Month: December 2023

A 2023 Year-End Post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In spite of all the changes to my general writing habits, one thing I always feel compelled to write about is the end of the year post, even if I have an inkling of knowing that it’s going to be pretty mundane, if not kind of depressing.  It’s something I’ve done for years, and old habits die hard, and in this case, it’s a habit that’s not necessarily bad, as much as it is just writing with the hopes of being able to reflect and contemplate life in general, and maybe I’ll recognize some patterns or observations to possibly improve my standing in life.

But mundane and kind of depressing are a fairly accurate way to describe how 2023 was for me.  This isn’t to say that I thought it sucked by any stretch of the imagination, there were definitely a lot of positive things that occurred throughout the year.  It’s just that we as people tend to dwell more on the negative things that upset us or make us unhappy and it truly is a case of what have you done for me lately, life, huh?? kind of attitude.

As has been the case since becoming a parent, twice, and living through the pandemic, I’ve made my general world a really, really small place.  Being a dad and parenting comes ahead of absolutely everything else in the world, and considering the immense amount of, capacity, it requires to raise two toddlers, I barely have any time on a daily basis for myself, and so often times I try not to dwell on just how much shit I have to punt on, on a daily basis because there’s just not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on top of being a parent.

My daily routine has mostly maintained the same course over the last three years, and I’m always the first one up in order to make breakfast for the kids and be ready for them in the mornings, and most every minute upon my arrival back from the office or the end of my work day is spent with my children, until they go to bed at around 7-8, and then I do a bunch of daily chores to reset the house and prepare for the next day, and when I’m done with that, then maybe I’ll have an hour, maybe two, depending on if I want to forfeit some sleep, in order to have some personal downtime, which has its own pressure in not wanting to squander it, and a feeling of failure if I do.

I don’t have the capacity to dick around on the internet as much as I used to, and look up news and stories from around the world, the state, or even my own city, to have inspiration to write about, and even if I do have the inspiration, I don’t have the time to write about it.  If I earmark it for later, it stands a good chance to not happen, because the knee-jerk reactions that fuel lots of writing don’t exist after too much time passes.

Among the numerous self-imposed writing exercises I put onto myself, I keep a living document that tries to summarize every single day of the year.  In the past, I would jot down some interesting news that might have happened on X day, or a sports occurrence that happened on Y day, or tragic news of a shooting that occurred on Z day, but I generally had this belief that something, somewhere, was interesting stuff happening, on every single day, and it was my way of trying to capture all some of it.

But then COVID hit at the same time I had a kid, and my world became extremely small.  Even though the worst of the pandemic has passed and my kids are getting older, my world hasn’t expanded back out that much, and my general daily summaries are usually along the lines of me being agitated about something, usually parenting related, things my kids did, occasional sports or wrestling observations, but for the most part, a very sparse well of topics that I’ve had the capacity to summarize on a daily basis.

If it sounds depressing, it’s because I’ve come to the admission that I probably am depressed, possibly on a clinical level.  As in the chemicals in my brain are wacked out, causing me to feel apathetic, disinterested in everything, unmotivated to do the things that I generally enjoy and other activities.  The thing is, I feel like I know what’s causing the depression, and it isn’t just solely a chemical imbalance, so I don’t necessarily feel like medical intervention is necessary. 

Throughout my life, there’s been a direct correlation with my emotional state and my financial wellbeing, and the fact of the matter is that I haven’t felt financially comfortable in like three years, and I don’t know how to fix any of it, so it leaves me feeling despair often, and I’m pretty sure that’s the root of my depression.

Like if I were to go on some sort of anti-depressants, sure that might make me feel like I’m not so stressed or sad anymore, but no medication is going to magically make my financial woes go away, so I’ve never felt like I should see anyone to try and see what’s up.  Also, my medical insurance at my job throughout 2023 has been absolute hot garbage, but I’m going on mythical wife’s medical for 2024 which is way better, so perhaps I should swallow my pride and look into getting checked out, because living the way I have been living throughout the last few years probably hasn’t been the best for all parties involved.

But like I said, there was also a lot of good stuff that occurred throughout the year, even if I’m a headcase for more days of it than not.  My family went on a bunch of Disney trips that were brutally expensive for sure, but rewarding in their own rights.  Cruising out of New Orleans was great, visiting Hilton Head was pleasant, and trying a bunch of new restaurants at Disney properties were all good, and my kids seemed to enjoy a lot of it, and that’s what really matters.

