Category: Brog

General posting

Man, it’s great to have baseball back

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ain’t nothing to bring us back to the joys of baseball being back in season than a team trotting out a position player to pitch in a blowout game.  On Opening Day.  Against the Chicago White Sox, fresh off of their historic record-setting 121-loss season.

I know the Braves dropped their season opener out in San Diego, but the Padres are actually a good team, and the Braves could just as easily come back to Atlanta 6-1 or 1-6 seeing as how they have the Padres and Dodgers back-to-back to start the year.

But the Angels, a team whom in spite of having lost Shohei Ohtani, still have Mike Trout finally healthy on the team, and should be better than the Chicago White Sox whom really made no attempt to compete, once again.

It’s going to be a long season for both these teams.  And it’s going to be a long season for the Braves too, because 162 games a season plus potential playoffs means a whole lot of fuckin baseball!

Really though, despite the fact that I have no real intention of watching, well, any games, I’m feeling optimistic about the Braves this season.  As long as they can remain healthy, then I think they have the chance to be a noticeably better squad this year than the one prior where they limped into the playoffs and were bounced unceremoniously.  Despite my general dissatisfaction with their typical Braves-ey lack of movement in the offseason, I do like the acquisition of Jurickson Profar, and although they’re no blockbusters, I like them getting guys like Craig Kimbrel and Alex Verdugo for depth.

Either way, short of some comical fuckups and occurrences, I wouldn’t expect much baseball talk in the brog.  I find that I’m most happiest when I’m not really paying attention to the game these days beyond a cursory glance from time to time.  I still love it, I just have so no time in my life to dedicate to it as I once did, and feel that it’s expendable in the grand spectrum of my day to day.

I still hear about the high level points without any effort, and when the day is over, it’s the dumb silly stuff like position players pitching and other goofy anomalies that I tend to enjoy writing about.

Happy Opening Day!

The expansions of Erris Irand wounds my soul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Look, I know and understand that the point of any business is to grow, improve, and make money.  And I genuinely am happy for ellis island • casino • hotel • brewery for continuing to grow, presumably making more money and gaining success and foothold in the crowded Las Vegas ecosphere, but this is definitely one of those old man, it’s straying away from the charming little shithole I once knew and loved things going on, and every time I check in with what I endearingly have always referred to Erris Irand, things continue to change and stray further and further away from Erris Irand and becoming a more, miniaturized little posh typical Vegas casino with less and less character and personality with each change.

It recently came to my attention that Erris Irand is embarking on another round of upgrades, and although I’m amused that they along with other businesses I remember fondly like Battista’s are suing the shit out of F1 for wrecking shop in the city I used to once really really love, and went to at least 2-3 times a year, it adds to the melancholy mood of things changing yet again, furthering it from the specific place that I would say that nobody loved more than my big orange brother and I did.

The photos they used was deceptive in making it look like there was the possibility of upward expansion, as in building a tower on top of the existing structure, but that’s just a silhouette of the hotel behind them that I frankly don’t remember what it was called or is called now.  But that’s the only real relief I get is knowing that they’re not going to (yet) turn into some posh, metrosexual named joint, much like Imperiar Parace and Bill’s and O’Shea have all done over the last decade or so.

And although the proposed upgrades are all purposeful, and will undoubtedly help boost business, revenue and general success for the business as a whole, it’s just so, so far gone past the little locals shithole that I first really discovered back in like 2006, that it wounds me in the soul to see just how much things have changed throughout the passage of time.

Like, when I first stepped into the place, the floors were hard oiled concrete, decades of cigarette ash, spilled booze and the dreams of degenerate gamblers ground into them by the footsteps of ornery locals, adventurous travelers and, degenerate gamblers.  The sirloin special was $6.99 and came with a $5 match play coupon for table games.  Metro Pizza was buy one get one on Sundays, applicable to a single slice or an entire pie.  Their excellent house beer was a dollar a pint, if you weren’t actively gambling, and that’s if the cougar-ey bartender even bothered to take it.  There were only a handful of table games, roulette was almost never going, and they barely had enough room for a half craps table, where there’s nowhere in the city where I fared better at, earning so much in one session that I was able to get a brand new replica wrestling blet.

For years, there wasn’t a single trip to Vegas without at least one trip to Erris Irand, where I ate well, gambled well, drank well, and spent many great hours with my brother and whichever of my friends could lower their noses to realize the charm of what Erris Irand was and represented.

Frankly, I’m the only person I know that has actually stayed in the attached Sleazy Super 8 motel, twice in fact, and I have no regrets in doing such.  From what I understand, it’s now not even a Super 8 brand, and is actually branded to the casino itself.

