Month: May 2024

#TRYHARDSZN2024: When going 11/11 just doesn’t seem special anymore

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Michigan high school senior gets into all eleven of the schools she applied to, including 5/5 on Ivies

Okay, so I’ve been doing this for this #TRYHARDSZN and I’ve gotten to the point where success stories like this just don’t really seem like that big of a deal anymore.  Regardless of the fact that she got into five Ivy League schools, all I really think about is why she only applied to five of the Ivy Leagues and why not all eight of them?

What did Penn, Columbia and Dartmouth not do to make this #TRYHARD omit them from her applying spree, because I have to imagine that someone who’s applying to five Ivy League schools may as well shoot for all eight of them, and hedge their bets and go for among the rarest of feats, which is getting the Ivy Sweep which is an actual term borne from the fact that there are so many #TRYHARDs on a yearly basis that try to get into all of them, presumably for the bragging rights and not because of anything else.

But other than the fact that I’m getting tired of stories of #TRYHARDs and am tiring of writing about them, frankly a story like this one where a chica goes 11 for 11 in applications and among them are five of the Ivy League schools, just doesn’t really seem special anymore.

No feigned arrogance for me to dissect, no reports of cumulative scholarship money earned for me to point out that the schools they applied to must’ve been low-tier, just a hard working teenager who only abused the application system just a little bit, and got into all of the schools she applied to.  Sure, I could say that in a real-world scenario where she had to pay for her own application fees, she’s probably looking at somewhere around $3,000 if I had to guestimate, but I’ve already made that observation about 15 other times from all the other #TRYHARDs I’ve chronicled this #SZN.

They’re planning on going to Yale.  So was Zack Morris, and look what happened there.

So we’ll leave it at that, congratulations to a #TRYHARD for getting into all these high-tier schools, but in the grand scheme of the game of trying hard, she’s but a mere blip in the bucket of #TRYHARDs applying to everything under the sun and probably not paying anything for it.

I would like a pizza topped with a Little Caesar’s pizza pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For absolutely no reason other than to support my children’s school’s spirit day partnership with a local restaurant fundraiser, I ordered some pizzas from a local pizzeria that was the chosen restaurant of the month to split their profits with the school.

Believe me, there’s nothing in it for me or my household by ordering New York-style pizzas. 

Doing it for the kids.

Anyway, those who have ever worked in the restaurant business or have a decent understanding of how a lot of them work, know that one of the highest profit margins comes from soft drinks.  Like a bag of syrup for like Coca-Cola costs $80, but the ROI on the entire bag is usually 2-3 times that, depending on what the business decides to charge for soft drinks.

Over the last few years though, I’ve noticed that if there was ever something to challenge soft drinks on the profit margin scale, it would definitely have to be pizza toppings.  Of course, adding things onto your pizza should not really be free unless you’re a giant like Pizza Hut, Domino’s or Papa John’s, but those pizzas are all garbage anyway and aren’t really considered pizza as much as Chinese food should be considered Chinese.

But from all the independent, mom-n-pop types of pizzerias, I’ve noticed a tremendous amount of inflation as far as pizza toppings go over the last few years.  One pizzeria I used to frequent when I was a little bit closer to the city, charged like 50¢ per added topping to a slice of pizza, to which when you’re ordering by the slice typically is a little more negligible, but when ordering up some pizzas (for the kids) the other day, adding toppings was now up to $3 per topping for an entire pie.

Look, I know everyone loves to cry inflation as justification for costs going up across the board these days, but ain’t no way adding pepperoni and mushrooms onto my pie should be the same cost as an appetizer of garlic bread.

I was complaining about this to a friend of mine, and I stated that the cost of adding two toppings to a pizza is now the cost of an entire Little Caesar’s pizza, and if I were going to be paying that much, I might as well just ask to have an entire Little Caesar’s pizza chopped up and spread out onto my pizza as a topping itself.

And then it dawned on me just how brilliant of an idea that could possibly be, and how much of a culinary atom bomb of an invention that could be if ever tried out.

But this couldn’t be something I tried out on my own, because for the idea to be optimal to what I’ve fantasized, the Little Caesar’s would have to be chopped up and spread onto the pizza before it goes in the oven, not afterward, because then it wouldn’t have cooked into the pizza itself.  And you can’t do it after the fact because then you’d be overcooking the pizza outright.

