Tag: observations

Good intentions, still kind of racist

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I saw this photograph of the Atlanta Falcons’ placekicker Koo Younghoe posing up with new Braves’ scrap-bin pickup Kim Ha-Seong where they did/were coerced into a jersey swap, my first reaction was that of a wince.

I understand what was going on, and I imagine both Koo and Kim were smart enough to just go with it for the sake of whitey and the rest of America; and as the title of this post says, I think most Koreans would probably get that the intentions of this obviously orchestrated connection were good, it still gives off a sense of ignorant microaggression, in my personal opinion.

It’s like there’s absolutely no chance that Koo Younghoe was planned in advance to happen to be at ScumTrust Truist Park on this particular day, even if the NFL season was right on the precipice of beginning.  If the Braves really wanted to tie into the start of the Falcons’ season, undoubtedly they would’ve gone after Michael Penix or any of their more popular skill position players, and not the placekicker, no matter how talented and generally likeable that Koo actually is. 

The choice to invite Koo to the ballpark stinks of white people exhibitionism, like when white people are trying to integrate a black person, gay person, or any other individual who classifies as not-straight white people, they go out of their way to dig out any other member of said demographic to help introduce them into the collective.  And I’m going to give benefit of the doubt that both Koo and Kim were aware of what was going on, but like I said, they’re probably smart enough to just go with it, as not to jeopardize their own careers by calling out bullshit when they see it.

I’d wager that Koo and Kim were amenable to each other during this forced interaction, and maybe they did become quick acquaintances from the connection.  Koo probably reinforced the likely things the white people on the Braves told Kim about life in Atlanta, about how Koreans are plentiful here, mostly the students around Georgia Tech, as well as Gwinnett County as a whole, and probably some recommendations on where to get some decent Korean food should Kim be jonesing for the flavors of the motherland.

But the thing is, Kim was born and raised in Korea, played ball in the KBO, and came to America barely five years ago.  Koo was born in Korea, but immigrated to America when he was 12; he went to high school, college and embarked on his NFL career all in America, and in spite of his origin, man has had plenty of time to more or less become a true American in terms of personality and quality of life. 

They really couldn’t be more different beyond their nationality of origin and the fact that they’re both professional athletes.  But that seemed to be good enough for the Braves to go out and invite Koo over to the ballpark to meet up with Kim, because, they’re both Korean, they probably already know each other, and their grandfathers probably had to have served together in the Korean War or some other bullshit assumption.

If the Braves were actually smart, they’d basically have just pointed Kim Ha-Seong straight to Jurickson Profar, since they were already familiar with each other, having been teammates on the Padres.  And they were tight enough to where they referred to themselves as Rush Hour, even as horribly racist as that name would be for a Korean and a black-skinned Venezuelan to compare themselves to Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, it’s the kind of unity that only comes from actual friendships.

I mean, maybe they did, and they’d already reunited, but they still wanted to introduce Kim to another Korean Atlanta professional athlete, just to show him that more of you chinks are here playing professional sports here after all.

Either way, as well-intentioned as the whole thing was, I’mma just go ahead and declare the thing, racist.  Not necessarily a malicious racist, but still racist all the same.

They wouldn’t do this with a new Dominican pickup, or a black pickup.  But seeing as how Kim is the first Korean Braves player since Jung Bong, they may as well be back to square one with interacting with Korean culture.  I definitely hope Kim stays, because I’ve been following his journey since he posted out of the KBO and made his way to MLB where he was absolutely excellent in his first few years with the Padres, and I genuinely feel the Braves got an absolute steal of a gem in their typical modus operandi of picking through other teams’ scraps, and I think both the Padres and the Rays gave up on him too preemptively, mostly on account of typical Korean disrespect, but I’m hoping he finds success in Atlanta and the Braves can actually have a Korean player that hangs around for more than a split second.

Hopefully, microaggressions like forcing Koreans to interact don’t shy his opinion too much, and he forces Braves Country to realize who the fuck he is, and is a part of the hopeful 2026 re-do of this cesspool of a 2025 season.

Karate Kid: Legends – nobody asked for this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While coming home from a trip, I negligently forgot to bring my iPad which serves as absolutely nothing but a glorified Kindle, and I didn’t want to burn out my phone’s battery utilizing the shitty plane wifi.  However, I did remember that I had a set of wired headphones in my backpack, so I decided to actually capitalize on the in-flight entertainment and watch a movie to help chew up the flight time.

