Day: July 26, 2024

Dad Brog (#137): I’ve been waiting their entire lives for this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My kids made me bracelets for the first time.

There are randomly colored beads, pink, blue, green, yellow, white, red, green.  Some smiley faces, some flowers, an octopus, some eyeball-looking beads.  Some stars, a moon, and some random letters.

And they’re my favorite things in the entire world now, and short of showers and exercise, I’m seldom going to not be wearing them.

Even before I had kids, whenever I’d see a guy wearing some bracelet or some accessory that was clearly made by their children, I always thought it was sweet, and I admired their sense of security at not being embarrassed or afraid to wear their children’s creations, and I knew that those were the kinds of dads that I wanted to be more like rather than some stuffy stooge of a dad that doesn’t move the needle of what it takes to be a modern, supportive and loving father in this day and age.  Few things irk me as when I see content insinuating dads are distant deadbeats and have no connection to their kids, but at the same time I understand how that narrative came to be, and why it’s still in such prevalence.

All I really want in my life is to be the type of dad who breaks that sad mold, and be the type of dad that people can look at and talk about as being someone who loves the hell out of their children, is unafraid and apologetic about show affection and doing corny things like wearing princess apparel or colorful bracelets and other handmade jewelry.

Over the last few years, watching my kids grow and seeing their interests come and go, ebb and flow, I’ve always been waiting for the time in which they might, in some of their budding arts and crafts explorations, be in a position to make me a bracelet or a necklace, or some other accessory. 

That day has finally come, in which a mini bead and bracelet set was provided to them, and I came home to find that they had each made me a bracelet, and I couldn’t have been more over the moon to put them on and wear them with pride and love for my perfect kids.

And much like them, they are my treasures.

I hope Southwest is ready to be mediocre

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WaPo: Southwest Airlines eliminating open seating starting in 2025

In the grand spectrum of things, Southwest Airlines getting rid of open seating doesn’t really impact my life that much.  I don’t fly enough anymore to really be affected by this, because my life is too hectic at this juncture in my life and when it’s time for a family trip, driving is more economical and logical albeit more time consuming, but it’s better than dropping $2,100 on a trip to like Orlando.

But Southwest was always a company that I had some admiration for, because their general people-first modus operandi was always refreshing in the vast ocean of big businesses that existed solely to part dollars from the hands of the people and put them into the pockets of soulless shitheads known as investors and other finance-ey words used to describe old white people. 

And it’s not like they were starving by any stretch of the imagination, even during some of the most brutal recessions and stretches of financial wastelands, SWA was one of the few airlines that continually turned profits, mostly on account of their generally friendly business practices.

Reasonable fares, convenient routes, free checked bags, and free change policies; there was a lot to like about SWA, but if there was ever one thing that conversely blew the minds off of the dull-watted, and to some probably perceived as a deterrent and turn-off, was the open-seating policy that probably defeated more people than the internet itself.

Personally, it was, and has never been an issue for me, because I have a brain.  It’s not that hard to queue up in lines in little chunks of five behind clearly marked totems, and it takes either a little bit of upfront discipline or the willingness to pay a little extra to get Group A boarding, and seeing as how the vast majority of my travels on SWA have usually been by myself, I’ve almost always been able to grab an errant single aisle or window seat closer to the front of the aircraft, meaning I can get the fuck off sooner rather than later being wedged into the back of the aircraft and needing an extra 20 minutes just to deplane.

But if I had to guess, in spite of being their policy for over the last 50 years, SWA has simply had enough of the bullshit of dealing with passengers who just haven’t gotten it after a half century, passengers who conduct themselves like entitled spoiled assholes on the aircraft, and having to deal with passengers who they have to reimburse or give free second seats to because they’re the sizes of Pontiac Azteks.

Like the vast majority of things in the world that end up being declared ruined, there’s nobody really to blame, except people.

Sure, at the root of it, I want to accuse some managerial change at the higher rungs of the ladders at SWA, where some bean counters have identified a vast field of earning opportunities to be had by ditching open seating, and that’s probably not inaccurate, but the company had resisted many opportunities to switch in previous decades, but in this day and age, the bullshit of passengers has probably grown too much, their workforce has grown flakier and full of impatient younger heads, and enough is enough and this is where we’re headed.

The reality is that SWA has probably lost out on millions over the last few decades, by trying to be The People’s™ airline, with their friendly policies and acceptance and inclusion, and thanks to mounting passenger bullshit, they’ve probably just hit a philosophical wall of why they should be handicapping their earning capabilities being nice to a ton of assholes, when absolutely nobody else is doing it?

When the day is over, as I said, it doesn’t impact me a whole hell of a lot, but I would be curious to see what lies in the future for Southwest.  I don’t imagine the loss of open-seating is really going to impact the airline as much as many outlets on the internet make it sound like it’s going to, but for those people who were married to the concept, and are going to revolt, or at least no longer prioritize them because they’re basically transforming into an “ordinary” airline on the level of United or American or JetBlue, SWA is just going to likely blend into the pack, except, barring a change, more handicapped by virtue of not partnering up with travel aggregators like Google, Kayak, Travelocity and Expedia.

