Month: May 2021

Let’s talk about Love Death + Robots S2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was excited when I saw that Love Death + Robots season 2 had a formal drop date.  I enjoyed the first season tremendously, even if there was a lot of controversy around the perceived subject matter of two specific episodes, and regardless of what a bunch of SJWs on the internet felt, I still loved the first season, as it was an enjoyable, fast-paced anthology of short and sweet stories that paraded a myriad of animation styles, which touched all spectrums of the heart and mind, and was over in the blink of an eye because every episode ranged between 7-15 minutes.  So when I saw that more LD+R was on the way, I was quite pleased, and made sure to earmark some of my limited daily time to indulge.

At just eight episodes, S2 was over in the blink of an eye as well, if not shorter, and I watched all eight episodes in two short sittings, although I could easily have done so in just one if I timed it correctly.

I will say, I think that the polarizing reception of the first season probably had some influence on the second, or maybe it’s because it was a shorter season, but I felt like S2 didn’t have quite the bite that the first season did.  I’m not saying I require gratuitous violence or violence towards women specifically, but I felt that there was a little bit of edge lacking in this second season of the show.  The subjects of the episodes were more abstract and broad, and in most cases, did not seem to contain all three of the requisite love, death or robots, not that such was ever an established rule to begin with, but seemed to be better adhered to in the first anthology.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t like S2 at all, but after I had finished all eight episodes, there wasn’t one in particular that I was enamored with and could gush to anyone who wanted to talk about LD+R that it was my favorite.  But for all intents and purposes, this is how I’d rank the episodes (in parenthesis, according to Netflix’s order)

  1. Pop Squad (#3)
  2. The Tall Grass (#5)
  3. All Through the House (#6)
  4. The Drowned Giant (#8)
  5. Automated Customer Service (#1)
  6. Ice (#2)
  7. Snow in the Desert (#4)
  8. Life Hutch (#7)

Really though, it would be my top three, and then the rest were just kind of there, interchangeable in rank depending on the mood I were in, which is to say that they were all kind of okay, and not particularly close to standing out above the others.

I would however, like to talk about Pop Squad; the reason I would say it was the best episode of the season was not necessarily because I liked it the most.  In fact, the theme of the episode is completely horrific and I kind of hate it, but it was one of the episodes of the season that invoked all three love, death and robots, and frankly evoked the most emotional response out of me, which whether I liked it or not, makes it successful all the same. 

**Spoilers ahead, that being said**

Continue reading “Let’s talk about Love Death + Robots S2” →

Yeah no thanks, I’ll keep my mask on for now still

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just the other day, the CDC officially reported that fully vaccinated individuals can drop wearing masks and relax social distancing.

That’s great and all, but as the title of this posts says, no thanks, I think I’m going to keep wearing masks for a little bit longer.  Maybe until like, 2024.  Because one, I don’t trust the vast majority of Americans or other people in general to not be selfish shitheads who have refused to wear masks and refused to get vaccinated to this very day, and two, I absolutely love the fact that I went an entire calendar year without catching the cold or any other contagious nuisance of a sickness from anyone else.

Frankly, I’m disappointed in the CDC and the president for announcing this, because if it were up to me, I wouldn’t even think about making it widely known that there was any modicum of safety until America’s vaccination rates were at like, 90% and not like the what, 43% it’s currently at right now?

Such is the very epitome of American ideals, where this country is so complacent, so impatient and so selfish to get back to a broken normal, that when something is barely partially effective, it is rolled out to the general public, with hopes that success rates will continue to climb when the ultimate variable of failure, people, are introduced into the mix.

Thanks to this allowance of people to unmask and relax social distancing, we all know what’s going to happen; the numbers of transmissions and positive results will begin to creep slower, vaccination percentages will start crawling if they even continue to rise in the first place, and coronavirus as we very well know it, is never fucking going to go away, because it will continue mutate and evolve, and be as commonplace to the list of sicknesses as the common cold, except coronavirus can actually kill motherfuckers.  And the vaccines that are already in place will eventually become obsolete and require the rat race of constant updating and developing in order to help shithead Americans just have the ability to believe they can think it’s safe enough to go out for margaritas and go to Target without having to wear masks.

I’m tired of wearing masks too.  I wear glasses, so wearing masks usually means my glasses fog up often, and it’s exasperating.  Taking them off when it’s safe means I have to fight with the arms of my glasses as well as hope the elastic doesn’t rip the backing of the one earring I choose to continue to still wear off, and I would much rather not have to wear one in the first place.  But I have a family and kid(s) that I want to keep safe from harm, and because the rest of America doesn’t seem to want to protect anyone else, it’s up to me to protect myself so I can, even if most of the people around me in public don’t deserve it.

An AEW direction I actually like

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t even know Rusev Miro was even in the title picture.  The last few weeks have been all about Darby Allin’s re-kindled rivalry with Ethan Page back from their Evolve or whatever indy fed they had a ton of brutal matches in, and for some reason, Scorpio Sky has been attached to him and sandbagging his own ascent, but the point is I didn’t even know Miro was even in line to wrestle for the Popeyes TNT Championship.

