Tag: observations

I would be all for sudden death baseball

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I came across this story about how the Frontier League (independent) is going to explore with an idea labeled as “sudden death” in games that exceed ten innings; presumably to eliminate the idea of long, drawn-out extra-inning games.  Usually, I’m pretty resistant to change, but as far as this idea is concerned, I absolutely love it, and would love to see it in action.

I’ve actually been to a Frontier League game.  There’s a team just outside of St. Louis, technically in Illinois, despite the fact that the town is just called East St. Louis.  My friend and I went to a Cardinals game in the afternoon, and we realized that we had the time to get across the bridge and catch a Gateway Grizzlies game.  It also didn’t hurt that Man v. Food labeled their ballpark’s nachos as the best nachos in baseball, which we were very intrigued at putting to the test.

The nachos were a bust and Adam Richman’s opinions are shit, but we did enjoy being out at a Frontier League game.  So knowing the level of talent and the fact that they’re not affiliated with MLB, the sudden death baseball experiment should be pretty interesting.

Long story short: games that exceed ten innings go into sudden death.  Home team chooses whether they want to hit or pitch.  If hitting, they start with a runner on third base.  They have three outs to bring that guy home by any means necessary.  If they don’t?  The team pitching automatically wins.  Game over.  No 11th, 12th, 16th or 18th innings.  Nobody has to worry about games ending at 1 am or beyond anymore.

And I am all about this idea.  Not that I mind extra-inning games, but there have also been plenty of times where extra-inning games end up feeling like a chore, and I wished it were over three hours ago, after the first three hours of the original nine innings.

But it opens the door to so much new strategy and scenarios for excitement, that I have to be optimistic about this.  It’s kind of got that college football overtime feeling to it, except the fact that there is no opportunity to match, it’s just an instantaneous decision.

Like, if a team has their best hitters coming up, they absolutely should decide to hit.  Conversely, if a team sniffs out the possibility of sudden death, they might choose to hold back their closer or general bullpen ace(s) in order to prepare to pitch.  Or a team that is put in the position to pitch switches pitchers every single batter in order to play the splits.

More likely than not, a team will probably opt to hit, because three shots to put the ball in play seems a little too favorable.  I almost think the rule should start with one out, instead of none, but I get that it should be “a full inning.”  But there’s still all sorts of holes in the idea, like what if the guy on third gets gunned down at the plate, but there aren’t three outs – does the sudden death resume with presumably the next guy on base, having to try and win hard mode from first?

Either way, I love the idea.  MLB will undoubtedly be watching, because even when they’re not in loose cahoots with Indy leagues, they’re more than happy to steal great ideas and implement them themselves.  And if it goes well in the Frontier League, than I’d expect to see it start popping up in MLB, even if it starts in the minor leagues first.

Peak America

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this story about how health care in America is so fucked up, that it creates a perfect scenario for billionaire Mark Cuban to swoop in and get to play hero to the country.  In short, Mark Cuban launched an internet pharmacy that offers more than 100 generic drugs at reasonable cost, which is a bigger deal than it might sound, because American pharmacists have been notorious for gauging the fuck out of the American people over the last decade or so.

Naturally, Cuban is being lauded with acclaim, in addition to people being refueled for their disdain for the pharmaceutical industry for being greedy and valuing profit over human lives.  The thing is, Cuban embarking on this endeavor is about as low-hanging fruit as they come; there are a number of billionaires, corporations, conglomerates or any other entities in the world that could have done this, a long time ago.  The fact that of all the random rich entities in there are, Mark Cuban is the guy that grasps the low bar, and is not only going to look like a modern saint, but make no mistake, he’s going to profit, massively.

I have no qualms with Mark Cuban, in fact I respect the guy tremendously, in spite of the fact that us pleebs are supposed to hate the wealthy.  He’s one of the guys that actually understands the need to give some shit away in order to make money, and such is the core strategy of how he basically transformed the Dallas Mavericks from perennial laughing stocks into eventual champions.

In fact, he’s basically doing the same thing all over again, but instead of basketball tickets, it’s common, necessary medicine.  Just because he’ll be selling generic medicine at a little over 15% over at-cost, he’s undoubtedly going to be raking in massive amounts of money on account of the likely million people who will all be shopping his online pharmacy; all while gaining their adulation at providing such a compassionate service.

It’s basic Wolf of Wall Street math here, sell cheap necessities to the lower classes, and there’s ridiculous amounts of money to be made.  And as much as I too think what Cuban is doing is a very good thing for the world, the sad reality is that he probably shouldn’t have been the party to have had the opportunity to do this; when it really should’ve been the responsibility of, fucking America, to do this for its own people instead.

