Month: May 2018

Initial D, fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not a lot of people know this, but Initial D is one of my all-time favorite anime out there.  Easily in my top ten, quite possibly in my top five.  I’ll be the first to say that it’s far from high quality in terms of plot, progression or quality of animation, but when the day is over, there isn’t any other anime that I’ve revisited the status of availability over the span of 18 years, to make sure that I’m caught up to all the episodes.

That’s longer than my interest in Ranma 1/2, Rurouni Kenshin, Kare Kano, Kodomo no Omocha or Neon Genesis Evangelion, all other series that I could say would be up in my top ten.  Not many of them had nearly the longevity of Initial D, much less a variety of movies, OVA and live-action adaptations made for them, in spite of them probably being considered bigger traditional classics.

I recently finished watching the series after I discovered that the Fifth and the Final Stage seasons were available; after the cheesy way that the Fourth Stage had concluded, I was eager to see if the series could get back some of the gearhead excitement that defined the series as a whole.

To no real surprise, the last two seasons were by no means blockbusters, as the series in general is nothing really complex – dudes who love driving cars and racing, racing against other dudes who love driving cars and racing.  The only things that really change are the competitors to the Project D team, and occasionally the course does too.  At first blush, it’s hard to imagine the types of cars that are losing to a Toyota Corolla AE86 or an RX-7 FD3S, but the show surprisingly takes the initiative to explain and justify the mechanics to how such can happen.

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The DeVanzo Shift in an actual MLB game

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A guilty pleasure of mine is the film, Artie Lange’s Beer League.  It’s more or less a love letter to all things New Jersey, featuring Artie Lange and a bunch of small time New Jersey losers who enjoy beer league softball in their town while going through the motions of their own mundane lives.  It’s by no means good, but to someone who appreciates sophomoric humor, rec league softball, and one of the random things that Ralph Macchio actually performs in, the flick still holds a place in my well as a go-to for a cheap and reliable laugh.

One of the things in the film that I make references to almost regularly is The DeVanzo Shift, a defensive strategy employed by one of the antagonist teams, designed to feast on the fact that Artie Lange is completely incapable of hitting the ball to anywhere but the left side of the field, so the Manganelli Fitness team blatantly positions all fielders on the left, leaving the right side completely open.  Naturally, being the underachiever he is, Artie still hits the ball into the teeth of the defense and is easily rendered out.

Throughout the last decade or so, Major League Baseball has gone in the direction of teams employing radical shifts, in order to capitalize on the tendency of more and more hitters to pull the ball more than anything else, because pulling = power, power = homers, and homers = $$$.  It’s become laughably commonplace these days that every team’s left-handed power bats will see shifts where either a second baseman or a shortstop will position themselves pretty much in shallow right field, and be pitched in manners that will try to get them to hit it directly into the shifts.

Regardless, any team that shifts will almost always still have a guy or two position on the opposite side of the field, in the event that a hitter will drop a bunt to counter the shift, or some fluke of a swing slaps a ball to the opposite side of the field.  After all, these are paid professionals who are supposedly the best in the world at baseball and should be able to read a defense and react accordingly to how the opposition is trying to play them.  So shifts are not uncommon in the big leagues, but it’s like we’d ever see a real DeVanzo Shift in the majors.

That is, until Joey Gallo started playing baseball for the Texas Rangers.  Apparently the book is pretty short and concise on Gallo: strikes out a ton, and if he makes contact with the ball, he’s pulling it.  And the Houston Astros have clearly gotten the message, and have basically deployed the DeVanzo Shift, in Major League Baseball.  The Astros positioned nearly every single fielder on the right side of the field, save for left fielder Marwin Gonzalez, who was the sole left-side safety net in the event that Gallo hit anything remotely to the left.  Needless to say, the Astros were very confident that they were going to get Joey Gallo to hit a ball to the right side of the field.

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Only the Mets

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It’s not Bobby Bonilla Day yet, but it’s never too early for the Mets to get into the national spotlight for doing something stupid and foolish that only the Mets seem capable of doing and whom the sports media loves to point out their screw ups.  So when the Mets manage to screw up something as simple as batting lineups, and give away a free out because they submit an incorrect batting lineup card to the umpires and opposing team, and subsequently lose the game, it’s newsworthy.

At this point, I’ve watched thousands of baseball games in my life.  I’ve never once seen an instance where a team has managed to bat out of order in a game before.  I mean, I’ve seen blunders on double switches and managers accidentally burn a pinch-hitter or a relief pitcher in critical situations before.  I’ve seen a guy walk on three balls instead of four balls because absolutely nobody from the umpires, players and both teams were paying attention.  But never before have I ever seen a game where a batter went up and took an at-bat out of the predetermined order, and then get caught for it.

I’d say that this is something that only the Mets would seem capable of doing, but seeing as how absolutely everything baseball is recorded, naturally, there’s citation of when this happened last time, and apparently it really wasn’t that long ago when this happened, back in 2016.  But because nobody gives a shit about the Milwaukee Brewers, nobody seems to have noticed when they did it, but because the Mets are notorious for screwing up just about everything there is to screw up in the game of baseball, and the media loves to point out when it does, it becomes news worth talking about.

Seriously though, what stupid shit for the Mets to fall for, and despite the fact that he was kind of a colossal fuck up in Washington, good on Reds manager Jim Riggleman for knowing exactly how to play the situation, and waiting for the precise moment when the Mets were building up some momentum to reveal the blunder, and completely wipe out any positive juju that they were beginning to feel with a runner on second with only one out.  Naturally, the Mets would have to, and did lose the game, in extra innings no less, where had their blunder not occurred, might not have even been on the table.  Who would ever know how things would have played out had the Mets not been so perpetually boneheaded?

