Tag: reminiscing

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.

I’d be curious to see the venn diagram on this one

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of my current dad-related nonsensical missions is that I need to get him a Georgia driver’s license, or rather at this stage, state-issued identification because pffh ain’t no way he’s driving anymore in his current state.  Despite the fact that his current license is still valid until 2027, he’s been harping on me to get it changed over, as if there were some sort of threat of grievous harm if he doesn’t, naturally because it’s something one of his buddies said, and in true Korean parent fashion, what a buddy says >>> what your children says.

When I moved to Georgia in 2003, I remember going to a Department of Driver Services office, saying I needed to get a Georgia license, and basically the only things I needed were my current, Virginia license, and some sort of proof of address.  I did have to take the written test on the spot, but because I am not a halfwit, such was no problem, and I was in and out of the DMV in a reasonable amount of time without too much aggravation.

I took my dad to a DDS office, and because nothing with my dad is ever easy, naturally there was a line stretched all the way back to the door.  I had my dad go take a seat while I camped the line, and I had the positive wherewithal to look on my phone to make sure I had what I needed, lest we waste any further time to get up to the desk and be told we didn’t have sufficient materials.

In addition to his existing license, and proof of address, it turns out that the criteria for getting a Georgia identification from somewhere else now requires:

  • (At least) one more piece of mail to prove address
  • Social Security Card and/or tax return
  • Proof of US citizenship, such as US Passport, immigration card – existing drivers license not valid for this purpose

Seeing as how I did not have either of these bullet points, I immediately pulled got my dad and we left the DDS, explaining to him that shit’s changed, and this license mission isn’t going to get done today, and that we needed moar shit before coming back.

It’s apparent that the process has been deliberately made as hard as possible for immigrants to accomplish things by the book, but not at all surprising that things are the way they are like this.

Naturally, my dad has lost his current passport, despite the fact that he visited overseas as recently as 2022, however, I was able to find the last three passports he had previously, all expired, and one being his Republic of Korea passport.  And fuck if he knows where any documentation of his US citizenship certification or immigration card or his Social Security card is; and add insult to injury, I found the envelope that his original SSA card came in, but the card itself was removed from the perforated sheet, lost to the aether of age and neglect.

So, in order to get my dad’s Georgia identification, I will have to get him a replacement passport.  Thankfully, as I recently did my dad’s 2025 taxes, I have those to stand in place of his SSA card, and I have proof off address and his previous license that he’ll have to turn in.  But ironically hilariously, I still have to get him a new passport so he can get a driver’s license equivalent.  And obviously, anyone who’s ever had to get a passport before knows just how much of a pain in the ass that singular task is, but I have to go through it all in order to just get to the next step of a different pain in the ass task.

Regardless, moar bitching about my dad wasn’t what prompted me to start writing this post, but because it’s on the topic of passports, all this nonsensical shit poured out because it’s somewhat related.

But I was reading about how the Orange Administration is taking credit for a law that’s actually existed since 1996, about how those deadbeats in the country who are being on child support and alimony will have their passports revoked.  From what I understand, this policy has really existed since 1996, but the amendment that the Orange Party is taking credit for is that instead of waiting for passport holders to try to use their passports before getting rejected and revoked, they’re instead just going to preemptively revoke them through public records.

So in other words, a whole lot of nothing, in actuality.

But the funny thing is that I’d be curious to see the data of just how much impact this is actually going to have in the country, because I have a hard time imagining the types of deadbeats who fall tremendously behind on their child support are really the types to be having passports in the first place, so they can jettison away from the United States in the first place.

Same logic applies to the types of people who will be crawling all over themselves in order to get limited edition passport books with the baked potato’s disgusting mug on them, as part of the United States 250th birthday bullshit.

Yeah, the schmucks who are interested in limited edition passports with their god-king on it, or/and the types to be behind in child support, I can’t imagine there’s a big correlation with them having or even needing passports in the first place.

The funny thing is that in the grand spectrum of effectiveness of getting deadbeats to pay back child support, I feel like the states that have laws that are along the lines of those who owe, can’t get hunting and/or fishing licenses, probably have more success than any rules mandated by the stooges in DC.

