Month: February 2026

Dad Brog (#162): Three over three

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m halfway tempted to change the title of my dad brogs to the above, but really the hope is that this is a one-time blow-off kind of rant, and that when the smoke clears dad brogs remain being about my kids and my journey through fatherhood, and not really any further about being a parent to an elderly Korean parent on top of it.

Regardless, three over three is pretty succinct in how I’m feeling these days, because I have three human beings in my care that over the age of three years old, and they’re basically all fucking kids.  Two of them being my actual kids, but the third being my dad, whom, like many Korean parents throughout history, has chosen to go down the path of being as inept as possible, as needlessly dependent as possible, and to require as much care and patience as an actual child needs.

I thought I was right on the money when I came up with the general basis of The Korean Story™ but one thing I was completely blind to was what life was going to be like when the parents actually do hit that feeble senior life, and it’s the responsibility of the children (me) to basically become the parent, all while trying to not inhibit progress when they (in)conveniently want to remain the parent and demand respect and authority without any warning, spontaneously.

But basically my dad has become my third child, much to my dismay, and over the span of the last 12+ months, it’s been my biggest challenge trying to be the adult in the room, and steer him into decisions that are my best attempt to be for his benefit; just like my actual children.

It also doesn’t help that conversing with him, I can understand about as much as I can my actual kids’ excited ramblings about Pokémon or whatever fandoms they fancy at the time, primarily on account of the worsening language barrier, and the rate in which he listens to me when I’m trying to tell him do so something is about as successful as with my kids, that’s leading me to feel this way.

But it’s at its worst when I’m with all three of them at the same time, and my kids want attention, and my dad wants to ramble on about something that’s not important but he’s pretending like the fate of the world rests on it, that I’m asking myself what my life really is right now, and I’m pondering just how bad my blood pressure must look at these specific junctures in time.

However, the difference between my kids and my dad is that they’re heading in opposite directions as far as their attitudes towards independence.  Whereas it’s a routine struggle to negotiate with my kids on what they think they can do versus what I know they’re not capable of, it’s a constant struggle with my dad to try and get him to do things that I know he can do once he learns how to, but he refuses to even fucking try because he’s assuming everything has passed him by and that an old dog cannot be taught new tricks.

I got him a television, a smart one, so that he could avoid having more than one remote control, because the presence of anything higher than one results in a system failure, and the television would collect dust, unused.  I set up the wifi, Netflix, and an app specific to Korean television, but trying to explain the concept of apps is like trying to explain quantum physics to an inanimate onion.  I’ve set things up so that turning on the television and going into the Korean television app would require three total key presses, had him write it down with drawings of the buttons, but after two days, I’ve learned that he’s hit system failure and hasn’t turned it on since the one time he tried and failed to get into the app.

I wouldn’t dare say that my dad is lacking in intelligence, but what he really is, has become fucking lazy and defeatist, and is making his unwillingness to learn my problem, and the problem of the scant everyone else in his life who has tried to help.

And let’s not get started with his iPhone, and it just makes me mad at the world for advancing into gradually worsening ageist times that completely ignore the existence of the elderly, who almost have no options other than smart phones, full of all sorts of features and functions that they not only need, but their presence makes the elderly go into system failure, and just give the fuck up on them, which doesn’t help that we’re in a modern age where not having a phone is tantamount to not having lungs.

Today, I went to visit my dad, and brought the girls with me, so we could do an activity that I intend on making a permanent standing monthly event, on top of any other visits that could happen throughout.  And as much as I love knowing that my kids can actually spend some time with their grandfather, and that my dad can actually spend some time with his grandchildren and actual blood relatives, much less human interaction, it was pretty high-stress.

Being the only adult in the room for hours on end gets tiring, and have my kids wanting to run around and touch and climb everything in sight, and then there’s my dad with shit for legs, needing a walker, always a fall risk, and there’s always a deficiency in coverage somewhere when trying to do the even most mundane things like get in the car, go into a restaurant, or any small task.

My dad hardly understands the girls’ speak, the girls don’t understand anything my dad says, we all love each other, but like so many cases in my life these days, I’m smack dab in the middle of being pulled in numerous directions, and I’m fried by the end of the visit.

Naturally, coming home, I get obliterated by two massive highway issues because Georgia is smart and loves to do all their road construction right in the heart of the weekend, and then I come home and my wife is pissed because I’ve been gone too long and even if she understands the circumstances, it’s me that the anger is taken out on, and I’m just like what the fuck, might as well blow my fucking brains out.

Shit like this is why I haven’t been so apt to buy into the concept of thinking or hoping that with a new year comes a fresh start, because I know all the shit going on in my life; it doesn’t matter what number is at the end of the year, because a lot of the things I’m going through are some long fucking games, and ain’t no resolutions or hustles going to change anything quickly short of winning the lottery and just buying off a whole shit load of the problems away.

It’s almost funny how it wasn’t long after getting my vasectomy that my dad decided to transform into the third child I wanted to avoid having by having a surgical procedure, but considering the angst and darkness that swirls through my mind when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed and overstimulated, it most certainly is fucking not.

Shitty Toy Alert for Parents #3: ReCreate sets from Lego

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the record, I adore Lego.  Loved them as a kid growing up, loved playing with them with my nephew while he was growing up, and I still love them now.  I have several of the Fast and Furious large sets, and I jumped all over the $375 Goonies pirate ship set that dropped upon hearing about it. 