Regardless, I was quite pleased to see that Miro was given the ball, and had a relatively clean victory over Darby Allin and is now the new TNT Champion.  I was always very high on Rusev when he was still Rusev, and it was always saddening to see just how mishandled and misused he was in his later years with the WWE, and I always hoped he would go to New Japan afterward and become the IWGP World Champion.

Obviously, with the existence of a stateside alternative in TNAEWCW it was obvious where he would ultimately end up going especially considering his wife was still very much active in the WWE, but we could all have hopes.  I mean, Jon Moxley is doing it, and I love it so much I’m actually referring to him as Moxley instead of purposefully calling him by his old WWE name.

But anyway, I’m delighted to see that Miro has been given some actual direction in AEW instead of being the sidekick to Kip Sabian of all people.  When they paired them together, all I could think of how much of a colossal waste Rusev was going to be in AEW, and winced like OJ Simpson in court when he was stuck week after week in meaningless work against the Best Friends.

It’s yet to be determined just what AEW actually does with Rusev as a champion, and hopefully he’s not the first one in the promotion’s short history to be a transitional guy, or worse off, considering his first feud appears to be likely to be Lance Archer, hopefully he doesn’t lose it to him.  Considering what Rusev did with the WWE US Championship, I’m hoping Miro will get to do similar things with the AEW Popeyes TNT Championship, so that when he eventually drops it, it will be worth more than their poor world title, which is becoming lost in the shuffle in Kenny Omega’s collection of blets.

Revisiting An Old Post: Stephen Strasburg’s 2016 Extension

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the best things I ever felt I implemented into my brog was the On This Day plug-in, which lets me look back to the date in all prior years in which there was a post, and read, cringe and laugh at myself for all the bullshit I’ve spewed throughout the years.  Occasionally, I’ll come across a post that I’ve written in the past, and think to myself, man, how much things have changed, or man, how fucking wrong was I about that?

Regardless, it serves to be potential inspiration for things to write about that aren’t the depressing-ass news of every single day in the world and it’s not that I’m so narcissistic that I source the inspiration for my writing to myself as much as sometimes I just don’t want to look at local or national news, because it’s all just so demoralizing, for humanity.

So, back in 2016, I wrote this diatribe about how the Washington Nationals were probably embarking on the path to becoming the New York Mets, because they were repeatedly exercising the contract strategy of deferring salary to way later in the future in order to maintain financial flexibility in the present, which is exactly one of the reasons on how the New York Mets became the laughing stock of baseball, because they deferred payment of $5.9 million dollars for one year of Bobby Bonilla, and somehow turned it into 25 annual installments of $1.3 million dollars, which it doesn’t take a math whiz to realize is vastly more than $5.9M cumulatively.

Back then, the Nationals had signed star pitcher Stephen Strasburg to a seven-year, $175 million dollar contract to stay with the team, where in the fine text of the deal was that the Nationals would pay him a large portion of his salary many years after the deal was done, to which baseball nerds love to ridicule deferred money, because they years in which they are paying are often times years in which the actual player themselves are somewhere else, or not even actually in baseball anymore, so effectively paying for nothing.

The thing is, the Nationals also had other players on similar deals, namely pitchers Max Scherzer and Rafael Soriano; and the thing that I had decided to zero in on was this window of time between 2024 and 2028, in which the Nationals would be on the hook for deferred payments to guys that will most likely no longer be on the Nationals, or even playing in Major League Baseball.  It would be a five-year window in which the Nationals would be paying a total of $127 million dollars to literally, no actual players.

Obviously, this is a giant epic fail, and we should all laugh at the Washington Nationals right??

Continue reading “Revisiting An Old Post: Stephen Strasburg’s 2016 Extension” →

Here we go again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Up until this week, I had no idea what the Colonial Pipeline was.  But when I heard that it had something to do with the supply of fuel to the southeastern region of the United States, my first thought was, hmm, maybe I should go fill up my tank.

Seeing as how I still have the luxury to be able to be working from home, I decided to dip out for a spell, at a time in which people might still be working, and head to a gas station, since I was sitting on just a quarter of a tank left, and I didn’t want to be in a position to if another fuelmageddon were to begin, I’d be left with my dick out with no way to get more gas for my car.

The first gas station I got to, every pump was full, but it wasn’t pandemonium yet.  I did one circle, and was able to get to a pump, but it turned out that the display screen was busted, in a constant state of reset mode, and I wasn’t able to actually use it to start a transaction.  I punted on it, as there was already someone waiting behind me, and I was technically on the clock at work, and I figured I should get back sooner rather than later.

I went to another gas station, which was deserted, and I was able to fill up without any issue.  I felt relief knowing that if shit did hit the fan, I would be okay, because since I work from home, I barely drive much as it is, and I typically have been filling up like, once a month, and I’d hope that if any fuelmageddon were to start, I could probably weather the storm; sure mythical wife who has to drive daily wouldn’t be so lucky and her problem would become my problem because that’s what good spouses do, but at least that would be one less car to worry about.