But I guess without stories like this, America really wouldn’t be America.

I saw my first GCW show and it was pretty good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much as I like to pretend like I’m some wrestling mark hipster, and know every single indy wrestler out there, I’m not even close.  I don’t even know where half of AEW’s roster originated from, and when guys like Daniel Garcia or Wheeler Yuta show up, I have no fucking clue who they are.  I went to an indy show back in November and saw names like Effy and Marti Belle and had no idea who they were, much less aware that both were title holders in other promotions.

Honestly, up until the episode of Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring about Nick Gage, I had no idea what Game Changers Wrestling was.  And based on the episode, where Nick Gage basically repeatedly killed himself in all sorts of deathmatches, I frankly wasn’t enthralled with GCW, and came away with an impression that they were a promotion that was determined to one-up ECW in terms of violence.

But then after Zack Ryder was fired from the WWE, and Matt Cardona eventually showed up at GCW after a masterful troll job, impersonating Jon Moxley who had been bouncing anywhere and everywhere he wanted, I began to see GCW showing up on the general internet radar of professional wrestling, beyond the exposure they got on Dark Side.  Eventually, Cardona would dethrone Nick Gage as the promotion’s World title, and whether they want to admit it or not, it was off to the races for GCW.

Eventually, the actual Jon Moxley would really show up, and beat Cardona for their World title, which brings us to present time, where thanks to a lot of cross-promotion with talents from AEW, Impact, Ring of Honor and whomever else, GCW had drummed up enough exposure and attention to where a filthy casual like me was very intrigued and interested in their supposed major biggest show ever, The Wrld pay-per-view event.  The card looked intriguing, and I was genuinely interested, and excited to catch my first ever GCW show.

Continue reading “I saw my first GCW show and it was pretty good” →

What I feared might happen, happened

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sad.  One of my former reports from my old job texted me to let me know that they, and numerous other members of my old newsprint team from my old job were all being laid off.

This is something that I figured could eventually show up on the table, but seeing as how over the last six years I was there, I never saw, or heard of anywhere in the company that did any sort of laying off, I didn’t think that it would actually happen.

It’s funny, when I had planned on leaving the company, my ego and I had hoped that it would get a modicum of respect and acknowledgment.  I’m not saying I was ever the most important cog in the machine that was my team, but I did design the work process that kept us afloat throughout the transition into the Ford Pinto of software we were forced to use.  However, when I had announced my notice of resignation, we were already in the first week of a two-week notice from one of my production counterparts, and unbeknownst to me, my other production counterpart was a week away from announcing their two-week notice.

Suddenly, I was the Stephanie Tanner middle child of resignations, doomed to be unnoticed, and worse off, I begun feeling concerned that this power vacuum that was forming due to the departure of 3 out of 4 managers on the team was going to no longer put the team in a defensive mode until they could staff back up, but now put them at risk of being potentially liquidated, and the work outsourced.

Ever since the pandemic rose and my team specifically took some lumps throughout the last two years because the print medium isn’t as agile and adaptable as digital ones, there was concern throughout the team about the security of their jobs.  I had, honestly opined that I felt that everyone was safe, solely because of the ironic fact that we all had knowledge of the aforementioned Ford Pinto of graphic design software, so it’s not like any joe-schmoe could be hired off the street to do our jobs.  And for the last two years, in spite of how much of a pain in the ass it’s been, our team had navigated the bumpy waters of pandemic retail, and come out no worse for wear at the end of it.

But now, with the Great Resignation™ hitting our team specifically and creating such gaps in the team, I can’t say that I’m surprised to see that liquidation and outsourcing has begun.  The company as a whole clearly soured on the print medium, which was my impetus for starting to look for a new job, aside from the fact that I hated the fuck out of my boss, but none of it changed the fact that I still cared about my team and that all these talented designers all deserved better than they’ve been dealt.

I do feel a little bit of guilt that there is the possibility that my departure, along with the departure of the other managers made this happen, although I have no clue to whether or not this was always on the table in the first place regardless of if we were there or not.  But when the day is over, I still have to, and I did, put myself and my family above all else, and it turns out that I dodged an extremely close bullet.

It’s just that as an empathetic person, it kills me that people that I cared about are put in this unfortunate position.  The saving grace is that they still have nearly nine weeks notice, which gives them fairly sufficient time to begin looking for new jobs, and with the cards all out on the table, it’s not like anyone has to be discreet about it.  In fact, as long as they’re not insubordinate shitbags, all my old team that’s on the block doesn’t even really have to put up the front of being friendly or overly professional anymore, because the company is still going to rely on them to put out all the scheduled advertisements all the way up to Memorial Day.