I ultimately landed on Karate Kid: Legends, because it aligned pretty well with my flight time, and this was the perfect class of film that is best seen on an airplane where I’m a captive audience, and I wouldn’t really want to watch this on my own time at home.  Despite the fact that I’m a big fan of the Karate Kid franchise in general, just about everything about this film gave me a feeling that it probably wasn’t going to be great, and as an airplane flick seemed like the most fitting place to watch it.

And almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the film was pretty much everything I thought it would be, this really mediocre ball of mediocrity that just barely did the absolute bare minimum of keeping my attention while feebly re-telling the tale of the Karate Kid for the umpteenth time to try and cater to another generation in spite of the fact that older iterations of the story do it just fine as long as modern viewers can get over their biases of things that appear older than them.

Like, the title of this post was exactly what I felt after watching Legends.  Nobody asked for this film to be made, and if anything at all, this does a massive disservice to the Karate Kid franchise as a whole, especially after Cobra Kai had built up so much equity after it’s wildly popular run.

I get that following Cobra Kai is an extremely unenviable position to be in, but there was always the option to just not make anything at all, at least for a little while, so that the mood of success and victory from CK could hang around for a little bit, before releasing something to re-ignite the fanbase.  But not only was Legends made completely unnecessarily, it was dropped in a manner of time that was frankly more detrimental to the KK universe than it would be beneficial.

Worst of all, it was just a severely mediocre story, even if it was mostly just a regurgitation of the original concept.  The general linear path of a KK re-telling was entirely there; protagonist moves to a new place, meets girl, gets beat up by local martial arts practitioner, trains up, topples adversary in a tournament, gains respect.  But the side quest of Joshua Jackson’s character being the former boxer who runs a pizza joint who borrowed money from the wrong people seemed wholly unnecessary and seemingly could have been completely cut without it really impacting the story was weird to me. 

And then of course when Jackie Chan comes to America to guide his former pupil, it was a bit cringeworthy to how forced and obvious it would be that shocker, he just so happened to know Mr. Miyagi too and naturally they were of course friends in a life long ago, which then loops in Daniel LaRusso, thus tying together the original series to Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu Kid, in the lowest of low efforts of connecting the series all together.

All while leveraging the set that was obviously put together on Netflix’s dime for Cobra Kai, which is probably the only justifiable reason to have released this as soon as they did, so that they could utilize existing sets instead of having to rebuild any shit, years later.

Worst of all, for a film called “Karate Kid” the action in the flick was pretty disappointing.  The main kid was a competent kung fu practitioner, but one bad scuffle and he basically abandons it for shitty Miyagi-Do style karate, before hitting paydirt when he blends the two styles together.  But fight sequences were pretty minimal, and for those who want to actually see some martial arts action, it’s massively underwhelming, with the tournament being 3-4 randos in weird alleyways, basketball courts and renovated bodegas before getting to his last boss which is on a rooftop like the last boss of the original Twisted Metal.

The point remains, this was a film that didn’t need to ever exist, but still happened anyway, which to me is the ultimate sign of a cash grab.  And fewer things seem to support that accusation than the absolutely lackluster performances from all performers in the film, from Jackie, to Macchio, even to Joshua Jackson and even Ming-Na Wen, whom seems to be the actress with the golden touch at how she’s somehow always able to get her finger into every notable franchise throughout her entire career.

This is where I say I’m glad that I watched this on an airplane, because I’d be really disappointed if I had seen this out in the real world, where I might have had a thousand other better things that I could’ve done with those 90 minutes.  But frankly, I still think I pulled the trigger on picking this one a little too preemptively, without at least seeing what other things I could’ve watched on Delta in-flight alternatively, but at least I got a little inspiration to make a post about it.

I would like to have a DragonZord tail too pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently this is news from six years ago which goes to show just how out of touch I can get with the rest of the world, but supposedly Japan has developed robotic tails for the elderly to equip in order to help them with balance.  For whatever reason, this just started popping up in my socials recently, leading me to get that spark of inspiration because when I saw the, what I’m guessing were AI-generated images, all I could think of was how much they looked like DragonZord’s tail from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

And how I too would really like to have a DragonZord tail too; not just for something to help me maintain my own balance, but the obvious desire to be able to rear back and whip the sparks out of any motherfuckers who cross me, or try to take over the Earth on my watch.

