Author: dannyhong

NJPW Television Championship blet: WTHF

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While I was chatting wrestling with my bros, I thought about how New Japan’s upcoming Wrestle Kingdom, which is the equivalent to their Wrestlemania, was looking like a really stacked show, and if not for the fact that it started at 3AM the following day for us in the west, I would totally be interested in watching it.  Just the two matches between Kenny Omega vs. Will Osperay and Jay White vs. Kazuchika Okada are enough to sell the entire show, but really NJPW doesn’t ever have a bad Wrestle Kingdom, top to bottom.

Looking at the rest of the card, most of the other matches seem very appealing, even if it does contain the further stripping of titles off of FTR who will undoubtedly lose the IWGP titles in the triple threat match they’re in, and seeing the new IWGP Women’s champ Kairi (Sane) on the card seems as good as place as any for the rampant news that Sasha Banks will be appearing, to come to fruition.

But the one match that caught my attention immediately, and one that I had no idea was even developing was the finals of a tournament . . . for a brand new championship, the NJPW Television Championship.Obviously this means that there’s a new blet, and when there’s blets, there’s me, hoping it’s awesome so that I could hope to get a replica for my collection, but at the same time hoping it sucks, so that I won’t be tempted to plop down $300-400 I don’t have for something that’s useless and I don’t really need.

Well the good(bad) news is that the design of the blet is this gigantic ball of what the fuck, as in this is the worst fucking designed blet since the days of the NWA territories, and their blets were basically made out of scrap aluminum and Peg Bundy’s pants.

Seriously, I haven’t had a blet boner go flacid so quickly since the old Ring of Honor TV blet whose plates were so vertically long that it couldn’t not be a literal cockblock.  The NJPW TV blet does absolutely nothing for me except say what the fuck, every time I look at it, because nothing about it makes any god damn sense.

Firstly, it’s completely boring and uninspiring, with the shapes of the plates being some fucking rectangles.  The baby shit brown color of the strap with the weird gold piping trim don’t do it any favors, and I just don’t get why all promotions seems so determined to steer away from traditional, classic black straps.

But then the designs of the plates themselves, are nothing but eye-scrunching puzzling.  For starters, it’s deviating from the norm and is not being classified as an IWGP championship; for the matter it’s not really being classified as just an NJPW championship but an NJPWWorld.com title.  As in it is a championship belt that represents a website and nothing else.

And despite the fact that they’re calling it the NJPW Television championship, the word “television” doesn’t appear anywhere on the strap itself, but don’t worry the URL NJPWWorld.com is on it five fucking times, so that anyone who sees the blet who misses it the first four times might still see the address on the fifth spot on the left side plate.

The only thing that gives any hint that it’s for television is on the side plates, which basically has a clipart of an early 2000’s monitor with a gigantic PLAY button on it next to the NJPW lion crest, naturally accompanied by one of the five NJPWWorld.com URLs, so I guess it sort of represents digital media.

I know IMPACT! gets a lot of flack being the spiritual successor to TNA, but at least they have the wherewithal to name their blet the “Digital Media (world) championship,” have the name of it on it, and have a blet that doesn’t look like shit.  For all the weeb-y praise and credit NJPW gets, in this regard, they just got dunked on, hard, by fucking IMPACT! of all other promotions.

Finally, the last criticism I have for this turd blet is the silhouette behind the primary NJPW World wordmark on the center plate.  I have no idea what that is supposed to be.  Usually, blets like to have silhouettes of continents or countries, to signify the regions they’re supposed to represent, but I can’t really make out what’s in the background of this one.  Despite being for a Japanese website, the silhouette kind of looks like North America if global warming raised the sea levels, sunk most of Mexico and western Canada and thinned Florida out.  Or maybe it’s eastern Asia despite the fact that NJPW doesn’t operate in any of those countries.  But all the same, I think the heat can get off of the NXT UK Tag blets for not actually having the UK visible on their plates, because at least some recognizable country is comprehensible.

The bottom line is that the NJPWWorld.com YouTube Championship blet looks like garbage.  If I’m Zack Sabre, Jr., I’m pleading with whomever has the book in New Japan to not have me win the championship, because it would be a colossal embarrassment to be seen having to carry around a shitty looking title as such.  It would undoubtedly be better to be a non-champion than have to carry around a clown championship, and if there’s one thing the WWE and WCW has taught wrestling fans throughout the years, there very much are championships that sandbag careers than benefit them.

