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#TRYHARDSZN2024: Uganda be kidding me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Binyebwa: Oakland teenager accepted into 122 colleges and amassed over $5M in scholarship dollars; chooses UC Berkeley because he wants to be a musician

I’ll be honest, I actually don’t know what Berkeley is actually famous for, but I didn’t think it was a place for aspiring musicians.  It’s a reputable enough school to be known by name, but I’m a bit puzzled on why it would be a school where an aspiring musician would name drop to be where they want to go to pursue their career.

Apparently, Berkeley is known for its mathematical science, as well as the Space Sciences Laboratory, according to Google, and some light digging doesn’t show anywhere where music is a viable path to thriving  as a student there.

But then again, if I wanted to pursue my architectural design degree, and for some reason, Berkeley were among the schools that I were accepted to, and I could go to for in-state tuition as well as the fact that I wouldn’t be too far off from home if I’m from nearby Oakland, it would be something to consider going there, solely for the name value alone, because it still is a reputable institution regardless of what I’m attending there for.

Either way, despite the fact that we have a queen of #TRYHARDs anointed this #SZN for her 200+ college acceptances, I would say that we should all rise for the king of #TRYHARDs this #SZN, the Ugandan boy from Oakland who has collected 122 college acceptances and amassed $5.3M in scholarship offers.

Thanks to him and the queen, all the other pleebs who only got into 30, 50 and 60 colleges seem like common peasants now.

But it is pretty funny when I think about this particular #TRYHARD; boy wants to be a singer, an entertainer of some sort, which most people in the world of entertainment would simply respond to a kid saying they wanted to get into the business with a stern and nihilistic, don’t.  However, that’s not stopping this one kid from chasing his dream, considering he survived immigration into America and is probably living a slightly better life than if he were still living in Uganda.

At some point he realized that he could still chase his musical dreams, but when the day is over, it’s still important to have an education, so he starts flinging college applications out like Gambit throws playing cards, and because of his obvious attributes, the acceptances start rolling in and next thing you know, he’s got 122 of these things.

Obviously despite the fact that he picked Berkeley, it’s a safe bet that many of them were probably the UC-campuses that are not Berkeley and are less known or reputable.  Hell probably among them were some actual music schools, but when the day is over, entertainment is really, really, really hard to break into, and it’s probably for the best that he’ll have a Berkeley degree to fall back onto instead of some shitty wannabe Julliard of the west coast.

Overall, it’s just funny.  Guy wants to sing, but still wants to fulfill obligation to go to college.  Fires applications out like crazy, gets into a ton of them, including a well-reputable school. It’s like accidentally became the 2024 King of the #TRYHARDs.  Uganda be kidding me!

MLB’s Japanese Player Fetish

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This has been a topic that I’ve had on my list of things that I wanted to write about, that I just haven’t really been able to bring to fruition.  Either I burn myself out on writing about high school tryhards applying to every school under the sun, or I just don’t feel like I have sufficient time to write about it, but it’s definitely a topic that I feel like I could go off about, but for whatever reason, I just haven’t had the chance to do so until now.

But it’s been something that’s been brewing over the last few years, and this year it’s definitely come to a boiling point about just how cringey MLB has become when it comes to their obvious opinion and feelings when it comes to Japanese players.

Sure, Shohei Ohtani is an incredible specimen of a baseball player, and I do think there is legitimate argument that we might be able to call him the best player of all time (for this generation), and that he’s more impressive than Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Albert Pujols, combined.  Statistically he does bring a lot to the table, but one thing that he does not bring to the table that MLB insists that he does, is the fact that he is, Japanese.

His ethnicity has nothing to add to any argument over his place in baseball history, but MLB is so rapid quick when it comes to injecting it into the narrative, and it’s not like those who follow baseball aren’t already aware that Japan is the de facto #1 country in the world when it comes to baseball talent, seeing as how they’ve won the vast majority of Olympic golds and World Baseball Classics when it comes to international competition over the last 20 years.