I mean, anyone who’s ever watched as much Power Rangers as I did probably knows that despite how cool it looked or the idea of the DragonZord tail whip is, the fact of the matter is that it was really often times portrayed as an extremely ineffective attack.  It’s like short of the debut of DragonZord, where it would whip the shit out of Tyrannosaurus or MegaZord when it was being controlled by Evil Tommy, once on the side of good, DragonZord and its tail whip were nerfed into oblivion.  Either Goldar or bad guy of the day would duck it easily, or they would just tank the hit for no damage; and so often times was the case, an opp would just grab the tail and use it to pick up DragonZord and swing it into a nearby building or mountain range.

But I don’t care, if a DragonZord tail were made available to the people, I for one would still like to have one.  I’m sure as I continue to age, my balance will worsen, as I’m seeing is the case with my own dad, and it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to get ahead of the degradation and go ahead and start equipping my own DragonZord tail.  Being able to whip motherfuckers with it would only be a bonus, and if it would be possible to get a drill-tip upgrade like DragonZord, I think it goes without saying that I’d have to have it, because you just never know when you really could use the ability to drill a hole into something, in a clean fashion, and not have to resort to some makeshift spike or some unsymmetrical blade in order to do so.

Anyway, for all the nonsensical and useless shit Japan makes to solve even the most first world of first world problem minutiae, I will concede that creating DragonZord tails definitely sounds like a real W of an invention, and I would very much like to have one pls.

If this man is 12, then I’m 35

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AP: Taiwan wins the Little League World Series, riding the arm of their 5’8 wunder pitcher, who throws 82 mph

Being the consummate sports fan, news of the Little League World Series always pops up for me on whatever feeds peruse on the regular.  I was cognizant of the fact that Taiwan was in the tournament, and I had heard that they had an alleged 12-year old who was 5’8 and was hurling fireballs at 82 mph, which is the MLB equivalent of being able to throw around 107 mph, and my first thought when I heard about this kid was, a Danny Almonte.

Frankly, the Little League World Series is no stranger to parents who lie about their kids’ ages to get them in for whatever selfish reasons, but Danny Almonte was one of the most famous cases, since he was actually 14 years old, throwing 80 mph, leading his team from the Bronx deep into the tournament.  He was eventually found out, and unfortunately became the poster child for age cheating, despite the fact that it was his parents and his team that orchestrated the whole ruse.

Anyway, when I saw a picture of Taiwan’s flamethrower, my red flat went up immediately – there’s no way this kid is 12 years old.  The little man has the pizza face of that of a 15-16 year old, and at 5’8 is nearly a full head taller than most of his teammates and opposition.  And I feel like the Taiwanese were banking on the fact that people in the west can’t tell Asians apart much less be able to deduce age based on appearance, and snuck him into the tournament with the added cushion of racial sensitivity.

But yeah, there’s no way this man is 12 years old.  As the title of this post says, if he’s really 12 years old, then I’m 35 years old, it’s that egregious of a claim.  Obviously it was pretty easy for Taiwan to win the tournament, when they’re trotting out a grown-ass man to play against actual children, and it sucks for all these kids who get obliterated by a ringer, who might then start to give up on baseball and get all jaded from the experience.

All I’m saying is that if it emerges at a later date that this kid turned out to obviously not be 12 years old, don’t be surprised.  I’d like to make the joke about how you heard it here first, but one I don’t have any readers, and two I know that I’m far from the first person to be making this claim. 

#GGLLWS

I guess we know who’s vying to be the next Spirit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Some friends and I were bullshitting on the topic of how Spirit Airlines is seemingly knocking at death’s door, about how if and when Spirit goes under, who takes their place in the airline pecking order, as the new budget airline that will absorb the lion’s share of ridicule and be the butt of all airline travel jokes?  Surely, one would emerge, seeing as how that’s just the natural order of nature, that if the weakest link of any category were to be cut off and killed, that someone would inevitably become the next in line.

The obvious choice would be Frontier, which is basically just Spirit Airlines but branded in green, as far as being a budget airline that lives on nickel and diming the fuck out of their customers, but for those who play it smart, a fairly serviceable option to get from point A to B.  And as someone who has flown both airlines on multiple occasions before, they really are pretty one and the same, and it would stand to believe that when Spirit goes under, those who already didn’t think Frontier was the ass-end of the airline industry, might not have any choice in the matter.