It would be nice to be able to walk into one of the local pizzerias that I like, with my own Little Caesar’s in tow, and place my order, and then ask them to chop up this Little Caesar’s and top my pizza with it, and I’ll give them $6 for the equivalent cost, because if the cost of toppings is going to be as much as an entire Little Caesar’s, might as well get an entire fuckin Little Caesar’s put on top my pizza for reals then.

For the kids.

The financial burden of smokers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lady somewhere in my office building that I surmise takes a smoke break every single hour.  Every time I go to the gym, I will inevitably see her walk past the windows to where all the smokers tend to congregate, which is horrifyingly over a section of the Colonial Pipeline gas main that made national headlines a few years ago. 

The thing is, as much as I’d like to, I don’t go to the gym at the same time every single day, I have to be fluid with the times in which I go, depending on my workload and any scheduled meetings on a daily basis.  So I’ve been to the gym as early as within the 10 am hour, as late as the 3 pm hour and at any time in between.

But it does not matter what time of the day in which I go to the gym, I will always see her trudge past the gym windows to go take a roughly 20 minute smoke break, or whenever she gets done with dicking around on her phone and milking her smoke.

That being said, I’m really curious what she actually does for whatever company she works for, and I can’t imagine it’s something remotely essential or necessary, considering the fact that a person who literally works maybe 30-35 minutes of every single hour is in the position, because factoring in the walking time, and elevator time into each smoke break, that’s what I’m assuming she actually at her desk/workstation, regardless of if she’s actually working or not.

I know the hiring process is not supposed to demonstrate any sort of bias or discrimination, but honestly if I were ever back in a position of hiring people, I think I’d try to find out if an applicant were a smoker or not.  And if they were, throw their application in the trash, because I can’t imagine that short of being Good Will Hunting genius, a person who works 3/5th of the time of someone who doesn’t smoke, will actually outproduce in the long run.  Last time I checked, smoker isn’t a race or a class of person that has any consequence for discriminating against and if it were up to me, I wouldn’t want any smokers in my workplace if I ever were in control of one.

Just the sight of this person kind of disgusts me.  I’m not trying to get all high-and-mighty on someone, and I seldom thing I’m above most things or most people, but considering the work ethic of Miss Chimney, who stinks like one, and I can tell when she’s been in the elevator recently, because she leaves it stinking of smoke, I do kind of look down on her.  If I were her employer, I’d be aggravated as fuck knowing that she’s burning 20-25 minutes every single hour of every single working day trolling around outside dragging on a bunch of cancer sticks on company time.

If it were up to me, once this kind of bullshit gets on my radar, I’d consider making a case against it, and start extrapolating their wages against how much time they’re actually present in the office, and see what happens afterward.  I’d wager the behavior corrects itself more likely than not, and that they might look for an exit strategy, to which I would say good riddance, may I get a replacement that doesn’t smell like an airport smoking lounge.

It’s the kind of behavior my old cunt of a boss would embark on, but if there’s one thing that I would agree with her is that time theft is still theft, and I sure as fuck don’t want any thieves on my team.  I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have team members that are equitably present, and also don’t smell like fucking alleyways behind Chinese restaurants.

I think the Bloodline has DJ Tanner Wrestling’d

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Only the longest of my zero readers know that DJ Tanner Wrestling-ing is my personal evolution to jumping the shark, and in the case of this particular topic it’s relevant since this is yet another post about, professional wrestling.

Anyway, over the weekend the WWE did their best to surprise the Universe by introducing Tanga Loa into the company, when he interfered during the Bloodline vs. Kevin Owens and Randy Orton tag match.  A few weeks ago, they had brought in Tama Tonga to join forces with Solo Sikoa, whom the storyline has as being the guy now assuming control over the Bloodline, with the long-deserved hiatus of Roman Reigns after Wrestlemania. 

And with that, both members of the Guerillas of Destiny (GoD) have made their way to the WWE after a long and fruitful career overseas in NJPW.  Both have aligned with Solo, and are representing the new age of the Bloodline.  I doubt that they’ll still be called GoD once the dust settles from their arrival, but to those that are familiar with them, they’ll always be GoD.