Nobody will ever know, but because it’s the Mets, they’d probably find a different way to mess things up and lose, because that’s simply what the franchise seems to do best.

Cobra Kai was good, but can only go downhill from here

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When I first heard news about Cobra Kai, I cringed.  The phrases “spin-off” and “reboot” have become so frequent and so often yielding in sub-satisfactory product, that I’ve become somewhat sensitive and triggered whenever I hear them.  Worse, when they’re attached to a property I’ve loved for nearly my entire life, The Karate Kid franchise.  I felt immediate dread and a grave concern that The Karate Kid was next in line to become bastardized by the Hollywood machine that feels the need to bilk and ruin everything that was once successful, in order to attempt to cash in on nostalgia, and feast upon the wallets of the past, in the present.

The pessimistic feelings intensified when I heard that the show had been green lit, and then was actually in production.  And then the press releases emerged with actual drop dates and that it was going to be a YouTube:RedTube exclusive, and the reality started to sink in that this was actually going to happen.  I avoided all teasers and preview trailers, and tried to unsee whenever I caught any glimpses of any promotional materials, because frankly I didn’t want to accept that Cobra Kai was actually going to happen.

A friend of mine began telling me how pumped up he was that the show was coming, and how it was going to get him to actually pay actual money in order to get a RedTube subscription so that he could watch it.  When I said that I didn’t really want to watch it, he called me a hipster that was being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and that I should be more open minded.  I leveled with him, and told me that if he legitimately thought it was good, then I would give it a chance, but his judgment would be on the line if that were to be the case.

When the show dropped, my friend started texting me about how good it was.  It’s easy to get caught up in the early episodes, but I didn’t want to watch something that was going to disappoint me in the long haul.  The texts kept coming, spoiling some non-essential situational plot points that admittedly intrigued me.  And then the next day, I get a text detailing how tired he was at work, because he had stayed up to just watch the whole series.  Then my brother texts me asking me if I’d started watching yet. 

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This is the stuff I fear for Georgia

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Impetus: guy who wants to run for governor of Georgia drops campaign video where he’s brandishing a shotgun the whole time, pointing it at a young man who recites his campaign points

See, this is the kind of shit that makes me worry for the future of Georgia.  I understand that the whole video was meant to be kind of tongue-in-cheek and definitely produced with a sense of humor intended.  But surprising to nobody with brains, it falls flat on face and comes off as some gun-crazy hick basically holding a young man hostage and forcing him to read off his generic promises if he’s elected governor.

Most educated, liberal, and/or just people with brains mostly conclude that this was a tasteless campaign commercial, and for all intents and purposes should not help him win the primary.  But the problem is that Georgia is filled with a whole lot of people who do not fit the aforementioned criteria.  These are people who will have thought this commercial was funny, this commercial was memorable, or worse off, completely agree with everything about the commercial – and then they’ll act on such sticking power, and actually vote for this shithead.

And that has me very scared for the future of this state, if gun-loving hicks like this actually rise to some prominence.

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What’s not racist versus what is

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It’s amazing the lengths that people go out of their way these days for in order to pretend like they’re offended so that they can have a reason to bitch about something on social media with hopes that they’ll go viral and get 15 seconds of internet fame.  This week’s staged offense is a story about a girl in Utah who went to her high school prom wearing a Chinese qipao dress; it doesn’t sound like a big deal at all, but the thing is that the girl wasn’t Chinese or any sort of Asian descent, and suddenly she’s a racist, she’s culturally appropriating, and she’s offending many, many people.

Speaking as an Asian person, I’ll say this: a not-Chinese person wearing a qipao is NOT racist.  Period, full stop.

It also isn’t cultural appropriation, which honestly shouldn’t really exist in terms of clothing, because if the whole world wanted to get technical, it would be quite the contrary and the vast majority of the planet would be appropriating clothing that was manufactured probably in China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam or any other country where cheap, slave-wage labor is available.  If place of origin is what decides what culture clothing belongs to, then just about every American is culturally appropriating someone else’s clothing.

And historically, there have been litanies of women who have worn qipaos or other traditional Chinese garments who weren’t Chinese.  Whether they were celebrities or dignitaries from other countries visiting China, or expats living in China who eventually starting wearing local clothing out of convenience.  There is zero difference between people like these and a teenage girl wearing a qipao for her prom.  She’s in fact pretty and wears it well, and the Chinese originators of the garment would probably be proud to see it being worn to a meaningful event like a teenager’s prom by someone who claims to really love it.

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KANE FOR MAYOR

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In short: Glenn Jacobs, better known as WWE wrestler “Kane” wins the Republican primary in the Knox County, Tennessee mayoral race

In other words, Kane is one step closer to becoming an actual mayor of an actual county in an actual metropolitan area in the United States.  Not a bad achievement for a guy who makes his living fake beating people up in a fake sport.  The only thing that stands in the way of total victory now is the Democratic candidate in the general election in November.

Honestly, I didn’t think Kane was going to make it this far, because despite how ironically funny and cool it would be to see a professional wrestler ascend the ranks of government and take public office, cooler heads tend to prevail in the end, and the career politicians usually end up winning most of the time.  But now that Kane has emerged victorious in the first critical step, I want to see nothing more than for Kane to go all the way and become MAYOR KANE, and send Knox County, Tennessee straight… to… HELLLLLLL.

Lest we forget Kane’s resume for becoming a mayor:

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