And then they get a severance package, and fortunately the timing of it will still allow all of them to partake in the company’s semi-annual profit sharing bonuses which usually take place in March.

At this point, what I’m most curious about are the future statuses of other individuals on my old team, namely my old boss.  I don’t get the impression that they’re on the block like my old reports are, and I have this pessimistic suspicion that they probably didn’t fight very hard, nor are they remotely anything close to the type who would go down with the ship.  They have another channel under their umbrella, and I’ve long known that that one was their true passion, while my team was kind of the bastard they had to manage in order to have their role.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they in fact initiated this liquidation, because often said that their life would be peaches if they could get rid of newsprint, and could focus solely on catalog.  But these are things that I’ll never know, but the result of it all is still feeling terrible for a lot of talented designers who will soon be out of a job, and not help feeling a little bit guilty for helping push the boulder over the edge.  I don’t regret anything I’ve done in regards to seeking greener pastures before the shots were fired, but I’m still allowed to feel empathy for those I used to work with who were saddled by this unfortunate development.

I love what Matt Cardona is doing post-WWE

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I was ever a Zack Ryder fan.  The whole internet schtick, the fist pumps and self-aware but still over-the-top broeyness of his character, he was pretty much no better than Santino Marella, as far as caricatures of wrestlers they were.  I cringed when he had a US title run, and I winced even harder when he actually got a Wrestlemania Moment™ when he won the Intercontinental championship in a ladder match against way more worthy opponents.

When he was released by the company, I didn’t think anything of it, other than the fact that I figured he’d probably end up in AEW, because at the time everyone who was leaving the WWE whether it was a forced release or future endeavored, was usually bound for AEW at some point.

And as expected, he did show up in AEW, under his real name, Matt Cardona.  However, after a fairly uninspired program where he teamed up with Cody Rhodes, he was quietly gone.  Scuttlebutt said that he was only brought in for a temporary program, but for the most part was not #ALLELITE™

A few months later, Matt Cardona’s name came up again, as he apparently had a massively gruesome deathmatch in a fed that I’d just begun hearing about, GCW, since Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring had just done an episode on GCW godfather, Nick Gage.  And despite Gage’s cult-like popularity in the ultra-violent GCW, he had still done the job to Matt Cardona, and made him the GCW champion.

What was pretty astounding though, was how Cardona introduced himself to GCW, which was under a mask, and pretending to be Jon Moxley, which royally enraged the fans, and GCW fans are already maniacal enough in the first place, but Cardona manufactured a perfect heat bomb that got fans nuclear hot about his existence, and the number one rule of professional wrestling is to elicit a response at all, be it cheers or jeers.

But Cardona became the GCW champion, which I shrugged off, seeing as how GCW would probably rank as like the sixth or seventh noteworthy promotion in North America, so it really didn’t seem like much of a big deal.  However, I did take amusement of this new persona of his where he was apparently feeding off of the hate for Zack Ryder, fans like the ones of GCW were, and basically trolling the entire promotion by doing shit like declaring himself king of death matches, and switching their belt for an obnoxious John Cena-like spinner variant.

Eventually, he’d lose the GCW title to the actual Jon Moxley, who supposedly showed up to an event to watch it, but was somehow roped into performing and then going over as champion, which kind of disappointed me since I was beginning to curry favor with Matt Cardona.

But then he shows up in Impact weeks later, to get involved with a program with their champion, Moose, and the guy who used to be Big Cass in WWE.  Next thing you know, he’s in a world title program on Impact, even if he would eventually lose in a triple threat against Moose and Morrissey, but it was more of the same.  Fans someone have become conditioned to dislike Cardona, for what I’m guessing is because they all still see the obnoxious Zack Ryder character.

Somewhere along the way, Cardona also shows up at an NWA event, to jump their champion, Trevor Murdoch.  When I find out about this, I am salty, because this was actually an event that I had tickets to go to, since it was taped in Atlanta, but due to the rise of omicron, my tickets were cancelled and I didn’t get to go, but again, same story, unexpected appearance, jumps a world champion, gets nuclear heat from the crowd.

Now, I’m a big fan of what Matt Cardona is doing, and I don’t think there’s any wrestler out there that’s capitalizing on a career post-WWE than he is.  Sure, he touched AEW like most guys do, but when that didn’t work out, he didn’t quit and go get a job at Walmart like his old tag team partner did.  Instead he got extremely creative, and is low-key blazing an entertaining trail in lower promotions, but raising his stock all the same.  This is some Chris Jericho-like creativity in reinventing himself; he might not be making WWE money anymore, but he’s definitely in world title pictures in three different promotions, with nobody really being able to predict where else he’ll show up next.