The NJPWWorld.com Digital Streaming NJPWWorld.com Championship definitely, definitely is one of them.  What the holy fuck indeed.  There’s absolutely no desire for me to track down a Pakistani bootleg replica of this, even if Rusev/Miro were to set Tony Khan on fire and burn AEW to the ground and make the jump to New Japan that I foretold years ago and won this piece of shit en route to fulfilling his destiny as IWGP World champion.

Marvel Comics imagined by someone who doesn’t know Marvel Comics

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The following is a painting by the world renown famous Thomas Kincade Studios®.  From what the product description states, this is supposed to represent the Battle of Wakanda, that I have no idea is actually sourced from, but my knee-jerk reaction was that this was just a hilariously bad imagining of the climactic fight from Avengers: Infinity War.

Because Thanos’ forces weren’t Skrulls, nor did they have the Hulk/Wolverine Hulkerine abomination in their ranks, and I didn’t know why one of the troglodytes had Loki horns and was carrying Stormbreaker.  Nor was Storm involved in the battle, much less any mutants at all because phase one of the MCU most definitely didn’t have any of the M-words anywhere, at least in name.

But in all fairness, the product description actually discloses that it’s some other battle of Wakanda, and discloses the Skrulls by name, so it really isn’t just a tragically terrible imagining of the Infinity War battle, as much as I would have loved for it to have been.

All the same, it’s still terrible in its own right, and there’s a legendary degree of shark-jumping and DJ Tanner wrestling in play here with Disney actually allowed for the vaunted Marvel comics to do a collaboration with Thomas Kinkade, which is best known for the overly fluffy artwork of horses, cottages and forest fantasy scenes on plates and forgettable artwork hanging at your white grandma’s house.

And all the same, it’s fairly clear that whomever did paint this horrendous piece probably doesn’t know Marvel comics at all.  I know there were other super Skrulls that emerged throughout the years, but most all comic followers usually are aware of the OG Super Skrull and that his additional powers were only that of the four members of the Fantastic Four.

I just love how there’s the primary focal point of the Skrull army being some nondescript super Skrull who is as big as the Hulk, has one flaming arm of Human Torch, and is sprouting Wolverine claws out of the other.  And then you have the other hulking Skrull in the background carrying two Asgardian weapons, leading one to believe that if these are the bad guys, how are they worthy to be holding two Asgardian weapons?

And then there’s the weird golem in the background that looks like a cross between Mach I Iron Man and Juggernaut, but for some reason he has Thing’s arm.  Furthermore, none of the Skrulls have the multiple cleft chins that they’re pretty known for physically.

But what I like about this piece is that due to the multiple points of focus, and the strange right-to-left directionality of the conflict, and to those who might actually not follow comics and were to look at this, it really is kind of ambiguous to whom the artist of this piece had envisioned the bad guys to be.  For all the casual viewers would know, the Skrulls are the ones defending their land and their futuristic looking city in the background from an army of invading black people, and not vice versa.

Considering the general demographic of Thomas Kinkade’s usual consumer base, this was either done intentionally, or completely unconsciously by the artist.  Neither of which is good, but at least it’s something for comic fans to all collectively point and laugh at.

Starting at $950, the fuck out of here

That’s a whole lot of words to say “because we suck”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d heartily: San Francisco Giants GM Farhan Zaidi tries to explain the difficulty of signing free agents because nobody likes the city

I remember when my baseball travels took me to San Francisco, I looked forward to the trip.  Years of watching stuff like Full House and Mrs. Doubtfire made the city seem like a pretty cool place, but at the same time, as a sports fan, I was a little skeptical, because as far as baseball was concerned, it became pretty common knowledge that San Francisco was the city that was 69F all year long, and their sports fans were among the most insufferably obnoxious ones in existence.

All the same, I looked forward to the trip as I did most all of my baseball trips, because regardless of the preconceived notions, it was still a place I’d never been to before, and I always relished the opportunity to see new places.

After my trip was over, I had decided that it was a good enough trip, but as a whole, I really wasn’t that impressed with San Francisco.  Everything everywhere was ridiculously expensive, the weather really was static, and it was just a difficult city to traverse in general.  As far as ballparks were concerned, I thought Oakland’s decrepit mausoleum of a ballpark was the better place to watch a game, and the sports culture was everything I had expected before going there.  Giants clearly cared more about the scene than they did the team, and even when they were getting stomped by the rival A’s, the fans still went ballistic for the Fist Pump Cam, and I’d never felt more embarrassed for other human beings in my entire life.

Despite the hype and perception and the self-importance from those in the Bay area, San Francisco was not a city I am that fond of, and I have little motive to want to visit again without good reason.

