I feel bad for the B-Team

June 3, 2018August 7, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If there’s ever one thing I’ve observed about the WWE throughout the decades, is that every now and then, you can tell when there’s a character or character(s) where it’s extraordinarily obvious that the Creative department has absolutely no ideas for. However, the performers themselves are either competent in the ring and/or are personalities that are genuinely decent, therefore they are desired to be kept on television and therefore employed, as opposed to being completely taken off of TV in general and allowed to rot in obscurity.

More notable and recent examples of this would be early incarnations of The New Day, Damien Sandow and Rusev, whom were all given pretty lame duck seeds for characters, but were all pretty decent performers or supposed good locker room guys, hence the desire to keep them at all, even if their personas were lacking in effort.

The thing is, the wrestling smark culture is smarter than ever with the advent of the internet and the ability to know what’s going on the vast majority of the time, or at least be able to talk it out with other wrestling fans and come to conclusions that differed from the days when communication wasn’t quite so simple. Subsequently, whenever the smarks have been able to identify when a wrestler or wrestlers were getting the shaft by Creative, these are precisely the wrestlers that they begin to get behind, in a defiant, contrarian manner to kind of play a chicken and egg game with the industry to put the test towards the claim that the fans make the stars and not the other way around where stars make fans.

That said, all three of my examples are cases where almost by sheer will and a relentless refusal to give up with seeds they’re sowing, got over with the fans, and to gargantuan amounts. The New Day singlehandedly resurrected tag team wrestling in the WWE in an age where countless names in the industry have stated the company’s secondary opinion of it, and have become probably the most lucrative merchandising property in the company. Damien Sandow became Damien Mizdow, the super-over stunt-double for The Miz, and probably spun more gold out of shit than anyone else before him, and Rusev took a dead-end partnership with Aiden English, and through forced-meme determination, gotten the Rusev Day gimmick over like crazy.

Continue reading “I feel bad for the B-Team” →

Thoughts on Solo: A Star Wars Story

May 28, 2018August 7, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

*SPOILER FREE* If there’s any more indication to how I felt about Solo: A Star Wars Story, is the fact that it’s been just a day since I watched it, and I’ve already forgotten that I’d seen it.

This isn’t to say that it was a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, it’s hardly a film that’s remotely memorable in any real fashion. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being bad and ten being excellent, I would rate Solo at a 5, for average, solid mediocrity. It was far from the excessively fatalistic and pessimistic expectations of the film that the cesspool of the internet and the cancers of social media would lead people to believe, but it was nowhere near the level of quality that was Rogue One, the other Star Wars Story film. I would still rank it above Episodes 1-3 of the canonical storyline; although that doesn’t say that much, it at least shows that it’s still better than other films and therefore not the worst movie in the history of film.

It’s just not a particularly memorable film that has any sticking power in my opinion. One of the only sentiments of the film prior to its release that I agree with, is that I questioned the necessity of a standalone Han Solo film in the first place. I don’t disagree that it’s in all likelihood a money grab, trying to cash in on the familiarity of existing intellectual properties, but after Rogue One, I had hoped that future Star Wars Stories films would be similar, in the sense that they would be widely original characters and storylines independent from the reset of the main canon plot, while existing in the same universe. But instead, two editions in, and we’re getting an origin story that kind of floats almost independently in the timeline of the canon, that would require some creative shoe-horning in order to make fit adequately in the stream of the story, because they’ve used primary characters.

To me, this implies that there will be a future necessity for Luke and Leia, since the childhoods of either would probably be way too boring to sustain their own films, and from what I understand, there’s a lot of scuttlebutt about a film about Boba Fett, to which I’ll never understand the mass astonishment for a character that really had a total of maybe 7-14 minutes of total screen time within the original trilogy, to have such a devout following, not to mention that his origins were already somewhat explored in the abysmal episodes 1-3.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Solo: A Star Wars Story” →

The Whitest Weekend Ever, vol. ~113,064

May 19, 2018August 7, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every now and then I feel like the world gets a little too oversaturated in white people things. I mean I know white people like to believe that the entire planet revolves around them, and they go through extraordinary measures to keep things feeling that way, but every now and then I feel like the cauldron burns extra hot and the bullshit bubbles over to the point where it needs to be pointed out how excessive they’re being.

