Month: September 2012

Photos: Chipper’s last regular-season home game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For very likely the last time in 2012, I went to Turner Field to catch a Braves game.  The Braves are guaranteed at least one playoff game next Friday, but honestly, I don’t really like the idea of going to a playoff game by myself, so I’m probably not going to go.  So as far as I’m concerned, this is probably the last time I go to Turner Field for the remainder of this year.

But anyway, this also serves as the de facto final regular-season home game for Chipper Jones, to which the crowd showed up en masse to commemorate the occasion.  I’m actually proud of the baseball fans of Atlanta for a chance, seeing as how I figured the attendance would have been above-average, but not necessarily a packed house like it ended up being, because there was a Falcons game in town at the same time.  But they showed up in great numbers, and were never not willing to stand up and cheer for Chipper Jones every single time he stepped up to the plate, or made a good defensive play.  It’s nice to know that there are plenty of other people out there that genuinely seem to appreciate the career of Chipper Jones.

Continue reading “Photos: Chipper’s last regular-season home game” →

Thoughts about Trouble With the Curve

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So I decided to go to a theater for the first time in ages, and I watched Trouble With the Curve, starring Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams.  I had some trepidation going into this movie, seeing as how it’s pretty much one gigantic counterpoint to Moneyball, which was a story and concept I liked, and the movie wasn’t half bad either.  But the movie focuses around baseball, and uses the Atlanta Braves as the team that the characters revolve around, so it was kind of unavoidable in the end.

As a movie plot, Trouble With the Curve is nothing spectacular at all, but it’s far from the worst flick on the planet too.  It’s predictable, the characters are cliche, and it tended to drag on at times, if not by any means other than repeating the plot device of “emotionally-detached aging father has difficulty bonding with now-grown-up daughter so walks away.”  At this point in time, I’m having difficulty in appreciating Clint Eastwood’s former greatness when he’s playing these vulnerable and cliched, gruff, elderly men.  And as for Amy Adams, I figured I would come out of the theater with a renewed crush on Amy Adams, but yeah no, not really.

Continue reading “Thoughts about Trouble With the Curve” →

Photos: Moxie tailgate and baseball night

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, this zoom lens is pretty balla.’  I tagged along to a company function from Jen’s work, because it got me into a baseball game for free.  Along the way, I got to see homeless people descend on their waning-down tailgate to converge upon the spread like they were vultures closing in on a freshly run-over rabbit.  But then I was back in my comfort zone of Turner Field, taking some pictures of possibly the last time anyone will see Chipper Jones wearing the classic traditional home whites.

Continue reading “Photos: Moxie tailgate and baseball night” →

Man, What a Stupid Commercial #002

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I watch a lot of sports and wrestling, so it’s unavoidable that I see this commercial at least once a week, but likely way more than that. Clearly, the perceived demographic of those who watch baseball, college football and professional wrestling are blue-collared white men who feel the need to drive gas-guzzling pickup trucks long distances on desolate country roads in which biker gangs travel on.

From the get-go, this commercial doesn’t exactly begin in any fashion that makes any sense. A scorpion skittering on the ground before the word RESPECT just randomly pops up on the screen. What does a scorpion have to do with Dodge Ram trucks or bikers? What does a scorpion have to do with respect? I respect the fact that scorpions have the capability to incapacitate and even kill human beings with their stings, which leads me to want to avoid them at all costs, but I clearly fail to comprehend the connection between scorpions, trucks and bikers.

But then we get to the “plot” of the commercial, which starts out with the protagonist of the spot, driving down a long, endless desert road. In a pickup truck. That claims to get 24 mpg on the highway with a fuel tank that can hold purportedly 26 gallons. Sure, trucks are large bulky and have the capability for comfort, but I’m surprised at how in a such a supposed fuel-conscious society, the imagery of cruising down highways in our pickup trucks is still being pushed.

Continue reading “Man, What a Stupid Commercial #002” →

How wrong Capcom got it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I was looking up old video games, and I came across a game whose title caught my eye – Street Fighter 2010. It was a side-scrolling beat ‘em up game released by Capcom for the NES back in 1990. America got the version where the storyline was altered so that the main character of the game is in fact futuristic, year-2010 version of Ken Masters. The basic story is that Ken became a scientist after winning the Street Fighter tournament, and is going around through transdimensional portals, partially a cyborg or something along those convoluted lines, and beating up a variety of cyborgs and aliens, searching for clues for his dead science partner.

Honestly none of that is really at all important, humorously absurd as it all may be. My biggest point of criticism is simply the fact that the game is titled “Street Fighter 2010,” and it’s currently the year 2012, and not a single fucking thing about the game is the least bit realistic to the times. Interplanetary warp gates? We’re still struggling with daily commuting, as they did back in 1979. The cybergoo that the story revolves around that turns people into superhumans, I guess could be a comparable analogy to steroids and human growth hormones or something like, but that shit has been around for decades, so it’s nothing new.

Continue reading “How wrong Capcom got it” →

Man, What A Stupid Commercial #001

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I title this with a number as if I’ll remember to keep it going as time passes. Commercials are relatively a nuisance to begin with, and when I have the misfortune of watching television that isn’t DVR’d, I’m at the mercy of having to sit through them. But every now and then I’ll see a commercial that is just bad, and stands out as bad amongst all the other bad advertising that exists. Commercials that make my contort my face and wonder “what the fuck was that?” Commercials that I’ll deem as stupid for a variety of different reasons, or multiple/all of the above.

But since lately with the inception of a Facebook account, I’m having a tedious time coming up with things to brog about; at least with commercials, there’s an endless well in which stupid content might trigger the urge to slap some words down onto the interwebs. And here we stand.

Does any company truly fail at marketing more than Pepsi? Serious question. The company spends an egregious amount of money to market, but in the end, so little of their marketing actually is good marketing. At first it was the overblown, overly-winded explanation of how the current Pepsi logo came to with inspiration from The Golden Ratio, Michaelangelo’s David, the Mona Lisa, and all sorts of other trite, convoluted explanations that are more laughable than memorable.

But commercials like this have me wonder what the fuck Pepsi is thinking sometimes.

Continue reading “Man, What A Stupid Commercial #001” →

Seeking a Korean starter wife

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My mom’s convinced that at some point, I promised her that I would marry a Korean girl by the age of 30.  I can’t really say I recollect making such a ludicrous promise, but regardless my mom badgers me about it just about every time we speak on the phone.  She knows that I’m not really into Korean chicks let alone Asian chicks in general; all jokes aside about me being Korean as burritos are, and being an mega-Twinkie/banana, I’m just not.  Maybe the right one(s) has never come along to spark any interest, and break the walls, or maybe it’s the fact that I grew up surrounded by Korean women, so it’s like this awkward family complex I have towards other Korean girls in general.

No matter, she gives me the old-world spiel about how she wants to see me get married to a Korean girl before, of course, she dies.  Obviously no good son really wants to see his mother die at any point at all, but we’ve had discussions before on the importance of her happiness for her, and my happiness for myself.  Clearly, there’s a conflict of interest here.  She wants a Korean daughter-in-law that will birth my heir and give her yet more grandchildren, and then become a subservient caregiver while she lives out the rest of her lives in my home, or something along those lines, right out a circa-1990s Korean drama VHS tape that Korean moms and grandmas would trade and rent and watch for endless hours.

Continue reading “Seeking a Korean starter wife” →