As the subject says, I’d really be interested in seeing a bunch of venn diagrams to illustrate the effectiveness and correlations between shitheads who don’t pay child support, versus people who have/need passports and those who have/need licenses for redneck activities like fishing and hunting.

I’m willing to be the latter is better at getting people to catch up on their child support than penalizing passports is.

I haven’t felt this disconnected to the WWE since my parents took cable away

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is something that I’ve often wanted to write about, but mostly on account of the chaos that is my life, and/or not feeling like writing about it when I actually have a few minutes to write, it’s just constantly been put back on the shelf

And then other things would emerge from the passage of time, in the WWE universe, and my general notes of what to write about when I get to it modifies, tweaks and I always hope it stays connected enough to where I can consolidate it to all one singular post instead of branching out into separate ones that give me anxiety of an ever-growing topic list of things I want to brog about if I ever had the time (and the drive).

But as the topic of this post clearly states, I’ve never felt so disconnected from my general fandom of the WWE and professional wrestling as a whole, than I am feeling these days.  By now, it’s no secret to fans that parent company TKO has done a number of things that have gotten the attention of fans of the industry, such as cutting a large swath of the WWE roster, reports of requesting massive pay cuts out of those who are still left, and the subsequent voluntary departures of others who did not want to yield their contractually obligated salaries, among numerous other acts of The Man.

Television, which for me is currently limited to just RAW on Netflix, because I don’t want to pay for ESPN Unlimited for PLEs, I don’t want to pay for Peacock for sporadic SNMEs, and I don’t want to pay for whatever service is necessary in order for me to be able to watch theCW for NXT and FOX for Smackdown.*

*I don’t want to jinx it, but there’s also AAA, free on YouTube, which has been extremely gratifying to watch, as it fills a metaphorical void left behind with the closure of NXT UK, where it’s a smaller, grassroots territory with a ton of talent and I’ve been enjoying its product immensely, especially since the book was given to the Undertaker

RAW is next to unwatchable nowadays because at least 65-69% of the broadcast is commercial breaks, stacked on top of the near cartoonish amount of ads that are strewn about the guardrails, on the ring apron and printed on the mat itself.  Wrestler entrances are what really makes wrestling into pro-wrestling, and almost every match has one superstar getting the shaft of having their entrance covered up by 7-8 minutes of commercials.

I genuinely don’t remember the last time I saw Roxanne Perez’s entrance, Io Sky seems to have fallen down to the tier that is at risk of having commercial break entrances, and the New Day’s fantastical entrances have been on perma-commercial break.

Speaking of the New Day, they’re probably the most notable names to emerge from recent events as talents who refused to budge from their contractually obligated compensation, and were subsequently forced into departure as a result.  In one hand, it makes me really sad to see Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston leaving, but in the other, I’m so proud of both of them for sticking up for themselves, their worth and basically saying fuck no to TKO.

Normally, I think AEW’s track record of converting those who jump into lasting successful results isn’t very high, but if there’s ever been talents that probably have the potential to make a noteworthy splash, it’s The New Day’s who will obviously have to change their names, but the field has been set up to embark on a list of what-if programs, with FTR, Edge and Christian Cope and Cage, and of course, The Young Bucks.  And if they can somehow miraculously both pry Big E away from the E, and get him medically cleared, insert Kenny Omega into the mix for the long-fantasized Elite vs. The New Day.

Speaking of departures, the recent departure of Asuka under ambiguous circumstances was another massive blow, as far as my fandoms were concerned, because there were few more talented packages in the women’s division than Asuka.  Reportedly, she’s not released, she’s not quitting because of salary cuts, but I can’t help but feel that such things weren’t in her head when she chose to step away for a spell.  The firing of her partner Kairi Sane while in the midst of an active storyline, and the lame duck finish to an interesting arc are probably things that she considered, regardless if she refuses to admit.

And just in general, the quality of the product has gotten really poor, in general.  A lot has been made about the reduction of house shows and live events, and yeah it’s great that the talent doesn’t have to kill themselves on these televised events, but it’s not like these events existed solely to cash grab smaller towns.