But MLB does it anyway, because for whatever reason, over the last 20 years, they’ve become an organization that is definitely going through a serious weeaboo phase in their history where Japan = #1, and everything, including their own assets are inferior in comparison.  Ohtani is definitely a worthy blue pill to cause this phenomenon within the organization, but the ensuing trickle-down effect when it comes to the yearly migration of a handful of Japanese players and the hype and fanfare they get when they come to America is downright cringey.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto making more money than Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan ever made in their careers, combined is an egregious overpay and fellating sign of kowtowing to their Japanese overlords. 

Everytime Shota Imanaga throws another scoreless inning, bean counters for Elias and MLB blow their loads at being able to throw out another tweet about how low his ERA is, seemingly completely ignorant to how the league will adjust on him harder than the stock market once the scouting report on him is complete. 

Seiya Suzuki is by-and-large a perfectly good, above average player, but the way MLB expounds his occasional positive contributions is like they’re talking about the second-coming of Ichiro.

The season is barely a quarter of the way through, and there’s already talks about the next Japanese overlord, some guy named Munetaka Murakami.  But few outside of the diehard fans of their respective teams are bothering to get excited over any prospects on their own farms.

The point of all this is that it’s extremely clear that MLB has a pretty raging boner fetish on Japanese players right now.  I can practically hear the gong and racist Asian theme in my head every time I see an MLB channel or MLB beat writer lose their shit over something a Japanese player does, as if their mythical powers from the magic Orient were why Yamamoto had a 5.2 inning outing where he gave up no runs, while Max Fried throws a complete game shutout in the middle of an era where complete games are becoming as scarce as no-hitters.

Much has been made of Ohtani’s 2024, and how because he doesn’t have to worry about doing any pitching at all, he can focus on being the demigod of hitting he’s believed to be.  Every single home run he hits, is answered by some god-awful MLB tweet fellating him for doing what he’s going be paid $700 million dollars to do; meanwhile, Marcell Ozuna of the Braves is leading the majors in home runs currently, when just a year ago, fans were clamoring for him to be cut from the team and eat the salary hit, and MLB barely takes notice when he maintains his home run lead.

It’s just funny how an entire organization like Major League Baseball becomes no different than myself and lots of my nerdier friends in my life have been at certain points of their lives, when it comes to going through a Japan #1 phase.  I look back at that time of my life with rolled eyes and a little bit of embarrassment, but the difference is that I’m not a publicly known, forward facing, billions of dollars organization, looking like a collective cringey weeb in front of the rest of the world, and I look forward to the day when MLB grows out of it, because it’s really fucking embarrassing watching them spooge all over themselves over Japanese players.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: The Arrogance is real and appropriate for Duke

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TL;DR: teenager from Scotland not the country, North Carolina, accepted into more than 30 schools, selects Duke University

Firstly, if any of my zero readers were to click the link to de-anonymize this #TRYHARD, I have to ask if all of the photographs of her are actual photographs or if they’re paintings?  They’re processed so crudely that they look like paintings, and I know I’m already calling her arrogant, but I don’t think to the degree where she’d have paintings of herself in graduation.  But I guess out in Scotlandnotthecountry, North Carolina, they don’t have any reliable graphic designers anywhere to not make photographs look like shitty watercolor paintings.

But anyway, here we have another #TRYHARD who is just arrogant enough to pique my interest, because when the day is over, she’s really not that hot shit because she basically applied to every college in the state of North Carolina and because the article points out that she raked in nearly $1M in scholarships, not to mention will be getting aide from the Gates Scholarship which basically is a free ride to anywhere, any and all credentials and accolades have to be mentioned to really sell this #TRYHARD in a sea where there are fish who have cleared 60, 120, and 200+ college acceptances themselves.

To cut to the chase, she ultimately picked Duke, which is definitely a good reputable school in academics, but it’s also among the most insufferable institutions on the planet if you want people to hate your guts for any reason at all.  But it seems to be a match made in heaven already, because when describing her journey of when she started getting acceptance letters, she’s clearly got the arrogant part of being a blue blooded Dookie already down:

When she began opening her accepting letters, she thought it was too good to be true.

I was like, I need some rejection. I need to be humbled,” Revels joked.