However, a surprising* contender appears to be emerging, as far as being a strong candidate to be the next Spirit, and that would be the once-reputable, once-universally beloved, once-proclaiming to love their customers, Southwest Airlines.

*or not, given the general direction of the company over the span of the last two years

Over the span of the last 12+ months, Southwest has made a tremendous amount of operational changes, with almost none of them being remotely beneficial to consumers.  First, it was them ceasing the whole open seating policy they had, which, to some was welcome, but to others, a sign of conformity and how they were taking one step closer to becoming another United or American or any other middling airline.  Then, in a move that definitely rose the ire of travelers, was the implementation of baggage fees, when for years prior, they boasted how bags flew free. 

And just over the last few days alone, Southwest has continued moving in conceivably the wrong direction, by announcing a large slew of route cuts, that will adversely affect lots of travelers from having direct options, and even had the audacity to try to spin that layovers were opportunities to see different parts of the country.  For as long as it took them to get their hooks into Atlanta, it looks like they’re already trying to reduce, with supposedly over 50% fewer flights this time next year, departing from ATL.

But one new development that is sure to draw the wrath of the internet as well as many around the country is their redefining of the large passenger policy, which was previously that large passengers could purchase a single seat, and get a second seat por gratis, if the flight could accommodate it, which was polarizingly applauded by many as a firm stance of allyship of inclusion of people of all body shapes and sizes.  Under their new policy, large passengers will have to preemptively purchase two seats if they know they will need them, and refunds of the second seat would be taken into consideration but not guaranteed, presumably on a case-by-case basis.

The latter is still probably better than what most other airlines offer, but it doesn’t take a genius to anticipate that the wrath of the internet is just going to see this as a sign of Southwest hates fat people, and when perception becomes reality, they become just like all the other airlines in the end.

The point is, Southwest is seemingly giving no more fucks about customers, contrary to the general brand reputation of theirs over the last two decades prior.  They’ve made it crystal clear that they are trying to profit in a competitive market, which is white people speak for, we know we’d probably be fine operating like we had been over the last half century, but we want to make more money now, so we’re going to say fuck the people and just do what everyone else is doing in order to achieve that.

I mean ultimately, that is the goal of every business in the world, to make money, but there are ways to do it and keep integrity and respect of the people intact, but that of course, often comes at a cost in itself, and when a bunch of old white guys run all these corporations, integrity and respect quickly fall to the wayside in pursuit of those extra nickels and dimes.

But it is funny how rapidly Southwest is selling their soul in order to go from successful company to asshole-rich successful company.  A part of me begins to wonder if Southwest isn’t deliberately tanking their company in one of those strange-but-typical modus operandi of businesses slashing expenses in a massive manner through liquidation and layoffs, in anticipation of a company sale or merger, and that Southwest is somewhere in a process of selling the company or getting absorbed by another airline.

And if so, a little more to be poured out for the airline industry, because within the guts of Southwest Airlines exists the remnants of AirTran, the budget airline that did succeed, and that I flew the shit out of, because they accomplished absolutely everything I needed out of an airline at reasonable costs.  Spirit and Frontier never could accomplish the things AirTran did, and AirTran did so well, they got assimilated into Southwest, who like Microsoft or Adobe basically did in so in order to kill a competitor.

Regardless of what happens to Southwest’s business in the future, if there was ever a bigger red flag of how they could become the next Spirit, look no further than the terminal incident out of Orlando, where a Southwest passenger went ballistic, and assaulted a terminal worker, as well as smashed up some monitors.  It’s funny because if this were actually Spirit, the lady would have been tazed and arrested within moments of the first aggression, but it’s like Southwest still has a lot to learn about unruly passengers, and she went unchecked for a while before presumably getting dealt with long after the cameras stopped rolling.

But if Southwest continues down this downward spiral, anticipate way more of this bullshit, and their gates will become the future places to meander to when you have a long wait before your flight after Spirit is gone, with hopes that you might see a street fight or a massive hot mess passenger meltdown.

