Tag: comparison

Who knew Dwyane Wade was an old Asian guy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Atlantic: The Worst Statue in the History of Sports

Usually when I link to a source, I write my own snarky little snippet, but in this particular case, I think The Atlantic’s verbatim headline, although a little heavy-handed, sums up the general sentiment and sets the tone for my own observations about Dwyane Wade’s freshly unveiled statue, outside of the BBC whatever name of the venue in which the Miami Heat play in.

But yes, the Dwyane Wade statue is pretty horrendous for a litany of reasons, and not just the fact that it looks absolutely fucking nothing like him.  Personally, I think he looks like an old Asian man, like Mr. Fuji from the WWF, but I’ve seen comparisons to Morpheus from The Matrix, as well as a laundry list of other NBA players past and present.

I can’t say that I was as big of a hoops fan to understand the significance of him pointing down, but the 14-year old in me automatically assumes that he’s pointing to his testicles, adding to the list of reasons why this statue is so historically bad.

Without (much) argument, Wade is probably the best player to be drafted and succeed with the Miami Heat, having won a championship with him being the 1A guy in like 2006.  If there were any time in his career in which his status should have been inspired by, I would’ve guessed the 2006 Finals, but I don’t really remember much about his performance other than the absolutely bonkers rate in which Wade went to the free throw line, and attempted over 90 free throws during the series against the Mavericks, en route to scoring like 200 points and winning the Finals MVP, so I guess having a statue of him shooting free throws wouldn’t have been that legendary.

Otherwise, as revered as he is in Miami, all I remember him for is being the guy that voluntarily gave up the driver’s seat of the team to LeBron James, which did in fact, net him two more championship rings, but basically tarnished the rest of his career as he basically became Robin for the remainder of it, to the point where he was one of the first really hilariously notable victims to a sports contract opt-out clause, where he opted out of his deal with the Heat, thinking he could negotiate more money, but was very wrong, and ended up having to crawl back to the Heat for the same money, but more years to earn it.

He would then bounce around between Chicago and Cleveland and eventually come back to the Heat where he could at least go out on relatively his own terms, ending where it all began, and actually have a farewell tour in the process.

I have no issue with Dwyane Wade, but in my opinion there’s no mistaking that he’s a guy that got owned quite a few times in his career, and I can’t help but find humor in those scenarios.  The fact that in what should’ve been one of his last few greatest career moments in his career, also ended up being a bomb as well, on account of a hilariously terrible statue that looks absolutely nothing like him seems fitting, as the guy basically finished up the second half of his career getting owned repeatedly; so really what really is the harm in one more instance of getting owned for D-Wade?

I don’t see it anywhere, but let’s just hope that the statue itself at least spelled “Dwyane” correctly; not that it should be surprising if they didn’t considering the asinine phonetically incorrect way he actually legally spells it, but it would be funny if it weren’t.

Oh, South Fulton #47

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: South Fulton taxpayers ‘livid’ because mayors wants to give himself a raise

It was 7:10 am and I was in the kitchen groggily pondering my life while getting ready to start preparing breakfast for the kids, when I saw the headline for this article pop up on my Echo.  My brow furrowed, and my knee-jerk reaction was what, fuck that when I pulled out my phone to look up the story to find out more.

I’ve said it many times that despite the fact that I’ve long bid good riddance to South Fulton county, I still have a casual interest in the goings over there, because I do believe that in spite of all the corruption and ironic bad behavior that will always render the place a swampy swirl, I do feel for those that are good, that still live there and believe in the place, even if I don’t, and want good for those people.  And my knee-jerk reaction was that a mayor giving himself more money for a region that seems incapable of improvement, doesn’t sound like a very good idea for those people.

But then I read the context behind the headline, and my attitude changed fairly quickly.

Turns out the Mayor of the City of South Fulton was making a paltry $47,676 a year.  The caveat to it is that for whatever reason, it was in a part-time capacity, and there are all sorts of easy jokes about how it’s possible or why it’s just part-time explains why South Fulton is such a wasteland, but in terms of numbers, the mayor was making a wage that frankly I don’t think is necessarily livable in the Metro Atlanta area.

It should also be mentioned that one of the former mayors of Atlanta once was discovered in an audit to have spent upwards of $20K doled out to employees as prizes and bonuses for holiday parties, to give a barometer of how much reckless spending there is in this general region.

