Month: October 2020

The best month ever, fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In spite of the mental troubles I went through earlier in the month, I came to the realization that October truly was, one of the best months ever, as far as my life is concerned.  I have my child, I have my wife, and I have my mother under the same roof throughout the entire month, and I’ve been getting free childcare from my mom while I’ve transitioned back into the rhythm of working virtually. 

Additionally, my fridge has literally never been so full so often, as my mom is basically a machine when it comes to insisting that I be eating more Korean food, and I’m more than happy to oblige as much as my appetite can accommodate.  It’s actually been kind of humorous the pattern of her complaining about the lack of fridge space when it’s she who’s constantly buying more food to re-cram in there. 

But the last weeks have been an enjoyable pattern of me getting to work with piece of mind that my daughter was with her grandma and in the best of hands that aren’t her parents.  The two of them bonded pretty immediately, and it makes my heart swell every time I see them together, both of them smiling and enjoying each other’s company.  My mom bringing a lot of old world parenting to the forefront, with my child responding just fine, as long as she was being cared for and given attention.

The thing is, I had a harrowing thought in my mind throughout the month that I’m not entirely sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to spend this much time with my mom again in my life.  She’s in good health, and takes pretty good care of her lifestyle, but she is in her 70s now, and we live in a country where basically a plague that preys upon the elderly is still running rampant.  I feel like my child kind of revitalized my mom a little bit to where she was capable of babysitting for her throughout the working weeks, but it was clearly taxing by the end of each day, and I can’t assume that this will be able to be the case again in the future if I were ever to have a second, but I also don’t want to imply that grandma’s biggest value is solely in babysitting, because she’s still a mom to me.

Needless to say, the realization that these are the days that should be treasured the most is what helped me pull my head out of my ass, because there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever have time like this ever again in my life.  It’s been a truly incredible month for the most part, and I’m happy that I was able to capitalize and memorialize a lot of the times with my actual camera, because it was really important to me that my daughter have lots of photo evidence of her time spent with halmoni on dad’s side.  Because she’s been hitting home runs every single day while she’s been here, and as our month winds down to a close, I wanted to write something about it so that I too can look back fondly at this time of my life and remember that in a year where everyone is bemoaning as the worst in history, I had one of the best months ever.

Parent Triggered

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the things that I learned throughout my 30’s is to metaphorically not keep score with so many things in life.  Because life is not as fair as we’d all like it to be, and so very rarely is a perfect 50/50 balance, no matter how logical and equal people think they should be.

For example, say I meet up with a friend, and I pick up the check for a $40 dinner, and the next time we get together, they pay for a $20 lunch at Willy’s.  I could be a prick and mentally ledger that they still need to pay out another $20 for us to be even, or I can just appreciate the sheer reciprocity and be content that I’m getting one of my favorite foods for free.  Frankly, I’d rather do the latter than try to keep score.

My mom and I were talking about Korean politics way back when, back when Moon Jae-In had successfully reached through to the insane neighbors up north and made some massive ground in diplomacy.  Naturally, we were both dubious that anything was really going to progress beyond some monumental photographs, but her stance was that there was no way that the north was going to play nice enough for anything substantial to happen because there was no way that they were going to give anywhere close to equal what the south would have to give.

I explained that this was an instance where expecting fairness was never going to amount to anything, and that this was a prime example of where a 50/50 split just wasn’t plausible.  There are just some times in life where it might have to be 55/45 or even 65/35 in order for progress to be made, and sure it’s not fair, it’s not equal, but sometimes it takes one party to be bigger in order for progress to happen.

It’s like playing any variant of Civilization, like whenever India comes knocking on the door and you have Gandhi asking you for a king’s ransom’s worth of knowledge and technology, and refusing him results in him literally declaring nuclear war.  It’s not fair and it’s not equal that he’s asking for a 70/30 relationship, but when that 30 is the survival of your civilization, you still come out of the agreement knowing you made the right call.

You just can’t expect to live life thinking that everything is always going to equal out and everything is going to be fair, because it most certainly never will be, and thinking that will, only leads to frustration, angst and heartache.