This past weekend was a good example of just how white things were getting, and how, at least to the eyes of this not-white person, how either frightening, obnoxious, insufferable or all of the above, it feels to be alive in this world while not also white.

So Friday kicks off with the very white past time of shooting up a school, where I didn’t have to wait for the release of any names to take bets that the shooter was probably white. Sure, he had a very Greek name, but when the day is over, he still fuckin’ white.

At this point, there’s really not much else to say about school shootings and gun control. Considering there’s a shooting incident at a school at almost a weekly basis now, after the incident in Florida it wasn’t so much of an if it ever happens again, it was always a matter of when it was going to happen again. After Texas, it’s not a matter of false promises, and the also-very white past time of saying thoughts and prayers; at this point, it’s not if this is going to happen again, it’s simply that the days without incident sign just gets reset to zero.

Saturday morning featured something that I haven’t seen white people get so excited and hot and bothered about in previous iterations, with the Royal Wedding between Prince Ginger and that chick from Suits, one of the few USA Network shows to stand on its own without the WWE crutch. Seriously, it was kind of astonishing to me just how much white people cared about the marriage between two people in England, over absolutely anything and everything happening in the United States, like the high school shooting that occurred less than 24 hours previously, but they really seemed to be making a tremendous deal about it.

Continue reading “The Whitest Weekend Ever, vol. ~113,064” →

Cobra Kai was good, but can only go downhill from here

May 7, 2018August 6, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first heard news about Cobra Kai, I cringed. The phrases “spin-off” and “reboot” have become so frequent and so often yielding in sub-satisfactory product, that I’ve become somewhat sensitive and triggered whenever I hear them. Worse, when they’re attached to a property I’ve loved for nearly my entire life, The Karate Kid franchise. I felt immediate dread and a grave concern that The Karate Kid was next in line to become bastardized by the Hollywood machine that feels the need to bilk and ruin everything that was once successful, in order to attempt to cash in on nostalgia, and feast upon the wallets of the past, in the present.

The pessimistic feelings intensified when I heard that the show had been green lit, and then was actually in production. And then the press releases emerged with actual drop dates and that it was going to be a YouTube:RedTube exclusive, and the reality started to sink in that this was actually going to happen. I avoided all teasers and preview trailers, and tried to unsee whenever I caught any glimpses of any promotional materials, because frankly I didn’t want to accept that Cobra Kai was actually going to happen.

A friend of mine began telling me how pumped up he was that the show was coming, and how it was going to get him to actually pay actual money in order to get a RedTube subscription so that he could watch it. When I said that I didn’t really want to watch it, he called me a hipster that was being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and that I should be more open minded. I leveled with him, and told me that if he legitimately thought it was good, then I would give it a chance, but his judgment would be on the line if that were to be the case.

When the show dropped, my friend started texting me about how good it was. It’s easy to get caught up in the early episodes, but I didn’t want to watch something that was going to disappoint me in the long haul. The texts kept coming, spoiling some non-essential situational plot points that admittedly intrigued me. And then the next day, I get a text detailing how tired he was at work, because he had stayed up to just watch the whole series. Then my brother texts me asking me if I’d started watching yet.

Continue reading “Cobra Kai was good, but can only go downhill from here” →

Is this really happening?

April 27, 2018August 6, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout my entire life, the Koreas have been at war. The same can be said about just about all of my peers, friends and acquaintances. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that there’s always been continuous combat for 36 years, but in the technical terms of the Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953, the fighting may have ceased, but the Korean War had never ended. It’s safe to say that large chunks of the world’s populations have never known of a world where the Koreas have not been at war.