Just a week ago, he was back in GCW, where he defeated Rhino; and because Rhino was the last ever ECW TV and World champion, Cardona declared himself the new ECW TV champion, and I have no fucking clue to where he procured the blet, but he still celebrated with it, all the same.

At this point, I’d lose my shit if Cardona shows up at a New Japan Pro Wrestling show, seeing as they’re currently touring North America right now.  Or maybe he’ll lay low and then show up at Ring of Honor in Dallas in April when they start their shit back up again.  Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t show up at Final Battle in December.  Hell, maybe he should wander down to Mexico and appear at a AAA event, and mix it up with their Mega Campion.

Nobody is embodying the potential for fun and excitement in this current wrestling atmosphere like Matt Cardona is.  The industry isn’t just the WWE and AEW, and their insufferable tribalistic fans.  There are so many other options out there, and with the sheer volume of talent that was cut loose from the WWE primarily, the indy scene is ripe with potential for all sorts of creative, fun and new possibilities, and there’s nobody capitalizing on all this potential than Cardona is.

I never really cared much for Zack Ryder, but I absolutely love what Matt Cardona is doing these days.  He’s trolling fans in promotions left and right, but staying relevant and at the tops of cards everywhere he goes.  And I hope he keeps it going and finds some real success doing it, because I think what he’s doing is awesome.

The subtle arrogance of unfriending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

To my knowledge, short of third-party plug-ins or software, it’s not easy to really know when the people you know on social media unfriends you.  Maybe if you don’t have a generally high number of online friends and a pretty good memory, one might be able to notice the lack of a name or three in their respective lists, but for the most part, it’s not something that’s pretty easy to do, at least in my estimation.

I like to think that I don’t have a tremendous number of online friends, but it still encroaches over 100 people.  That said, it’s still easy to not notice when some names might not be present anymore, which seems to really be the only tell of when you’ve been unfriended by others.

Recently, a friend of mine sent out a group invitation for their wedding.  I hold this person in very high regard, so I will most definitely be making the effort to go to the wedding, in spite of it being numerous states away and will require the logistical efforts that go along with parenting young children.

As we have a number of mutual friends, out of curiosity I clicked on the members tab to see if I could get some hints to the people I may be coming across at the eventual wedding.  As expected, I saw quite a number of familiar names and faces, and felt a modicum of excitement at the idea of finally getting to see some people after many years and pandemic-related reasons for being unable to connect for a while.

And then I noticed something: next to some of these names that I thought I was already friends with, were +Add Friend buttons.  Now unless I’m missing something here, that means to me that I had been unfriended by these particular people.

Obviously, if I’m expending the effort to brog about it, I am taking it probably more personally than I should be, but honestly?  It’s hard for someone like me not to, because in spite of distance, time, or general lack of maintenance, these are people that I still consider friendlies in life, and at the very least would enjoy knowing the feeling is mutual enough to warrant keeping as friends status on their fucking Facebook pages.

I know that I didn’t unfriend them, because I don’t ever unfriend people, save for some pretty extreme circumstances.  In fact, I remember the last time I unfriended someone, and I regret doing it because I felt that I was pressured to do it and didn’t really do it on my own accord, but the circumstances were pretty extreme.  But usually if my opinion on a Facebook friend sours, or I’m just tired of the shitposting I think they do, then I just perma-mute them, or snooze them for 30 days at a time and repeat it every month.

Just because I don’t always like the stuff they post doesn’t mean I don’t think of them as at least acquaintances, because everyone is different in person than their online behavior indicates.  Outright unfriending people, at least to me, there’s an air of, I no longer wish to care about you any further, and that is kind of a shitty sentiment to pass onto someone else.  Maybe I’m making a bigger deal about this than I should, but it’s definitely some food that my mind has been thinking on for a day.

There’s also something subtly arrogant about unfriendings.  Because I like to think I know the people who have unfriended me well enough to be able recollect instances in the past where they’ve made posts about their intentions or acts of doing unfriending sessions, and up until the cuts where I didn’t make it, I could be subconsciously pleased that I was thought enough of to remain alive on their lists.