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Sounds like a Clemson grad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The importance of an education: unknown man wagers $8,600 on #1 ranked Clemson vs. negative-ranked Syracuse . . . on Clemson to win.  And at -100,000 odds, the payout on Clemson’s inevitable victory would be an $8.60 payout

Either this person is a Clemson homer/grad, and/or they really don’t understand how sports betting works.  And/or they are just dumb.  Most likely all of the above.

Honestly, before I clown too much on this guy, I’ve kind of been there before.  Betting on sports isn’t as cut and dry as it is amongst casual friends, where everything is a pretty straight up bet.  But to do it on a book, it’s vastly more complicated, and usually involves match-ups that aren’t so overwhelmingingly favored in one direction as it was between Clemson and Syracuse.

In 2005, I felt really good about the Washington Redskins’ chances against the Seattle Seachickens in the playoffs, as the Redskins were riding momentum, and the Seahawks were going to be without Shaun Alexander when he was still good.  I actually called up a sports book that I’d been hearing advertised on television, and whereas I thought it would be as simple to just say I wanted to put $50 on the Redskins, I quickly learned that it’s vastly more complicated.  Such as money lines, spreads and partial games, but ultimately I went with the straight money bet, since that’s all I wanted, and I stood to make like $75 if the Redskins were to pull off the upset.

Naturally, I lost, because , because the Redskins are the Redskins and I’ve literally never won a sports bet in my life, but I learned a little something about sports betting that evening.  Mostly, that it doesn’t really have any meaning unless the matchup is remotely competitive, which is something that pretty much any college football game featuring Clemson is not, to the point where lots of books won’t even offer straight money bets on Clemson, because they win every game by like 40 points, and they don’t want to pay $8.60 to the 400 oafs who take the sure-lock bet, because that’s still $3,400 they lose, even if it would have netted them $3.4 million if the upset were to occur.

I get it though, kinda.  This loser with $8,600 to blow wanted to boast about how much they gamble, and conveniently leave out the fine details, like how they’re betting on the best college football team of the last decade, against a school that’s more known for basketball than football.  They brag to their friends and over social media about how much money they’re risking, and when they inevitably win, they’ll brag about winning, but fail to mention the odds or how minuscule risk there actually was.  If it’s not stupidity, then it’s all a really excessive effort dog and pony show for the internets; which still makes it stupid.

The only true justice is if and when one day, Clemson actually gets upset by an actual scrub.  And in all fairness, one of the last times that actually happened was against Syracuse a few years ago, but that was also before Trevor Lawrence.  But hopefully, one of these days, this particular guy, or anyone like him, when it occurs, the internet is ready to identify, ridicule and meme-ify them to the rest of the world.

Writing when I don’t feel like writing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My motivation to write lately has been pretty nonexistent lately.  Not necessarily due to depression, quite the contrary, I’ve managed to pull my head out of the darkness a little bit better since my last brog therapy session.  It’s just that I just don’t really have any motivation to write.

I’m not finding a lot of things on the internet that are inspiring me to write, and maybe I’m still in a state of having writer’s rust when it comes to consistent brogging since I got my site back up months ago.  The point is, I just haven’t felt like I’ve had any real inspiration to write, and I don’t particularly feel motivated to write about things out of thin air either.

Regardless, the anxiety of letting too much time pass between posts is greater than the anxiety of feeling like I don’t have anything to write about, so in order to try and fill the airtime, I’m doing something I used to do whenever it was that I felt like I had nothing to write about: sit in front of a blank canvas and just start writing and see what words I can barf out.

Life lately has been somewhat steady over the last few weeks, especially since my mom is living with me for a few more weeks, and I have the peace of mind knowing that my daughter is in good hands while I hole up in my office for work; I’m actually utilizing my dedicated office space in order to take my job more seriously, as I probably really wasn’t during the first few weeks of quarantining, especially since I had a newborn baby that’s now a 7+ month old infant now.

