Month: September 2019

When the venue becomes more notorious than the team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apple News seems to know to look more for stories that have the capability to entertain instead of just depress me with the shitty way the world is.  That being said, I came across this story about how the American Airlines Arena in Miami were foregoing their partnership with the venue, and that the naming rights for the building were up for grabs.  And among the numerous companies that would love to slap their name on a building and be THE home of the Miami Heat, one rose to the top of the heap, in terms of intrigue, interest and sheer entertainment potential.

Bang Bros, the pornographic website, has apparently put together a very serious proposal and ponied up a ten million dollar bid in order to acquire the rights to the venue, hoping to name the place the Bang Bros Center.  To which it doesn’t take a 17-year old to realize that that would make it the BBC, which most certainly doesn’t represent the acronym for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Needless to say, despite the fact that there is probably a 100% chance this will never happen, no matter how seriously and legitimately Bang Bros presents their proposal, I have to say that this one of the more funny and classic attempts for a pornographic company trying to crawl out of the dark and dirty recesses of the internet and into something physical and tangible, and in this case, really, really huge.

The funny thing to me is that there aren’t a ton of cities that could probably be more likely to get away with smut like this, but I’d have to put Miami up there as one that could.  It’s a city full of vapid and superficial people, a ton of men and women who look like they’d be in Bang Bros’s library somewhere, and the general culture of Miami is pretty loose and probably where a ton of porn is shot anyway.  And the majority of people who go to Heat games are probably a more concentrated sample of the culture, considering the ludicrous price of going to NBA games, and that they’re places for people to show off more than actually watch basketball.

But of course this isn’t going to happen.  No city in their right mind would sell out their treasured sports venue to a pornographic website, no matter how much money they’d offer up.  Primarily due to antiquated beliefs like “for the kids” and general integrity, and not just the fact that aside from Bang Bros, there are probably other, more boring and square companies with deep pockets are probably more than willing to +$1 anything Bang Bros comes to the table with.

But let’s be real here; there is a rare opportunity in this where a venue could become way more newsworthy than the team(s) that play in it.  Like, it wouldn’t matter if the Miami Heat had the 1992 Dream Team starting or the shitty roster called Team USA that just lost two straight international games, the product on the court wouldn’t come close to garnering the attention that the name outside the building would.  And in that regard, that’s about the greatest blessing a franchise could possibly want, where it wouldn’t matter if the Heat had to hit the ceiling of the salary cap or not, people would still show up to the BBC, just because all dudes and their bimbo dates just want the kick of going to a place called the BBC.

Shit, even I’d considering actually going back down to Miami and foregoing a baseball game for a night, just so I could go to the BBC and take a hundred sniggering Boooker T mugshot face selfies, just so I could boast on social media and/or my brog about how I visited the BBC.  And surely, I can’t be the only dude on the planet that would feel the same way.

As far as I’m concerned, the fact that this is all but guaranteed to fall through, seems like one of the more tragic decisions of foregoing great profitability in the name trying to operate business with a modicum of integrity.  Last time I checked, I didn’t realize those things were so mutually exclusive.

Not surprising, but still sad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I found out recently that the Hooters Casino & Hotel in Las Vegas is going under, and I can’t help but feel a little melancholy at the thought of that.  It was definitely not the most glitzy and must-see destination of all of the Las Vegas casinos, but it was still one of the casinos that seemed like it might actually have some staying power, based on its fairly decent location at the south end of the Strip and just the general fact that they were Hooters, a company powered primarily on one of the staples of Las Vegas’s commerce: boobs.

Then again, the south end of the Strip hasn’t always been that advantageous, especially looking at the sad state of properties like the Tropicana, Excalibur, and the revolving door of identities that Hooters was before it was Hooters, and it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that even the mighty titty-centric Hooters is even failing.  Especially considering that in comparison to the many casinos that employ go-go dancers and lingerie dealers, Hooters’ signature uniforms have become somewhat tame and daresay conservative, and their business model has grown stale in a city that’s always changing, in the name of making money.

It was a few years ago in which I went to Hooters last, when mythical wife was still mythical gf and it was her first trip out to Las Vegas ever.  We were staying at the neighboring MGM Grand, so we wandered over to Hooters, just so she could get the full gamut of casinos, seeing as how the night prior, we had wandered around through bougie joints like the Cosmopolitan, Aria and City Center, so now it was an opportunity to see some of the more tired and less-than-glamorous joints.  And walking into Hooters, it was the very definition of tired and defeated, with carpets that looked like they haven’t been changed since 2000, the odor of stale cigarettes, defeat and desperation, and barely any dealers working the floor.  Granted, it was a little earlier in the day, but it was still kind of a reminder of the harsh reality that not everything in Las Vegas is glitz and glamour.

Ultimately, it’s of no consequence to me that Hooters Casino & Hotel is getting shut down, because I’ve only ever stayed there once, and I don’t always go there whenever I go out to Vegas.  When the day is over, the emotion I feel is mostly based on the simple fact that it’s a change to something that I’d grown accustomed to, and there’s no secret that change itself is one of the chief evokers of emotion these days.