So I was quite tickled pink to read this article where the Giants’ GM Farhan Zaidi maybe said a little too much in an interview, because he basically said that free agents don’t want to sign with his team because the city kind of sucks.  He cited a couple of things that were not at all sports-related, and the author of the aforementioned story injected a little bit more of their own opinion into the article trying to smokescreen it as Zaidi’s.

But they mention stuff like homelessness and drug problems in the city, and although they don’t expressly say it, their use of sociological factors is basically trying to skirt around the fact that San Francisco is pretty well known to be one of the gayest cities in America, and I don’t say that with any hint of criticism or animosity, after all I’m in Atlanta, which is probably right behind them in population of the LGBTQ+.

Ballplayers probably don’t care about homelessness or drug use in the city, what they’re more likely to care about it the fact that it’s an expensive as fuck city to live in, and even the biggest of superstars are going to have a hard time trying to find a place to live, having to compete with all tech millionaires and billionaires that live in Silicon Valley.  Over the last few years, there have been numerous professional athletes who have turned away opportunities to play in New York and Canada over anticipated tax costs, and gone to places like Texas and Florida where tax laws aren’t as costly, they get that granular with their money.  San Francisco and the highest real estate costs in the country aren’t very likely to be that attractive to anyone, much less professional athletes.

Maybe the more country bumpkin athletes might have an objection with living in a blue state full of the gays, but it’s more likely that what will drive them away is a city with horrendous traffic and mountainous hills where they can’t drive their sports cars around in and have any fun, but it really was hilarious that the author of the post cited being the home to Nancy Pelosi as a potential reason why Aaron Judge wouldn’t sign there.

The thing is, no life-long Bay area resident would ever publicly decry their hometown to anyone other than other Bay area lifers.  Hometown criticism is like mom jokes, as in only we are allowed to make them, but coming from outside us, fuck you.  So it makes it that much more entertaining to me, that a notable representative of the city in the form of the hometown baseball club’s general manager goes on the record to point out all the faults why free agents wouldn’t want to sign there.  I’m sure he’s going to be a popular fellow until the next shiny distraction emerges.

Naturally, at the time I’m writing this, word drops that the Giants succeeded in signing shortstop Carlos Correa to a 13-year megadeal worth $350 million.  Most interestingly about the initial details is that I’ve noticed that there are no opt-out clauses, which means I really hope Correa likes the city, because he’s going to be there for quite some time.  Hopefully he knew what he was getting himself into, otherwise it’s going to suuuuuck.

Either way speaking of suuuuuuuck, suck it, San Francisco.  Y’all are an overrated city that nobody outside of it likes.  I relish in the fact that coronavirus exposed the town more than any other in America and their ridiculous real estate market took a notable hit, and it almost nearly gets some blood flow to hear that the Giants’ own GM think the city sucks too.

With all due respect to the Dream

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t get on board with the trophy for best defensive player of the year being named after anyone but Dikembe Mutombo. 

I love Hakeem Olajuwon, the man is an incredible champion, fantastic human being, and easily one of the greatest players of all time.  And although I’m a little surprised that the stats and numbers don’t support my argument, I think what it really boils down to is the fact that in terms of knee-jerk perception, when people think of legendary defenders, there’s no way Hakeem comes to mind before Dikembe Mutombo does.

I get the NBA’s decision and logic, Olajuwon made more All-Defensive teams than Dikembe did (9 vs. 6), averaged more blocks, had more total blocks, and was vastly the greater steals threat.  But the thing is, Hakeem Olajuwon was outstanding at pretty much everything in basketball, defense and offense.  For god’s sake, he’s one of the only guys in history to ever have a quadruple double.  If not for the existence of Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon would probably have more MVPs and more championships in his career, and the MVP trophy would’ve been named after him.

When you say the name “Hakeem Olajuwon,” probably the first thing that will come to anyone’s mind is him completely humiliating David Robinson in the 1995 playoffs.  Sure, Olajuwon was statistically the better defender than Mutombo was, but he was still a prolific scorer that was a tremendous offensive force that the Houston Rockets relied upon to carry the team.

But when you say the name “Dikembe Mutombo,” probably the first thing that comes to mind aside from the GEICO commercial, is the countless number of blocks he rejected throughout his illustrious career.  There was a best-of-five playoff series in 1994 where he blocked 31 shots in five games, which is complete insanity, and through his pure defense, his #8 seed Denver Nuggets upset the #1 Seattle Supersonics in one of the greatest upsets in the history of the game.

Mutombo wasn’t a terrible scorer, but it was never his priority to be the man on offense.  All the teams he’s been on have always had a primary scorer aside from him, because his job was always, defense. 