But yeah, the mayor of the City of South Fulton is currently making $47K and wants to bump himself up to $85K; the article states that it’s a 78% increase presumably to increase outrage, but it’s really 55%, and frankly, for doing the thankless job in a wasteland, even if it’s at a part-time capacity whatever that entails, I don’t think is an unreasonable amount to propose.  It’s not like he’s asking for six figures to do the seemingly nothing that all the politicians in the Metro area do, and frankly it’s not like he hasn’t earned some money for all the efforts he’s tried to put into his jurisdiction.

For context, after being elected, he deliberately moved himself into one of the sketchiest apartment complexes in one of the most sketchiest parts of town, to try and prove to his constituents that he was one of them and was a man of the people.  He eventually had to bail because unsurprisingly a place like that had tremendous mold problems and it was threatening to the lives of him and everyone who lived there (the complex has since mostly burned down, “accidentally”), but this is the kind of guy that he tried to be, as a politician.

Regardless, there are many in South Fulton who are deemed as livid because he wants a little bit more money to part-time reside over them, and after seeing the numbers, I’m not opposed to it anymore as much as I think a lot of it should be past-services due. 

It’s like that scene in Ocean’s 13 where the dice factory goes on strike, and Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict hears the number $30,000, and is all like $30K for every employee?  And then is informed that it’s just $30k is what they’re demanding in total, and everyone’s just basically like.. that’s it?

That’s how I feel about this guy asking for a little bit more money.  It’s not an egregious amount, and it’s frankly too modest in my opinion.  I know it’s easy for me to say not being my tax dollars and my money, but if anyone were to offer me a 55% raise to go live back in South Fulton County, I’m not doing it.  Not even for a 100% raise, because there’s no way I could afford to live in a secluded fortress away from all the bullshit, not to mention the agony commute I’d be putting myself into again.

Man is just asking for a modest raise to continue living in a part of town that mostly everyone has given up on and doesn’t believe in, and even if he is one of the many Metro Atlanta politicians blowing smoke, $85K a year seems like a rounding error in comparison to some of the flagrantly irresponsible spending going on around the rest of the Metro area.

I’m so envious of Earth-1610 Aunt May’s Spider Cave

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In my most recent episode of I don’t have any fucking space for myself, I began to fantasize about how great it would be if I could just have a underground bunker like Spider-Man (E-1610) had in the backyard of Aunt May’s house, perfectly hidden by a nondescript and dilapidated looking toolshed, as shown in Into the Spider-Verse (amazing film, btw).

And not just because it was full of all sorts of shit that’s right up my alley, like the gym full of free weights, the spacious computer area, as well as a generous amount of space allocated to workshopping, but just because of the sheer space that existed, available to use.

I have no personal space of my own.  Like literally, I don’t have any designated space that is mine and mine alone, and my blets are in storage, all my personal effects are in storage, and I have like a shelf, a desk, and a Ron Swanson poster in the corner of my master bedroom that’s the closest thing I have to personal space, and that’s when mythical wife isn’t taking a nap.

The rest of my house is absolutely overflowing to the gills full of kids things, and every now and then when my mind can grasp how ridiculously full my home is, I feel despair and hopelessness about how things will never improve.  When I bought my home, it was two adults in a four-bedroom home where one bedroom hardly saw any use, one was a guest room, and I had a room designated to be my office where I could store and display all of my personal effects.

Now it’s three adults, two kids, no spare bedrooms, no office, and me having angst about having no personal space, whenever I have the time to have angst, and writing about how I fantasize about a fictional underground bunker that ignores the existence of infrastructure, code and architectural integrity which is the least unbelievable thing about this specific world which has teenagers flinging themselves all around New York on spider webs, and travel between alternate realities.

But yeah back to the point, I’m so envious of the Spider Cave underneath Aunt May’s house, and if I had something remotely close to having an underground bunker of my own, without any hesitation, it would be the go-to place to store all the shit that’s taking up space in the house proper, and maybe allocating half of it to becoming my personal private office space.  Because don’t I deserve a place to get some peace and quiet too??

I would take all of the holiday shit in the attic and it’s going into the Spider Cave.  All of mythical wife’s teacher shit that sits in a number of crates in the garage; all that shit’s going into the Spider Cave.  The large tubs that are accumulating with kids clothes, artwork and toys that they don’t play with – Spider Cave.  Tubs of DVDs and BluRay discs?  Spider Cave.  The lawnmower I haven’t used in three years?  Spider Cave.