Live events are basically live training and practice fields for talent to work things out and practice and grow chemistry with their partners.  When you take a lot of these events away, talents have less opportunity to build rapport and practice spots and move sequences in real time, and when it comes time to do them on live television, the results have been noticeably more sloppy.

Take for example, Sol Ruca.  Frankly, I think she is the very obvious face of the women’s division in the future, but her recent demotion promotion to the main roster has been anything but impressive.  And it’s not really any fault of her own, she’s been booked to lose to all the current mainstays, which is not illogical, but when you’re trying to build up a callup, jobbing them to oblivion isn’t the way to go.

But it’s the fact that she’s been thrown to the wolves with very little rapport building with the likes of Liv Morgan and Iyo Sky, both of whom she’s already lost to, but the matches were clunky, disjointed, and way below the standard that the level of talents should be capable of.

The reason why Sol was such a standout in NXT is the quality of the matches she had with all the girls down there, but the difference is that down there, Sol and all the other girls worked out a ton at the Performance Center, NXT runs live events throughout the state, and Natalya Neidhart runs an open training facility for all the local talent.  But on the road with the main roster, Sol has looked exposed and completely devoid of chemistry, because there’s frankly not enough opportunity for it to build.  On paper, there’s no reason why she should have clunkers with the likes of Iyo Sky and Liv Morgan, but if they’re not getting enough reps in off-camera, then it’s definitely going to show on-camera.

Overall, at a holistic level, it just feels that there’s an overwhelmingly oppressive amount of corporate meddling going on in the WWE by their parent company, and although the likelihood of the same result occurring being very low, seeing as how the E is still a veritable money printer, I get a lot of vibes of WCW’s tail end, with how much corporate meddling going on.  AOL Time Warner’s constant interference, and standards and practices basically killed WCW by a thousand cuts, and every time I hear or read some inkling of the corporate meddling by TKO to the WWE, I keep seeing some dudes named Ari and Shapiro at the root of some decisions that indicate that they really have no idea how to operate professional wrestling, and it always feels like there’s always some dude named Shapiro involved whenever it comes to money micromanagement in any arena, be it wrestling, baseball, or any other multi-million dollar industries.

The bottom line is that the WWE has been really, really hard to want to continue to support, and I feel this nihilistic line of thinking that TKO is really deliberately trying to alienate older, passionate fans of the product and industry, preferring to draw in fresh and younger and looser with their money audiences, which isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, but one that can only have fatal consequences down the line for when the ADD-ness of them all decides they don’t like, or wants to cancel wrestling.

There’s a popular saying that, nobody hates X more than X fans, so in this case, it would be that nobody hates wrestling more than wrestling fans, but I used to jokingly add “and Bret Hart” to the end of it, since ‘ol bitter Bret has absolutely nothing positive to say about the current state of professional wrestling, but nowadays, it seems like it’s more accurate to say that nobody hates wrestling more than TKO, because it just feels like with their obsessive pursuit of profit, they’re absolutely killing a property that has proven for generations how profitable and sustainable it can be, when managed by the right parties.

Backlash came and went, and it was one of the first PLEs that I didn’t watch in a while.  I tinkered with VPNs for the Royal Rumble, and plunked down a month for ESPN Unlimited in order to watch Wrestlemania, but the way Backlash’s card set up, it just didn’t look like it was even worth the effort to try and swindle my way to watch it por gratis; apparently my assertion wasn’t wrong, as it turned out to be a very mid card.

The last few weeks have been hectic for me, and I missed RAW last week and didn’t feel like I missed anything (I didn’t), and the latest episode, I kind of watched it for lack of anything better to do with that amount of time, and as I’ve been saying to mythical wife who’s often sitting next to me while I’m watching, the worst part of every Monday night is when I catch up to the live feed, because that means I’m not subject to have to watch the commercials.