One of my closest friends got married in Vegas, and I didn’t hesitate to go out there and bear witness, and my company sent me out to Los Angeles for the Adobe MAX conference, which was the coolest work trip I’ve ever been to in my career.

Most importantly, as much as they sometimes drive me crazy with their roller coaster of toddler emotions, watching my kids grow throughout the year is always a wondrous sight of seeing them develop, physically and intellectually.  Both my girls have demonstrated a ton of intelligence, and sometimes I just stop and watch them while they eat, play, read or just simply exist, and three years into the journey, I remind myself of how unbelievable it still feels that I’m a dad.

So, much like my emotional state throughout the year, this year’s end post goes up and goes down, like a roller coaster.  There may be plenty of days in which I’m burnt out, worried as fuck about finances, or in need of a good anxiety outlet, but there are no days where I don’t have love for my family and children and friends, no matter what is believed to be on my exterior.

Overall, I do not feel that 2023 was a poor year, and at the same time, I hope that 2024 and beyond is better.  Because why shouldn’t anyone not hope that the next day is better than the one before it? 

It’s like Detroit always has to have a tragically bad sports team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t follow a tremendous amount of NBA these days, but there have been some interesting storylines that have played out over the course of this season that has had me attuned to the league a little bit more than usual.  The weird In-Season Tournament, the collapse of the Warriors, Draymond Green going ballistic twice and out indefinitely, the seemingly endless beef between Luka and Booker, etc, etc.  But behind all of these microbeefs, has been one thing that has grown into one of the more notable storylines that won’t just be for this season, but NBA history.

With their 27th consecutive loss within a single season, the Detroit Pistons have entered rarified air of being able to say that they’ve embarked on the worst losing streak in NBA history.  So often times in sports, we see hallowed and/or embarrassing records be reached and either they’re tickled, or in lots of cases, tied.  It’s truly not often that many records really break, if they’re of any substance, and even in today’s NBA where at any given point there are numerous teams trying to tank and deliberately take losses for draft positioning the following year, so the fact that the Pistons have managed to eat 27 losses in a row really is something that probably did involve some luck and determination to allow happen.

Of course, there is still one more record to chase, and I feel like I’m jinxing it because I am the lord king of sports fate and if I address it, I am doomed to be defied but it’s too late because I’ve started writing it and history be damned, this will stand.  But apparently in 2014 and 2015, there was a stretch between two separate seasons where the Philadelphia 76ers managed to eat 28 straight losses, but considering the Pistons are currently playing to a .067 clip, it’s a safe bet that they’ll at the very least catch the record and should for all intents and purposes break it, but like I said, I am tempting fate by writing about it right now.

It’s funny because three games into the season, the Pistons were 2-1.  Fans at home were probably thinking, it’s early, but we’re looking good!  With 10 playoff seeds now, maybe we’ll be able to get in this year!  But then that win against the Bulls back in October was the last W they’d ever see, as they’d then proceed to go through all of November without a single win, spawning all sorts of memes about how the Pistons succeeded in No-Win November, but then proceed to keep on chugging through December without any wins and are in prime position to finish All-Defeat December.

I had to look up some of the official numbers since my knowledge of bad basketball records has apparently grown outdated, but the worst record in history seems to be declared to be the 2012 Charlotte Bobcats, who went 7-59, a winning percentage of just .110.  But in a full 82-game season, the 1973 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, a winning percentage of just .101.  As unlikely as it would be in today’s NBA climate, but if the Pistons’ current winning rate were to stay steady, they would finish the season at 5-77, shattering both records with room to spare.

And then the ultimate failure would be that in spite of having the most balls in the draft lottery, anyone else gets picked before they do.  All the hotshot prospects in college right now are probably talking with their representation about their eligibility and NIL money comparisons to hard consider sticking around another year versus risk getting drafted by the Pistons.

It’s just funny though, because it just seems like the city of Detroit is destined to at any given time, have some tragically bad sports franchise.  Like there’s a shared pool of sports talent in the city, and when one franchise is taking the lion’s share, another is starving to death.  Like in the early 2000s, the Detroit Tigers were losing 100 games and threatening the all-time losses record, but then the Pistons won an NBA championship.  Then the Tigers were becoming playoff regulars, while the Detroit Lions had a season where they literally went 0-16 and I think tacked on a few more L’s the following season before upending the Redskins to end their torment.  And now the Lions have secured the NFC North and are playoff bound, while the Pistons are embarking on a journey to become the worst NBA team in history.

