Month: July 2023

When the photoshop drives the post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few days ago, the Mets began their slow raising of the white flag when they traded David Robertson away.  Their $gabillion dollar payroll team, hilariously wasn’t working, and the Mets realized that the only way to get onto the path of recovery is to start selling, even in spite of post a historic payroll, thus proving the old adage that you can’t buy success, especially when you’re the New York Mets.

Not long afterward, the Mets successfully unloaded one of their biggest ballasts, when they shipped Max Scherzer over to the Texas Rangers.  Sure, the Mets would have to eat a massive chunk of the remainder of the money they owe Scherzer, but they did get back Luisangel Acuña, which is very much in relation to the Atlanta Braves’ superstar outfielder, Ronald Acuña, Jr., his little brother.   Obviously, the Mets are hoping the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and that Acuña Jr-Jr might blossom into half the superstar that big brother Ronald is.

Make no mistake though, as much of a pride-swallowing, crow-eating gesture that trading Max Scherzer is for the Mets, it absolutely is a big win for the organization.  Probably the best thing to happen to the organization all season.  Sure, they’re eating $35M of the remaining $58M they owe him in order for the Rangers to take him, but the $23M savings they are getting in the aggregate is a pretty big deal in the long game.

That being said, when the 2024 season rolls around, thanks to the ridiculous deferred money deal Scherzer made with the Nationals, he will be getting paychecks from an unprecedented three different MLB organizations, all of which are going to be over $15M each.  The Nationals will be paying him one of their annual $15M installments which goes all the way to 2028, the Rangers will be paying him $15M, and from what I’ve read, the Mets will be paying a $28M chunk of their remaining obligation to Scherzer, which means he’s slated to be making $58 million fucking dollars in 2024.

I don’t really know how to explain it, but he’s like the reverse, anti-Bobby Bonilla with this kind of arrangement, where he’s not going to be getting paid until the end of time regardless of his playing status, he’s somehow swindled multiple organizations to be contractually obligated to giving him massive amounts of money for a very short period of years.

But as the subject says, this wasn’t really something that I was intending on writing about, even though this is the kind of bullshit of baseball that I love hearing about, but when chatting with some bros about sports and this topic, I made an analogy about how Max Scherzer is like the Thanos of getting baseball teams to pay him money, and by somehow managing to swindle three teams to pay him simultaneously, he’s basically like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones.

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A win is a win for Union City?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Union City is #1… ranked worst place to live in Georgia.  Ouch

Normally whenever some rando websites called stuff like 24/7 Wall St. make lists about places the people writing them have obviously never been before in their lives, I’m usually full of objections and piss and vinegar and snark ready to rebut with.  Because like good old fashioned your mom jokes, as much as I criticize and dog on Georgia, it’s okay when I do it, but I sure as hell don’t always like it when those outside of here take a stab at some cheap shots.

But in the case of this rating system, that has Union City, Georgia as the #1 worst place to live in all of Georgia, I’m inclined to agree.   As a former resident of the south side of the Metro Atlanta area, I can say that I lived way too close to comfort to Union City than I’d care to admit.  Close enough to where I patroned the businesses, even if I didn’t really want to be there, just because it was close and convenient to where I lived. 

Needless to say, I’m not just agreeing with the shaming of Union City just because I buy what some website’s criteria is, I’m agreeing, because I have familiarity and a lot of personal experience of just how big of a shithole Union City really is.

Honestly, I didn’t really feel like I needed to have to read it to figure out what the main factor of the poor ranking was, because Union City and crime go hand in hand like peas and carrots.  The cited statistic that Union City’s crime rate is triple the state average, seems low in my opinion, seeing as how my old neighborhood’s NextDoor feed has at least two posts a day detailing people reporting gunshots, thefts or police incidents on a regular basis.

Just driving through town feels unsafe, no matter what time of the day it is, and it’s truly tangible how your own body can feel unsafe in an environment, just by being in the proximity of the town.

And I was always just passing through, or at the very worst, going to the one Kroger that was probably the closest to my actual house.  The roads are unkept, every parking lot is full of oil slicks, glass diamonds and copious amounts of litter, all evidence of poor maintenance and riff raff behavior.