But as is the case, no good things truly last forever, and perception is the eye of the beholder, and as much as good is what the business perceived, the change was not good to me, but like I said, I understand the business aspect, and growth and expansion and change is inevitable in successful operations, and such was the case with Erris Irand.

The BBQ restaurant grew and blew up, the sportsbook turned into a respectable setup that wasn’t just a bunch of 19” screens inside of basically cubicles.  The brewery was opened up to the public, and more tables and more slots entered the establishment.  The floors were eventually cleaned and refinished and tiled, and the dim smoky ceiling lights were replaced with actual bright and welcoming lighting.

My last time at Erris Irand wasn’t that long ago, and after a few trips where mythical wife and my friends had no interest in going, I was by myself on this trip, and I literally took an Uber directly from McCarran to Erris Irand, because nothing was going to stop me from visiting my old friend on this trip.

And it was a surreal experience walking into the side entrance, where everything was different, the air didn’t reek as much of smoke.  The bathrooms were all posh and even had branded wallpaper and backdrops, inviting people to take selfies and be shitty millennials and shitty Gen-Z’ers.  The restaurant was without all the framed artwork of warships and pirate ships and infernos, and I had to wait an inconvenient amount of time for a shift change to occur despite the restaurant being kind of empty.

The sirloin special was still unlisted and available, but it was apparent that the kitchen isn’t used to making these as they once did, as my steak came out overcooked, but not inedible, but the magic wasn’t really there this time around.  The table limits were still fortunately lower than the rest of the Strip, but I didn’t have the time on this trip to come back despite the fact that I really wanted to, with my friend who had just gotten hitched by Elvis.

But now we’re deviating even further from that, with the next wave of expansions to implement rooftop access, so people can presumably look at the Total Rewards Group’s parking lot and training facility, unless there’s plans for something to take up the giant concrete lot between Koval and Audrie, for Erris Irand visitors to stare at being constructed over the next few years alternatively.

Like I said, a lot of old man things changing rambling going on here, so I’m going to stop here before I continue to write in circles like I tend to do sometimes about the things I’m passionate about.  I won’t not go to Erris Irand the next time my travels actually take me out to Vegas again, but honestly I’m kind of over the city as a whole lately, and I just don’t have the disposable funds available to finance the gambling I’d like to do, so it might be a while, but I imagine it’ll be yet another surreal experience of seeing just how much the place has changed. 

Here’s hoping they’ll still have the sirloin special and the best hefeweizen when that time comes, and that I don’t go broke in an hour like the rest of the Strip’s casinos had done to me my last time out there.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Good effort, but not enough trying hard

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

11AliveOnMySide: Fairburn, Georgia teen accepted into 53 colleges with $1.5M in scholarships earned

After writing about the chica that notched 155 acceptances and $6M in scholarships, #TRYHARDs like this one just seem so pale in comparison to write about.  Which really sucks for them, because being a student with a 4.0 GPA and hoovering up 50+ college acceptances really is something to be proud of, but I guess this is what happens when #TRYHARD culture has become the thing it’s become, and gives a glimpse to why #TRYHARDs #TRYHARD.

As important as education is, to those in the #TRYHARDing game, attention and notoriety seems to matter just a little bit more.  What with all the insufferable humblebragging, the photoshoots and general look-at-me behavior by all those that #TRYHARD, it’s apparent that the actual education at the end of the journey is secondary to the two seconds of internet notoriety that comes with being the best of the best when it comes to #TRYHARDing and accumulating as many college acceptances as possible while more than likely, not having to pay a cent in application fees.

Which is a shame, because a lot of the stories of the people who become #TRYHARDs are really fascinating and inspiring up until the point where they decide to do what they do because they want the attention.  Like this one chica from close to where I used to live, which was a pretty desolate wasteland back then, and is seemingly worse now, has still managed to emerge from the muck and be a student with a 4.0 GPA, volleyball player, and somehow has the tenacity to be working two jobs, really is the embodiment of hard work.

But at some point in her journey, it was decided to become a #TRYHARD, and the question becomes if the grades, the extracurriculars, and the jobs, are they for the purpose of building character and necessity, or are they the purpose for padding a personal resume to feed into the next stage of life to where additional #TRYHARDing is all that life is going to be until they’re anonymous adults who hate their lives and wonder what their formative teenage years went.