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No good deed goes unpunished

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I feel like I’ve written this exact post before, with very similar context, and I know for certain that I used a picture of Poison Ivy the Batman villainess when I did.  But long story short, I did some manual labor for Habitat For Humanity on behalf of the company that I work for, which is a good thing.  But in doing so, I managed to get some nasty poison ivy on my arms despite the fact that I barely spent any time outside, and even when I was, I did not come into any contact with any poison ivy, oak or sumac, which is very much, a bad thing.

I don’t regret participating because of the eventual results of the work I contributed towards, but I do regret participating in the fact that I’m apparently very allergic to poison ivy and I’m basically receiving punishment for having done a good thing.  I abhor the existence of poison ivy, and in my idle bitterness, I googled “why does poison ivy exist,” and aside from some bullshit fluff at how every plant has some potential for medicinal purposes, I frankly didn’t find a single fucking justifiable reason to why this shitty plant and its urushiol-producing relatives exist on this planet other than to troll humans who are susceptible to them.

What really aggravated me was the fact that when I got to the house in question, I didn’t have to look at the property for more than two seconds to know that I should probably work indoors.  The front yard was pretty overgrown, and the back yard looked like Tarzan’s jungle.  I could already see poison ivy, and the vines that were growing on the side of the house was very likely sumac.  And in spite of the precautions I took and the avoidance I exhibited, I still have arms that look like raw hamburger, weeping liquid endlessly no matter how many caladryl or calamine I spread on them.

So I have to suspect that the culprit in question has to be the gloves I used, which came from a generally communal bucket full of gloves, provided by Habitat.  Obviously, I’m not going to accuse and proclaim Habitat For Humanity for maliciously and deliberately supplying urushiol-slathered gloves for their volunteers to use and get afflicted by, but it’s no secret that ivy oil can stick to things for months if not cleaned, and agencies like Habitat have a lot on their plates already, so making sure gloves are kosher doesn’t seem like a likely high priority for their volunteers.

Considering the vast majority of my rashes are on my wrists and arms, precariously where the gloves would have been, it’s an easy guess to believe that I had to have been using some gloves that at some point had done some handling of brush removal or landscaping work, and had come into some pretty significant contact with poison ivy or sumac.  Just my luck.

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Mindhunter is a damn good show

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last two weeks, I’ve watched all of Mindhunter on Netflix.  That’s as pretty close to binge watching from me as things are going to get these days, as by the fifth hour of anything, I’m usually apt to passing out in my recliner, no matter how good of a show it is.

But after watching both seasons of Mindhunter, I have to say that it’s a pretty excellent show from beginning to end.  Often times, I feel that shows tend to start too slowly, and as I get into a show by the midway point, I have one of those revelation moments involving something seen at the start of the first episode that I might have to go re-watch to remember.

That wasn’t the case with Mindhunter, which starts off with a metaphorical and literal bang, and establishes characters quickly and begins their development immediately, that it’s easy to become interested right away.  And it’s the characters that I think are the strength of the show as a whole, because there are three core characters, and it’s really easy to become fairly interested in all of them, whether it’s collectively as the Behavioral Sciences Unit, or their own personal lives.

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To prove I could still do it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the numerous things I did over Labor Day weekend instead of going to Dragon*Con, I ran in a 10K on Labor Day.  Ever since I installed a rod in my office in which to hang all of my running medals from, I was disappointed at how sparse it looked, and decided that I needed more medals.  The Big Peach Sizzler seemed like a perfect opportunity to do something productive in the sense of acquiring another medal, accomplish something that was exercise, but also to prove to myself that even at the ancient age of 37, I could still run a sub-60 minute 10K.

And at 58:44, I accomplished what I set out to do.

Not bad for an old dog like me that didn’t really prepare that much, other than routine maintenance runs, just to make sure that I can run 2-3 miles at the drop of a hat.  It wasn’t my best 10K time ever (54:09), but given the circumstances, I can’t really complain.

I was actually really excited when I passed the 55-minute pacer, and thoughts of possibly beating my best time began to swirl in my head, and the amount of personal gloating and braggadocio I could do if I achieved it.  But clearly I blew my wad a little too early, and around the third mile, I began to hit a wall of not feeling good enough to continuously run for the rest of the run, and had to drop gears and go into a run-walk for the rest of the run.  Not long after hitting this wall, it was only a matter of minutes before 55 passed me, and it became a personal battle to not see 60.

And fortunately for myself, I never saw the 60-minute pacer, nor did I ever take the time to look backward and try and see.  Given the fact that I finished at 58:44, they probably weren’t ever that far behind me at any point after the third or fourth mile.

Ultimately, this overall positive result, and the fact that I want to collect more medals for my display bar, has inspired me to get more back into running, to where I can, not just improve, but have reason to keep up training, and be capable of getting back to making progress and tackling longer runs, where I can start amassing more medals to display.

Hey, whatever it takes to have good reason to continue to exercise and have a good physical habit in my life, right?