Month: September 2026

I can only fantasize about being Agent Kim

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I tend to steer clear of lots of K-Dramas, mostly on account of the fact that Koreans are notoriously long-winded (like me) and it shows in their television programming, because most seasons of Korean television are usually like 26 episodes, 95 minutes each or something that signifies an intimidatingly long time commitment, and as I’ve gotten older, the more I find merit in shows that are shorter in episode count as well as run-time cumulatively.

And if you do watch a K-Drama, they are in fact the crème of the crop when it comes to Asian media, but in most cases with Korean television, the storylines do tend to get a little convoluted at times, usually there are some red herring storylines that either don’t go anywhere, or are poorly inserted to deliberately misdirect the viewer, or they drag on for the sole purpose of creating ambiguous endings, as if they’re always leaving the door open for future seasons when (usually) one is enough.

But thanks to some clever reels I saw over social media outlets, I found myself sucked into watching 김부장 or Agent Kim: Reactivated on Netflix.  At the root of the fairly simple plot is the story of a dad who just wants to protect his daughter, and such a premise is all I really need to hear to be interested in it.

The kicker is, “Mr. Kim” is a former North Korean military agent with basically super soldier training and a ruthless killer instinct ingrained into him, and when his daughter goes missing, it isn’t really so much a police drama as much as it’s a triggered vigilante doing whatever it takes in order to pursue his child.  Although the genre of such a story can be categorized as thriller or crime, to parents like me, this is definitely in the realm of fantasy, as in I fantasize about having such skills, and the tenacity and opportunity to flex them onto criminals who would dare endanger my children.

Needless to say, I found the show to be entertaining and satisfying, even if I know my mom would immediately label this as 엉터리 테레비 or trash television.  It feels like Taken but in television form, and the star of the show 소지섭 looks like Korean Bob Saget, except he’s going around beating the ever living piss out of gangsters and anyone else who would dare stand in his way.  No obstacle or situation seems insurmountable, and the rate in which he defeats people feels like a speedrun, except in Korean television speeds, meaning ten episodes at 70+ minutes.

And true to Korean television standards, just when I thought the show had ended, seeing as how the general core plot of the show seemed to wrap up in seven episodes, after returning to the Netflix menu after watching episode 7, I was mortified to see that there were still three more episodes left.

Naturally, they were wholly unnecessary and honestly served to eliminate a position where the show could have easily milked it into a season 2, but in a way, I’m glad that they wrapped it up in ten, instead of did seven, and then make me wait another year for a second season of 7 moar convoluted episodes before getting to a nicely gift-wrapped ending.

But again, the appeal of the show is simple in the fact that it’s basically just a story about the lengths a dad will go through in order to protect his children, and that’s definitely something that resonates deep in my psyche, and gives me something to live vicariously through, watching dad pwn the shit out of all sorts of opps who cause danger and harm to his family.

WTF is WWE doing #312

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Turnabout is fair play, and I can be just as critical about the WWE as I can about AEW or anyone else when I think they’re doing something stupid and asinine questionable.

And the topic in question is the decision the E made to not air the Worlds Collide show that took place and was taped on September 26, and held it off until September 30.  The originally described rationale was that the E did not want to explicitly go head-to-head against AEW’s All Out show, which happened on the same night, also in the city of Chicago, and that they would save the airing of the show until the following Wednesday, so they could plop it down right on top of a similar time slot to AEW’s weekly Dynamite programming.

In doing so, it’s kind of like they symbolically threw in the towel at remotely even trying to compete with AEW on the 26th, and thought that they could use the content to muck with the ratings game on the 30th, but the issue I had was the fact that the internet has no capability of shutting the fuck up, and that it would be inevitable to make it from the 26th to the 30th, without some, if not all of the results of Worlds Collide being spoiled by then.

It also didn’t help that in the gap between taping and airing, was a live RAW episode, and whether they took it into consideration or not, they basically spoiled another Worlds Collide match when Roxanne Perez was featured on RAW, not carrying the AAA Reina de Reina’s Championship blet, which spoiled the fact that she did not defeat La Catalina, and anyone with a brain paying attention would know that when it airs on the 30th.

This, was extra salty for me, as I’ve grown quite high on Roxanne Perez and her match at Worlds Collide was one that I was really looking forward to watching.

