Month: June 2017

Judging a book by its title

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to Chinese food, I’m not particularly picky.  I mean, let’s be honest here, Chinese food in America is about as American as McDonald’s is, so going to Royal China in Atlanta isn’t going to be terribly different from Lucky Golden Buddha in Seattle or China King 3 in Oklahoma.  Furthermore, I usually favor my Chinese food either delivered to my house so I can be lazy, or going to a buffet where I can stuff my face like a miserable fat fuck and regret it terribly later on in the day.  There’s almost no appeal at all when it comes to going to a Chinese restaurant where the food is not unlimited.

Until I discovered the existence of this place.  Where the name of the restaurant alone is enough to elicit an opinion of “no fucking way,” and eventually “I want to try this place out if they’re so audacious to have such an iconic name that triggers so much nostalgia.”

I mean seriously, when you’re going to name your restaurant Double Dragon, you have to know you’re going to be putting a bullseye on yourself from snarky gamers that are 30-years old and older at this point.  You also have to know that you’re seriously not trying hard to hide the fact that you’re seriously infringing on some copyrights, from the name itself, to the logo they’re using, but then again, it’s hard to really nail down who owns the rights to the franchise these days; so maybe there’s no concerns that Technos or Atlus or whomever develops and publishes the game is going to bother coming after them.

Seriously, the logo could be slapped onto an NES cart and look like a legit edition to the series, it’s so blatantly based on the video game franchise.  The dragons are even the fucking colors of Billy and Jimmy. 

Regardless, a Chinese restaurant in Atlanta named Double Dragon.  I think that might be kind of racist, but the game is a Japanese development featuring white guys named Lee, and dragons are so very prominent in Chinese culture, so it too is hard to really nail down.  But I am most definitely piqued, and it’s now on my list of places that I would like to try.  If anything at all, this is kind of the closest thing I might ever see to restaurants named after video games, like I often hope to find an Indian restaurant called Yoga Fire.

The zombie apocalypse starts in Vietnam

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This is how it starts: skin care center in Vietnam conveniently happens to be using the exact same logo as the Umbrella Corporation, the “fictional” company from the Resident Evil franchise responsible for “accidentally” creating the T-Virus which started the global zombie apocalypse

In other words, UMBRELLA IS REAL AND IS IN VIETNAM.  Start stocking up on ammunition, first aid spray and green and red herbs.  Engineer some convoluted locks and puzzles based on chess pieces, piano sonatas, and shattered crests of mythical creatures.  And start writing out your thoughts in diaries and start scattering pages around your homes, with discreet clues on how to solve your puzzles and unlock your locks so that Jill, Chris, Rebecca and Leon can find your shit after we all die and then reanimate.

This is pretty close to how the plot started in the movie franchise, with Umbrella’s public guise being one that started off with cosmetics and health wellness while privately dabbling in the world of viral pathogens and some sinister science to ultimately be weaponized and sold for ridiculous profits.  It’s a little too close to home that a clinic in Vietnam is all about the skin care, but happens to be using the verbatim exact same logo as the Umbrella Corporation.

I guess the Capcom conspiracy theorists who wrote out the plot to Resident Evil 6 were a little off in estimating that a zombie outbreak would be in China, but that’s still close enough to Vietnam to believe that maybe these hair-brained video game plots couldn’t be based on some sort of potentially lurking truth.

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Unfortunate demise of a cultural icon

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I remember telling any of my friends from out of town whoever came to visit Atlanta that we would have to go to Gladys Knight’s Chicken & Waffles.  Seldom did anyone disagree, because regardless of how they felt about fried chicken or waffles separately, nobody could deny that there was some bit of intrigue about having them put on the same plate and served simultaneously.  It didn’t hurt that the food itself was decent, and the location was pretty central to the city, making it easier to do anything else afterward.

Throughout more recent years however, myself along with many other kind of stopped going to Gladys Knight’s.  Maybe it was too touristy, maybe being featured on Man v. Food and other travel shows made the place too mainstream and too avoidable for hipsters like me.  Not to mention the idea of chicken and waffles has been borrowed by so many other restaurants throughout the city, many of which have found ways to make it better than the originals.

