Month: July 2018

Reason #1,728 why social media is cancer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The other night, some friends of mine and I went out to Hooters for dinner.  Ironically, it was actually the girls in the party who suggested it.  However, it turned out to be one of the worst dining experiences in recent memory, because the particular location we went too apparently had the equivalent of TNA Wrestling management working the kitchen, because it was the slowest service I’d received in months, and when the food came out, it was not really hot and was subpar.

However, it did give me a lot of time to watch TV, and I caught the very tail end of the Braves game, where Braves pitcher Sean Newcomb came within one strike from throwing the first Braves no-hitter in 24 years.  Despite the heart-breaking near-miss, it was undoubtedly the greatest start of a very young and budding career for the once-highly touted prospect.  Newcomb should absolutely have been feeling really good after the win that prevented the Dodgers from sweeping them at home.

Nah, instead the afternoon turned sour really fast when some Twitter troll(s) dug into his Twitter history and found some tweets he made when he was high school that were yeah, racially insensitive and pretty homophobic.  So shortly after having the best start of his career, Newcomb was sitting at the media table for the post-game talking about how regretful and apologetic he was for saying stupid shit for when he was a teenager, instead of talking about his fantastic start, in the present.

From what I understand, the person who started this shit storm was supposedly a Nationals fan, so some vindictive Braves fan(s) decided to eye-for-an-eye the situation, so they took it upon themselves to go digging through the old tweets of one of the young Nationals players, and found one in rising star Trea Turner.

Continue reading “Reason #1,728 why social media is cancer” →

Full circle

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back to where it all began: Tampa Bay Rays trade Jonny Venters to the Atlanta Braves

Honestly, I thought I’d be more pumped up about this trade, considering how much I love Jonny Venters, and that he’s coming back to the Atlanta Braves.  But I guess there’s this permanent small resentment towards the Braves in my brain, involving their unnecessary move, their affiliation with ScumTrust, the tax increases they caused, and their general apathetic baseball operations that kind of makes me feel that they didn’t deserve to have the services of a classy guy like Jonny Venters.

Especially since the Braves basically cut Venters loose while he was at his very lowest point after numerous injuries, it was the Rays that kept his career alive, and I guess it was with the Rays in which I would’ve liked to have seen his career reignite.  Or at least, I would’ve loved to have seen the Rays trade Venters to an actual contender, and not like the currently free-falling Braves, who need starting pitching and not more relievers.

Continue reading “Full circle” →

Only going to talk about this once (hopefully)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So Yosemite Sam won the Republican nod to run for governor this November; this is not at all surprising, as victory was pretty much locked in as soon as the Donald Trump gave him his endorsement, which all but guaranteed all of his brainless sheep worshippers would vote him in.  Also not surprising was the relative ease in which he won the primary, defeating Casey Cagle by nearly 40 full points, going to further show just how much power a president that everyone loves to make fun of truly does wield.

So the field is officially set for probably the most important state election that I’ve lived in Georgia for, between gun-toting, Trump-worshipping, immigrant-threatening, unapologetically redneck Yosemite Sam, versus Stacey Abrams, a black woman, in a racist-ass state in busted-ass America, for governor of Georgia.

Obviously, I’ve written a lot of words about this particular topic, more than I ever thought I’d care to ever expend.  But I’m a grown-up (relatively), and I guess this is what happens to grown-ups, caring about politics, and I like the general state of Georgia these days, and I fear that a radical change in the political regime of the state highly jeopardizes such chill state of Georgia.

The bottom line is that no matter how much money, exposure and awareness that the Democratic party has funneled behind Stacey Abrams, she is obviously going to be the underdog by being both black and a woman, trying to make history, by becoming the first-ever black female governor in the United States.  In Georgia.  A state with deep roots involved with slavery, white supremacy and barely a decade removed from when they actually got the Confederate insignia off of its flag.

Continue reading “Only going to talk about this once (hopefully)” →

This will probably be the best ppv of the year

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s the thought that crossed my mind when Stephanie McMahon announced the women-only Evolution special, set to air in October.  I get that such isn’t saying that much since the ppvs of the year have been kind of lackluster, but I state such acknowledging the genuine importance and historical significance of the WWE embarking on a women-only special.

A friend of mine and I discussed what it would be like if the WWE had a women-only show, and my first thought was that it would be the kiss of death for the women’s division.  Despite the fact that a show featuring solely cruiserweight probably would have been the hottest shit on the planet back in like 1999, 205 Live is kind of proof that good ideas don’t always translate into good results.  Much like it, and Main Event (if that’s even still around) are good indicators that a show solely dedicated to women would probably not be a good idea, and the women’s division doesn’t need anything like such to derail the equity that they’ve been building over the last few years.