So it’s kind of surreal, almost strange, and definitely unbelievable the recent news of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un meeting with South Korean president Moon Jae-In, and coming to terms and signing a peace treaty declaring a formal end to the Korean War. It’s treading into waters that most of the world has never seen before, and it’s kind of amazing to think that babies born beyond April 27, 2018 will be coming into a world where the Korean War was not technically happening.

Seeing as how I am American by birth, and as authentically Korean as a Hyundai assembled in Mexico, I’m a little surprised at how much the news of the Koreas ceasing the war affected me. I’ve only been to Korea twice, and know a pathetically paltry amount of the history of my ancestors. Yet, reading news and progressions of the peace summit at Panmunjom really made me feel genuine hope, positivity and a swelling of emotion from within that I think I can only really explain as a result of my Korean heritage.

I know there are tons of people who are skeptical and untrusting of North Korea, and I’m most certainly not without my own skepticism and conspiracy theories of what might actually be in the works. There are allegations that North Korea really fucked up on a missile test and took down a mountain, destroyed a major developmental facility, nuclear fallout, or all of the above. There are theories that the escalating trade tensions between the United States and China have unintentionally begun to choke out North Korea’s primary trade partners, thus making them suffer, forcing them to become desperate and take these measures. Both are somewhat logical and justifiable to why seemingly out of the blue, North Korea has been open to meeting with South Korea.

Continue reading “Is this really happening?” →

More skeptical than optimistic

April 23, 2018August 6, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When news breaks about how North Korea and South Korea are considering a peace treaty, there are a myriad of thoughts that swirl through my head. Considering when I was born as well as the vast majority of the people I know, we have pretty much only known a world where the Koreas are at war. Sometimes, I’m surprised how many people don’t actually know that the Korean War never technically ended, and that it’s only through the Armistice Agreement in the 50’s that they aren’t physically fighting to this day, but then again considering this isn’t information so readily available on Reddit, Facebook or Twitter, I can’t really say that I should be that surprised.

But although peace is ultimately a worthy end goal for warring nations, I can’t help but be skeptical about it instead of as optimistic as I probably should be, especially as a person with Korean blood running through my veins. I attribute it to a lifetime raised by television, movies, video games, comic books and professional wrestling that I’m quicker to question the legitimacy of two parties willing to come to a truce, than be pleased to see the progression towards peace.

Frankly, the most dubious of factors is the fact that it wasn’t even a full year ago that tyrannical Kim Jong-Un was basically mouthing off about how he could blow up the United States any time he wanted to, successfully baiting the cheeto-in-chief into a childish Twitter war. I have a hard time believing that a guy who is one, well known for his general instability, that must be genetic, considering who his dad was, and two, someone who has been vocal about his disdain for the United States, to be so suddenly willing and accommodating towards the progression towards a peace treaty with a South Korea that is pretty comfortable with their positive relationship with the United States.

I get that North is in a precarious position where they’re basically disliked by most other countries in the world, and would probably be a unanimous public enemy #1 if the Middle East didn’t exist. And as a result, life is kind of difficult for them on a regular basis, what with the country routinely not having nearly enough food for their people, and a laughably inadequate distribution of resources between regular people and those controlled by the government. From an outsider perspective, it looks like to me that North’s biggest reasons to strive for peace is so that they can possibly get in on the global trade market that might make life in North Korea not quite as hard as it seems to be on a routine basis. As it stands now, it’s my understanding that the vast majority of their trade comes almost solely from China, and putting all their eggs into few baskets can’t possibly be as fruitful as putting them into more and bigger ones, in this instance. Even if it means dismantling their nuclear program, a peace treaty would undoubtedly unlock many doors in order for them to start being able to get resources from South Korea as well as possibly even the United States.

Continue reading “More skeptical than optimistic” →