As a wrestling fan, I’ve put up with the loss of kayfabe, the steroid scandal almost killing the business, oversaturation of product, AEW’s fans, Katie Vick, the Gobbedly Gooker, and all sorts of shitty stories, wrestler deaths, and tasteless storylines, and stuck around.  But at this current trajectory, there is a very realistic possibility that I’m just going to stop watching RAW, because all the commercials just makes it unbearable, and when it is on, the quality of the performing going downhill isn’t going to help its cause.

Going back to the title of this post, I just haven’t felt this alienated from something I’ve loved for as long as I’ve almost been alive, and it’s kind of sad, and I would wager that I’m not the only one who’s feeling this way out there.

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.

Free is a four-letter word

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And is about as inflammatory and prone to resulting in aggravation, disappointment and general negativity as some of the more notorious four-letter words out there in the common lexicon.

I’ve spent the better part of a week this month at my dad’s old place in Virginia, my old home, cleaning it out, because as he’s no longer living there, the only logical thing to do would be to empty it out and get rid of it.  Of course, that isn’t going to happen on its own, and nobody in my family really seems as eager to not let a valuable asset potential degrade due to neglect as I am, so that has almost entirely fallen on my shoulders to do, despite the fact that I would rather have been doing a hundred other things than driving all the way up there just to clean and struggle to do my job remotely since that home hadn’t had internet access in the last two years.

I had the brilliant analogy that my dad was basically like Wall-E, in the sense that he seemed to collect an inordinate amount of useless and worthless trash and tchotchkes, but he was pretty good at organizing it and making it look fairly orderly within his own home.  However, when it comes to sorting and determining what could be salvaged and what needed to be tossed, it became very, very quickly apparent that the load didn’t jive with the time available, and that pretty much everything needed to be trashed.

It was like an episode of Storage Wars where Dave Hester would always brag about the potential profitability about every single storage unit he won, but that’s because he had a consignment shop where all the bullshit he collected could sit on shelves and make a nickel five months later, as opposed to being moved immediately.  My dad had a lot of stuff that honestly could’ve made a few bucks here and there if time were on our side, but in the span of a week, I wasn’t about to try and organize a last second single home flea market for the legions of crap that my dad had hoarded over the last decade and a half.

Box full of optical mice?  Trash.  Bag full of brand-new commercial painting supplies?  Trash.  Boxes full of partially used duct and electrical tape?  Trash.  Box of tool grade rope?  Crate full of commercial paper towels?  Industrial tubs full of liquid soap?  Trash, trash, trash.

Amidst all the crap were all sorts of personal and family mementos too, stuff that my sister, my mom or myself didn’t take with us when we all inevitably moved out.  And as much as I tend to hesitate when it comes to disposing of anything of such nature, I walked into my week of work with a credo, to harden the heart and let shit go, because otherwise I would accomplish nothing.  If nobody cared about this stuff to take with them when they left, nobody is going to care about it when it’s tossed.

High school yearbooks, shop class projects, little pieces of crap that I may have saved at random points in my life, all part of the trash pile.  I had a moment of quiet shock, when my mom took her wedding photo album and tossed it into a box marked for disposal, but seeing as how they are divorced, it’s understandable, but still no less slightly mortifying as a child of said union.

When my work was done, the house was still in pretty much chaos, but at least it was fairly organized chaos.  Originally, I had planned on just being a repeated shuttle back and forth to the dump to dispose of everything that needed to go, but my aunt and my mom meddled and convinced me to pay for professional disposal.  Having a little experience with it, I knew to expect a bill north of a grand if we were going to go that route, but the thought of saving myself and my car the labor didn’t hurt, so that’s the choice I made, and I made some calls and reached out to a few companies, and landed with one who would come at a later date to come pick up all the trash.

Among all the crap, I had pulled aside some items that even I thought, would go quickly, if offered for free to the community, like some extension ladders, a television, and a weed-wacker.  Long story short, the ladders moved, but with resistance, and I ended up donating the television and the trimmer to Goodwill when neither generated a lick of interest.

Additionally, there were also a lot of furniture that I felt had some value in it, and I figured it shouldn’t be hard to leverage the Salvation Army to come pick up some free furniture that they could then flip at their consignment shops; yes, I’m aware of the general negative reputation the internet has over the SA, but I just wanted to get this house cleared in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible, and in the past I’ve used them to help clear out my old house, and they seemed like a logical option.