Oh please, someone reject me just so I know that I haven’t applied to every single UNC-Wherever satellite school for agriculture among a few others that will still give me the time of day simply because of my demographic credentials.

But then it gets better and in this case I mean worse, as in her arrogant humble-bragging just continues to grow, in thinking that perhaps she sold herself short by not applying to bigger and better schools, like perhaps any Ivy Leagues (that we know of):

Despite being accepted into so many schools, Revels admitted she regrets she didn’t reach higher.

Don’t sell yourself short. I felt like Duke was my highest reach. Why not go higher and go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton? You never know what could happen,” Revels said.

Man, despite getting into a school like Duke, she doesn’t hesitate to take a dump on them and loudly ponder on if she could have done even better.  That’s quite some arrogance.

Welp, it’s because you did have doubts and did sell yourself short, and didn’t bother try to get into any of the Ivy Leagues.  Frankly, Harvard has accepted just about everyone under the sun this year that wasn’t white, so it stands to believe that this one probably would’ve made it through as well, but she didn’t try, and therefore she won’t know, and despite her high degree of arrogance, she most definitely falls short in the rankings of #TRYHARDs this #SZN.

Didn’t try hard?  Then you can die hard.  Owned

#TRYHARDSZN2024: When going 11/11 just doesn’t seem special anymore

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Sauce: Michigan high school senior gets into all eleven of the schools she applied to, including 5/5 on Ivies

Okay, so I’ve been doing this for this #TRYHARDSZN and I’ve gotten to the point where success stories like this just don’t really seem like that big of a deal anymore.  Regardless of the fact that she got into five Ivy League schools, all I really think about is why she only applied to five of the Ivy Leagues and why not all eight of them?

What did Penn, Columbia and Dartmouth not do to make this #TRYHARD omit them from her applying spree, because I have to imagine that someone who’s applying to five Ivy League schools may as well shoot for all eight of them, and hedge their bets and go for among the rarest of feats, which is getting the Ivy Sweep which is an actual term borne from the fact that there are so many #TRYHARDs on a yearly basis that try to get into all of them, presumably for the bragging rights and not because of anything else.

But other than the fact that I’m getting tired of stories of #TRYHARDs and am tiring of writing about them, frankly a story like this one where a chica goes 11 for 11 in applications and among them are five of the Ivy League schools, just doesn’t really seem special anymore.

No feigned arrogance for me to dissect, no reports of cumulative scholarship money earned for me to point out that the schools they applied to must’ve been low-tier, just a hard working teenager who only abused the application system just a little bit, and got into all of the schools she applied to.  Sure, I could say that in a real-world scenario where she had to pay for her own application fees, she’s probably looking at somewhere around $3,000 if I had to guestimate, but I’ve already made that observation about 15 other times from all the other #TRYHARDs I’ve chronicled this #SZN.

They’re planning on going to Yale.  So was Zack Morris, and look what happened there.

So we’ll leave it at that, congratulations to a #TRYHARD for getting into all these high-tier schools, but in the grand scheme of the game of trying hard, she’s but a mere blip in the bucket of #TRYHARDs applying to everything under the sun and probably not paying anything for it.

I would like a pizza topped with a Little Caesar’s pizza pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For absolutely no reason other than to support my children’s school’s spirit day partnership with a local restaurant fundraiser, I ordered some pizzas from a local pizzeria that was the chosen restaurant of the month to split their profits with the school.

Believe me, there’s nothing in it for me or my household by ordering New York-style pizzas. 

Doing it for the kids.

Anyway, those who have ever worked in the restaurant business or have a decent understanding of how a lot of them work, know that one of the highest profit margins comes from soft drinks.  Like a bag of syrup for like Coca-Cola costs $80, but the ROI on the entire bag is usually 2-3 times that, depending on what the business decides to charge for soft drinks.

Over the last few years though, I’ve noticed that if there was ever something to challenge soft drinks on the profit margin scale, it would definitely have to be pizza toppings.  Of course, adding things onto your pizza should not really be free unless you’re a giant like Pizza Hut, Domino’s or Papa John’s, but those pizzas are all garbage anyway and aren’t really considered pizza as much as Chinese food should be considered Chinese.