Regardless, it’s still to hear about a culinary trailblazer like Gladys Knight’s restaurant getting shuttered and basically condemned now.  Especially, in the manner in which all this transpired, which is long story short, Gladys Knight’s shithead son using the family restaurant as a drug front, getting busted several times and murdering the business in a slow agonizing death.

Seriously, it’s bad enough that Atlanta lost an iconic restaurant that, but it’s sadder to hear that it basically ruined a family relationship between mother and son because the son is greedy, selfish and an asshole, and mom just wanting to distance herself away from his bullshit.

No, Gladys Knight’s wasn’t the best chicken and waffles in town, but they were amongst the first to bring the cult-like combination to the city in the first place.  Furthermore, they were in a location often times mired in political strife and kind of a key point of contention for the future of the city.  Had the Peachtree/Pine area ever gotten back on their feet and improved, Gladys Knight’s was basically at the center of it, but instead, they’re not just another boarded up storefront in an area that’s already plagued with ghetto and failure, and not even the Empress of Soul herself could withstand the hood.

When a movie is treated like more than a movie

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I don’t really planning on going out and seeing Wonder Woman.  Not because I’m a sexist pig that refuses to support a film with a strong leading woman, but because I’m just not really that interested.  One, it’s a DC Comics film, and I know there’s a fallacy of predicting the future based on the past, but if the last few stinkers were any indication, it’s probably not going to be that great.  And two, the monumental amount of attention and press that this film has received, regardless of it was actually about the film or not, has put this movie on a plateau of expectations that I just don’t think can realistically be reached.

Had Wonder Woman just been released like any other comic book movie, I might’ve had more interest in seeing it.  I mean, this variant of Wonder Woman was introduced in such an epic manner, giving a modicum of life and interest to the steamer known as Batman v. Superman, that it really shouldn’t have been too difficult to expect that a stand-alone Wonder Woman should be just fine.

Now I know that as a man, it’s not really my place to speak on behalf of women, but I still have a lot of opinions on how the buildup and arrival of this movie has basically taken on a life greater than the film itself, and I think that it’s kind of unfair to the film and those who worked on it, that it’s being treated as anything other than a feature film that people will pay money to hope to be entertained by, and little else.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Gal Gadot is awesome.  If anything at all, I feel like I’ve been a fan of hers longer than most sudden Wonder Woman fans are, because I’ve enjoyed her throughout the later Fast & Furious films, where she plays Gisele, who isn’t just eye candy, but another strong female protagonist not defined by her role in the lives of men.  I know she served in the Israeli army, which explains why she’s so rock hard and convincingly tough, because she actually is, and nobody needs to give me an elaborate dossier for me to know that I appreciate her.

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=/

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That emoji is kind of how I felt when I read about Mein Fuhrer deciding for the whole country and pulling out of Paris Climate Agreement.  I don’t really know how to explain why I felt sad by it, it’s not like I’m the greenest person on the planet either; I don’t go out of my way to recycle, although I am cognizant about turning off lights and shutting down electronics that aren’t being used.  That’s the kind of person I am when it comes to climate concerns, if that paints any picture at all.

I think it’s more a sense of dissatisfaction at a situation where pretty much the vast majority of the American public can agree that, not even for just the sake of the climate, whether it’s believed in or not, there’s nothing really wrong with trying to reduce pollution and find simple and efficient ways to not be so wasteful, but the guy in unfortunate charge of the country seems to operate at this seemingly predictable reverse psychology methodology, so whatever the people wants, he simply does the opposite.  So when the vast majority of Americans are saying to not leave the Paris Climate Agreement, he decides to leave, joining like, two other countries as the only countries in the entire fucking planet that isn’t a part of it.

And then to add insult to injury, there’s always the tagline at the end that claims to “be for America’s best interests,” that I can’t even believe for one second that those who say it can believe it.

By now, I’m entirely convinced that if Twitter started proclaiming that they hoped that this administration would never end, the Comemeder in Chief would resign full stop right then and there, because he’s so accustomed to doing whatever it is the American people don’t want.

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