Their free baggage and lack of change fees might be enough to retain some customers, and I’m really curious to know what’s going to become of the large passenger policy once seats become assigned, and big people won’t be able to just lumber to the gate and assume an empty seat will be available next to theirs, but in the game of airline thrones, the most important thing is solely going to hinge on if as long as SWA can remain competitive with fares.

Regardless, I still lament over the days before SWA engulfed AirTran.  Not a travel day goes by where I don’t miss AirTran and the time where I could get sub-$200 RT fares to visit my family and eastern-based friends, and then cash in my credits to trips to Las Vegas or Seattle.  After the merger, all those routes have nearly doubled in cost, and despite my general positive opinion of their brand, I was not happy about it.

Things change, this is where we’re headed, and I hope SWA is ready to slide into the middle of the pack.  But as long as they don’t have to see any further videos and articles about their passengers being douchebag pricks on the internet, they probably are happy to take that deal in the long game.

I like to imagine phone calls between Kazuchika Okada and Shinsuke Nakamura

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few days ago, the wrestling internet made a classic big deal over the breaking revelation that the WWE’s Shinsuke Nakamura picked up NJPW-but working programs for-AEW Minoru Suzuki from the airport and hung out together.  OMG the scandal, one of them is definitely jumping ship, etc, etc.  Internet wrestling fans are special like that.

A few months ago, there was some buzz surrounding the free agency of Kazuchika Okada, as he was wrapping up his obligations in Japan, that seeing as how he didn’t re-sign with NJPW, it was a foregone conclusion that he was definitely coming to America, but the question really was, the WWE or AEW?  I mean, if I were a betting man, I’d have put a sizeable amount on AEW, but the thought of him going to the WWE was plausible enough to where many began to analyze the sudden push of Nakamura into a program against Cody Rhodes, as evidence of the willingness of the WWE to give Japanese guys high profile opportunities.

Regardless, Okada went to AEW, and Nakamura’s push came to about as sudden of a stop as it had started, but after watching the main event to AEW’s super television show aptly titled Blood and Guts, where Okada, who was previously regarded to be basically NJPW’s John Cena over the last 15 years, was relegated to this glorified hardcore brawl, where the man was undoubtedly out of his element, and performed as such too.

The same Okada, who basically had some of the greatest wrestling matches not just in modern history, but arguably of all-time, was hanging around inside double steel cages, trying to avoid being on camera as much as possible.  All around him were thumbtacks, steel chairs, ladders, and one of his most notable moments in the match was when Swerve Strickland put a staple in his middle finger, when he was merely just trying to flip the bird because he’s an evil heel and that’s what bad guys do.

Eventually, he would be “taken out” during a commercial break that didn’t even get JR’s Restaurant Quality Picture-in-Picture™ and was hiding for the remaining minutes of the shitshow, and it goes without saying that there’s no single part of me that doesn’t feel that AEW is wasting and squandering the talents of a guy like Kazuchika Okada (and Mercedes Mone but that’s a different story).

I like to imagine a scenario where after a debacle like this one, one random evening, Okada calls up Nakamura, assuming that they’re friends because they’re both Japanese, both professional wrestlers, and have a positive relationship built when they were both in NJPW.

Okada asks Shinsuke if he saw his match at Blood and Guts, and of course Nakamura didn’t, because he’s on the road and didn’t have a chance to see it.  Okada goes into mansplain mode about how intense it was, how into the marky AEW crowd was, and all the cool shit they got to do in the ring.  Meanwhile, Nakamura responds with an unimpressed mmhmm, while he describes how he had to lose to Logan Paul at a house show in Sheboygan, Wisconsin in the second match of the night, but at least he didn’t have to land on any thumbtacks or have his finger staple gunned.

They proceed to talk about their respective lives in their respective promotions, where they both wax poetic about how they were the literal kings of NJPW, and how they’re basically organizational filler in America.  But Okada gets defensive and talks about how he’s a champion, Nakamura rebuts that AEW/ROH has like 53 active championship belts.  Okada talks about how he’s featured on television as opposed to Nakamura, but Shinsuke says he’d rather not be on television than be portrayed like a clown when he was a god in Japan just four months ago.

And then Nakamura then goes on the offensive to talk about how even though he’s an afterthought right now, he still works a soft schedule, gets to travel internationally on the WWE’s dime, and gets to experience a lot of the world, all while not having to be put in uncomfortable clusterfucks and wrestle on thumbtacks and staples.

Okada responds with the likely reality that he makes way more money than Nakamura does, but then the older and wiser Shinsuke responds that they’ve both already made big fortunes in wrestling already, at what point does all these extra dollars even matter?

And with the Okada rage hangs up the phone, while Shinsuke Nakamura scoffs and laughs at the dead air suddenly at his ear.

This is the kind of bullshit that goes on through my head these days when I’m not in dad-mode, and this is probably why I can’t even begin to start making my life’s fortune on some stupendous side hustle that would undoubtedly take off to the moon if I could just get off my ass and stop brogging about professional wrestling fan fiction.