After I had left, and the scheduled day of the SA pickup had passed, I called my mom whom I entrusted to be on site to let the SA guys in, and she told me that they took nothing.  They came into the home, examined all the marked items, deemed them not suitable quality, and refused to move anything that required traveling a flight of stairs.  I knew right away that it wasn’t so much that everything I offered was inadequate, as much as it was around 3:30 pm when they showed up to my place, their truck was probably full, the workers were tired, and they simply did not want to go through the labor of hauling off all the stuff I had asked them to.

So I basically got exactly what I had paid for – zero.

There’s the popular adage that people should never stop learning, and it was at this moment that I decided that I have fully learned an important lesson that I will try to implement into my remaining life, and that free, is bullshit, and to look at anything in life that claims to be free, with the skepticism that I would look at anyone proclaiming to be a Nigerian prince.

Free, always sounds awesome, but free comes with a whole slew of conditionals that are mitigated when there’s some form of transactional currency.  And the drawback to free always seems to be at the extreme risk of something often times more valuable than any form of currency, which is time, because with the case of the Salvation Army, their refusal to do their job because their service was free, still cost me a great deal of time, as I did not have a fallback plan, because they did me right in my own previous experience, which was a fallacy in its own right that I need to be mindful of in the future as well.

But I think about all the times in my life where something has been free, whether it’s been me trying to get something, or me trying to give shit away, and almost all of the instances, have involved aggravation, regret, and questioning why I did in the first place.

It’s like the IHOP fallacy, whenever they do like their free pancake day or whatever, you see on the news people who wait hours for a free short stack of pancakes, when that same short stack would’ve cost like $7 and get it immediately if you paid for it, making those who think about it realize that paying > free.

I’ve gone through great lengths in the past to get free bobbleheads at ballparks, and looking back at all those instances, I can count on one hand where it’s actually been worth it, and I actually applaud myself in any instance where I may have self-policed my time versus free scale and altered my choices in the past.

I also think about the sheer aggravation of trying to give stuff away on stuff like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, because it seems like something that should be layups, but the flake rate for free shit is so astronomically high, so often times I just end up throwing perfectly good shit away, because I simply grew exasperated with trying to not be wasteful and giving away perfectly good goods, because I’m just tired of people.

The point of all this is that I have, I truly have, learned, that the word free is not necessarily a good word anymore, and is instead a loaded word, full of conditionals and rules and invisible clauses, that one really needs to understand the risks when they inevitably grow tempted by it, solely because of the potential end result of a transaction with nothing exchanged.

So many times in life, it’s simply better to just grow up, pay up, and get shit done, without any of the bullshit that free entails.

I guess this makes me sound old

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago on Thanksgiving, my family missed our flight. 

Actually, we did not miss our flight, but rather we missed the recommended two-hour check-in period because mythical wife and I were parents new to two kids, had a boatload of cargo to haul with us, and had to check-in at a service desk, instead of just going straight to security as if we didn’t have all the extra crap.  And the only reason why we missed it is because ATL’s parking garage is the worst in the nation [fact] and the 15 minutes in which it took us to get from car to terminal was the difference between making it and not.

Being late, I can take responsibility for.  Airline travel these days is a stressful ordeal most of the time, multiplied by the fact that it was a holiday.  Add to the fact that parenting is hard, especially at the time, two kids under the ages of two.

What really bothered me about the whole situation was the fact that after we were told that we would not be getting onto our flight, was the fact that for the next hour and 50 minutes, while I was on the phone with Delta trying to figure out what our options were, was knowing that our aircraft was sitting there, still waiting for cargo to be loaded, still waiting for people to board, still, just fucking waiting.  Meanwhile, thanks to some uppity gate agents hiding behind the subjectively conveniently wall of protocol, my family was denied clearance, and I had to drop $700 on the spot for two new day-of holiday tickets in order to go to Virginia for barely 12 hours, all for being 10 minutes past a recommended check-in time.