Regardless, the act of unfriending either comes off arrogant and/or is examples of recency bias, because it makes me think the people doing them think highly enough of themselves and their number of internet friends to where surfing the news feed is such a chore that they need to cull down the numbers to better filter the shit they want to see, as opposed to the shit that comes from their supposed friends, regardless of if they really want to or not.  Or, I feel like I’m getting cut, and people they’ve never met, or people they hardly know, remain, because they need constant attention, and don’t need a silent lurker like me to occupy one of their precious 5,000 spots.

Anyway, that’s my word vomit on this particular topic.  The reality is that regardless of my apparent unceremonious cutting from these peoples’ internet lives, I still don’t wish them any ill will or hold any genuine animosity towards them.  This is the equivalent of silently busting their balls at their arrogance of thinking they’re so important that they can’t possibly have a pleeb like me associated with them.

The chances are high that I’ll run into some of these folks at the wedding, if the stars line up and most of the people in this group also make the trip.  We might very well sit at similar tables, share drinks, stories, reminisce and possibly be in pictures together.  It will in all likelihood be good times, but back on the internet we may as well remain strangers, as long as they’re too good to remain friends with me online.

A wrestling analogy I’m proud of

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’ve ever watched much Impact Wrestling in my lifetime, whether they were NWA-TNA, TNA, TNA-Impact, Global Force Wrestling, or whatever iteration the promotion ever was under the ownership of the Jarretts, Dixie Carter, or whomever.  The peak of my viewership of the product was when a distant acquaintance and former schoolmate of mine, Sonjay Dutt was a regular performer, and I was curious to see a guy I went to grade, middle and high school with, live out the dream he always had as long as I had known him, in being a professional wrestler.

But in this day and age when professional wrestling seems to be doing pretty well, with the WWE and AEW sitting comfortably on top of the industry, there are all sorts of tiers beneath  the top of the mountain, and if I had to make a pick, Impact Wrestling would probably be the #3 promotion in North America.  Followed by other promotions like the NWA, maybe Ring of Honor again one day, along with a litany of even smaller independent promotions.

Much is being made these days with all the talent that’s been liberated (read: fired) by the WWE, and how AEW is hoovering up many of the names as soon as their non-compete clauses expire.  Personally, I think AEW’s roster is bloating to unstable proportions, but they’ve yet to collapse under the weight of their talent and their payroll yet.

I saw the card for Impact’s Hard to Kill PPV, and thought that damn, that’s a pretty loaded card.  Numerous championship matches, and what I really like is how Ring of Honor champions are just kind of randomly showing up at other promotion’s shows, to defend ROH blets, and Jon Gresham only adds to the credibility of the card.  In a different point of my life, I’d literally drop what I was doing and hop on a flight to Dallas to try and watch this with my brother, that’s how decent of a show I think this has the potential to be.

AEW has been doing a lot of impressive stuff over the last few weeks, and I hear the chatter, but as I’ve made fairly clear that I just have a hard time caring about the things they’re doing.  In all fairness, I have a hard time caring of what the WWE is doing lately too, but the difference is that I still have Peacock access and can see their PPVs.But despite my general ambivalence towards Impact historically, I’m finding that I’m rooting for them in the midst of all these wrestling promotional battlegrounds.  And I made an analogy that made more and more sense the more I thought about it, and I have to say that I think it’s pretty accurate.

The WWE is obviously the Yankees; they have money, they have history, and they’re the biggest baddest franchise in the business.  AEW is the Dodgers, who are blending all sorts of new-school strategy and flinging obscene amounts of money out on the market to bring in top-tier talent to bolster their roster, even to excess.  But that makes a promotion like Impact, the Oakland A’s, a cash-strapped promotion that does well enough, but has to really maximize the value out of every asset they have and try and play smarter than the richer competition in order to survive.

And when it comes to sports fandom, who doesn’t appreciate the plucky underdogs, especially when going up against the big bad rich opposition?  Hoping for Impact to do well has no consequence or conflict to any allegiances if I had any, and when the day is over, the successes of other promotions outside of the WWE and AEW are better for the industry as a whole.

Whenever wrestlers are released from WWE, most of the time I’m usually like, man that guy/girl would be perfect for New Japan, or Impact, but just about everyone ends up in AEW, due to the money they’re flinging.  I don’t hide that I have these general ideas about promotions, and I think most big white oafs always stand a chance at being the next big bad foreign heel in NJPW, and if there’s one thing that Impact has always done well historically, is that they’ve always cultivated good women’s wrestling.  Even long before the WWE did, Impact doesn’t get enough credit for their contributions to women’s wrestling, and Hard to Kill has some pretty good women’s matches on deck that I most definitely wouldn’t take a piss break through.

Almost makes me think I should perhaps seek out some replicas of the Knockouts Tag Blets, so that my girls can be double champions.