Where has this stuff been all my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Chili oil crisp was always something I never gave much thought about; it’s not something I hadn’t ever seen before, after all, it’s almost always at the table whenever you go to an actual sit-down Chinese restaurant.  I’ve never really been compelled to try it before, but over the course of the last year or so, I’ve heard occasional remarks about people who love this particular brand of chili oil crisp, Lao Gan Ma, and how it is one of those condiments that goes with everything, almost like a Chinese version of Frank’s Red Hot or something.

I was at the Asian market a little while ago, and I saw an endcap display where Lao Gan Ma was on sale, and I figured ehh, why not, no time like the present to give it a whirl.  When I brought it home, I tasted it straight, and it was good, but I didn’t really see what all the fuss was all about.  Most people talked about how it went great on eggs, but I can’t exactly eat eggs straight, so that was out of the question, but I could imagine different things that it might go well with, but not many things that I was going to make any time soon.

I found it went okay with curry, but when the day is over, I preferred adding chipotles to my curry as my preferred heat additive, and although I liked the Lao Gan Ma, I knew I had yet to find the right thing to add it to, to really unlock its potential for my palette.

Recently, The Algorithm has been showing me content of all these people who were making these cucumber salads, touting their ease, and general low-cost, when combined with stuff like canned tuna, celery, dill, salt and pepper, with some people utilizing mayo, and others using combinations of cottage cheese and/or Greek yogurt.

Impressionable as I sometimes can be, I decided to give a flyer to one of these recipes, since they seemed a little bit on the healthier side, while being lower on the carbohydrate scale; and it was pretty good, but I felt that it was something that probably would taste great with some sort of hot sauce . . . or some chili oil crisp.

And it was in this union of a creamy cucumber tuna salad, and Lao Gan Ma chili oil crisp, I unlocked this mega combo, where the creamy base of the salad, tempers a little bit of the heat of the chili oil crisp, and they go together in a fantastic combination to where I’m crushing half the bowl of the salad in one sitting, and emptying out a third of my jar of chili oil crisp.

Sure, a hot sauce like Frank’s would probably be good with this cucumber tuna salad, but it wouldn’t give it the satisfying crunch that Lao Gan Ma crispy chilis do, and now I’m basically at a stage of my life where I’m wondering where the heck this stuff has been throughout it, and how excited my inner big back is at seemingly finding the key to unlocking the potential of chili oil crisp, and deliberating future foods that it could probably go great with now as well.

So dismissive, kind of callous, I can’t help but respect it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how my birthday this year was basically borked on account of being endlessly sick throughout the entire month of April, I didn’t really celebrate at all.  I actually still have some gifts that I haven’t even opened, yet, because I’ve been in such a dour plcae over the last few weeks, I want to make sure that I’m in a positive headspace before opening anything that’s meant to be a pick-me-up, and I really don’t think I’ve gotten to that point just yet.

Either way, this is something that I’ve wanted to write about but just didn’t get a chance to and it kept getting pushed back in the queue of things that pique my interest or inspire words to formulate, but I noticed something in the soulless, mostly obligated birthday card that I received from my colleagues at work.

Among the generic and canned-corn hand written messages from my colleagues, I noticed that one person signed via a rubber stamp that simply said “Happy Birthday -Michael”

My brow furrowed, and numerous emotions went through my head at seeing such.  The fact that Michael had a rubber stamp created with the most generic of greetings, was such a sign of dismissal, a lack of genuine care, and an acknowledgment that office colleague birthday cards really are tedious, forced and things that we as people really don’t care about, but feel obligated to participate, for optics.

However, at the same time, I found it to be absolutely hilarious that Michael here had the wherewithal to understand that office colleague cards really are tedious, forced and things we don’t care about, that he created a solution that absolved him of even the littlest of thought necessary to hand write a generic greeting.