Look, I know that rules are rules, and my family wasn’t there at precisely 2+ hours before departure time.  But I’ve witnessed in my rather copious flying experiences people in way more dire and illogical, and should-be-fucked situations emerge victorious, all because there’s a generous amount of discretion, grace and ability to read the room involved with being in airline customer support.

I was ten minutes late.  I wasn’t a dick or raised my voice or created a scene with the agent.  I also understand the needs of the baggage handlers and that their time needs to be accounted for.  I wasn’t asking for super special treatment, and to be escorted through security through special assistance.  I just wanted a little bit of grace and understanding for our parenting situation, and a little bit of leniency on the time, especially since there was more than enough of it remaining to make our flight.

But no, we were stonewalled, marked as no-shows, and not allowed to advance on our original itinerary.  The reasonable flights were refunded as credit, but that needed to be used immediately along with $700 extra dollars to book two new flights, and it led to a real shitty holiday travel experience.

All because a gate agent didn’t really feel like working, and used the wall of protocol to shield themselves behind.

It’s not lost on me that from a cold hard facts point of view, the agent did nothing wrong.  From a procedural standpoint, they did everything to the T, and when the day is over, you really can’t ask for much more from an employee.

Nobody is required or expected to go above their required duties, and I know there’s a lot of gray area when it comes to Office Space debates on doing the bare minimum versus trying to do more, but when the asks are not difficult or require little extra effort, but the result is the satisfaction and gratitude of helping another person accomplish something, why the fuck not give it a whirl?

I’m sure that there have been points in my life where I’ve hidden behind the exact same wall of protocol, but I’m fairly certain that if I did it, it was coming from a place of antagonism, and I was probably aware that my refusal to budge was going to be seen as an act of hostility, from whom I was being obtuse with.

Well that introduction went a little long, because what the whole point of this whole post is that I recently had a situation with a colleague, where I asked for some assistance with a project, and was met with a surprising amount of resistance, a deflection from a shield of protocol, and a conclusion where the task was not completed, and will have to wait an entire week for this person to come back from PTO before it gets completed.

Like the airline story, they’re not in the wrong with the course of action that they chose to take, but the ask I had for them was to convert two sentences and three bullet points into a smaller, digestible 2-3 sentence paragraph; a task that I’ve seen not just any copywriter, but this specific copywriter accomplish in less than five minutes.  I even vetted the ask with them over Teams before entering the request into Workfront, which was met with a response indicating how easy it would be.

But once they received it in Workfront, they responded to the group that the due date for the task was already past-due because our PMs are suspect in capability, and that it would have to wait until the following week due to their upcoming PTO, and that they recommended assigning it to another copywriter if it was urgent.

To this type of response, I scrunched my brow at the screen, and wondered why the fuck they had agreed upon its ease if they weren’t going to help out with it in the first place?  Furthermore, this all happened at like 10 am in the work day, there was more than enough time to just knock it out, then I could do my part, and we could close the entire project out, and that would be one less ticket looming over our workloads.

Aggravated, I decided to not reassign the task, and to make sure it remains on this copywriter’s plate.  It has the time, but it could have been done so much sooner, and on principle, I’m going to make sure that they still do it, and lord help me if they complain about their workload when they get to it then.

I get wanting to coast before a vacation, but I’m also the type who absolutely abhors the idea of anyone having to pick up or fill in or finish something that I started.  I’m a monster when it comes to trying to close out all my tasks, tie up all loose ends, and knock out anything that can be knocked out before I go radio silent.  To me, it just seems like common courtesy, but as I very well have learned throughout my life, nobody works harder than a Korean, and I feel as if I’m a step above the rest on top of it.

Ultimately, my mind immediately thought to the notion that this wasn’t just ordinary apathetic work avoidance, but rather more typical to Gen-Z work ethic, and no matter how nice and chipper and glowy of personalities a worker can be, the barest of bare minimums is to be expected, and that anything that might be construed as exceeding such, is absolutely out of the question.