I couldn’t imagine living in Union City, because if I was beginning to feel unsafe and uneasy on the regular where I used to live, I couldn’t imagine how much worse it probably was in actual Union City.  Having firearms and guard dogs wouldn’t bring me any more easiness, especially knowing that with the crime statistics in the city being what they are, the likelihood is that criminals would be living among me at any given time.

Either way, the point is, despite the fact that often times a lot of these rando sites that come up with lists about real estate and towns and cities across America are full of WASPy and NIMBY bullshit, but in the case of this particular list, I don’t think they could’ve hit the nail on the head any better.

I’m amazed Cam Newton lets Union City tout that they’re where he’s from, because he seems like a pretty regular cat.  But I guess it’s easy to live the good life when you’ve successfully gotten out of Union City.

How have the Angels sucked?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With the Major League Baseball trade deadline looming, and with there being an endless array of articles, hypothetical and proposed trades for uber-superstar Shohei Ohtani, the question has come up a lot recently, as well as being one of baseball’s more recent memories over the last decade: how have the Angels sucked?

Going back to 2012, when the Angels had acquired a prime-Albert Pujols, fresh off a World Series win, they also called up Mike Trout, who has for the better part of the last decade, been the best player in MLB, you’d think the Angels would have opened a window in which championships wouldn’t just be contended for, they would be expected.

Obviously, everyone knows that baseball is a team sport and that one man does not a championship win, but a guy like Mike Trout is a generational talent, and with someone the talent of at least five good players, success in theory should have come by a little easier for the Angels than it would for like, the Seattle Mariners.

And over the decade, the Angels would go on to win the signing rights and acquire Shohei Ohtani, who wasn’t just the next Babe Ruth, he’s light years better than ol’ Herman, with his homerun hitting prowess, as well as his ace-caliber power pitching.

Seriously, here are the AL MVP rankings over the last eleven seasons:

2012: Mike Trout, MVP
2013: Mike Trout, 2nd in MVP voting
2014: Mike Trout, MVP
2015: Mike Trout, 2nd in MVP voting
2016: Mike Trout, MVP
2017: Mike Trout, 4th in MVP voting
2018: Mike Trout, 2nd in MVP voting
2019: Mike Trout, MVP
2020: Mike Trout, 5th in MVP voting
2021: Shohei Ohtani, MVP
2022: Shohei Ohtani, 2nd in MVP voting

The Angels have had the AL MVP in five of the last eleven seasons, which is pretty unprecedented.  With such abundance of talent, you’d think the Angels would have been at the very least, in the playoffs every single year or something, right?

Well of course not!  Otherwise a brog post like this wouldn’t ever come to fruition, and these are the kinds of things that happen in baseball that make baseball such a wonderful sport to be a fan of, because logic doesn’t matter sometimes, and wacky shit happens every single day in a baseball season.

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It doesn’t happen often

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

But what we have here is someone who appears to be more egregiously overpaid than a professional athlete: Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner to receive a $100,000 raise, bringing annual salary up to $550,000

Obviously there’s no shortage of crooked government workers in any state, but GDOT’s flagrant doling out of taxpayer dollars to some stooge who doesn’t know how to use the railroad button in Sim City is pretty noteworthy, at least to make it onto the brog, interrupting the fairly droll legion of baseball, professional wrestling and angsty dad brog posts.  At least it gives me the opportunity to blow the dust off of the ohgeorgia tag and utilize it to throw shade at the state’s poorly veiled attempts to pad the pockets of some glorified crooks.

Seriously, I’m hard pressed to think of anyone getting more money for as little justification as possible as this clown of a DOT commissioner.  Even the article itself fails to really come close to justifying why they deserved a 22% raise up to over a half-million dollars cumulatively:

Among achievements Brown cites are McMurry’s management of a series of highway improvement projects, including reconstructions of major interstate junctions in Atlanta, Macon and Savannah.

Reconstruction?  What reconstruction?  I’ve literally driven in all three of these cities within the last six weeks, and there’s been no real construction anywhere.  There have been lots of instances where shoulders are closed, cones are doled out all over the roads, some concrete barriers are erected, and the rando police car with their lights on to try and get the speed demons of Georgia to slow the fuck down, but there sure as shit hasn’t been any construction beyond maybe re-paving of some highways here and there.  Unless we’re awarding raises to people who look like they’re pretending to do work, there’s zero merit to these fake claims that these are actual improvement projects.