Anyway, I know I’m tempting fate by having exerted effort to write about it, but I for one love seeing sports history, especially when it’s a team that I have no real care for, at the risk of making the wrong side of it.  I can’t say that any point in my life I’ve ever really been a Pistons fan, or a fan of any team from Detroit for that matter, so here’s to hoping we’ll see some fresh history coming up in a few days.

The Holiday Famiry Road Trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In an attempt to tackle numerous birds with a single stone, my entire house packed up and hit the road, so that we could visit family, see some sights, and let the kids and the au pair see some things outside of our everyday life in Georgia.  All of the driving necessary to hit all of our destinations was daunting, but with hopes that breaking up the trip with strategic stops, and having an iPad full of kids’ movies and television shows to distract, it wasn’t really that bad aside from the sheer time and boredom of the driving aspect which is I guess the burden of dads everywhere in the world when it comes to a famiry road trip, but honestly I can’t complain.  The kids were great on the entire long stretches of driving, and we didn’t have to stop nearly as often as I feared we might have.

As for the trip itself, it was pretty good from the standpoint of getting to see a lot of family, and taking the kids and au pair into Washington DC to see some sights.  Say what I might about DC as a former resident of the area, but places like their zoo and all the museums truly are top-notch.  And the gentrification fairy certainly has done some work to the place since the last time I really went exploring or got lost in the city itself.

Pour one out for the husk that used to be Chinatown, which is apparently limited to like two restaurants and the big red arch that remains.  It’s also hilarious to see all the American and chain businesses that seem like they’re required to have Chinese writing on their storefronts, so like you’re seeing a Chipotle, with Chinese characters that probably say like Mexican food or something on it, since I doubt there’s specific characters to describe a burrito.

I took our au pair to a Caps game since somehow she’s inexplicably a hockey fan from South America and is apparently a New York Islanders fan, and since they were playing the Caps during our trip, it seemed like a layup to be able to gift something of a dream experience for her to be able to see the Islanders in person.  Unfortunately, the Islanders took the L, but she got to witness the general apathy and low-excitement of the DC sports scene, where the entire crowd basically waiting for Alexander Ovechkin to do something, and the guy looking like he’s playing hurt, based on the Undertaker-way he was coming into the game only at optimal scoring chances, and shooting from the same spot on the ice a few times before coming right back off.

In the past, I used to hold onto something of a kinship with the general area, and have a sense of pride of being a former Virginian.  I liked knowing that I still knew the area very well and could get around without a map, take Metro without needing guidance, and generally co-exist with the denizens of the area without much complaint.  But during the span of this trip, there were several instances of where I came to the realization that I’m just not one of them anymore, and not just that, that I don’t really like it up there very much, and often wondered how I was able to live up there for like 12 years.

People, in all of the DMV, are just so much more conceited and petty and just generally more selfish than what I’m used to living in the South.  It’s hard to explain, but there’s always the smallest of micro-aggressions that I witness that remind me that I’m not in the South anymore, whether it’s holding doors open, being in the way on sidewalks or being at restaurants and being completely unwilling to offer up extra chairs or space.  Like we’re at a restaurant with six people, and there are only 4-tops left, but both adjacent tables have people with extra chairs; perhaps it was presumptuous to assume anyone would’ve offered them up to my party, but down South, people are just a little friendlier and a little more aware of others, as opposed to the people around us who insisted their coats or their empty bag of takeout needed their extra chairs.

Mythical wife actually wants to ultimately end up back there, as she has lots of friends up in Maryland, but I have very little desire to move back up there, even if 75% of my general family lives up there.  It’s not like they’d all automatically become ready babysitters, nor would I want to put that responsibility onto all of my cousins or my parents, and then I’d be stuck up in DMV paying DMV land values and being subject to all the shitty people and worst of all, the motherfucking traffic.

Because that was absolutely one of the worst parts of the trips, was the aforementioned motherfucking traffic.  It was bad when I lived up there with the seemingly endless construction of the I-495/I-395/I-95 interchange, but because VDOT apparently needs to always have a 20-year project on their docket at all times in order to justify their existence, they’ve decided to turn I-495/I-66/Rt. 123 into their personal battlefield now, and getting stuck on a route in which I remember cruising back and forth through in the past just made me feel homicidal whenever I was caught in some standstill traffic.