Dikembe Mutombo was defense.  And no disrespect to the Dream, who may have all of the better numbers, but when people think of defense, they’re probably not thinking of him first.  They’re thinking of the finger wagging, the swag, and the guy who built his entire career on being able to alter entire offenses just by being on the court.

I get why the NBA went with Hakeem, but I genuinely think they missed a great opportunity to really make a tsunami instead of a wave.  If it were the Dikembe Mutombo Defensive Player of the Year, the trophy could easily, easily have been a trophy of a hand wagging a finger like Mutombo used to do.  Doing so makes the trophy have swagger and a bit of edge, and players in the league might actually want to step it up defensively if they thought they could win some baller hardware.  Next thing you know, we’re back to the NBA of the 90s of 86-74 final scores, where any action inside the arc usually results in a block or a steal, resulting in all games becoming the glorified three-point shootouts they’ve evolved into anyway.

But all sports fan know the saying, defense wins championships.

Dad brog (#103): Dad’s solo blow off trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I think any of my zero readers might have been able to tell through tone and topic, especially in these dad brogs, that parenthood has been challenging throughout the last year or so.  Two kids at their ages in the conditions we are in societally, have taken their toll on me, and I’ll be the first to admit that since the start of COVID which coincided almost perfectly with the birth of #1 have put me into a bubble that I often struggle to get out of and it’s up for debate on whether or not I’m even out of it at all.

I know that I’ve struggled tremendously with keeping my cool, and that I will never accept the perceived shortcomings of the rest of the world as being the norm now, as reasons for my mental wellbeing, or lack of it.  I’m extremely irritable, little makes me happy, I struggle to enjoy just about anything and I’ve basically forgotten how to live for myself because so much of my life is spent being a parent and taking care of just about everything but myself.

It’s hard for me to really let go of things and unwind, when I’m constantly in this state of feeling overworked and taken for granted.  That if I don’t do things, things don’t get done, at work or at home, and that there are many instances where if the result of me taking any sort of time off is just a backlog of bullshit for me to have to deal with when I get back, then I question having taken it in the first place.

The last few trips I’ve taken with my family have been challenging, because two kids as young as my own are a tremendous handful and I’m always trying to be cognizant of their safety and wellbeing to the point where I can’t enjoy myself at any point.  Any time I am afforded to have to unwind always feels inadequate and too short and I’m left wondering why bother, like an ungrateful ingrate.

Regardless, what this all amounts to is the very obvious need for me to have some time away from dad mode, even if it’s on my own.  An opportunity to where I can not be a dad for a few days and try and hope to unwind and relax and recharge just a little bit.  Stare at a walls or screens and not have to worry about clocks or the schedules of other people for a few days.  Let other people feed my kids and hope that they don’t fall victim to their pickiness and that it’s really just dada’s shitty cooking they’re tired of and not really hating things.  Not being the only one cleaning my house on a nightly basis, preparing for the next day when it all has to get done all over again.  Go to sleep with no alarms on, and hope I can actually stay asleep for at least eight hours.

Yes, dada needs this little break.  If it were any more overdue, it would have already been fully foreclosed upon, and being prepared for demolition and the property already sold to CubeSmart.

And in true burned out dada fashion, I slept through my morning alarm to get to the airport, and if not for the Lyft driver to call me at 5 am to ask me where I was, I probably would’ve fucked everything up and everything would’ve been 690% worse.

Better believe I tipped my driver well this morning.  Here’s hoping the rest of my weekend will be successful.

Ho hum, just more Korea > Japan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not surprising when you think about it: Korean webtoons surpassing Japanese manga in terms of popularity, profitability

Usually in my friends’ group chat, we talk about politics, futbol (right now), and an inordinate amount of conversation about fried chicken.  But out of the blue one of my friends posts this story, and it’s definitely the type of story that chubs me up, about how Korean webtoons are surpassing Japanese manga.  And when you stop and think about the state of the world and how in spite of what I primarily do for a living, everything is advancing towards a digital medium, it’s a pure no-brainer and not at all surprising.

Everyone has a phone, Korean or Japanese.  Or French, Portuguese, German, American or Canadian for that matter.  And regardless of one’s attitude about such a notion, among everyone who has one, the vast majority of these users are probably looking at their phones way more than they should be.  That being said, at least in Asia, it’s not a surprise that Korean webtoons are passing Japanese manga in popularity and profitability.

It really does boil down to the adage that the medium is the message, and that if you’re not using the right medium, the message might as well not exist.  The fact that webtoons are accessible on mobile devices that everyone already is carrying in the first place, will always make them more appealing than the need for a physical edition, or worse of, having to go hunt down the physical edition and risk not getting it.