Brown also credits McMurry’s leadership for Georgia’s growing transportation budget, and notes praise Georgia has received for its infrastructure during McMurry’s tenure.

Translation: traffic is so epidemically bad once again due to the world seemingly believing the pandemic is completely over and so they’re all hitting the roads again and clogging everything up that Peach Pass registrations and toll payments have gone up, which is where this transportation budget is coming from.  Too bad it’s going directly into the pockets of all these clowns in GDOT and their cronies, because there sure as shit is still no real infrastructure in this entire state to be worthy of any mention.

What’s incredible is that whomever this guy is, he must have incriminating photos of the people who are in charge of giving him raises, because this is far from the first raise he’s gotten for doing absolutely nothing:

McMurry’s pay rose from $250,000 to $350,000 in 2017, then to $450,000 in 2021. The raises, including the latest, will also boost McMurry’s state pension.

Seriously, the guy got his foot in the door of a job where he doesn’t do anything, and banks a quarter mil.  For pretty much no reason other than he was too lazy to look for anything else, he ends up doubling his salary over the span of like 6-7 years, and he has accomplished basically nothing.  2-3 of those years were kind of a wash thanks to Coronavirus and people not really going anywhere, and the bozo still got a $100k raise in 2021.

Here’s the kicker too.

The state paid Gov. [Yosemite Sam] $176,250 in 2022.

The governor of the entire state makes less than half of what the GDOT commissioner makes.  Now I don’t like that cocksucker either, but something seems fishy when he’s getting literally lapped salary-wise.

Either way, it’s pretty incredible that there’s actually someone out there that actually makes as much money as a professional athlete and deserves the money even less.  It’s also pretty incredible that I somehow managed to find the time to bang out a brog post about something out of the usual array of fallback topics, but I wouldn’t anticipate it happening again for another minute, but for what it’s worth, it was a little reprieve.

Cody Rhodes is the IPA Hipster of Wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The irony of this post is that I’m so not a fan of Cody Rhodes, but this probably like the third or fourth time I’ve made a post about how much I don’t like the guy right now.  After the took the L at Wrestlemania this year I called him something like the mega tryhard fantasy football player of wrestling, the way he thinks he’s so wise and knowledgeable about the industry that he believe he sees the entire business on a completely tier as everyone else, and it’s obnoxious as fuck listening to him talk about it.

Well, he’s done it again, because (likely as part of his contractual obligation), there some documentary about him that’s set to release, and he’s on the promotional warpath once again, and I can’t stand the guy so much but I like wrestling so much I’ll probably still watch it, so that I can have some inspiration to write about how much I can’t stand the guy in the future.  But in some recent interview, he talks about how he dislikes the catchphrase that he created leading up to his feud with Roman Reigns AND he takes time to shit on the secondary World championship blet that the company introduced because Roman Reigns has such a stranglehold on the company’s top prize.

But I like how at the very root of it, he’s decided he doesn’t like his “finish the story” catchphrase anymore, because the internet got a hold of it and internet-ted it into a meme, and now he’s all regretful for making it in the first place since he’s soft as Charmin, and is too hipster transcendental to understand that there’s actually nothing wrong with having one’s catchphrase meme’d, and that it’s way worse to elicit no response at all from today’s fickle wrestling fans.

Frankly, I’m with him; it is a lame catchphrase, but the difference is that I always thought it was, and didn’t think it was cool at first but then turned on it because the fans ruined it. 

And then he has the audacity to take a big dump on the new big Gold blet that the company introduced, that’s currently being defended like a madman by Seth Rollins.  He proclaims that winning that title wouldn’t finish his story, because it’s not the championship that his dad, big ‘ol Dusty was incapable of winning, which is tantamount to basically saying that Rollins’ World Heavyweight blet is second-tier and that the only title that’s worthy of his obnoxious attention is big gold W that Roman’s rocking.