One thing that nobody could have ever anticipated either, was the unfortunate and untimely sudden passing of Benjamin Satterley AKA Pac AKA Neville on the 27th, because everyone knew that the Dynamite on the 30th was going to immediately pivot into being a tribute show to Pac, and the optics are poor on the WWE to try and run counterprogramming to a tribute show, for a guy that was apparently very well liked, respected and cared for by performers all across the industry, regardless of who they were working for.

Naturally, the WWE didn’t budge, and they still plopped Worlds Collide on the 30th.  Despite how much I wanted to see it, preferably live, I didn’t watch it yet, because like many wrestling fans, I was upset by the passing of Benjamin Satterley, and I had tuned into AEW; a little weird to see the decisions to bring Bryan Danielson and Wardlow back on this specific night, but the Will Ospreay and Ricochet match was amazing, and it was a pretty good night of just pure wrestling and working, in the name of honoring the life of Pac.

But overall, poor form on the WWE and their gradually deteriorating soulless operations.  The choice to not run Worlds Collide live to me, seemed cowardly in not wanting to run in direct opposition to AEW, as well as disrespectful mostly to the AAA talents that were on the card, because they don’t get nearly the same exposure as all of the main roster and NXT talents do, and needlessly manipulating the airing of a show where they were going to get some larger billing, seems disrespectful and inconsiderate to their travel and effort.

I will watch the show when I get a chance, because I’m high on the AAA product, and anything they’re involved in is usually very fun and good quality, but massive egg on the E for handling this the way it was done.  Tf are you bean counting cocksuckers thinking?

Baseball is the best

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I’m a pretty casual fan these days that isn’t nearly in the trenches of the minutiae of the game like I once was, this turned out to be a pretty interesting final day of the MLB regular season, that I took more notice of a lot of concurrent storylines than I probably had at any other point in the season, probably over the last few too.

So, starting with the Braves, seeing as how they had clinched the NL East last week, this final week of the season was full of games where the outcomes were basically inconsequential, but in fitting Barves fashion, Atlanta had to go 2-4 and end the season with a loss, backing into the playoffs.  Inconsequential as these last games might have been, I’m a firm believer of momentum and routine, and seeing as how the team won 92 games by playing in a certain fashion, I never like the idea of changing the way they play the game and letting off the gas, when, especially in baseball, the team that gets hot in the playoffs usually is the one that wins it all, completely regardless of records, seeding and bracket positioning.

Frankly, I don’t like the Braves’ chances in the playoffs, seeing as how for most of the second half of the season, the offense has been pretty anemic, where the wins have been mostly on the arm of Chris Sale, blowout wins were sparse, and every victory felt like they were coming from behind, instead of putting opponents away early and cruising to any low-stress wins.

There were a handful of games today that I had hopes for the outcome, and almost systematically, nearly every single one of them went contrary to what I was hoping for:

  • Wanted Phillies to lose to Rays (Phillies won)
  • Wanted Diamondbacks to beat Padres (Dbacks lost)
  • Wanted Angels to lose to Mariners (they did)
  • Wanted Astros to lose to Athletics (Astros won)
  • Wanted Rangers to lose to Twins (they did)

Getting all five would’ve been a tall order, but two out of five still kind of stinks, and there were particular reasons where I was hoping for each of these outcomes.

With the Phillies and Diamondbacks outcomes the way they happened, means that the sixth and final playoff spot in the National League belongs to the Phillies, who will play the Braves in the Wild Card round, three games in Atlanta.

I don’t think there’s any team in baseball that I have a complex about more than the Phillies, because they’ve probably been the biggest thorn in the side to the Braves for as long as I’ve been a fan.  Philadelphia sports in general, it’s my belief that all Atlanta sports fans should have a similar complex about, seeing as how the Phillies and Eagles have tormented the Braves and Falcons for decades at this point, and it always seems like they’re the ones who send Atlanta home in the playoffs.

Historically, the Phillies are 3-0 against the Braves in the playoff series, having knocked them out in 1993, 2022 and 2023; and its worth mentioning the Phillies were the lower seed in the last two, and it really doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled them in the regular seasons, there’s just something about the playoffs where the Phillies rise up harder against the Braves than anyone else, before dropping like flies immediately after dispatching of the Braves.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that the Phillies have snuck into the playoffs, and even more disappointed that they matched up against the Braves.  I genuinely would have rather have seen the Cubs or Padres over the Phillies, and I don’t have a good feeling about this year either.

The Angels’ loss today meant that for the first time in franchise history, the Angels have lost 100 games, and is generally meaningless it is to me, I always like to see ironic historical marks, and seeing as how the Braves have never dropped 100 in my tenure as fan, I’m amused to see it happened to someone else.

