Month: June 2010

Jock Hair

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I am no stranger to generalization.  It’s happened to me, and I’ve done it to others.  Everyone has, and has been.

Yesterday, I was a little early to trivia, and for whatever reason, this geek bar had one of the televisions tuned into ESPN, which was at the time showing the Phillies and Yankees game.  Naturally, I have little vested interest in either team, but if I had to pick a team, it would be the Yankees, because any losses that occur to the Phillies are good for the Braves.  Unfortunately, that was not the fortune, as the Phillies were obliterating the Yankees all night long.

At one point in the game, I made a quiet remark about how a hit ball “was gone,” since Ryan Howard does that about 45 times a year every year.  The cute 20-something bartender took notice, and then turned at the television, and then back to me; obviously the thoughts of me actively watching baseball in a geek bar or something of the sort was in her head.

“Yeaaah… I’m kind of a jock too,” I say, to explain that yes, despite enjoying video games, nerd culture, and geek trivia, I still love me my professional sports.

“I figured,” she responded, much to my surprise.  Am I that obvious to my interests on supposed opposite ends of the spectrum?

“The hair kind of gives it away.”  Now this was interesting.  So for lack of a better term, my hair has been somewhat of a controlled, deliberate mess for the last few years or so.  I like it that way, too.  But to be indicative of jock-like tendencies, it has never occurred to me before.

So for the first time in my life . . . well, not really, because I’m pretty sure I was generalized all sorts of things when I was 16-18 and my hair was every color of the CMYK color wheel at some point, but I guess for the first time since having somewhat more civilized hair, I’ve been pegged as a type, based on my hair.  My apparently jock hair.  Fascinating.

Downsides to living in Bataria

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So, I’m off for the next two days as I’m between assignments right now.  I’ve been fairly productive the last few days and over the weekend, doing all sorts of mundane household chores and cleaning up, since it’s been long overdue, to which I am quite pleased with.  This morning, after I did my usual jog around Zombieland and my typical array of lifts, sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups, I decided that since it’s hot as a witch’s tit these days and I have the spare time, to go visit the neighborhood’s pool.  It’s been a while, and the thought of taking a nice swim, to cool off and loosen up my muscles sounded like a great idea.

I get to the pool, and I arrive at the gate; I wave my keycard on the keypad to unlock the gate, when I realize that it’s not necessary; the gate is broken.  Not broken in the sense that the keypad isn’t working, but broken in the sense that the keypad is there, the keypad is registering my keycard, but it’s completely unnecessary, because the magnetic block is pried back and bent away just enough to where contact between magnetic locks is now impossible.  In other words, I’m paying association dues on broken equipment that clearly has gone ignored for quite some time due to the visible rust on the bolts, and the swimming pool is completely accessible to the entire world now.

And the entire world, or at least all of Bataria is capitalizing on this free pool concept.  All around poolside were littered cups and cans, and a few cigarette butts.  I found several squirt toys laying around poolside, and it’s very obvious that the HOA doesn’t send anyone to clean up around the place; but in all fairness, they shouldn’t have to, because the residents of Bataria really should know better, and that it’s really not that great of an idea to shit where you eat.

It’s not my responsibility, but I decided to make it my responsibility; at least for today.  I picked up the cans and cups of garbage that were left behind, and placed them into the trash receptacle that has obviously been ignored for quite some time as well.  And then I picked up the squirt guns and toys, and smashed them against the concrete, or snapped them in two across my knee before throwing them in the trash.  Crazy motherfuckers out there, best to not leave your shit laying around, I guess.

So with my poolside now a little bit cleaner, and a little more civilized, I was able to enjoy my morning swim just a little bit more, but seriously, there are some real downsides to living in Bataria sometimes that just won’t ever be fixed.

The Kung Fu Kid vs. The Karate Kid

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At first, I had wanted nothing to do with the idea of Will Smith using his influence and pull to recreate one of the greatest movies of all time, in The Karate Kid, but using his own kid as the titular role. And then when the premise of the plot was butchered to where instead of being in the United States, but instead China, I was a little beside myself; obviously from the get-go anyone with half a brain knows that it’s no longer karate. I thought the idea for the film was utter crap. However, that ended up changing somewhere down the line.