Responses from people in my circles whom I shared this with were varied, from wooooowww, to laughing, and if anything at all like me, kind of in admiration for Michael for having such a brilliant idea to have a dismissive and informal stamp to just slap on a soulless Happy Birthday greeting, which includes his name on it, so that everyone who sees it, can see, that Michael feels all of the above.

All the same, regardless of how anyone feels about it, it elicited enough of a reaction from me to where I felt inspired to write about it.  And frankly, that in itself is a gift that’s invaluable, at least to me, and Michael has no idea he accomplished such. 

I kind of want my own generic greeting rubber stamp now.

I clearly give off a fuck off aura

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, there was an all-hands meeting at work.  I went down to the conference room early so that I could have my choice of seat, and I chose this chair next to wall, but in the front row so it looked like I wasn’t a complete degenerate, planning on dicking around on my phone throughout the entire meeting.  After all, appearance is everything, so I’m often told professionally.

As the clock ticked closer to the start of the meeting, and seats began filling up, the seat immediately next to mine remained unclaimed, regardless of how full up the room was getting.  By the time the meeting started, there were at least 10-15 people who were standing against a wall, while the seat right next to me remained vacant.

In fact, not only was the seat next to me vacant, the two seats immediately behind me were also empty, creating this perfect three-seat halo around me of empty seats.  Had this happened on an airplane, I’d be over the moon, because that’s like the broke boy first class, getting a bunch of seats around you left open.

However, this was not an airplane, but a conference room where everyone had free choice on where they wanted to occupy for the duration of the next hour, the fact remained that three open chairs immediately surrounding me remained open, with numerous people preferring to remain standing, as opposed to sitting near me.

The low-hanging fruit is that I clearly must smell bad, or emanate an odor that is unsavory to people I do not know, but among my friends and those people who actually take the time to get to know me, most have no problem sitting in close proximity to me, so I’m (hopefully) able to take the stinky hypothesis off the table.

So the only logical conclusion at this point is that I have fuck-off aura, that is as potent and overpowering as an anime or video game character, at compelling people to stay the fuck away from me.  Not that I necessarily mind the space that people give me, it gets to the point where I begin to ponder about the appearance of everyone fucking-off from me, and unfortunately perception is reality, and it probably does me little good to look like a person that everyone else wants to stay away from.

I do not apologize or feel the need to disclaim that I have the male equivalent of resting bitch face, and that I look pissed off as my neutral state of existence.  There are times in which such is the case, but even when I feel as if I’m having a good day, I understand that the expression on my face is that of experiencing the absolutely shitty state of transportation in Santorini, Greece.  But people, including my own mother and mythical wife, often implore me to fake it and smile every now and then, which isn’t necessarily bad advice, but faking it, and faking a less miserable expression is tiring and requires more effort and fucks than I’m willing to give, especially in this day and age.

This was not an isolated incident as well.  I have all sorts of memories in my life where relative strangers typically have demonstrated a noticeable aversion to sitting near me, and this isn’t even the only incident off the top of my head in my own office.

There was once a team meeting, that was especially packed on this particular day, and every single seat was taken, except for the one right next to me.  I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the notion that even within my own team, my fuck-off aura struck again, and the only seat to remain empty was the one next to me, and this was among a lot of company who kind of knew me, as we were in the same department.

And to add insult to injury, one of the few people in my company that I am not particularly fond of, they meandered into the meeting late, as is customary for the narcissistic asshole they are, but they did a quick scan of the room to look for a seat, and they put themselves into a situation where they were seen scanning, which meant that they had to take something if it were available, and so I had to end up sitting next to my least favorite colleague for the next 40 minutes, all because my fuck-off aura put us into this scenario.

Like I said, incidents like this have happened numerous times in my life, but it just so happens that it happened to a degree where I finally had the motivation to actually sit down and write about it.  And also like I said, I refuse to apologize and ask for forgiveness for looking mean and scary, and if people are unwilling to put their biases aside, then they really can go fuck off.