My entire team has been told that we’re basically going to be working from home until at the very earliest, January 31st of 2021, and frankly even that seems like a dubious milestone in my opinion, because I think when the day is over, schools are what are going to be driving the decisions of all companies on whether or not they’re going to make employees come back to the offices or not.  Child care is low-key the main thing that is going to determine whether or not businesses large or small will be going back to offices any time soon, and even that, is going to be determined by the availability of a vaccine, since ‘Muricans can’t stop being so selfish for two months to effectively quarantine and let coronavirus burn out on its own.

But whatever, for better or worse, I’m working from home for the remainder of this year, and into the start of next.  Regardless of the state of work in that time, I can always have peace of mind knowing that I am always going to be home with my child, even if she will be with the nanny that we’re going to have to hire part-time in order to have eyes on her while I take my job seriously.

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The precise moment where the Braves fulfilled their destiny

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Top 4th, runners on second and third, nobody out.  The Braves had just taken a 3-2 lead on the Dodgers on a single by third baseman Austin Riley, and were in a prime position to bust the game open and put the Dodgers into a precarious hole.  Instead, in only a way that the bumbling Braves are capable of doing, they turn a scenario that has a high probability to score some runs into one where they commit three outs in mere minutes in a game where every single one of the first four innings felt like Star Wars trilogies in themselves, they took that long.

After Austin Riley got tagged out for the second out of a bang-bang botched run down, and then the Braves completed the colossal fuck up by harmlessly grounding out to end the inning, this is where I knew that the game was effectively over.  I’ve watched enough baseball in my life to recognize that when you give away opportunities to score runs that don’t cross the plate, Murphy’s Law dictates that the opposition will definitively, cash them in instead.  What probably should have been a 5-2 or a 4-2 score to end the 4th inning instead remained at a paltry one-run 3-2 score, which the Dodgers would easily grind away and overcome, while the Braves literally went three-and-out in every single inning except one throughout the remainder of the game.

The fuckup on the basepaths undoubtedly sucked all the wind out of the sails of the Braves, ruined all of their swagger and confidence, and most importantly, planted the undefeatable seeds of impending defeat into their minuscule brains.  The remainder of the game after that tragic sequence was all but a formality, and a contest of when, the Dodgers would eventually take the lead.

Frankly, the only reason why I watched the entire game was that I was hoping that the Dodgers would go to Kenley Jansen to close the game since he’s been pretty awful throughout the season and he would be the best chance for the Braves to maybe make some late-inning heroics as they’ve done numerous times throughout the year, but it turned out that the Dodgers didn’t trust Jansen in this critical game, and instead rode the hot hand of Julio Urias instead to close out the game himself.

Naturally, I’m sure anyone of my zero readers can see through the façade I put forth of being the world’s worst baseball fan when it comes to the Braves, and I spare a lot of words and drivel bemoaning them and deriding them, as if I had the mutant power to tempt fate to prove me wrong with writing, but in reality, there’s nothing more I would’ve wanted than to see the Braves actually not fuck up for a change, defeat the Dodgers and actually go to the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays of all teams.

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This is what wheels coming off a vehicle looks and sounds like

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Well, at least the Braves aren’t going to go down having gotten swept.  Instead, they’ll have gone down flubbing a 3-1 series lead, which in baseball isn’t that terribly uncommon, but it’s still poor optics, since the statistics of teams coming back from 3-1 deficits are still minuscule in comparison to how long Major League Baseball has been played.

Honestly, I’m more surprised that the series is going to seven games now, which is the ultimate agony for sports fans to endure, watching the slow bleed of defeat, watching their teams bring them to the brink of hope and jubilation, only for them to crash into agonizing finality.  But when the Braves got blown out and allowed 15 runs in game three, I figured that it was a foregone conclusion that the Dodgers were beginning their mighty comeback and were going to win four straight, like the way the Braves blew the 1996 World Series against the Yankees after winning the first two games.