In fact, while up in DMV, there was literally not a single instance where I got into my car and didn’t get stuck in some catastrophic traffic jam.  Going to Gaithersburg, traffic.  Coming back from Gaithersburg, traffic.  Going to my mom’s place, traffic.  Going to the nearest Metro station to pick up wife and au pair, traffic.  After my family gathering, my house was going to head back to Richmond in order to shave an hour off of the big drive the following day, and one of my cousin’s said that I shouldn’t expect any traffic on the night of December 23rd, but naturally, there’s some catastrophic traffic jam in fucking Quantico of all places, as if my time in the DMV area just had to get one last fuck you before I left.

People seem to think Atlanta traffic is, which it is, but I still think traffic up there is still way worse.  Atlanta traffic is primarily aggressive drivers and poor infrastructure, but the DMV area has infrastructure and a reliable train system.  Their traffic is on account of bad drivers who are all pussy-whipped into overly-safe-into-becoming-dangerous drivers by the Commonwealth’s egregious ticket fines and the area’s constant tampering with the road system buoyed by their $4B+ road budget.  The overall result is me wanting to blow my brains out every time I got into the car, and most definitely not wanting to be in the area, as a residence especially.

But like I said, this trip was not entirely about me.  It’s important that my kids meet and have exposure to my family, and it’s important that our au pair gets to actually travel and see places and experience things outside of her daily routines, so if it means accomplishing those things, I’ll take some traffic on the chin for the greater good.  As much as I bemoaned the traffic and aggravations of DMV living, seeing how happy my kids are around their grandparents and extended family, and seeing how happy the au pair was when she got to see her favorite Islander players in person, I really can’t ask for better gifts than those.  This is why I often insist on getting nothing for the holidays, because some of the best things just aren’t tangible things.

Not my MiLB logo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently I missed this way back from September: but Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball have agreed to change the official logo of Minor League Baseball

And of course this wouldn’t be a post if I didn’t, but I absolutely hate it, thanks.

Fewer things are a sign of mediocrity and spinning wheels like a logo rebranding.  This was not a case like the Cleveland Indians really needing to get rid of a horrifically racist mascot, this was the case of some bored corporate stooges looking for things that weren’t broken and decided to fix them anyway, to justify their existences.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the previous MiLB logo.  It was subtle, it was understandable, and most importantly, it was just different enough to where the shape and brand positioning of it was always consistent to MLB standards, but the visual identity of the icon itself was different enough for those looking to understand that this was Minor League and not the MLB icon that any sports fan or casual could understand.

In one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken with my mom, I’m wearing the old MiLB logo generic shirt.

Now this new crappy logo is basically identical to the MLB logo, except the batter is aligned to the left, and instead of a baseball coming towards the batter, it now looks like the batter has sat looking at four pitches that are now past him, and considering the escalating rate of strikeouts throughout the last half-century, the guy in the logo has probably struck-out, as much as the logo itself does in my opinion.

I hate to say it, but there are a lot of baseball fans that aren’t particularly intelligent.  The Gwinnett Braves used the excuse that there were people that actually managed to confuse tickets for G-Braves tickets for tickets for the Atlanta Braves, which I didn’t think was really a believable excuse, but I’m also not going to pretend like baseball fans are always the smartest people in the world either.  This new logo is going to 100% confuse people into thinking they’re going to Major League games and buying Major League apparel, but perhaps that really is the end game, and I’m just being hyper critical of a tactic that I think is petty, but is really some corporate shills really living in 2050 and playing chess.

And I don’t understand why they’ve put a color palette behind it, especially of two shades of blue.  MLB logos, especially on apparel, namely baseball caps, often times already ditch their own color palette and adopt the primary and secondary colors of the team, or they just go reverse white, as not to compete with the colors of the teams, especially ones that don’t utilize the navy and red palette of the MLB logo.  This Carolina/Dook blue combo logo just seems odd and uncharacteristic to professional baseball in general, where it seems like the vast majority of teams utilize shades of red, at all levels of the game.  For all the teams like the Blue Rocks or the Stone Crabs or the Pelicans that utilize shades of blue, there are teams like the Redbirds, Nuts, Crawdads and much more where adding a logo of blues into their branding is more like shoehorning a horse’s hoof into a toddler’s shoe.

Either way, I am very much not a fan of the new MiLB logo.  It is uncreative, homogenized, convoluted, and was something that never needed to be updated in the first place.  Not that I’m going to many baseball games at all these days, but a team’s branding is going to have to work just a little bit harder to make me decide to impulsively drop some cash on any team merch if it’s going to have this little blue turd of a brand slapped onto it.