Few things bring me joy than my kids developing an enjoyment of Lego as well, and it was one of the major themes of this past Christmas with most everyone gifting them numerous Lego sets, but now gradually graduating from Duplos into actual big kid Legos.  Even though they are more and more gravitating towards screen entertainment, good books and Legos still bring them away from them, and I’ve found myself on the carpet with my kids over the last few weeks and months, putting together various Disney Princess™ and Lego Friends™ sets.

As stocking stuffers for my kids, I got them each one of these Lego ReCreate sets, because I liked the premise of them, how they are some random parts, but with some themed idea cards, that is meant to challenge the builder to use their imagination and interpretation to make them come to life.

Little did I realize that these things are basically Lego’s extra parts scrap bin, sealed into plastic bags with vague, interpretive instructions and a fancy schmancy premise, packaged more or less to sell you their scraps.

Yes, I know they say random, but I didn’t realize that it would be random to the point where you’re getting a fuck ton of scrap pieces with none of them being more than a 1×4 brick, and a whole lot of loose parts, that when poured out onto a surface, looks 0% different than the spare parts that are left behind after putting together a 300+ piece set; I would know this very well, because after all the actual sets that my daughters and I had been putting together, I have a Ziploc bag full of all their loose parts, and it looks absolutely nothing different than what was inside the ReCreate boxes that each of my kids got.

In one regard, I have to credit the people at Lego for coming up with such an idea that probably fleeced way more parents than myself with nothing more than abstract suggestions, clean packaging and spare parts.  It would be like bread companies took stale crumbs out of the crumb catchers of toasters all across the world and repackaged them and sold them as artisan bread flakes or some shit like that.

But on the other hand, fuck Lego for this bullshit low-hanging fruit effort of selling people their leftover parts and calling it imagination play.  Shit cost like $10 a box, and contained maybe 69¢ worth of actual Lego pieces. 

I kind of really fucking hate Nike right now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first heard about the special edition Kirkland x Nike collaboration Dunks, my knee-jerk reaction was along the lines of, lol look at these ultimate dad shoes, followed immediately by, I want them, because I’m a fan of Dunks in general given their visual proximity to Jordan 1’s which are still in my opinion the pinnacle of sneakers in history.

Originally, they were slated to have been released “Holiday 2025,” is what sneaker news cited, and I remember thinking that there couldn’t be a more perfect thing to redeem the $180~ cashback certificate I had been sitting on all through 2025.  That is, if I could even get a fighting chance to get my hands on a pair, because according to sneakerhead culture, these were picking up heat at potentially being the most demanded shoe in history, depending on whom you asked, but the point remained that the demand for these was going to be really high, and therefore, difficult to get.

I was hoping that my one saving grace was that being a Costco Executive member, the early hour perk could be my only chance at being able to get a shot at these.  But as Holiday 2025 approached, came, and then went, without there being any news of these moving forward, it became apparent and then confirmed that the Kirkland Dunks were a no-go, and that there was no clue to when they were going to drop, if they ever were.

And then of course, without any warning, they suddenly dropped, but in like, seven Costcos in the nation, most of them being on the west coast.  Naturally, once word got around, they were all gone, and are already up on resale sites for 3-4x the MSRP of $134.  Of course, Atlanta was not included in this initial drop, but scuttlebutt left it vague enough that these could potentially start rolling out in other Costcos across the nation, and my hope that Atlanta being a large enough market to be one of these supposed future drop locations could be there began rising again.

Over the span of the last week, I’d actually been checking the Costco not too far from my office right at 9 am on a daily basis, which might actually be the closest one to City of Atlanta proper, hoping to be lucky enough to luck into one of these purported “shock drops” which is a term I’m beginning to loathe considering the ambiguous and unpredictable chance that I’d even get to have a fighting chance at acquiring the ultimate dad shoes, and despite the fact that I still want a pair, underneath it all, I’m really fucking hating Nike as a company for these bullshit tactics, obviously deliberately done for absolutely no other reason than to create buzz, demand and all sorts of other intangible bullshit reasons that would be completely useless in a post-apocalyptic world once the zombie virus ravages humanity.

It’s frustrating, because they’re oft-called dad shoes, but any dad in my circumstances has almost no chance at getting them.  I’d frankly pay a higher MSRP if there was a chance that I could lock in a pair, or there were at least some concrete fucking information on when these would be available and I could have a fighting chance, but it’s the ambiguity and lack of information and transparency that’s been the killer of this whole debacle.

But all the same, I still want them.  And the thing is, it’s not even really so much that I want them as dad shoes that I can make beaters, these things have gotten to the point of where if I were to successfully nab a pair, I’m not even sure I’d even wear them given their increasing status as some kind of rare loot drop.  But I just want to feel a win, at succeeding at some small lottery type of victory, because my life has been pretty devoid of those over the last few years, and I think it would do my personal morale some good to feel special and lucky in any manner that doesn’t come from my children.

On that same token, on the very high likelihood that I do not succeed, it’s just going to make me really more resentful towards Nike as a company, which won’t necessarily cause me to full boycott, seeing as how I have a few pairs of J’s that I still enjoy, but still curse their existence whenever the topic of sneakers comes into play, although I wouldn’t rule out purchasing future product if they fit my fancy.