I can’t remember who said it between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, but one of them had a story about when they were young and in high school, and they were being touted as future megastars and can’t-miss prospects, they were reminded that as great as they think they were, inevitably there would always be someone out there who was working harder, and was probably better than you were.  And as inevitable as greatness finding greatness is, Bird and Magic eventually encountered each other at the college ranks, a rivalry was born, carrying into the NBA, and the debate still lives on whom of the two was the better player.

And as impressive as 53 and $1.5M should be, in the grand spectrum of things, just up the street from where this #TRYHARD was doing her thing, she probably wasn’t aware of a queen bee #TRYHARDingn way harder than she was en route to her 155 and $6M.  And there is no debate on whom of the two was the bigger #TRYHARD.

As I said before, it’s going to be a real hard act to follow, and I almost don’t want to waste my time writing about lesser #TRYHARDs unless a real noteworthy #TRYHARD comes along, but we’ll see how time permits in the coming months of #TRYHARDSZN2025.

So many easy jokes about the Mariners repping Nintendo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

LL: Seattle Mariners agree to wear Nintendo Switch 2 patch for the 2025 MLB season

I don’t care enough to dig deep into the finer details, but Nintendo doesn’t own the Mariners like they once did, but they have enough pull with the baseball organization to ensure that throughout the 2025 baseball season, the Mariners will have a sponsorship patch on their away uniforms for the Nintendo Switch 2.  Their home whites will have a regular old Nintendo word mark logo on those alternatively.

Regardless, the jokes write themselves about a company like Nintendo being the uniform sponsor for a baseball organization like the Mariners, because in more ways than one, they operate in similar manners.  Now such could be as the result of the once ownership and the influence Nintendo clearly still has within the Seattle Mariners organization, or maybe they really are two peas in a pod in how their business philosophies are concerned, but the fact of the matter is that there really is a lot in common between both companies.

Nintendo is notoriously Japanese, as in that they are more than happy to operate in a completely risk-averse, efficient manner that prioritizes a zero-waste mentality.  For example, despite the fact that a billion people on the planet wanted the Wii when it first came out, they were all like ehhhh, let’s make just 20 million units, can’t possibly risk there being some false demand and us being stuck with extra units and being forced to sell at a discount.  And for the next several years, nobody could get their hands on one, and they were selling on the resale market at insane markups, and by the time demand was truly fulfilled, the Wii 2 was knocking on the door, and the process kind of repeated itself. The point is, Nintendo prioritizes efficiency and avoiding all risk over possibly making consumers happy and meeting demand a lot closer in which they operate to this day. 

And the Mariners are kind of the same way, because they just, always kind of suck as an MLB franchise, and no matter how much the market changes, how much talent they luck into from their system, and the availability of free agents throughout the years, the organization just somehow manages to always suck at winning baseball games, and much like Nintendo, letting consumers down by taking no risks, avoiding any possibility of dead money by signing no free agents, and routinely letting their fans down on a yearly basis.

It’s funny, because I actually wrote about the Mariners not too long ago and how it’s pretty incredible how much they’ve sucked historically.  Because this is an organization that has had the likes of Ken Griffey, Jr., Randy Johnson, Ichiro Suzuki, Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez and a prime Robinson Cano, and in some cases, an overlap of some of these talents. Yet they never won anything, beyond the magical 2001 season where they won 116 games, before crashing out unceremoniously in the playoffs to the Yankees.  They rarely saw the playoffs, didn’t do much once they got there, and no matter the talent that has been on the squad, they just, well suck.

Just recently, the Mariners successfully signed their catcher Cal Raleigh, to an insanely team-friendly deal, six years at just $105M.  The guy is an average 4 WAR player, not even hitting his prime, and could easily have been worth double of this, in just a few years.  But he clearly likes something in Seattle and has agreed to stay there, but the real question is if the Nintendo Mariners will actually do something with this centerpiece, or if it will just be more of the same, operating like Nintendo, where they will only produce the absolute bare minimum in order to be relevant, but absolutely nothing more in order to even attempt to be anything but afloat.

It’s really a chicken and egg situation on whether the Seattle Mariners are operating like Nintendo, or if Nintendo is operating like the Seattle Mariners; but if I’m a betting man, I’d say the former, but either way, neither is a particularly enviable position to be in, because jaded video gamers all resent Nintendo for their Nintendo-ey business practices, and Mariners fans all resent the Mariners for simply never really trying, so ultimately, this sponsorship marriage seems to be a very fitting fit for both parties involved.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Meet the front runner

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo: Westlake High School senior accepted to 155 colleges, with at least one from every single one of the 50 United States, and has accumulated over $6M in scholarship offers

Welp, just when I was thinking about how Westlake High hadn’t produced a #TRYHARD yet, here they come to join the fray, guns ablaze.  It’s like the school itself doesn’t seem to be concerned about absolutely anything other than raising kids to be fixated and obsessed with applying to as many colleges as humanly possible, so that they the kids and the school can insufferably brag about their success rates, and effectively cockblock a metric fuckton of other kids throughout the country who will be inevitably be put on waiting lists while all these attention hounds make their decisions like they think they’re LeBron James.