Proposing a modification to best of sevens

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously I didn’t watch the game, but when I saw the score, I wasn’t the least bit surprised that not only did the Knicks beat the 76ers to complete the sweep, they won by a large margin.  And not only did the Knicks knock the Sixers out of the playoffs, Philadelphia got completely owned (again) by the legions of New Yorkers who made the jaunt down to Philly to watch the conclusion to the series, completely taking over the Whatever Name Arena that the Sixers call home.

Man, I don’t know what’s the deal in Philly, because I normally have this begrudging respect for their sports fans, but outside of the Eagles, it feels like Philly sports fans have completely lost their reputation, seeing as how the Phillies, Sixers and even the Flyers who were also just swept out of the NHL playoffs are all showing poorly, and their supposed, die-hard fans, aren’t showing much better either.

But anyway, back to the subject of this post, I have a proposal that would absolutely, never, ever come to fruition because a lot of parties stand to lose money if it were to happen, and regardless of if the athletes themselves would love the idea, The Man absolutely refuses to yield any money under any circumstances, logical or not.

Regardless; my proposal would be that in a best-of-seven matchup, should any team go up 3-0, the series is over, without the need to get a fourth win.  My hypothetical eye test has observed throughout my life as a sports fan, that not only has historically a 3-0 all but guaranteed a series win, in most cases, a 3-0 has a high chance of being a sweep.

Most every sports fans know that a comeback from 0-3 is practically impossible, with there being legitimately just three recognized instances in history; two in the NHL, one in MLB, and zero in the NBA.  Sure, there have been many instances where be it pride, a fluke, or a good old fashioned college try, where a team down 0-3 has scraped out a win, maybe two, with only a few times in history where they managed to force a game 7, but the ultimate comeback has literally only happened three times in the three big sports that utilize best-of-sevens.

And the thing is, the numbers actually back up my observation; with teams that are up 3-0, their win percentages in game 4 are all ranging from 60-70%, with MLB teams completing the sweep 77.5% of the time, NHL teams closing out at 62.5%, and NBA teams putting the finishing touches at a rate of 69.3%.

So that being said, zeroing in on the NBA, since it’s never happened before, why even bother anymore with playing out a series once a team goes up 3-0?  Not only has it been proven to be impossible for a team down 0-3 to comeback, it seems like in most cases that not only do they get swept, but they also get blown the fuck out in the finale too.

Much like the rest of the world, the NBA today has a lot of players who fall into this complete defeatist mentality, and watching teams that know history is against them, with a monumental task in front of them, you can just see their will to try and give effort is just not there.  I don’t care enough to really pore through the numbers, but I’d wager that a noticeable number of 3-0 game 4’s in history have resulted in not just a sweep, but a sweep by virtue of a big embarrassing blowout.

That being said, I propose to eliminate game 4s once a team is up 3-0, and declare it a series victory, because frankly, it just seems like a foregone conclusion that’s formally just a waste of time.

Obviously, this would never fly, because television broadcast money, advertiser money, venue money, ticket money, concessions money, all the money that circulates on account of one singular basketball game, would be forfeit with this idea, and nobody wants to lose out on getting paid.

But I feel like players would be over the moon if this idea were to become reality, and it would create all sorts of interesting new dynamics if this were the case.  A team up 2-0 starts to really play with their balls out in game 3, knowing that they can close out the series immediately, and potentially get a few extra days to rest before the following round. 

A team down 0-2 really now needs to kick that desperation gear in motion, because 0-2 now becomes the 0-3 in a way, but the difference is if they can stave off 0-3, they not only stay alive, but mathematically 1-2 comebacks don’t mean the end of the world, and even 1-3 comebacks are not impossible either.