Personally, I’m high on GoD, and loved their work in Japan.  It was the highlight of the evening when NJPW had a tour stop in Atlanta, where the main event was the Guerillas winning the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team championships, and above all else, I love that they’re the son and the adopted son of the baddest man on the planet, Haku.  That alone gives them a 10 in toughness, because I can’t imagine anyone raised by Haku would be anything short of being the polar opposite of a pussy.

I am excited for their arrival in the E and the sheer potential they bring by both being in the company, but at the same time, I still can’t help but have this feeling that they’ve caused the whole trajectory of the Bloodline to DJ Tanner Wrestle, mainly because of the simple fact that they’re not actual bloodline to the Anoa’i family.

In fact, they’re not even Samoan, but Tongan.  I know that white people can’t tell Asians and island boys apart, and there are a lot of similarities between the cultures, but the fact of the matter is that Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa aren’t related to the Anoa’i family nor are they Samoan, so having them be a part of the Bloodline seems kind of shark-jumpy in my opinion.

I know that Haku is super tight with many Anoa’i members, and as Rikishi once said, us island boys have to stick together, but it does feel like a little bit of a cop out to just slap GoD into the Bloodline and hope that nobody questions the genealogy here just because they’re all from island origins.

Sure, they did it already with Sami Zayn being the Honorary Uce, but the difference here is that they weren’t trying to hide the fact that he wasn’t Samoan and related to an Anoa’i, and I’m not saying that they might not do the same with GoD, but so far, they also haven’t made any attempt to dispel it either.  I have this suspicion that unless they get some heat from any Polynesian groups, who demand specificity, the WWE is just going to hope that fans at home assume that GoD are Anoa’i and don’t question it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m stoked that GoD are now a part of the E.  They will inject a viable tag team into the division of whichever show they land on, and I’m sure fans are already salivating at the idea of an inevitable GoD vs. the Usos matchup, because a Bloodline civil war does seem like it’s the obvious end game coming once Roman Reigns’ vacation is up.

It’s just details matter to me, and two guys whom aren’t even blood-related themselves, joining up with a faction called the Bloodline to which they’re not related to, seems a little DJ Tanner Wrestling-ey in my opinion.  I get why they did it, and honestly from their perspective, as far as being fast-tracked to the main event and making money, they’re probably not sweating it, but it doesn’t change the fact that the execution of it, holistically as a whole, does seem forced and just a little bit DJ Tanner Wrestling-ey.  Creative might surprise me and spin a magnificent story, as they did over the last two years of Roman’s reign, but seeing as how they blew the wad at Mania, I’m not optimistic that this long-term story will be worth the wait if all the moving parts happen in the manner that I think they will.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: I’m surprised she’s alive to TRYHARD

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly it’s hard to stay motivated to keep writing about all these #TRYHARDs after covering someone who was accepted into 231 schools before picking a random low-tier school, but the show must go on until the clock hits zero: 16-year old Louisiana girl accepted into 60 colleges, presumably graduating early in order to start college

By now, after writing about 20 of these insufferable #TRYHARDs, I’m kind of having some regret for taking this pointless exercise on, but at the same time, it’s something that keeps me writing even when I don’t want to write about it, and for someone who takes pride in sticking with it, there are worse things to complain about, like my life in general but anyway.

It’s obvious that so many people embark on the path of being a #TRYHARD because it brings them attention and they really like attention, but this particular one seems to have gotten bit by the attention bug at an early age, based on this specific quote from the article:

Poullard has also gone viral as a child, when she met former president Barack Obama.

“Still to this day I don’t realize how hard it is to meet the president,” Poullard said. “My daddy told me before we walked in that White House. He’s like ‘When you see the president run up to him and I bet you’ll go viral’. It’s been like 11 years. I just think that’s so crazy.”

It’s almost like daddy wanted his daughter to get gunned down or something, instructing his child to fucking run at the President of the United States.  But clearly the country under Obama probably made it just a hair safer for a five-year old black kid to run at the POTUS, and I didn’t care enough to dig deeper on the claim that she was viral as a kid and being noticed by the internet now for being a #TRYHARD, but it’s evident that the things this 16-year old has done in her life has probably mostly been done in the name of getting attention.