I don’t think it would ever happen, because usually the WWE is fairly decent at fulfilling their contractual obligations, but I do think it would be funny if the winds change within the next year, and Creative have no choice but to alter the general Roman Reigns timeline to where it’s not going to be Cody Rhodes who dethrones him at the next Wrestlemania, and he has to “settle” for the World Heavyweight championship instead.  But then again, if they were willing to completely eat the rise of Sami Zayn for Cody, that’s probably not going to happen.

Maybe by the time Cody does dethrone Roman, Rollins or whomever will have elevated the new Big Gold to heights that the Big W will be looking up to, and so even if Cody does finally get his story finished, nobody will care, because all eyes will be on the gods work that Rollins and the Big Gold challengers will be conducting at that time.

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That was awkward

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Part of my property includes this giant useless field that sits underneath power lines, where the options to do anything with are very minimal, because of the easement and by-laws and other bullshit that are tied to Georgia Power.  Regardless, I am still responsible for my half of the field, and I do the absolute bare minimum in doing so, by paying to have my landscapers run the mower over it, so that the weeds don’t get so high any I have another neighbor try and anonymously report me to the county again, and have them threaten a lien on my property for something I had no idea was my responsibility in the first place.

Despite the fact that it’s legally my property, its ambiguity is still in question to everyone else in the neighborhood, who all seem to make the assumption that I once did, that the land isn’t private property, and that it’s perfectly acceptable for everyone to walk their dogs on, or for people to trollop all over whenever they want to.

Normally, I’m okay with the dogs and the occasional teen girl squad who want to take sunset selfies, as long as poop is not left there, and nobody litters.  A few weeks ago, I came outside to see that a car had parked on the edge of the field and two teen lovers had laid a blanked out on my field and were just lounging out.  It irked me, but I chose to not say anything about it, because I didn’t want to be the neighborhood Clint Eastwood always telling kids to get off my lawn.

Just recently though, I was coming home, and I spotted a golf cart sitting on my half of the field.  I was like wtf, and it turned out to be this couple in the neighborhood that I recognized.  I have no qualms with them, and we’ve been friendly in the past, so I didn’t think it would really be an issue when I came up to them, and explained that I don’t have problems with them walking their dog on my field, but if they would just not drive their golf cart around on it, I didn’t want them setting a precedent that other people would start thinking they could run vehicles on my yard, thinking it was public land.

Pretty immediately, the defense came up, and it was clear that they were not fans of being made a request of, and they immediately disputed the fact that it was my property, and that it definitively belonged to Georgia Power.  They proceeded to bring up the fact that I was dumping tree debris from my fallen tree episode on company land, and that I had allowed so much tree debris to sit there for as long as I did because I have children and no time to clean up my yard whenever I want to.

It wasn’t a pleasant conversation despite both of us being able to keep it tensely civil, but I was thrown a tremendous amount of shade and passive aggression, with his wife chiming in that I should just build a fence, as if I have another spare $10,000 to erect a fence around the field, when I frankly don’t know how I’m going to pay off my credit cards at the end of this month.

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When I like to think I’m funny

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know what prompted it, but for some reason, the thought of Mortal Kombat’s Test Your Might bonus stages came to mind, and I thought about how silly it was that one, almost nobody ever got to see it in the arcades, because at its heyday, Mortal Kombat was always so constantly played that the game seldom ever got to reset to a point where the bonus stages could be triggered, and two, even if you did see all the bonus stages, you might have seen that the final bonus stage is trying to shatter a giant block of diamond.

With your bare hands.  One of the hardest stone surfaces on the planet.

Either way, maybe it’s because I’ve been feeling so mopey about finances, that the thought of a magical giant diamond block just manifested and mutated into thinking about Mortal Kombat, and how absurd it is that anyone could imagine breaking diamond with their bare hands, but why any of the Kombatants wouldn’t just take this diamond and get the fuck out of Outworld and go retire or save the planet from the likely immense worth of a diamond the size of a JVC Kaboom Box.

And of course, it’s Liu Kang being the mega nerdy paragon honorific square, that insists on trying to break a giant diamond block, but the more vapid, superficial Johnny Cage whom might actually know what the value of the finer things in the world are worth, that comes to question the objective versus an alternative solution.

Regardless, enough words, all the context that’s needed is in the comic strip itself.