But from all the independent, mom-n-pop types of pizzerias, I’ve noticed a tremendous amount of inflation as far as pizza toppings go over the last few years.  One pizzeria I used to frequent when I was a little bit closer to the city, charged like 50¢ per added topping to a slice of pizza, to which when you’re ordering by the slice typically is a little more negligible, but when ordering up some pizzas (for the kids) the other day, adding toppings was now up to $3 per topping for an entire pie.

Look, I know everyone loves to cry inflation as justification for costs going up across the board these days, but ain’t no way adding pepperoni and mushrooms onto my pie should be the same cost as an appetizer of garlic bread.

I was complaining about this to a friend of mine, and I stated that the cost of adding two toppings to a pizza is now the cost of an entire Little Caesar’s pizza, and if I were going to be paying that much, I might as well just ask to have an entire Little Caesar’s pizza chopped up and spread out onto my pizza as a topping itself.

And then it dawned on me just how brilliant of an idea that could possibly be, and how much of a culinary atom bomb of an invention that could be if ever tried out.

But this couldn’t be something I tried out on my own, because for the idea to be optimal to what I’ve fantasized, the Little Caesar’s would have to be chopped up and spread onto the pizza before it goes in the oven, not afterward, because then it wouldn’t have cooked into the pizza itself.  And you can’t do it after the fact because then you’d be overcooking the pizza outright.

It would be nice to be able to walk into one of the local pizzerias that I like, with my own Little Caesar’s in tow, and place my order, and then ask them to chop up this Little Caesar’s and top my pizza with it, and I’ll give them $6 for the equivalent cost, because if the cost of toppings is going to be as much as an entire Little Caesar’s, might as well get an entire fuckin Little Caesar’s put on top my pizza for reals then.

For the kids.

The financial burden of smokers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lady somewhere in my office building that I surmise takes a smoke break every single hour.  Every time I go to the gym, I will inevitably see her walk past the windows to where all the smokers tend to congregate, which is horrifyingly over a section of the Colonial Pipeline gas main that made national headlines a few years ago. 

The thing is, as much as I’d like to, I don’t go to the gym at the same time every single day, I have to be fluid with the times in which I go, depending on my workload and any scheduled meetings on a daily basis.  So I’ve been to the gym as early as within the 10 am hour, as late as the 3 pm hour and at any time in between.

But it does not matter what time of the day in which I go to the gym, I will always see her trudge past the gym windows to go take a roughly 20 minute smoke break, or whenever she gets done with dicking around on her phone and milking her smoke.

That being said, I’m really curious what she actually does for whatever company she works for, and I can’t imagine it’s something remotely essential or necessary, considering the fact that a person who literally works maybe 30-35 minutes of every single hour is in the position, because factoring in the walking time, and elevator time into each smoke break, that’s what I’m assuming she actually at her desk/workstation, regardless of if she’s actually working or not.

I know the hiring process is not supposed to demonstrate any sort of bias or discrimination, but honestly if I were ever back in a position of hiring people, I think I’d try to find out if an applicant were a smoker or not.  And if they were, throw their application in the trash, because I can’t imagine that short of being Good Will Hunting genius, a person who works 3/5th of the time of someone who doesn’t smoke, will actually outproduce in the long run.  Last time I checked, smoker isn’t a race or a class of person that has any consequence for discriminating against and if it were up to me, I wouldn’t want any smokers in my workplace if I ever were in control of one.

Just the sight of this person kind of disgusts me.  I’m not trying to get all high-and-mighty on someone, and I seldom thing I’m above most things or most people, but considering the work ethic of Miss Chimney, who stinks like one, and I can tell when she’s been in the elevator recently, because she leaves it stinking of smoke, I do kind of look down on her.  If I were her employer, I’d be aggravated as fuck knowing that she’s burning 20-25 minutes every single hour of every single working day trolling around outside dragging on a bunch of cancer sticks on company time.