There may be four stars on the logo, but if it were up to me, it would have none.

No way this doesn’t backfire on Southwest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Good intentions, unwinnable situation: Southwest Airlines becomes only airline to accommodate larger passengers with complimentary adjacent seats

How it works: plus-size travelers either purchase two fares on Southwest in advance, or purchase one fare; either way, at the airport, they have to speak speak to a representative to discuss accommodation, be allowed to occupy two seats.  If they purchased two in advance, they can be retroactively be refunded one fare, or if they purchase one fare, speak to someone at the airport and get a second one for free; airline reserves the right to exorcise the benefit or shift other passengers based on availability.

First of all, I do think it’s cool that Southwest Airlines for making this choice to be accommodating to larger passengers.  It is a decision made on empathy, positivity and inclusion, and in the calculation of the business world, it’s a choice that will all but ensure that larger travelers will be looking at Southwest first, with them likely to make some bank on the fact that they’ll probably buy two Southwest fares knowing they can be refunded for one of them based on their girth, as opposed to buying two fares on any other airline and not getting any recompense.

But I also just think that Southwest is opening a can of worms, and has created something that will inevitably be abused and met with a lot of opposition, hostility and negativity by all other travelers who don’t fall into the same large category of those that this is intended to accommodate, almost like an ironic reverse form of discrimination.

I’m not the buffest, most swole guy on the planet, not by a long shot, but when I sit back and am in a relaxed sitting position, my shoulders often times creep over the plane of space that is the armrest.  When traveling with mythical wife, this is mitigated because she is petite and I can just raise the armrest and we can lean on each other, or share our adjacent space, but the fact of the matter is that regular old me, could constitute a person who “encroach past the armrest” which is the language that Southwest’s policy declares as being criteria to receive the large person BOGO, as I’d like to call it as politically correct as I care to speak it.

This policy just seems like it’s begging to be abused by all sorts of people, mostly active, muscular, tall and other physically large people whom might not necessarily be overweight, but still with bodies capable of taking up a lot of space.  And considering the fact that airline seats are tuna can sized to begin with, I don’t think it would take a tremendous amount of arguing for people to think they can lay claim to the large person BOGO as much as a person who tried out for My 600 Lb. Life.

Already, there are instances of the backlash of giving larger folks free bonus seats, as cited by the example of a woman and her kids who were bumped off an oversold flight because one or more larger passengers were getting free extra seats.  And this is where it’s really a nobody wins situation, because I understand that large passengers go through a lot of shit already, flying in an airplane doesn’t make it any easier, but at the same time, as a person with a lot of miles flown in my life, I know the general frustration of the traveling process to begin with, and can understand the frustration that must bubble up when you have to sit next to a large person who encroaches on your space or denies you the ability to board outright.

Furthermore, as altruistic of a policy this is meant to be, it’s still going to be subject to the opinions of live human beings that oversized travelers will have to subject themselves to when they are at the airport and wish to plead their cases.  Imagine the general sense of spectacle and embarrassment many already go through having to go to the counter to discuss the large person BOGO, but imagine how much worse it would be if the person at the gate is having a bad day or is someone who’s in no mood to be empathetic of a large person’s size, and then they deny the second seat, or they prioritize parties over a large person. 

Nobody wins in these cases either, and it’s only a matter of time before Southwest gets sick and tired of dealing with all the headaches, complaints, accusations of abusing rules, and other negative connotation before they decide to punt on the program outright, and large passengers are back to either purchasing two seats and taking a financial hit, or risking denigration and humiliation when they get seated next to a Karen who live-tweets their misery at being sat next to a large person on an entire flight.

Again, it’s cool that Southwest is trying to be more inclusive than all the other airlines, but the airline industry is already one of the most miserable and volatile experiences for people in the first place, trying to rock the boat to this magnitude just seems like an idea that’s just begging to backfire with catastrophic results.

Whew. Let’s talk about Shohei Ohtani

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The whew in the title has nothing to do with any sort of relief I may be feeling that I do not have to shave my balls, because anyone with a brain knew that there was no chance in hell that Shohei Ohtani was going to sign with the Atlanta Braves.  I would’ve felt comfortable betting my house that Ohtani wasn’t going to sign with the Braves, frankly.  The whew in the title really is just in regards to how much there is to unpack, now that the free agent of the millennium has finally been signed and taken off the table and the rest of MLB can move on with its tumultuous life.