Now the Astros and Rangers, the only reason why I cared about their games, was the fact that speaking of ironic history, 2026 would mark the first time in history where a division winner would be have a no better than .500 record, and few things seem as amusing as the idea of a baseball team marching into the playoffs with barely 80 wins, when the Brewers and Dodgers both have 100+.

If both the Astros and the Rangers lost today, they would have ended with identical 80-82 records, with the Astros winning the division based on a tiebreaker, and we’d be witness to the first-ever sub-.500 division winner.

Unfortunately, the Astros pulled out a W against the also woeful Oakland Athletics, and finish 81-81, a cool .500, breaking the previous mark of futility of the 2005 Padres and their 82-80 record.  I’m disappointed, because .500 is still .500 and isn’t as ironically entertaining as .494 and firmly under .500.

That being said, after the Braves get bounced by the Phillies, I think I’m going to have to root for the Astros to go all the way, because few things would be great in baseball than an 81-win team going all the way, before the whole league goes on strike, and the last World Series champion of this era being a shitty 81-win Houston Astros, whom everyone already hates their franchise because of the cheating scandal of 2017.

So with the Astros in, the American League playoff bracket is something that of a slow-adult dreamed up, where an 81-win Astros get the #3 seed by virtue of winning a pitiful AL West going up against an 83-win #6 seed White Sox, where the winner of series gets go play against an 85-win Guardians squad that actually won the AL Central.

Meanwhile, on the other branch of the bracket, a 93-win Yankees squad goes up against an 87-win Red Sox squad, where the winner gets to play a 97-win Rays squad, where if you’re paying attention, all of them are in the same division, and because there’s no re-seeding after the Wild Card round, the #1 seed in the AL has to play a stronger squad in the divisional round, and it’s guaranteed that at least one sub-90 win squad is going to be in the ALCS, and keep hopes for a World Series alive.

But let’s end this post about baseball on a high note, which was the emotional Detroit Tigers game, which was the final game of future Hall of Famer, Justin Verlander, the pride of Goochland (Virginia).  I always love when professional athletes go out on their own terms, and I’m happy for Verlander doing the same, instead of milking it longer in order to pursue 300 wins (retiring with 266).  It’s not like he has anything left to prove at this point otherwise, seeing as how he’s already got two World Series rings, three Cy Young Awards, an MVP, 3,500+ strikeouts, three no-hitters, and countless all-star selections.

He goes out in a beautiful game where he’s joined by his kids with his supermodel wife Kate Upton, and I think the best part about the game was in his final inning, where legendary-bad umpire, and also-in his final game ever, Laz Diaz completely capitalizes on the Pirates’ running out of ABS challenges, and makes some hilariously bad calls in order for Verlander to end his final outing with a strikeout.

It’s been a fun regular season, but as we all know, the playoffs are a completely different animal, so let’s close out the regular season with reminders of just how awesome baseball is still capable of being.

lol MARTA #620

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: MARTA “payroll error” results in janitor making $620,000 in overtime pay in April, not flagged until July; neither janitor or employee responsible for clerical error are with company, no funds have been returned

Chalk this story up as one of the most Atlanta stories there could possibly be.  A crime that should have no right succeeding, and perpetrators who will in most likely get away with it, enjoying the spoils of their effort, before the legal system drags on and on and on before any sort of comeuppance is achieved, to where nobody’s going to even remember much less give a shit about this story by the time anything happens.

Make no mistake, there’s in all likelihood no error at all that resulted in a MARTA custodian somehow getting $620,000 bones in overtime in April, because the reality is that most payroll systems are nearly completely automated, and it most definitely required some degree of manual manipulation to suddenly make this guy’s OT hourly wage go from like $7.75 an hour to $7,750.

It’s a two-person job and everyone knows it, considering the obvious result that both the person who made the ‘clerical error’ and the custodian who received $620,000 in OT wages, peaced the fuck out of the job, and probably the country, the second after the funds hit the bank.

I think the funniest thing is that the crime happened in April, wasn’t flagged until three months later in July, and it’s now practically October that everyone is now hearing about it.  Even though MARTA is pursuing legal action and should by all rights win whatever case they have against those who stole from them, it’s not going to change the fact that the crooks who robbed them are going to be living pretty until that day of reckoning comes, if it ever does.