Dad Brog (#154): It kills me to see kids practicing shooter lockdown drills

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I remember watching this episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America, and getting a good chuckle out of the clowning on America’s obsession with firearms to the point where we should start arming our children as early as possible.  But mostly I always love how no matter how much people in Washington have been aware of Sacha Baron Cohen, known bureaucrats still keep falling into his traps of showing up on his shows and conducting rigged interviews, seemingly somehow oblivious to the fact that they are being made fun of for being, well, white guys.

The other night I was looking through some of the photos that #2’s pre-K posts to a private Facebook group for the parents, and there was a picture of the class huddled in a corner of the room, head down, knees up, tucked as tightly as they could.  All families know that the school does conduct routine fire, safety and lockdown drills, but this was the first time that I’ve actually seen any photo evidence of what was obviously the active shooter lockdown drill, and let me tell you how much it kills my soul to see a bunch of 4-5 year olds having to practice defending their lives.

In one hand, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and to have a modicum of idea of what to do in the event that such a scenario were to come to fruition, but in the other hand, it’s depressing and sad to think that kids have to practice this in the first place, because guns are more available than Nintendo Switch 2’s, and school shootings have now achieved a frequency in which it’s long past being not an if, but when, the next one is going to occur.

Regardless, it all amounts to all schools, of children of all ages, now having to spend a chunk of time periodically simulating what they would do in the event of a real active shooter situation, as if, if one were ever to occur, most people wouldn’t just flat out panic and fall back onto running and hiding as best to protect themselves above anyone else over some protocol.

And seeing a photo of #2’s class all huddled in a corner, as far away from the windows as they can be, set me off.  They’re a bunch of pre-K kids aged 4-5 – yes, jokes aside about how they can be obnoxious brats at times, it would take the sickest of fucks to be going after kids this young and still mostly so innocent to the world.

It just fills me with piss and bile at society that this is even a thing and being a parent it’s a hopeless feeling of having no real power beyond just hoping that your kids don’t ever become the unlucky winners any of the next school shooting sweepstakes.

Cracker Barrel’s rebrand: the question stands

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

USA Today: Cracker Barrel unveils a new logo; the internet is unsurprisingly not impressed

When the day is over, I have no skin in the game of the existence of Cracker Barrel.  Full disclosure, I haven’t been to a Cracker Barrel since I lived on the south side of the city, when they opened a brand new Cracker Barrel not far (relatively) from my old place, and upon going there, all the big wigs and managers and trainers were there, so everyone was on their best behavior and it was actually a decent experience.

But no matter if people hate the new logo or people love it, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it one way or the other, and can only really share opinions and thoughts based on the creative direction of it, as well as relish in some of the less tasteful jokes that the internet is particularly known for generating about anything and everything in existence.

But my first blush impression and my knee-jerk reaction upon seeing the new Cracker Barrel logo was that of unsurprise at the fact that they removed both the man and the barrel, and have homogenized it down to an uninspired shape.  However, I am surprised at the fact that they did manage to keep the general wordmark of the text mostly intact, instead of just typing out “cracker barrel” in a variation of Helvetica Neue or Myriad, like so many companies inevitably do, as if they’re determined to not pay anyone for a font, and are completely at peace with just writing it out in system default fonts.

So it’s kind of a push in the sense that they did murder all the character and uniqueness of the logo by removing both the man and the barrel, as well as the unsymmetrical shape in which the wordmark was housed, but still managed to preserve some sense of character, familiarity and recognition by at least keeping the wordmark mostly the same.

A hexagon with rounded corners isn’t a vanilla rhombus or oval like so many brands have boiled down to in this modern business space, and at least they appear to have kept their primary color intact; however, it appears they’ve cheapened up by swapping out their brown for a black, thus making future production simplified in that they technically only need one additional color outside of black and white.

Honestly, the container looks a little too large for the wordmark, and in the event like creating signage and advertising materials, the general proportion of it compared to the Cracker Barrel name is might end up looking comical, or lead to some comically large signs in order to compensate.

But like I said, when the day is over, I do not care one iota about this rebrand, beyond the obvious joke that was made in the shown screen grab – why DID they get rid of both the cracker and the barrel??  Considering the brand is kind of synonymous for being a white people eatery, not entirely sure why they’d go to the lengths of alienating them by removing paw-paw from the logo, but whatever.  As far a corporate rebrands go, this one is far from the worst, and it’s not going to suddenly make me want to deal with the shitty parking situations enough to want to actually go to a Cracker Barrel again any time soon.