It actually happened a few days ago, and I just didn’t have the opportunity to sit down and put all my knee-jerk reactions down to text, but for those who missed it, uber-star Shohei Ohtani ended his not-so silent quest for a free agent contract, and has chosen to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers, up the I-5 from Anaheim, at an earth-shattering $700 million dollars over the next ten years.

This wasn’t just the most expensive contract in Major League Baseball history, this is supposedly the biggest professional athlete contract in all sports’ histories, surpassing even guys like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo much less Aaron Judge, Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer.  Do the math, and it’s a guy who’s going to be getting paid $70 million dollars a year to play a children’s game.

And the thing is, most people haven’t bothered to care or learn, but Ohtani’s ability to pitch is completely off the table until like 2025, as he will be recovering from major elbow surgery over the span of now until most of 2024.  The Dodgers knew this, and they still were comfortable with giving him the biggest contract in history; he’s a remarkable hitter no doubt, but I can think of 2-3 guys I’d have pursued alternatively instead of dropping $700M on someone whom I’ll only be getting half their skillset for the start of the contract.

Whatever though, the goose chase is over, and Ohtani is going to be a Dodger for the next decade, and the rest of MLB fanbases can bemoan the rich getting richer, as the Dodgers pick up yet another marquee free agent, and their payroll looks to balloon way past what the Mets just set the bar to the year prior.  Frankly I’m not surprised that he went to the Dodgers, because as much as I knew he wasn’t going to land on the Braves, I figured he was probably either going to stay with the Angels, or go to the Dodgers or the Phillies, because those seem to be the only two teams that players actively want to end up going to these days.  And in spite of some gallant efforts by the Toronto Blue Jays, I’m sure Ohtani’s camp reminded him of the colossal pain in the ass that playing in Canada is like with all the constant customs hangups as well as Canada’s high taxes for services that he’d probably never use.

The thing is, after the breaking news of Ohtani’s signing occurred, what I really was the most curious about was the minute details of the contract, namely opt-out clauses as well as my favorite footnote in sport contracts, deferred monies.  At first, it was really hush-hush, leading people to believe that he was just going to get $70M a year, plain and simple, but baseball contracts are never plain and simple, and are astounding when they are.

When the news first came out, none of these details were made available, but ironically in the time between breaking news to when I could actually have some time to write about it, the things I cared about emerged, and hoo boy, are they some really interesting and unprecedented things.

Continue reading “Whew. Let’s talk about Shohei Ohtani” →

This is my new dream ride

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Florida hoons with too much time and money on their hands rig the body of a Honda Odyssey onto the chassis of a Tesla Model S Plaid

Throughout my life of being interested in cars, I’ve always been fascinated by sleeper cars.  Cars that look unsuspecting and basically invisible, but really are high-performance monsters underneath the hood.  There have been a few noteworthy sleepers out of the box, like the 90’s Ford Taurus SHO, but in most cases all it really takes is slapping a turbo or swapping a motor onto a nondescript automobile, and you’ve got a reliable sleeper.

However, over the last few years, I’ve become enthusiastic about having become a Tesla owner, and having an EV, that doesn’t rely on the gas that always demoralizes me when I have to fill up my gas-powered vehicles.  And given the price points and the general unwillingness to fuck around with and tinker with mine or any EV, the reality of having a sleeper car in the immediate future doesn’t seem very likely.

So this particular story about a bunch of car dudes out in Florida who clearly have too much time and money on their hands, who Frankenstein together the body of a Honda Odyssey minivan, onto the body of a Tesla Model S Plaid, one of the fastest cars in the world off the line, gets my attention because it is quite literally smashing together two things that I’m interested in, Teslas and sleepers, and making something that I didn’t think really was possible, a sleeper Tesla.

It’s just hilarious to see the dumpy turd on wheels that is the Honda Odyssey, and I wish that these bros went a little longer before making a video to actually refine and try to meld the two cars together, because as it is, it felt very raw and rushed, where they leave off.  But at least they have a relatively driveable ride, and I found it hilarious whenever they punched it, and the sheer torque of the Tesla’s electric motor would wrench and yank so hard that all you could hear was the metal-on-metal smashing of a jerry-rigged chassis trying to keep two pieces together.

But overall, this is a potential dream car: Tesla power and no reliance on gasoline, but the invisible obscurity of the penultimate soccer mom van of the 2000’s.  I for one, would definitely be all about riding around in one of these as my primary ride if it were remotely cleaned up, functional, and didn’t sound like the body would rip off when I pushed the accelerator.