The irony is that all this offloading into a Spider Cave wouldn’t actually free up enough space within my house proper to where I could actually have some private space again.  Objectively speaking, the more efficient thing would be to leave everything where it is, and use the Spider Cave solely for my own personal space and use, since it would hypothetically fulfill my desire to have even just a little bit of space for myself.

But the knee-jerk reaction to a fantasy fulfilled of having a Spider Cave was churning reallocation of crap from one place into another place, where it could be better out of sight and out of mind.

All the same though, having a magical bonus 250-350 sq ft. of usable space really is a fucking fantasy.  And it would be truly incredible to have my very own Spider Cave; I don’t even need or want any of the Spider Tech, because I don’t want to have the great responsibilities that would come with inheriting such great powers, I just want a place where I can hang my blets, display all of the crap that I’ve accumulated that’s worth displaying, and having a space to myself that’s just, me.

The perils of getting younger in the workforce

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I seldom feel as old whenever I stop and take a few steps back and look at my job, and ponder how many of the aggravations and gripes I have stem from the fact that my company hires a lot of younger people, as opposed to older professionals with actual work experience.

Sure, there’s merit to hiring young from a corporate standpoint, they lack the leverages of experience and work history to where companies feel like they hold the advantage when it comes to negotiating salary and benefits.  Younger workers are often believed to be malleable to fit into existing cultures, and the theory is that they still have enthusiasm and energy, and hope that they can inject such into workforces that are tired and jaded by a history of Office Space.

However on the flipside, younger workers lack the work ethic the generations before them have, and their overlap with older workforces often creates a culture clash that companies are still trying to figure out the calculus on how to combat and work through in order to have a harmonious environment.  You can’t push younger workers too hard, lest they immediately start updating their LinkedIn profiles and start looking for an exit.

If it isn’t obvious, the impetus of this post stems not just from a recent resignation of a colleague under the age of 28, but of months and months of being a part of a company that has demonstrated the tendency to hire on the younger side of the spectrum as opposed to possibly more professional candidates, and I feel like it’s leading to a lot of the day-by-day issues that are emerging and compounding as time progresses.

The recent resignation sucks, because this person was basically the point person of this retail campaign that my company is in the midst of trying to launch.  Their departure creates a noticeable hole in the workflow of the project, and until their successor can be identified, implemented and brought up to speed, the project is effectively on pause, because despite them still being present for their two-week notice, they’ve already basically stopped working on anything, instead of you know, trying to leave on good terms and tie up as many loose ends as they can.

But just in general, I work with a bunch of kids on certain teams, and them being kids means they’re all flaky and terrible communicators and spam up our internal Teams channels with gifs as a means of communication as opposed to actual fucking words.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to not be nearly as age-ist as I’ve heard some of them be, they’re rather pleasant and easy to chat with on a personal level, but when the temperature at work starts to rise from time to time, very few of them have the fortitude or tenacity to keep their shit together, and their bad habits tend to come out when things heat up.

But the biggest thing is though, like I said before, you can’t push them without chasing them away.  The turnover at my company in the three years that I’ve been here has felt pretty absurd, and I feel like it’s this downward spiral where young workers are hired, crumble under the pressure of real-world work, bolt after 6-8 months, creating a shitshow for the teams they abandoned; their backfills are also young workers, but entering a worse environment than their predecessors, crumble under the pressure and then bolt, and the cycle has been repeating itself, but with things continuously getting worse, rather than showing any signs of stabilization or recovery.

I get that the workplace in general is changing and loyalty and longevity mean dick and butt these days, and it’s not necessarily age-related when it comes to people bouncing in short order, but it doesn’t help the narrative and reputation that it is, when it’s mostly the younger workers of the workforce, that are exorcising this right the most frequently.

Seeing as how this is a thing that more of a cultural shift as opposed to something that can be fixed, it’s times like these where I wish I could just work for myself, but the reality is that I don’t know what I’d do for a living, let alone make ends meet and support my family.

If only I could get paid, generously, to brog about inane bullshit and the happenings in my life, that would be the ultimate dream come true.  But since that’ll never happen, it’s remaining in the downward spiral vortex, and just simply holding onto my butt and hope one day improvements occur.  At least I’m not under the draconian thumb of my old boss, but frankly, it’s not okay to constantly keep that comparison in my back pocket to justify other bad workplace behavior.

When I felt like I did something good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On our last morning at Disney, we had breakfast at The Contemporary, at Chef Mickey’s.  Mythical wife and I agree that character meals are often great indulgences to partake in, especially with the kids, because it guarantees meeting a number of characters, without having to wait in gigantic lines, all while you get to relax inside an air conditioned place, eat and not be on your feet.