But yeah, Georgia teen from the seemingly most notorious college application factory in the nation, 155 acceptances, and $6M in cumulative scholarships so far.  Sounds impressive, but when you do the basic average there, we’re looking at $38K per acceptance.  Sure, it’s not a flat $38K being offered by every single acceptance, but the reality is that some of the higher-tiered schools probably haven’t offered anything remotely close to a full ride, and if a full ride is what chica is looking for, she better be prepared to be going to Florida A&M or Howard, and not any of the Power-5 schools she probably got into. 

And let’s not assume she made any of the Ivies, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about #TRYHARD culture, is that if you’ve been accepted into an Ivy, that name is ensured to be mentioned, early in the article no less.

I had a moment when writing about the last few #TRYHARDs about why I’m taking time to pick on these kids, seeing as how they’re really just trying to get a free ride to whatever college is willing to give them one.  But this queen bee #TRYHARD is a reminder of why I started writing about them in the first place, because it feels like they’re doing what they do for all the wrong reasons, prioritizing attention-seeking and the right to brag and boast ahead of actually giving a fuck about their educations when the opportunity to grasp 15 minutes of internet fame is on the line.

I mean seriously, 155 schools is one thing, but it’s very apparent that the real coup de grace here for this chica is simply the ability to say that she got into a school from every single one of the 50 states.  Because I have a hard time believing that any teen from the southside of Atlanta would have any remote interest in attending a school in Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana or any other flyover state where the mortality rate of black people is probably noticeably lower than it would be in any actual civilized metropolitan area in the country alternatively.  I refuse to believe that there’s actual interest in any schools from any of those remote parts of the country, and that the sole goal was to check off gaining an acceptance in those states.

The University of Alaska, Fairbanks was mentioned as an acceptance, and a quick Google search has them ranked at 635 out of 650 accredited American colleges, so big win there.  Hawaii isn’t mentioned at all, but I’m going to guess that the acceptance from that state is probably along the lines of the University of American Samoa from Better Call Saul, or some other extremely low-difficulty school.

It’s funny when I think about it, because although she got 155 acceptances, I have to wonder how many rejections she got.  That’s one thing that all of these #TRYHARD stories fail to mention, unless they have an abnormally high success rate, and they brag about having gotten into like 50 schools out of 50 applications, but there was no such context here.

And as is often times the case, despite the fact that they might have over 100+ acceptances, in the end, they’re inevitably going to go to some generally low-tier school, mostly because of the fact that the most free-est ride is going to come from there.  And despite the fact that this #TRYHARD wants to become a bigwig pharmacist, her front runner schools are Florida A&M, Howard and THE Ohio State.  There’s nothing wrong with phishing for a free ride, but I do think it sucks for all the kids throughout the country who is put on a waitlist on account of all these attention-seekers just trying to amass acceptances and scholarship dollars.

But anyway, it comes as no surprise that the de facto front runner of #TRYHARDSZN2025 is a kid out of Westlake High, and the bar has been set extremely high now.  It’s going to take some real Ivy League #TRYHARDs to gain some consideration over this one, because 155/$6M is going to be hard to surpass, but it is still extremely early in the #SZN, so never say never.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Imagine if UGA were your dream school

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lowered expectations: Georgia teen accepted to 60 different schools, amassing $1.3M in cumulative scholarship offers

Another day, another Georgia-based #TRYHARD.  I’m seriously wondering if it’s an IP thing or something or if the vast majority of the #TRYHARDs in the country are all coincidentally just coming out of Georgia, but every single edition of #TRYHARDSZN2025 so far have all been from Georgia.  I doubt that such is going to be a case throughout the whole #SZN, but it is a little head-scratching from the onset.

Anyway, if I had 60 acceptances when I was this kid’s age, I undoubtedly would have had the criteria of being how far away from home, and how much scholarship money are they going to float me, and the best combination of distance from Northern Virginia and how much they’d scholarship me, would be the strongest contenders.