It’s a microcosm of the state of the legal system, not just in Atlanta, but the country, where it seems that so often times, the legal system is so slow, inefficient, and full of loopholes and trash cans to tip over to slow down the chase, where crooks are emboldened and not at all afraid to commit crimes and flagrantly steal, because it just seems like the punishments don’t outweigh the benefits and luxuries of committing the crimes in the first place, and in the end, they still win out.

The only ones who really suffer are probably the people who rely on MARTA, because the agency will probably cut jobs or worse off, implement a fare hike, to make up for the $620k that they lost, service will suffer, MARTA becomes an even larger ironic joke, and Atlanta takes more flack for being a low-rent city with a completely inefficient and incompetent transit authority, and where criminals are playing the game on easy mode.

It’s times like these where the world needs vigilantes like Batman, who don’t operate under any rules or jurisdictions, and could probably go after, apprehend and turn in the two crooks to the authorities in like two seconds.  It’s not like they probably went all Milton from Office Space, and actually managed to get out of the country and are enjoying their stolen money from some tropical paradise.

But how many colleges will he get accepted into??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox5Atlanta: 14-year old Fulton County teen scores perfect 1600 on the SAT as a freshman in high school

Just when you think #TRYHARDSZN is over, we have #TRYHARDs still #TRYHARDing over in Fulton County to prove otherwise.  Because if you’re not #TRYHARDing all year round, would you even be a #TRYHARD at all?

Anyway, this is going to be an interesting subject come next #SZN, that is if his fate isn’t already sealed by now, because we have this 14-year old little Doogie prodigy already putting up credentials to dwarf and shame all #TRYHARDs come the 2027 #SZN, what with his perfect 1600 SAT score, and already farming up college-level courses at Harvard and Rice.  I don’t know the approximate number of high school credits required for graduation, but he’s already completed 14.5 while still just a freshman at a fancy applicant-only innovation academy.

The difference is that this #TRYHARD goes to school and presumably lives in the bougie part of town, and not on the hood-ass south end anywhere remotely close to Westlake High, the undisputed champion of farming #TRYHARDs to apply to 117+ schools por gratis and to see how many times they can get their name in the news for having students getting into 89+ of them.

It’ll be an interesting scenario to see how an Indian kid from the nice part of town with at least one ace credential will stack up against underprivileged teens from the hood who leverage quantity over quality, to see which lands in the better collegiate scenario.  It’ll probably be a tale of extremes duking it out, where on one side we have a whiz-kid prodigy who will not only have socio-economic factors working against him, but the obvious (South) Asian Curve to overcome, versus teenagers from the hood who have generations of systemic racism, an unspoken affirmative action and reparative intentions by colleges across the nation on their side.

It may be worth passively following to see where this Doogie ends up versus the top #TRYHARDs of the 2027 #SZN, or whenever he decides to start applying to colleges, because I think it’s going to be interesting on many different accounts.  Primarily because I’d wager that Doogie isn’t going to have his college application fees waived across the board, and it’ll be interesting to see where he ends up deciding to go, versus the top #TRYHARDs of his graduating class.

Oh, Atlanta #614

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: Atlanta-based Sumo Championship League (SCL) to begin debuting in October

So let’s see: Atlanta has an MLB team, NBA team, NFL team, and even an MLS team.  Scattered throughout the rest of Georgia are all four levels of minor league baseball affiliates of the Braves.  USA Soccer has chosen Fayetteville, Georgia as their headquarters.  There’s an affiliated minor league hockey team in Duluth, which is as close as Georgia is going to get to the NHL after two previously failed NHL squads that have left for Canada.  The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech athletics are both reputable athletic programs in most major sports, and even Georgia State, Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern are D-I programs.

Needless to say, there’s no shortage of athletic competition to imbibe in at any point of the year for anyone who wants to watch competitive sport.  So perhaps it might not be a bad idea to start considering using dollars in the state of Georgia for maybe anything that isn’t related to athletics, no?

What’s that you say?  What about sumo wrestling?  Georgia doesn’t have sumo wrestling?  I mean, why wouldn’t Georgia, United States have an association of a sport native to the country of Japan in it?  But what’s that?  It’s going to have sumo wrestling debuting in Georgia?  In October?  What say whaaatt??

And here we are.  Some new Sumo Championship League is about to embark, and it was founded by a dude who used to be a bigwig at WCW Turner Broadcasting, so it has some sturdy Atlanta ties, and leads to believe that the SCL could be considered Atlanta-based.