Stuff like the Mae Young Classic and the women’s Royal Rumble have proven that there’s a demand and appreciation for the women’s division, but it’s far too early to let them stand alone and throw them into the deep end on their own.  For true equality to exist, the women need to be on the same shows and booked by the same people that all the men perform on.

A stand-alone special show is absolutely the right call for this idea, and regardless of the fact that 2018’s ppv lineup has been kind of mediocre, Evolution very much has the chance to be the best special of the year.

Continue reading “This will probably be the best ppv of the year” →

So savage, you have to respect the tactic

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A week ago, I got a horrible email in my inbox: Chick Fil-A was shutting the door on their wildly popular cow calendar promotion.  Citing after 20 years something something, I couldn’t really make out the rest from the rage that welled up behind my eyes but the point is, Chick Fil-A was ending their calendar, which meant no more monthly free shit ever again.

Obviously, a company like Chick Fil-A doesn’t become go-zillionaires without watching every single nickel and dime, and somewhere in some analytical study, it was deemed that the free shit given out every month on top of the sales of the calendars themselves, don’t really match up to the money is expected to come in as a result.  So regardless of how popular the calendars are, although everyone and their mother knows people only get them for the 12 months of free shit, they’re closing the door on the promotion.

But amidst the outrage caused by Chick Fil-A killing off their calendar, Bojangles swoops onto the stage to announce the launch of their calendar.  Except Bojangles’ calendar is free to join, completely digital, but still offers coupons of free or discounted shit.

Continue reading “So savage, you have to respect the tactic” →

This could only happen to the Mets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It couldn’t possibly happen to any other team: all-star pitcher Noah Syndergaard put on the disabled list for hand-and-foot-and-mouth disease

Most people who follow baseball are remotely aware that Noah Syndergaard is actually a really good pitcher, and not just a good pitcher for the perpetual-woeful Mets.  But to those who aren’t, know that Noah Syndergaard is a really good pitcher, definitely among the best in the game today.  It’s no more evident than looking for an ironic picture of him sitting on the bench looking dejected, or a pic of the manager taking the ball away from him on the mound as he’s pathetically removed from the game.  Even finding this one image of him moments after giving up a home run to an Atlanta Brave was a one-in-a-hundred kind of find.

That’s how good of a pitcher he is; even the internet has a hard time finding photographic evidence of when he’s having an off-day.

Regardless of his talent of throwing a baseball, he’s still on the Mets, and if there’s one thing the Mets have become synonymous with over the last few decades is that the players of their team are slightly more subjective to injuries than other teams.  Sure, it might sound like a bullshit assessment, but the proof is there – Mets players just get injured in the weirdest ways, or just so frequently to where they even thought simply making a sign would exorcise the bad juju to stop it.

Continue reading “This could only happen to the Mets” →

Office Space-ing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s only been a year and chance since I moved into my house, but I haven’t really done anything with my office.  Sure, I made and installed my wall of belts, and hung a few frames on the walls, in addition to positioning the futon and setting up a space for my computer.  But I still had a lot of boxes sitting in the closet along with general ideas for lots of little trinkets and nerdy figurines that I had imagined displaying in whatever room I’d designate as my office, that I simply never bothered really getting to.

Another thing I decided to do while mythical gf was out of the country was to finally do something with my office space, and get it to a point beyond where it was just a whole bunch of boxes stacked in a corner with just a computer and a wall of wrestling belts.  A few posts ago, I touched on the hanging wall shelves that I had put together, which are in place and I’m generally happy with, even though I underestimated a little bit just how many Rito figures that I had and how much space they’d take up.

So among the things not making the cut of the above picture are two shelves that I purchased and installed; neither are particularly impressive things, but more like essentials in order to get a degree of organization for all my various personal effects.  The obstacle I faced with my primary shelf was that I had some general dimensions that I did not want to exceed in any capacity so that I could retain as much open floor space as possible but still be able to have a place to hold some shit.

At first, I had resigned myself that storage cubes would be the most logical shelving solution for what I had in mind, but after a lot of digging on various sites, it was Amazon of all places where I found this shelf that fit into my dimensional parameters, and definitely looked like it had way more character than the cubes that just about everyone in my generation has from Ikea, Target or Walmart.  Not to mention I loved the faux-incomplete half edges on opposite ends that definitely gives it some personality as well flexibility in case something is a little wider than the surface area.

I only needed one row and the top to display stuff like nice figures and photo frames, and I didn’t have a lot of printed materials that exceeded the smaller shelf spaces, that didn’t quite fit into my library shelf elsewhere, so that left the entire bottom row available for general storage.  I got these storage bins to store shit like camera equipment, electronic peripherals and art supplies, but also looking a little bit nicer than the army of cardboard printer paper boxes they’d all been sitting in previously.

Continue reading “Office Space-ing” →