Later in the day, when I went out to go grab dinner, I realized that the shit did hit the fan.  The first gas station I passed had all their prices pulled, the sure-fire tell that they were out of gas.  The giant QT gas station that I occasionally go to because they’re the cheap gas was all out of gas too.  And across the street was a line onto the main road, for the diminutive 4-pump Shell station that wasn’t probably long with the size of their facility.  The picture above is a RaceTrac gas station that I had the leisurely position to take a photo of at a red light.

But here we are again, another fuelmageddon plaguing the Atlanta area.  I remember the last one in 2008 like it were yesterday, seeing all this mayhem over gas, and I really hoped that it wouldn’t get to those levels, because that shit was really scary back then.  Prices climbed to $4+ a gallon, and any stations if they even had gas at all, put a $40 max transaction, which for most vehicles with a fuel tank over 10 gallons, wasn’t ever enough to fill up.

Naturally, a lot of this bullshit stems from the fact that Americans are greedy motherfuckers who always feel the need to hoard and amass for themselves, with zero compassion for their fellow human beings.  Even at the first station I went to, I saw one guy filling up gas canisters, as if he were preparing for the zombie apocalypse, and if stations were running dry, that means other people were doing similarly all over the place.

Of course, it goes without saying that with chaos comes people who try to profit, and there’s been no shortage of reports all over of people trying to re-sell fuel at egregious markups, which is nothing short of disgusting.

However the best part about this whole post is that as long as it took for me to write it is about how long the offline status of the Colonial Pipeline lasted, and at the time I’m writing this, it’s already been reported to be up again, and hopefully that means that fuel production will resume again to normalcy pretty soon.

But my biggest hope is that every asshole who hoarded and amassed gasoline over the last 48 hours, is stuck with canisters of gas in their garages and homes, that nobody needs, and they have to eat the cost of having stockpiled, while it deteriorates and stinks up their properties with noxious fumes.

People never fucking learn that their greed seldom results in anything good.

The best advertising, is free

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’ll get the brand out there: US border agents uncover $4.6 million dollars’ worth of meth hidden inside of numerous The Home Depot signature buckets

That’s one of the downsides of slapping such prevalent branding onto very useful and utilitarian things like 5-gallon buckets; occasionally, someone’s going to do something bad with them, and next thing you know, your company’s name is being mentioned in the same breath as terms like “methamphetamine” and “cocaine.”  Then there will be all sorts of people who will waltz into a Home Depot over the next few weeks and point and snicker at the stacks of 5-gallon Homer buckets for sale at every store in America and wonder if it comes with any meth.

Forget about the hilariously futile attempt by some shitty drug runners to try and hide 216 lbs. of meth inside of a couple of buckets, because that’s a lot of fucking meth to be hauling inside of a single Ford F-150.  I mean seriously, didn’t they watch Breaking Bad?  Gus Fring barely smuggled like 2 lbs. of meth inside of entire shipping trucks, and that was dunked inside of fry batter and hidden among 100 other buckets inside of a refrigerated truck.

It’s the fact that they used Home Depot’s bright-ass orange buckets and thought nobody would notice these plastic cylinders that are brighter than the fucking sun, and maybe hoped it would be so obvious that nobody would look, but then they tried to smuggle over 200 lbs. of likely shitty pre-Walter White grade meth over the border.

Regardless, I had to smirk and laugh to myself when I saw this story, because inadvertent as it may be, it’s impossible to not disclose The Home Depot’s name when describing this story, and I like to think that somewhere at HQ, sure they’re not worried about it affecting their bottom line, but still wince and cringe at the simple fact that their brand, name and identity is momentarily attached to drug runners, meth and trafficking.

But hey, there’s no such thing as bad advertising, right??

2 Under 2: My child has a more refined palette than Paul Walker (#044)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As my child has gradually been climbing up the ladder of solid foods, one of the things that I have held back up to this point has been the crusts of bread.  One of the things that I’ve given her periodically has been toast with cheese melted on it; but minus the crust, as toasted bread crusts are hard, crusty and would be something of a choking hazard if not just a coughing trigger, things that I wanted to avoid while she was still very little.

Recently, I’ve begun feeding her the crust of bread, seeing as how she has several teeth and has become quite the voracious eater, much like her dad, and the risk of choking and weak esophagus have diminished some over the months.  To no surprise, she was able to take her own bites of the crust of bread and eaten it with little complaint.

It was in this moment that I realized that my daughter has a much more sophisticated palette than Paul Walker’s character Brian O’Connor from the greatest movie series of all time, the original The Fast and the Furious (the one with the the’s in the title).  And since characters are often loosely based on the people portraying them, I’m going to guess that tuna on white no crust is probably something that Paul Walker himself fancied, we won’t know definitively rest in peace.

But the fact that my daughter is more than capable and willing to eat the crusts of her bread means that at 14 months old, she has already surpassed the culinary palette of a 28-year old Paul Walker, when his character was shown stepping into the Toretto’s family convenience store to try and get into Mia’s pants by repeatedly ordering tuna sandwiches with no crust.

This might be more brog-worthy than her first steps or the fact that she’s demonstrating her increasing intelligence on a daily basis, but to out-eat Paul Walker, is something a dad should be proud of.