Such, is not the case for this guy, whom although they don’t disclose any of the 60 acceptances he received, the State of Georgia doesn’t have that many colleges and universities in it to constitute close to 60, so I have to imagine that a lot of ideal and acceptable out-of-state, far the fuck away from bumfuck Dublin, Georgia are being left on the table by deciding to go to his dream college of, the University of Georgia.

This reminds me of Terry Jerry-Larry-Garry Gergich from Parks & Rec and how him and his family’s annual vacation was to their favorite place in the world, Muncie, Indiana, which was presumably not that far from fictional Pawnee, Indiana.

Like, the boy has the opportunity to get the fuck out of Georgia, but instead he’s taking his golden tickets and just going two hours north, up to Athens, where his supposed dream school is.

Don’t get me wrong, UGA is a solid school, reputable and moderately respected in the world, but the boy wants to go down a pre-med track, and I’m hard-pressed to believe that UGA is the most qualified school to go to for a guy who’s interested in biology and pre-med.  Just in the SEC, I know that Auburn is a better school for such things, but I can’t imagine the level of education and awareness of the world outside of Laurens County is particularly high.

Either way, I’m already getting tired of writing about #TRYHARDs from Georgia with fairly mediocre numbers in the inevitable grand spectrum of #TRYHARDSZN, so good on this one guy for 60 acceptances and $1M in scholarships, and getting to go to his dream school right up the road, but when the dust settles, there’s already bigger #TRYHARDs and bigger dreams being chased by much bigger overachievers.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Is this becoming a Georgia thing?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

11aliveOnMySide: Marietta teen accepted into 52 colleges, amassing at least $1.8M in cumulative scholarship offers

So I have a tab open with a generic Google query for “college accepted” with filters to show me the most recent news.  Location is not turned on.  Yet all the stories that I’ve come across in regards to #TRYHARDs have all been kids from various Georgia areas, and not just seemingly out of Westlake High like they were highly concentrated from last #SZN.  Which is leading me to believe that the whole practice of applying to every single school under the sun for probably free seems to presumably be a very Georgia thing to do, especially seeing as how I have yet to come across a single #TRYHARD story from anywhere outside the state of Georgia yet.

Anyway, we have a new #TRYHARD for the #SZN, and what stands out to me for this one is the fact that the chica isn’t from one of the more commonly found #TRYHARD regions, but is actually quite the opposite.  Wheeler High School in Marietta is a school that’s not on the south, west or southwestern part of the Metro area, and isn’t just in Marietta, but in East Cobb Marietta, where the snobbery is real, but the general performance scores of the schools in the district are above average, generally.

Frankly, it’s one of the first times I’ve heard of an actual #TRYHARD coming out of a more upscale location, and I’m curious to what the criteria for getting to apply to a gazillion colleges with presumably no concern over application fees is, because if they’re allowing kids from Wheeler to do it, then geographical location isn’t necessarily a deciding factor in this privilege to shoot as many shots as you want.

But unlike many of reported #TRYHARDs, this one was considerate, and clearly egotistical enough to have a straight up graphic made, because it gives us a little more insight to some of the 52 schools that she was accepted into, because so many of these #TRYHARDs don’t actually disclose it, because as much as they want to brag about getting into 52 schools, they don’t want to brag that 48 of them are like small commuter schools nobody outside of their general locations actually know of.

Anyway, among the schools that this particular #TRYHARD got into are basically the entire SEC, with Auburn, Florida, Alabama, LSU, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi State (but oddly no Georgia), and then randomly some other Power-5 schools like Clemson, NC State, Oklahoma, Michigan State and Ohio State.

What seems apparent to me is that with the exceptions of Oklahoma, Michigan State and Ohio State, this girl doesn’t really want to stray too far out of the Southeast in general, seeing as how just about every school she got into is at the very most, like an eight hour drive to, less if flown.  But also, of all the aforementioned schools, they’re all notable college football programs, so if I had to guess, this girl really wants to go somewhere with big football cultures, and probably end up becoming an alcoholic at some point in her college career.  Even many of the non-Power 5 schools she got into have football programs that some people may have actually heard about, feeding the hypothetical narrative of the importance of football to our subject #TRYHARD over here.

Anyway, in the grand spectrum of #TRYHARDSZN, this is a solid contender, but if I’m a betting man, no chance at being top #TRYHARD.  58 and $1.8M are decent numbers, but it’s still early and the Ivy Leagues haven’t released acceptances yet.  I’m sure the #SZN still has a lot of gas left in it, and hopefully we’ll start to see some #TRYHARDs emerge from places outside of the state of Georgia, because this can’t be the only state where they’re all going to be coming from.