans, it’ll always still be known as Murder Kroger.  It’s the joke that won’t . . . DIE, and for those of us who were around when people were getting dropped there, it’s just easiest to always know it as Murder Kroger, even if there haven’t been any murders there in a decade.

However, despite the fact that Murder Kroger physically seems to no longer exist, the spirit of it appears to not be entirely gone yet, and seemingly through the network of Kroger locations, it appears to have decided to go mobile, instead of remaining at one stationary location.

I mean really, this story that came out earlier in the month, about a woman who was killed when a runaway car struck a parked car which then struck her, almost seems like some Final Destination kind of shit.  And considering it turned out the woman was a relative to two active Atlanta Falcons players, who’s to say that there wasn’t some modicum of foul play in play.

Naturally, one incident is a freak accident, a coincidence, but I’d be lying if I didn’t mouth the words ‘Murder Kroger’ when I heard that this had taken place on the property of a Kroger location.

But then this second story dropped recently, where a fucking dead body was discovered inside of a closed down Kroger location, that started making all the armchair comedians of the internet saying it together, Murder Kroger appears to be back, and taking its act on the road.

And it really sucks for Kroger in the second instance, because it was at a former location, no longer actively belonging to Kroger, but because it was such a large space, and there’s nothing to refer to it as other than its previous tenant, Kroger’s name gets dragged through the cemetery all over again, and now we’ve got Murder Kroger jokes all over the place.

The thing is, and it’s what really inspired me to write about this, is that I feel like I came up with a homerun of an analogy, that, at least I feel, is too good to not gatekeep and share, which is that this is all kind of like the plot of The Grudge, more specifically The Grudge 2, where the white girl in Japan who encounters the haunting spirits and basically gets marked, she moves away back to America, probably thinking that she can escape the curse of the grudge.

Instead, and spoiler alert for a 20 (!!) year old film, of course she can’t escape The Grudge, and not only is she not free from it, it has followed her all the way back to fucking Chicago, and basically has planted its cursed self into the entire apartment complex, fucking with all of the residents.

Murder Kroger may have been torn down and redeveloped, but the curse of Murder Kroger seems to still be very much alive, and has decided to start poking its head out, and is testing the water in other locations, delivering death and chaos to other Kroger locations around the Metro area.  It’s basically the Atlanta version of The Grudge, and only subject to Kroger grocery stores, and if I’ve never felt any reason to stop going to Kroger stores now, I think the fear of getting infected with The Grudge seems as good as reason as any to do so.

It’s like the intention to lose is deliberate

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

PBS: former Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms wins Democratic nomination for Georgia governor

Before I went to my voting location, mythical wife and I were talking about how the State of Georgia was at it again, with Governor Yosemite Sam signing HB369, which long story short, basically hides political affiliations for those who choose to vote non-partisan, basically to intentionally create confusion and ambiguity so that people might accidentally vote for the wrong candidates.  Obviously designed to help Republicans in the bluer parts of the state, but just another means of capitalizing on the less intelligent whose votes count the same as those with higher IQs.

There was a part of me that considered picking a Republican ballot and trying to monkey around with their results, as if there weren’t going to be tens of thousands of brainless orange worshippers who wouldn’t offset my tampering, but at least I could tell myself if by supporting Brad Raffensperger, he’s a guy that seems to have a modicum of integrity in a toxic wasteland of politico.

But mainly because the Democrats of Georgia’s play was known and in my opinion a terrible idea, and it makes me think that they’re either really that arrogant and stupid, or that they’re secretly on the payroll of the Georgia GOP to just keep doing the same dumb shit over and over again and pretend like there’s any hope.

It was pretty well known that Keisha was going to get the Democratic bid for governor, and much like the last two Governor elections, it’s basically going to be another win for the red team, but way easier this time around, and it makes me think about the cliché seen above about the definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

For the third time in a row, Georgia Dems are trotting out a black woman to go for governor, and not that I don’t think a black woman would be capable of handling the role of the position, the Dems here seem to forget that they’re in Georgia, which is a state that historically has not been particularly friendly to both black people and women.

Furthermore, Keisha Lance Bottoms is no Stacey Abrams, and she lost twice.  Stacey was a respected, tenacious bureaucrat who actually did shit that mattered, like launching Fair Fight to try and aid in voter suppression.  Stacey was generally liked by all Democrats, black and white and everyone else, and her first run for governor, although was still an L, was the closest margin the Democrats had gotten in like the last 4-5 elections.

Keisha on the other hand, has had a maligned career as the Mayor of Atlanta, often seen as handpicked stooge successor to notorious clown Hizzoner Kasim Reed, who himself was revealed to have flagrantly blazed through mountains of taxpayer dollars on his own indulgences while Mayor of the Atlanta.  Keisha constantly put herself at odds with the orange shithead, and there was one particular incident I always remembered, when she basically tried to legalize street racing to a degree, and the implication was that her son was most likely involved in doing it, and it’s like she was trying to preemptively change the law so her son wouldn’t get in too deep of shit if he were to inevitably get caught.

The bottom line is, Keisha put herself into a position where not only will she not have the vote of white people, especially those who favor the color orange, but she was not liked by large swaths of the black community, who simply thought she just wasn’t doing a good job as Mayor of Atlanta, so why would they even bother putting forth the effort to vote her into the governor’s mansion?

Like, I can practically hear Sweet Georgia Brown playing on election day when voters hit the polls, and vote after vote is cast for whomever wins the Republican runoff, because it really doesn’t matter who emerges for the GOP, they’re going to stomp a hole in Keisha.  And after the election, when voter numbers emerge, I anticipate there being a really poor black turnout, because like I said, as much as there may be those who don’t like the color orange, but they don’t like the alternative enough to feel it’s worth leaving the house to vote for it.

If it were up to me, Georgia Dems should take a step back and try to get just one wishlist category a W; either push a black man, or a woman, but just stop trying to get a two-for-one, because fringe Georgia voters are way too racist and way too sexist to vote in a black woman.

And if they try again in 2030, insanity will be definitely confirmed and reinforced.

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.