Because there appears to be a belief that there is a thirst for some real life sumo wrestling in North America.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect the sport, and the athletes that make up of it.  I don’t see a bunch of fat guys crashing into each other (like in futbol americano), I see athletes who just happen to have large mass, who play a human game of chess of trying to knock down their opponents or maneuver them out of a ring.  It takes intelligence, adaptability and actual skill in order to achieve victory, and I have seen some live sumo wrestling in my life.

It’s just that it just seems like a complete, nobody-asked-for-this kind of endeavor, where the league is supposedly valued at $25M, which means it has received about as much of that in funding, and it begs me to ask the question on how many other things in this world could $25M have better gone towards other than starting up a sumo league?

I digress though.  If the SCL starts running shows in Atlanta, preferably up where I could take my dad to some live events, it seems like something that would be interesting to check out, if the price is right.  Now if they start charging $65+ up for a completely unproven commodity from the onset, they’ve got to be diluting themselves, but if they play a smart game and offer up cheap, affordable entertainment until some worth is established, maybe I’ll go check out some actual sumo wrestling.  I’m always looking for interesting things to take my dad to go see, and perhaps we can both derive some entertainment out of welcoming some live sumo wrestling to the Metro, after all.

This was never a matter of if, but when

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Stanford busted for using AI-altered student photograph for advertising, most notably swapping out Hispanic male for black female

If I’ve never put it in writing before, I’m a firm opponent of AI.  I think it serves a purpose for doing monotonous tasks that can save people a lot of time and efficiency, but obviously this was never the objective of the companies and individuals who are hellbent on advancing it, and it’s astounding how many people who work on AI seem blind to the notion that they are expediting the extinction of jobs and careers for people all across the world.

Will we see AI become sentient and ultimately take over the world, enslaving or terminating the human race, a la The Matrix or Terminator?  Probably not in our lifetime, but as all those stories have predicted, it really does seem inevitable that machines will eventually see human behavior as truly redundant and expendable, seeing as how machines are devoid of emotion and well, humanity.

For the time being, AI is primarily being used (publicly) to “inadvertently” kill my line of work, in the creative field, as hundreds of thousands of companies, businesses and individuals are churning out gojiggabytes of AI-generated “artwork” from shitty restaurant menus, billboards and signage, as well as a trillion memes and bad video edits.

Genuinely, I feel that my line of work does have an expiration date, and I have experienced multiple instances at my own job, where colleagues and collaborators have leveraged AI to haphazardly try and create rogue content, and having to be gently reminded that it’s not okay… as long as products shown aren’t necessarily from competitors.  And the faster that AI advances and lazier the uneducated and unethical become, the sooner people like me will be out of a job, forcing me to probably go into the trades and improve my life exponentially.

But anyway, this was a highly dramatic cold open to a post where I wanted to write about Stanford University getting busted using AI to create graphics, namely altering a photograph, where a poor Hispanic kid was swapped out for a black girl, presumably so that Stanford could look more diverse in advertising.

There’s a lot of different angles to approach this one, but most of it circulates around the notion that Stanford, being in northern California, simply does not have any diversity, being in Silicon Valley, so they’ve gotten to the point where they’re leveraging AI to make it look like there is, instead of, actually allowing some black students attend their hallowed institution.

But on the other hand, I’m a firm believer of merit, and that the best students should attend schools, regardless of race or gender or any other categorization.  Sure, Stanford is probably racist as fuck I mean come on, just look at them, and have as flagrant of a black people scale as big as they probably have an Asian scale, so it’s hilarious to me that instead of going out and actually recruiting some actual living black students to attend their school, they’re just using AI to pretend like they have some.

Frankly, as the subject of this post implies, this was never an if it would happen situation, it was always a when would it happen, and we’d all be blind and deaf if we believed that this was the first time that this had occurred, but the fact that an institution as reputable as Stanford was the one busted doing it is what makes it news right now.

Honestly, my reaction was similar to the victim of the shitty AI swap, at first glance, it is funny, but when you sit down and really give it some thought, it really is just sad and pitiful and actually malicious, that they’re not only deleting the actual humanity from a photograph, but replacing it with something artificial, false and completely dishonest.  Let’s not even get into the cosmetic modifications to the people that were allowed to stay in the photo.

When the day is over, Stanford, for all their academic praise and reputation globally, is no different than any other shitheads on the planet who are completely okay with the global takeover of AI.  It just sucks for all the Billy Ramirezes of the world who draw the short straw in photos that need to be modified to force in some artificial diversity by dishonest companies who are too chickenshit to accept actual diversity into their holy confines.