But another telling quote that I found amusing were her so called words of wisdom to those who would also wish to embark on the attention-seeking path of #TRYHARDing:

Just because you don’t have a high A-C-T score or your grades might not be that good, you can still apply to that school if you want to,” Poullard said. “I guarantee you when you have a long list of community services that you’ve done, that’s going to say a lot about you as a person.”

So the takeaway I get from this is that despite being a mediocre student, as long as you don’t set your goals too high, you can still apply to a boatload of schools and get accepted into a lot of them, and as long as you don’t give specifics to the schools you’re applying to, you can still boast that you got into 60 of them and sound like a genius scholar.

I will say though, it must not have been entirely too mediocre, because the reveal at the end is that she’s staying local, and will be going to LSU.  As far as I’m concerned, LSU is one of the better known schools that has collected a #TRYHARD, but I also know them primarily for athletics and know nothing about them academically.  I do know though, that LSU is a school that does party real hard, and has some rough partying culture, and if I’m a parent, I’m definitely sweating sending my 16-year old daughter away to LSU.

For a kid that has been speedrunning life to get to college at the age of 16, there are some harsh, hard realities that are going to come into play once you’re away from home at college, and I hope they’ve learned enough street smarts and have enough maturity to survive college, and rush to become a miserable adult sooner rather than later.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: All hail the queen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t think anyone’s beating this: Hinesville, Georgia high school senior accepted into approximately 231 schools, amassing approximately $14,790,695 in cumulative scholarship offers

Welp, I think we’ve found our alpha #TRYHARD for the 2024 season, at least for the category of kids who apply to every single college under the fucking sun, because I can’t imagine that there’s anyone out there that’s going to surpass 231 acceptances at this stage of the season where most selections have to be made, like last week.

What’s amusing to me from this article is the approximation as far as the number of acceptances and the cumulative scholarship dollars are concerned.  Usually I feel like lots of these #TRYHARD stories just kind of round to a nice round number, usually 50+ unless it’s really high, to which approximation comes into play, and I suppose when you’ve got 231 fucking college acceptances, you really want to shout that from the rooftops.

I mean earlier in the year we had like 60+ and 80+, but this girl right here is the true queen, who clearly has been applying to colleges since 2022, because I remember how long a single college application takes, but to repeat the entire exercise over 231 times because I don’t believe that it’s possible for her to have batted a perfect 1.000 here, she clearly has been copy and pasting her credentials, or she’s getting some sort of advantageous means to apply to all these schools on a fast track. 

Either way, it does seem kind of fucked up, and really makes me wonder what the quality of life this girl has been living over the last few years, or wondering where she’s had time to apply to all these schools on top of the supposed extracurriculars, volunteer work and workload commitments she must’ve had.

Imagine if she had to pay for all these applications because I don’t imagine she had to pay a cent if she’s applying to over 231 schools.  Google says the average is around $75-90 which is bullshit because I remember it being way higher when I was applying to schools, but even still, multiplying that to just 231 is still $17,325 on the low end, not including the schools applied to that she didn’t get into, let’s round up, and since all these #TRYHARDs love to spout numbers, let’s estimate that she should’ve been billed about $20,000 just to apply to all these schools but more than likely didn’t have to pay.

But in true #TRYHARD fashion, as mind-blowing as 231 acceptances is, the lack of clarity on any notable acceptances, the rush to boast numbers and aggregate scholarship dollars, still indicates that the quality of the #TRYHARDING is on the low-end, especially considering her end result is selecting High Point University, in North Carolina.

I know where High Point is, since it’s in that space between Charlotte and Greensboro, and I know if it as a place that signifies that the boring-ass stretch of nothing in between the two is coming to an end when going northbound.  I also work a lot with a studio out there that did photography for my old company, and knew some nice folks there, but still by and large, High Point is a place where most people don’t really know where it is and probably have to Google it in order to find out where it is, and the fact that out of 231 schools, High Point University is the one that wins out means that the pool probably wasn’t populated by any heavy-hitters.

