Month: August 2018

Of course only for China

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Look at these Oreos.  At first glance, they look like they would be like.. pumpkin spice Oreos and green tea matcha latte Oreos, or some other flavors that white people go bonkers over.  The point is, they would be flavors best categorized in the sweet column, because Oreos are cookies and cookies are sweet snacks.

But they’re not pumpkin spice or green tea matcha.  They’re not even food colored regular Oreo icing to match some seasonal variant.  In fact, they’re not even sweet flavored cream to begin with.  They’re actually hot chicken wing and wasabi flavored Oreos respectively which begs the question, who in the fuck would want to eat Oreos of such devastatingly different and not-sweet flavors?

The answer is actually quite simple: China.  These Oreos are thankfully not available in America and only available in China.  This is where I’d say that I hope that they stay there, but we all know the gluttons and sadists of the world will all be curious and through like third-party overcharging services, people traveling abroad and other means, this shit will infiltrate all other parts of the world, and it’s going to pique a lot of curiosities globally of what they might actually taste like.

Frankly, I want to say that I’d hope to never know what either of these would taste like, but I’d be lying that I wouldn’t give it a whirl if one or both of these were presented in front of me.  I can’t imagine that either of them actually tastes any good, especially the hot chicken wing flavor, but damn would I be curious to find out for myself definitively.

Really, the bigger questions are why such horrid abominations must exist in the first place.  For a country that has so many refined ideas for cuisine, they sure have some wacked out ideas of what good junk food is supposed to consist of.  I mean come on, chicken and chocolate cookies?  The fuck is that idea, and what kind of opium-induced hallucinogenic lunacy created that idea to come to fruition in the first place?

Only in China, apparently.

Being unsatisfied is what being a wrestling fan is all about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since I don’t have cable television anymore, I can’t watch RAW or Smackdown anymore.  I keep up with storylines primarily by the convenient litany of condensed highlight packages that YouTube channels generate that have extremely short shelf lives before the WWE Internet Police™ gets them all taken down.  But by the good graces of a close friend, I have WWE Network access, and I’m still able to enjoy NXT on a weekly basis, as well as the monthly pay-per-view shows, that are the culmination of each month’s storylines.

There are lots of weekends where during the evenings, I find myself with a dearth of things to do, and I think to myself, “man, I wish this were [name of WWE ppv] weekend.  Now would be the best time to sit back and enjoy some wrestling.”  But because it isn’t, I ultimately end up laying on the couch and playing Fire Emblem Heroes on my phone, and wonder why it’s suddenly 11 p.m. and that I should probably get ready to get some rest for work or a Sunday morning jog.

And then there are weekends like this past one, where it was in fact, SummerSlam weekend, where wrestling fans not only were privy to watching the annual SummerSlam, but by virtue of being a big show, also NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 4, on Saturday night.

It goes without saying that fans like me look forward to the NXT show more than the main roster show, but frankly, there were reasons to be optimistic for SummerSlam as well.  Smarks probably looked forward to matches like AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe, based on their history of solid matches in Ring of Honor and ironically, TNA, and the Seth Rollins vs. Dolph Ziggler match seemed like a sleeper show stealer, since both guys are obsessed with trying to steal the show.  Personally, I was looking forward to the Daniel Bryan vs. the Miz match, since it was clearly one of the storylines that has been slowly built for years, and could have been one of the more entertaining matches on the card.

Smarks also probably bemoaned the presence of matches like Brock vs. Roman #68, Jeff Hardy vs. Shinsuke Nakamura because Jeff Hardy is old and busted now, and personally I didn’t want to see the inevitable squashing of Alexa Bliss at the hands of Ronda Rousey.  But maybe that one is just me.

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Batista will be in for a rude awakening

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know Dave is on this little high of thinking he’s a something big shot because he’s a former WWE champion and that he played Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, but I don’t think he realizes that he doesn’t have as much clout as he thinks he does.  But thinking that anyone is going to join him much less care, by threatening to walk away from the franchise if Marvel-Disney doesn’t reinstate director James Gunn after firing him for inappropriate tweets from a lifetime ago, he’s going to be in for a very rude awakening at the results that will ensue.

I’m sure he got the impression that the actors could make a difference, after Chris Pratt’s earnest attempt to pen an open letter and get all the stars of the franchise to sign off on it, but in spite of his experience in the public eye as a public wrestler, he’s still relatively green when it comes to the world of Hollywood, which at the very core of it, gives zero fucks about any human being, cares only about money, and fully understands that absolutely anyone is expendable and replaceable.

Furthermore, I’m sure ol’ Dave thought that the cast and crew of Guardians were tight as knots when he made his declaration of wanting to opt out of future Guardians films if they didn’t bring back James Gunn, but the reality is that Gunn or not, the franchise is going to continue, and ain’t nobody from the righteous and current-hotness Chris Pratt all the way to James’s own brother Sean, who has been a bit part in the both films so far would be willing to walk away on solely principle from the money, prestige and exposure that a Marvel Studios film provides to all those involved.

Frankly, Dave Bautista has a tremendous amount to learn about way Hollywood works, and as much as admire his determination to stick to his guns, it’s simply not the best idea for a guy that barely has a handful of films worth mentioning under his belt to be trying to make such waves in an industry where the ensemble cast around him is most certainly not as willing to join the cause. 

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The sociological entertainment of Crazy Rich Asians

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As someone who agrees that Hollywood is whiter than a Republican national fundraiser, I knew it was something of a social obligation that I should go out and watch Crazy Rich Asians.  I never read the book, nor did I have any inkling of an idea of what the plot was about going into it, but I still figured it would be a good idea to support any progression for Asians in a white-dominated industry, if we want to have any modicum of a chance of earning any respect up in this motherfucker.