And that was when I found out that Jackie Chan was the actor chosen to essentially be “The Mr. Miyagi” of the film, and then suddenly, my tune began to change real quick. I’m a huge admirer of Jackie Chan, not just for the entertainment of all his acting, acrobatics, and martial arts, but I really admire the guy’s intelligence. He speaks so many different languages, has a massive fanbase both in the United States as well as Asia, and there’s something about the guy that seems genuine and that he truly puts himself into all his roles. With him as part of the flick, suddenly the movie didn’t seem like it could be that bad.

In conclusion? I was right. The Kung Fu Kid wasn’t bad at all . . . Mostly because pretty much, we’ve already seen the entire movie before. (Potential spoilers, plot summaries ahead)

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Mage Designers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unless you’re a player like me who really likes to go through RPGs with as little reliance on magic as possible, then you probably play your own Final Fantasy games with a good enjoyment of spell-casting. Preferably, I like to fight; give me a cast of four Black Belts and after one turn, I will have hit the ogres about 72 times for close to a billion HP damage, terminated.

But today, I’m going to talk about the class that I don’t really use – the Mages, and then make a brilliant analogy about how it relates to my career and I.

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Dream street

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One good thing about having moving my base of brogging operations to WordPress is the simplicity in which I can jot down some thoughts and words at pretty much the drop of a hat, or whenever I can get on the intertubes.  That being said, I’m not the type that really remembers dreams too often, and whenever I do, I’d like to say I’d make a conscious effort to get them down in writing.  Sometimes, something comes out of simply trying to describe them, other times, it’s just reminders of the good that occasionally stems from the subconscious.

Anyway, last night’s dreams were naturally, all over the place.  Aside from the grin-worthy parts that involve two different chicks I’ve crushed over, in non-sequential order, the most vivid part of my dreams was simply a part where I was riding in a car with three other people.  Three of us were groggy and constantly dozing off while we were on our way to our destination, which I believe was geek trivia night.

Upon snapping out of my most recent daze, I become apologetic to the driver, who has become quite agitated at the notion that he was the only one awake, being the one saddled with the responsibility of driving.  I explain and make a vain attempt to wake everyone up, to be considerate, but suddenly, there are cars randomly stopped and scattered in the roads.  Some swerving and dodging is necessary at the moment, and I can’t really believe my eyes . It’s what I’ve seen hundreds of times in zombie and post-apocalyptic films, but here it is, right in front of me.

And that’s when I see the first bodies.  At first, I don’t believe it; it’s dark, and it couldn’t have been a real corpse.  But then we pass more cars, and then there are more bodies.  Swerving, and dodging more cars.  The further we go into this mess of chaos, the bodies increase, and it’s no longer in question of if it was a body, but now of what the fuck is going on?  Carefully we drive through the graveyard of cars and people, not really thinking once that maybe we should turn around.  The answer to my visual nightmares are never answered.

Because the next thing I know, I’m walking into my own bedroom, and there’s a girl I’ve been waiting to see, waiting for me.  Cue the soft Latin beat that typically plays in the background of the Dos Equis commercials.

The swan song of Miss Racial Profiler

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Dear Miss Racial Profiler,

It is my last day on assignment, so I do not feel any remorse for this approach.  But if you thought your weak verbal apology was sufficient for your blatantly ignorant assumption that I was delivering food menus to the hotel because I am Asian, then you are horribly mistaken. You should, and I hope you are ashamed of yourself.  You have no idea how offended I was by your ignorance.  People like YOU disgust me.

And such is the culmination of what turned out to be pretty fun last few days.  The yellow sheet of paper actually has those words written on it.  I could’ve taken the high road and not done any of this, but it’s too good of a story to pass up. This’ll be the last mention of the racial profiler story . . .  I hope.