But what I love about the article is the also-obvious observation of Japan’s tendency to be too Japanese, and always try and justify instances where they’re falling behind in the world under a bullshit veil of traditionalism and art.  Sure, there is some weight to the argument, but in the sheer rat race of the world and business, printed manga isn’t going to be able to keep up with the rise of artists who learn how to cater their art style to a digital medium.

If someone tells me about the next Squid Game or Itaewon Class and I’m interested, I’m going to want to check it out immediately.  Sure, it would be cool to have a physical edition of something, but as far as a customer experience goes, being unable to get it will definitely sour me on the property, even though such was out of their control.  But being able to hop on my phone and download it immediately and be immediately able to check it out, that’s the very definition of convenience and an immediate win for webtoons.

I understand the tradition argument, and there is merit to having physical shit.  But what all this really boils down to is the obvious conclusion that is the title of this post: ho hum, another instance where Korea has shown their superiority over Japan.  No matter how much all the fucking weebs of the world try and defend it, it’s hard to compete tangible evidence of dollars yen won.

Sports have too much fucking money, vol. 1,369: feat. the New York Mets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to pretend like I pay a tremendous amount of attention to baseball news these days, but I know enough of what’s going on to know that the Mets are dumping a tremendous amount of money to try and become a championship contender.  I knew they already had Max Scherzer, and that they were paying him an inordinate amount of money for a guy that effectively plays once every five days, so it was somewhat head-scratching when I heard that the Mets went out and “won” the Justin Verlander sweepstakes, signing him to a 2-year, $86-million dollar contract, I’m thinking damn, the Mets are really locking up $86 mil a year on just two pitchers?  I’m pretty sure the Oakland A’s entire payroll next year isn’t $86 mil.*

*at the time I’m writing this, 11 teams don’t have a payroll that cracks $86 mil including of course, the Oakland A’s

Of course, on paper this has all the pundits thinking the Mets are now the odds-on favorite to win it all, seeing as how they have two of the game’s best pitchers, even if they’re going to be paying them an entire team’s payroll on top of the other 38 guys on the roster they’ll have to pay, including the $54 million to two other players in Francisco Lindor and the freshly re-signed Brandon Nimmo, so if we’re keeping count already, the Mets are paying $140 mil to just four guys for 2023 alone.

[Repeat the title of this post with me here]

They won 101 games in 2022 without Justin Verlander, and if not for an epic, late-season collapse against the Braves, should have won the division, but that still didn’t stop them from choking in the first round against the Padres.  Regardless, the addition of a talent like Justin Verlander theoretically should make a good team like the Mets even better in 2023.

Who knows, maybe the 2023 Mets, in spite of the criticism of their historic $300M+ protected opening day payroll will win 102 games, win the division and avoid having to play in the wild card round and actually have a successful playoff run?

But who are we kidding, this is the New York Mets we’re talking about, they of the LOLMets meme of history.  They could have Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax as their starting five, and they’d still probably find a way to fuck things up and fail, as they always do.  They could spend $500 million dollars and have 4+ WAR players in every position in their lineup, but they’ll still find a way to shit the bed in the playoffs and get bounced by the Cardinals or Padres or Phillies.

And the biggest thing is that teaming Verlander and Scherzer up is no guarantee, because as many casual baseball fans probably might not be aware of, this has already happened before, as both of them were on the Detroit Tigers together between 2010 and 2014.  Five years of Verlander and Scherzer in the same rotation, and zero World Series rings to show for it.  They even had help from guys like David Price and a resurgent Anibal Sanchez in some of those years.  Sure, they made the playoffs four times, but the one time they made it to the World Series together in 2012, they got swept by the vastly less-talented Giants, getting victimized by guys like Pablo Sandoval and Marco Scutaro.

What I think is funny is how just about everyone the Tigers once had all achieved success outside of Detroit.  Max Scherzer got his ring with the Nationals in 2018, Justin Verlander won twice with the Astros in 2017 and this past year, and even David Price got a ring in Boston and Anibal Sanchez was also lights out for that 2018 Nationals playoff team.

So the point is, if a young and spry Scherzer and Verlander couldn’t get the job done ten years ago, Father Time is kind of betting against 40-year old versions of Scherzer and Verlander doing it, especially when they’ll be trying on a team as accursed as the New York Mets.

If me writing about it is a temptation of fate and I end up being completely wrong, hey I’ll be glad to revisit this if I notice and care in the future and admit being wrong, no shame in that.  But if I’m a betting man, I’m siding with Father Time, and going to take the bet against the Mets.  I know you have to spend money to make money, but, and I hate to sound all corporate Braves-ey, but allocating as much money that the Mets are to just two and four players just doesn’t sound what’s best for business.