The movie itself was fine.  Fairly predictable and extremely formulaic, but refreshing in the simple sense that every face didn’t look like Finn Wittrock or Balakey Lively.  Constance Wu carries the film brilliantly, and it’s super gratifying to hear her speak in her actual voice and not as over-the-top tiger mom from Fresh Off the Boat.  I didn’t even realize it was her until seeing her name in the credits although I thought she looked familiar, but Michelle Yeoh’s presence as a cunningly savage rich Asian mom is like an anime where you can feel an aura emanating from her whenever she comes on screen.

It kind of goes without saying that I rolled my eyes at the casting of some hafu named “Henry Golding” as the male lead of the flim, when surely it most certainly could have been cast to an actual Chinese or other Asian guy that didn’t look like a cross between Lawrence from Westworld and a young Ralph Macchio.  But seeing as how this film was being released in white Hollywood (oxymoron?), there had to be some compromise to make sure white power had some degree of a tether to their oppressive natures.  But it’s okay, because as bland and useless of a character Nick Young was, the film had no intention of being carried by him in the first place.

There’s one character in the film whose storyline carries almost zero correlation with the main plot at all, and could presumably not been needed at all whatsoever.  I’m going to assume it’s vastly different in the book and has more of a connection, but for the film’s sake, I’m going to assume it was included probably solely because the actress involved in it is somewhat known, extremely pretty, and needs to have requisite screen time in order to justify her casting.

As for the rest of the film, it had some fun characters and was moderately enjoyable, even with the obnoxious people in the theater, to where I couldn’t decide which was worse between the incessant commentary in Mandarin from the girls next to me, or the incessant commentary from the stereotypical black women who felt the need to very loudly opinionate on everything.

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$100k worth of noodles, 250 billion grams of sodium

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Pretty sure the container was more valuable than the cargo: truck containing allegedly $100,000 worth of ramen noodles stolen from rural Georgia gas station overnight parking

I know the article states that it was a semi-truck, but I have a hard time believing that something the size of a semi could actually contain $100k worth of ramen noodles.  Especially if they were actually like the cheap shit Maru-chan noodles that are like 10¢ a package, but the article doesn’t actually specify the brand of noodles taken.

Instead, I imagine that the only thing remotely capable of hauling $100k worth of ramen noodles would have to be one of those land train trucks that’s basically a semi hauling 3-4 cargo containers in succession, like the one in Fast & Furious 4 that Vin Diesel stole one of the tankers of gas from.  Maybe, only maybe, would a truck hauling four containers worth of ramen noodles actually amount to close to $100k.

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I wonder what Korean moms think about Mina Kimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whenever I see Mina Kimes on ESPN, I often stop and watch for a minute or two, before I realize that I’m always another minute or two from being bombarded by Stephen A. Smith and then regret my decision and walk away.  The thing is, I’m intrigued by Mina Kimes and I guess it could be interpreted as like an innocuous celebrity crush.  She is after all pretty, however she’s also really well-versed in sports, but where I know her the most from is her long-form writing for ESPN Magazine that’s one of the few things about the glorified NFL Ocho brand that I actually stop and enjoy.

I’ve actually met Mina Kimes briefly before; more like said a few words to her, while she was interviewing mythical gf back in 2015 when we were at the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational in Florida.  I had no idea who she was then and I kind of didn’t believe her when she identified herself as an ESPN writer because it was a little unbelievable that they actually had female employees that weren’t Erin Andrews or Rachel Nichols since their own bro-culture is very well documented, but she claimed to be gathering interviews and information about SK Telecom fans and eSports in general, and mythical gf being dressed as SKT-skin Zyra was an easy target to interview.

Months later, the article dropped, primarily centered around SK Telecom’s superstar player, Faker.  Although mythical gf’s contributions are merged into the context of the story, it’s abundantly clear that Mina Kimes was in fact a real ESPN writer, and the article itself was an enjoyable read, especially as someone who loves long-form storytelling.

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Cloak & Dagger is obviously Marvel’s C-squad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to pretend like I’ve ever read any of the comics, but given the track record of decent television shows, I looked forward to Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, and figured I could figure out what was going on from just the show with no prior familiarity of them from comic books.

However, there were some red flags for me that I kind of knew of going into the show, and although I did make it through the first season, I have to say that I’m not really that impressed as a whole, and if I had to rank the show it is a definitive last place behind most all other Marvel television shows out there.

For starters, the show aired on the Freeform network.  I didn’t even know that that network even still existed; I knew it did at one point, because there must’ve been one show that I saw while channel surfing in the past when I used to have cable television, but for the most part, it’s a no-name cable channel, and it should have been some sort of indication of the quality of the programming, even if it did have the Marvel name printed in front of it.

Going blind into this show worked against me in this instance, because I lacked any “Oh! That’s so-and-so” moments that tended to keep me engaged and interested in just about any other Marvel property show previously seen.  That being said, the first two episodes of the show were a complete slog, and I was wholly uninterested in the characters and plot. 

I stopped watching after the first two episodes, citing a poor mood to be watching new television, and told myself to give it one more episode before giving it the Legion treatment AKA walking away before feeling like I’m wasting my time.  The third episode was on the verge of making me throw in the towel, but then the plot started to get interesting in the final eight minutes of the episode, which saved it from abandonment, and then the fourth episode finally started to get somewhere and kept it watchable.  But with a ten-episode season, it literally takes 40% of the season for it to become watchable.

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