Nice enough and chipper and pleasant as this copywriter is, they still turtled up behind the shield of protocol as if I were asking them to find the cure for cancer.  Shifting the request to the other copywriter was out of the question to me, because they’re younger and more apt to bitch about an additional request being made of them, and I don’t want to hear it.  But even in spite of all the remaining time in the day, they didn’t have the time to address my ask, but they did have time to get on the department Teams channel and wish a happy birthday to fucking Mariah Carey.

Perhaps the five minutes of doing such should be construed as five minutes of flagrant not-work time spent, and they should make up for it by spending five minutes on the task that I had asked them for.

Either way, I suppose complaining about the perceived work ethics of those younger than me qualifies as one of those things that justifies the fact that I’m old now.  Whatever though, at least I know I’m capable of getting shit done, even if others might consider such attribute as giving shit away.

Year six of forever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even to this very day, I still sometimes can’t believe that I’m a dad.  I usually have these thoughts in the mornings, when I’m watching my kids eat breakfast, and my mind thinks back to when they were but little babies that drank from bottles, and eventually fed by spoon, and then finger foods, and here they are not only eating with utensils, they have opinions, on what breakfasts I make them that they do like, or if they’re one of their pissy morning moods, and whatever I’ve made is automatically putrid trash.

But sometimes I just quietly watch them while they eat, and I think back to my mom doing the same thing to me, and me thinking “whaaaat???” whenever I caught her staring.  I don’t remember what her answer ever was, if she even answered in the first place, but being a parent myself, I’ve come to understand why she was doing it in the first place, because I have to imagine she was probably thinking the same thing I think whenever I just watch my kids, that it’s still amazing that we have kids and that we are parents; bonus if the kids themselves are pretty good ones.

Today marks year six for my eldest, the one that started me on this path of being a parent, and like I stated above, there are times where I still can’t believe it.  Life as a childless adult feels like such an alien, foreign concept that I’m often flabbergasted when I see people who live such uncomplicated lives for basically nobody but themselves for the most part.  Sure, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the freedom, frivolity and sheer ease of not having to feel responsible for the life of young children, but there are times where there’s nothing like witnessing your own children grow into the world, and feeling somewhat responsible for helping shape them into the people they’re becoming.

Few things make me laugh more than hearing my children using some of the more common phrases that I use, like for example, #1 was getting tired of explaining some Pokémon thing to #2, and she bust out a how many times do I have to tell you, and I lost it right where I was sitting, because there’s absolutely no doubt where she picked that saying up from.  Maybe that’s not the best thing to be picking up to reflect on me, but it’s just an example of just how perceptive and how much of my kid my kids are capable of being, and seldom does a day go by where one or both of my kids don’t bring an avalanche of joy to my heart at some point.

And just like that, my eldest is six freaking years old.

She’s smart as heck, wants to know damn near everything she can about Pokémon, still enjoys reading with dad, and appears to be quite the math whiz, based on the fact that I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen an incorrect answer on her math worksheets throughout the entire school year so far.

She’s very observant, picks up on everything, and has the marvelously beautiful imagination that only a 5-6 year old can have, whether she expresses it through drawing, coloring or making things out of whatever she can get her hands on; Legos, wooden blocks, MagnaTiles.  I love building things to instruction with her, but it’s most fun when we disassemble a Lego kit, and then she’s free to build whatever she wants, and when she’s done she always has these elaborate backstories to the structures she’s building, and the figures that are living in them.  I’ll tidy up her room in the afternoon, and by the time bed time has come, she’s built an entire town of structures, with origin stories for everyone that’s living in it, and I don’t remember being nearly as imaginative as she is now when I was six.

What I really love is that she still wants to be picked up and carried by dad all the time.  There was one moment I had thought to myself at what age does it seem weird to be doing that, but it didn’t last long because I remembered that there would one day come a day where either she doesn’t want to be held any more, or for whatever reason I’ll be unable to do it, so I put that silly thought to bed, and I’m happy to pick up and carry my kid whenever she asks, because I’d rather get in all my carries and hugs in while I still can.

The point is, happiest of birthdays to my eldest child.  It’s been the greatest honor of my life to be your dad, and I love you (and sissy and mama) with every fiber of my being, and the simple objective of my life has always remained the same, to be the best dad possible to you, always.