Instead, the Braves gave false hope to all Braves fans by winning game 4 in commanding fashion and sitting on a pretty 3-1 series lead.  Naturally, since they have no starting pitching, they lost game 5, which was probably to be expected, but fans would find solace in the fact that Max Fried, arguably the best pitcher on the team would get the ball for game 6, but that brings us to now, where Fried pitched well, it’s just that the Braves offense appeared to have cashed in all of its available runs in the previous five games, and could barely scrap together a single run, losing to the Dodgers and sending the NLCS to game 7, where they will undoubtedly lose in embarrassing fashion, by like a score of like 11-1, bringing closure to a season that really shouldn’t have happened in the first place, and back to another cold offseason of pessimism and increasing nihilism in professional sports.

Much like Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, I can’t bring myself to watch games of teams that I actually care about, because it gives me anxiety and stress that I really don’t need, and I superstitiously believe that I am a master of the universe that undoubtedly jinxes whatever team I care about when I watch them, and if I do want the Braves to win, I most absolutely should not be watching them.

Seriously though, check out this Mookie Betts catch.  This is the kind of highlight that preserves no-hitters or turns the tides of playoff series.  If he doesn’t make that catch then Ozuna doubles for sure, and Freddie Freeman probably scores.  A single run doesn’t change the 3-0 deficit that the Braves were in, but at the same time, it could very well have been the start of a rally.  The thing is, a catch like Betts’ is what keeps the mythical momentum on the side of the Dodgers while sucking the life out of the hope of the Braves.  The jubilation of Mookie Betts after making the catch is precisely the opposite of a metaphor of what the Braves’ chances of winning the series sounds like.  Although his lips appear to be mouthing something probably like let’s fucking goooo it could very well be emanating the sound of a flushing toilet, because that’s precisely what happened when he makes that.

Welp, Baby Magic and partial-year champions theories were cute while they lasted.  I would undoubtedly put legitimate money on the Dodgers to win game 7, because it’s a foregone conclusion that the only thing well that the Braves are going to do, is what they’ve historically been known to do: fall short.

The real question is will they get blown out in the first inning like they did in game 3 a few nights ago and in game 5 against the Cardinals last year, or will they be competitive and hard-fought the entire way and then lose in agonizing and soul-wrenching manner late in the game like they did against the Dodgers back in like 2012?  Who knows, but as long as it ends up with the Braves going home yet again, does it really matter?

Dexter took a hiatus about as long as the Ultimate Warrior did

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mostly perplexed: Dexter television series set to return in a limited series capacity

My knee-jerk reaction to this was, whyyyyy???  But then I stop for a few minutes and think about how much I enjoyed the television series, in spite of its ups and downs throughout the season, the staunch survival through the writers’ strike(s), the awkward behind-the-scenes relationship between Deb and Dexter and their season six storyline, and of course, the head-scratching ending that spoiler alert it’s only been six years, resulted in a bearded lumberjack Dexter, in exile in the Pacific Northwest, and wonder… maybe?  Maybe this isn’t going to be one of those cringe-worthy reboots, like just about every old ABC network TGIF sitcom?

I mean, there’s a lot of terminology to define television shows these days.  Reboots, spin-offs, revivals, etc.  Even the linked article uses the term “revival” to define what the return of Dexter would be, and I guess among most available definitions, it’s the closest thing that might apply, but considering it’s more or less seemingly going to be a continuation of the series, it might as well just be a very late and overdue, ninth season.

Michael C. Hall will be reprising the role of Dexter Morgan, and frankly that’s all that there really needs to be.  I imagine there will be a bunch of flashback sequences to re-acquaint those who might have forgotten a lot of the past which might result in some paydays for the actors who played Debs, Angel, Masuoka, LaGuerta and hopefully Doakes.  And honestly, depending on how well the series performs, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see an appearance by Yvonne Strahovski, which would probably kick the label of “limited” off of the series, and next thing we know, there are two additional seasons ordered by Showtime.

The thing is, the series didn’t really end in a manner in which it would be difficult to pick back up where it left off.  Considering the nature of the general concept, it doesn’t matter if it’s in Miami, Florida or Tukwila, Washington, there are murderers and psychopaths everywhere, and Dexter would never be at a loss for murderers for him to murder, righteously.

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