If it were up to me, once this kind of bullshit gets on my radar, I’d consider making a case against it, and start extrapolating their wages against how much time they’re actually present in the office, and see what happens afterward.  I’d wager the behavior corrects itself more likely than not, and that they might look for an exit strategy, to which I would say good riddance, may I get a replacement that doesn’t smell like an airport smoking lounge.

It’s the kind of behavior my old cunt of a boss would embark on, but if there’s one thing that I would agree with her is that time theft is still theft, and I sure as fuck don’t want any thieves on my team.  I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have team members that are equitably present, and also don’t smell like fucking alleyways behind Chinese restaurants.

I think the Bloodline has DJ Tanner Wrestling’d

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Only the longest of my zero readers know that DJ Tanner Wrestling-ing is my personal evolution to jumping the shark, and in the case of this particular topic it’s relevant since this is yet another post about, professional wrestling.

Anyway, over the weekend the WWE did their best to surprise the Universe by introducing Tanga Loa into the company, when he interfered during the Bloodline vs. Kevin Owens and Randy Orton tag match.  A few weeks ago, they had brought in Tama Tonga to join forces with Solo Sikoa, whom the storyline has as being the guy now assuming control over the Bloodline, with the long-deserved hiatus of Roman Reigns after Wrestlemania. 

And with that, both members of the Guerillas of Destiny (GoD) have made their way to the WWE after a long and fruitful career overseas in NJPW.  Both have aligned with Solo, and are representing the new age of the Bloodline.  I doubt that they’ll still be called GoD once the dust settles from their arrival, but to those that are familiar with them, they’ll always be GoD.

Personally, I’m high on GoD, and loved their work in Japan.  It was the highlight of the evening when NJPW had a tour stop in Atlanta, where the main event was the Guerillas winning the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team championships, and above all else, I love that they’re the son and the adopted son of the baddest man on the planet, Haku.  That alone gives them a 10 in toughness, because I can’t imagine anyone raised by Haku would be anything short of being the polar opposite of a pussy.

I am excited for their arrival in the E and the sheer potential they bring by both being in the company, but at the same time, I still can’t help but have this feeling that they’ve caused the whole trajectory of the Bloodline to DJ Tanner Wrestle, mainly because of the simple fact that they’re not actual bloodline to the Anoa’i family.

In fact, they’re not even Samoan, but Tongan.  I know that white people can’t tell Asians and island boys apart, and there are a lot of similarities between the cultures, but the fact of the matter is that Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa aren’t related to the Anoa’i family nor are they Samoan, so having them be a part of the Bloodline seems kind of shark-jumpy in my opinion.

I know that Haku is super tight with many Anoa’i members, and as Rikishi once said, us island boys have to stick together, but it does feel like a little bit of a cop out to just slap GoD into the Bloodline and hope that nobody questions the genealogy here just because they’re all from island origins.

Sure, they did it already with Sami Zayn being the Honorary Uce, but the difference here is that they weren’t trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t Samoan and related to an Anoa’i, and I’m not saying that they might not do the same with GoD, but so far, they also haven’t made any attempt to dispel it either.  I have this suspicion that unless they get some heat from any Polynesian groups, who demand specificity, the WWE is just going to hope that fans at home assume that GoD are Anoa’i and don’t question it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m stoked that GoD are now a part of the E.  They will inject a viable tag team into the division of whichever show they land on, and I’m sure fans are already salivating at the idea of an inevitable GoD vs. the Usos matchup, because a Bloodline civil war does seem like it’s the obvious end game coming once Roman Reigns’ vacation is up.

It’s just details matter to me, and two guys whom aren’t even blood-related themselves, joining up with a faction called the Bloodline to which they’re not related to, seems a little DJ Tanner Wrestling-ey in my opinion.  I get why they did it, and honestly from their perspective, as far as being fast-tracked to the main event and making money, they’re probably not sweating it, but it doesn’t change the fact that the execution of it, holistically as a whole, does seem forced and just a little bit DJ Tanner Wrestling-ey.  Creative might surprise me and spin a magnificent story, as they did over the last two years of Roman’s reign, but seeing as how they blew the wad at Mania, I’m not optimistic that this long-term story will be worth the wait if all the moving parts happen in the manner that I think they will.