Plus there’s a number of not-so altruistic factors that come into play, because if a team closes out a series at 3-0, and have to wait on an opponent in another series that goes the distance, there’s a potential for a long layoff, and almost every sport has demonstrated the perils of too much time off, and it could creates for some interesting outcomes if a hot team that won a 3-0 sits for 13 days, while their opponent who went 7 games to move on is battle tested, hardened, and still has momentum on their side; or they could be exhausted, and the team that won 3-0 got some much-needed rest, and then they overpower their opponents.

Above all else, basketball is a physically grueling sport.  Probably more running than any other sport outside of futbol, and last year especially, we saw an NBA playoffs where like 3-4 different guys tore their ACLs, most notably Tyrese Haliburton in game 7 of the Finals.  Players would probably be thrilled at the possibility of gaining some extra rest time, should they close an opponent out 3-0, and something like this could be critical at allowing for players to get some much needed rest and recovery, and strategically lead to some more compelling basketball.

But again, it boils down to the fact that game 4s now, where a team is down 0-3 are just boring as fuck.  The losing team not only almost doesn’t ever win, they also get embarrassed, when they get blown out to complete their sweeps.  The NBA playoffs are already long enough, why not make some tweaks to the format to help spice some things up?

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.

Life after Spirit: It has begun

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MSN: Delta to cut snack services on what they deem short flights

At a quick glance, this doesn’t sound like a big deal at all.  Many on social media are very quick to opine such, claiming those people who see it as doom and gloom to be overreacting.  And in all fairness, it really doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, considering the fairly logical rationale behind it: shorter flights struggle to even complete snack service, with an extremely tight window that offers almost no margin of error, and any sort of turbulence or complication leads to some people getting snacks and others not, leading to a negative experience for some.

However, it’s the timing of this business decision, coincidentally as soon as Spirit Airlines has wrapped up operations, that raises my eyebrow, and gives me the impression that this is just the start of eventual perk-removing, that starts with snacks on a small scale to test the waters of reception and blowback, to eventually transforming into a fare class that might as well be called the Spirit fare, but without the actual Spirit prices.

Although the removal of snack service really doesn’t sound like a big deal at first blush, Delta will probably save somewhere in the neighborhood of like $8-12M in snacks they don’t have to purchase, more if this slashes their alcohol stocking.  These savings of course, will not mean that they will be passed onto customers, and in fact will probably pad the end-of-year bonuses to guys like Ed Bastian, who reportedly made around $24M in bonuses last year, and a conglomerate of old white male shareholders.

I can’t speak for any airlines, but I’m not going to assume Delta is the only one doing it, with their offering of some basic bare bones fare class, that’s basically already like Spirit Airlines, with no assigned seats, no checked bags, last to board, and the kicker being no SkyMiles earned, but it still costs like 3x the price of a Spirit RT.  I imagine this fare class will become more expensive with the removal of Spirit Airlines as a competitor, further entrapping would-be travelers with bullshit prices for the shortest of flights.

The point is, airlines are already fucking the people on a daily basis with their bullshit high fares, and the people are entitled to take back as much as humanly possible from them for how much they’re paying.  It’s not so much about the actual snacks themselves being removed as much as it’s an exploratory malicious act of deception with the end goal being more cash pocketed at the corporate executive level.

It starts with snacks, and little by little, 350 mile flights turns into 500 mile flights, the little bag checker displays start showing up outside of Delta gates, with ominous threats to start charging for personal items.  All while the fare classes continue to escalate, citing inflation, the Strait of Hormuz and the rise of jet fuel.

Randos on the internet can claim that it’s no big deal, but will be wondering why their round trip from ATL to DCA costs $479, gets no snacks, and no SkyMiles are awarded; all while Ed Bastian makes $30M in bonuses at the end of the year.

I know the death of Spirit was a good time for many on the internet, with all the jokes and memes to have come out of it, but it seriously was not a good thing at all for the entire industry, and the only ones who will suffer from it, are people who need to travel.  Eventually, nobody will be able to travel at all, unless it’s on their employer’s dime.