I mean, a free ride is a free ride, but High Point’s average tuition is allegedly $42K a year for an out-of-state student, and if she’s getting a free ride, we’re looking at like $170K give or take.  That being said, considering she amassed just under $15M in scholarships, I can’t help but be curious to know what kind of underwhelming offers there were from the 230 other schools that don’t have the dubious distinction of being selected by the 2024 queen of #TRYHARDs.

Whatever though, good on this #TRYHARD for getting a free ride.  I’m sure her parents are proud and relieved to know they won’t have to pay for schooling, and that they’ve got a child that will finagle an expensive piece of paper for free, and has demonstrated the ability to do a repetitive, monotonous task over and over again, like applying to mediocre colleges.  Can’t imagine the much more sky being the limit for these underwhelming expectations, but then again I also never finished college either, so I guess I should take my own advice and bow down to the queen (of #TRYHARDs).

Dad Brog (#132): Book title says it all

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, I sent my kids to bed without having eaten anything.  I gave them dinner and they flat out refused to even try a single bite of it, despite having tried it the night prior and finding it somewhat satisfactory to where I didn’t feel like a complete failure of a parent.  But today, they took one look at the food presented to them, voiced their displeasure, and refused to eat it.

So I cleaned it up, and they didn’t eat a thing for the remainder of their day.  #1 started trolling around in the kitchen phishing for something to eat, and told me she was hungry, but I calmly explained to her that she did not eat dinner when it was presented to her, that this was a tough lesson to not disrespect the food that I do present to her, even with possible incentives of dessert if they eat well enough.

It kills my soul to deny them food when they’re hungry, but at the same time, I think about the maddening frustration I feel when they turn their noses up at the meals I make for them like defiant little shits.  So today I decided to stay strong and stick with my decision, and they went to bed, probably hungry.

Despite the fact that mythical wife told me to not get so stressed about food refusal, it’s easy for her to say considering I do the vast majority of cooking for the kids, and it’s hard to not take it personally being someone who puts a lot of effort into trying to provide homemade meals for my children, and also abhors the idea of wasting food.  It frustrates me tremendously, and I know this is something that many parents go through otherwise there wouldn’t be books like the above, but it still climbs the ranks of shit my kids do to drive me crazy.

But it’s not just food defiance lately that’s been frustrating daily, it’s just the defiance in general that sometimes gets me upset when it compounds repeatedly throughout a day.  I’m already overworked and handle the lion’s share of parenting, and when things get to a point where I could really use a timeout but can’t because I’m on double duty because I don’t have enough help, my days tend to go to ruin and my head goes into some dark places sometimes.

It goes without saying that I could use a break, but circumstances haven’t necessarily made such a possibility, so I just exist here festering and getting worse when things go poorly.  My fuses get shorter, and I lose my cool faster and I just want a break but it feels like everyone else around me seems to get them except for me, and I feel like I’m taken for granted again and feeling shitty about it.

Like I’m so locked into being in dad mode, that I feel like the me that existed before kids is completely dead, or at least dormant to the point of not knowing how to bring it back.  Whenever I do have a little bit of time to not be a dad, it’s always not enough time to where I can deprogram myself from being concerned about doing dad things, and I just end up squandering it and know I squandered it, which propagates the downward spiral of falling back into states of depression.

But seriously, if I were suddenly able to have a stretch where I didn’t have to worry about my kids, worry about my house descending further into chaos, worry about their meals, their care or anything else, I don’t know the fuck I’d do.  I have no hobbies anymore, I have no interest in video games, reading books is harder for me to do these days because I’m in such a general sleep deficit that no matter how interesting a book is, I still get tired by the act of it that I can’t really accomplish any productive reading anymore. 

Traveling is expensive and I’m always too cognizant of bills and expenses that I just don’t want to go into debt for just my own indulgences.  I don’t want to pretend to be a foodie again because I’m well past 40 now, and eating anything makes me feel like I’m gaining 8 lbs a meal and that I’ll look bad in my clothes.

So basically all I ever do with any free time is watch television or write in a brog nobody on earth reads because I don’t have the time to do anything more substantial in my life right now, and I’m basically in the mother of hold patterns until my kids are old enough to be self-sufficient and I’m trying my hardest on a regular basis to not keep falling into pits of despair.

Or maybe I’ve just had a bad day.  Either way, I could use a break, a real one, but I don’t see that happening any time soon, either.