Anyway, I excuse myself to go to the restroom; and the first thing I do when I go into any public bathroom stall, is check the toilet paper.  The last thing any man wants to happen is to do your business, only to shortly discover that there’s no toilet paper or an inadequate amount of toilet paper left.  And it was good that I did this, because the first stall I went into, there was nothing but the roll of cardboard left on the roll.  Poor form for Disney, because usually they’re on top of this kind of thing.

So I go into the adjacent stall, find sufficient TP left, and proceed to do my business.  While I’m sitting there, I hear the door to the restroom open, and I hear the labored breathing.  In an instant, my mind is racing, wondering if this guy is going to go into the stall next to me, and if he does, should I say something to warn him about the conundrum he’s inevitably going to have, but before I could do any more thinking, the guy is already in the stall, breathing like he was just in a race, belt buckle clanging on the ground and he’s sitting and destroying the planet in the blink of an eye.

Seriously, I’m picturing that scene in Dumb and Dumber when Harry has to crap like the apocalypse because Lloyd spiked his coffee with TurboLax hearing what is transpiring in the stall next to mine, and unsurprising I hear an exasperated “ahh shit” come from him, knowing that he’s probably just noticed that there’s no TP on the roll.

At this point, there’s a part of me that’s wondering if I should just stick to men’s room etiquette and keep my mouth shut and mind my own business, but at the same time, I am very much aware that there’s an emergency about to happen right next to me, divided only by an inch-thick metal wall.

There was a time in my life where I would just go the aforementioned route of feigning ambivalence and washing my hands of the situation, and leave the guy to fend for himself, but especially on a trip like this one, at Disney World, it occurred to me that there was a very high chance that this guy was like me, in the sense that he too was a dad, probably had dealt with a metric ton of bullshit, babysitting, kid-chasing and exasperation, and the absolute last thing he needed in the world was to be put in a scenario where he’d have to bare-ass it out of the stall and try to wash his asshole in a public sink and hope nobody comes in and sees it.

So after I was done with my business, I gently extended my roll of paper down low to beneath the bottom opening, and softly said, hey man I think you’re going to need this.  He quickly grabbed the TP and was just like uhhh thanks, and I was off on my merry way back to my family.  Although the interaction was short and very few words were spoken, I felt like I really did a very good deed, and I like to think that this guy knew how lucky he was to have been next to me, and didn’t have to think too hard on whether he should swallow his pride and ask or risk a worst of humanity situation.

I didn’t have to do what I did.  I could’ve just feigned ignorance and left Harry to fend for himself.  But from one dad to what I’m guessing was probably another dad, we endure a lot on these Disney trips, a bathroom meltdown shouldn’t be one of them.  I’m glad I did what I did, and I think I did a really good deed and I applaud myself for it.

VT-MIA: Not sure what’s bigger bullshit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The ending, in which a game-winning Virginia Tech Hail Mary pass that was originally ruled a completion and a touchdown that was overruled by pretty inconclusive video evidence to protect Miami and their top-10 ranking, or learning about the existence of Miami tight-end Cam McCormick who is a 26-year old NINTH-YEAR senior.

Obviously, I can handle an L, as asinine and bullshit as it might be; Virginia Tech isn’t expected to be a contender again any time soon, so I’ve always got this mindset that any victories are pleasant surprises, but for the most part if the opponent is remotely recognizable in name, they’re probably going to beat the Hokies for the next few years, Miami included.

But learning about Cam McCormick, that’s definitely something worth spouting some words on.  Mostly, along the lines of, how is this fucking legal, that a guy can just keep coming back to college year after year after year, and competing against kids typically between the ages of 17-22 traditionally.  Sure, there may be an occasional fifth year guy on account of a red-shirting here and there, but Cam McCormick is 26 fucking years old.

I was five years into my first mortgage, and stressing out about my career and paying bills at the age of 26; Cam McCormick is probably still shotgunning beers and trying to pick up barely legal freshmen at frat parties at the U, and showing up to games and practice and feeling proud of himself for trucking kids 5-8 years younger than him.  Sure, he’s probably already making more money than I’ll ever see in my life through NILs, but there’s just something fucked up and weird about a guy that’s been “in college” for nine years, presumably still chipping away at a bachelor’s degree he’ll never actually use any of his bullshit credits from, that is if he’s even required to go to class at all being a meathead.

Seriously, look at the picture.  McCormick is a grown-ass man playing against a bunch of kids.  It’s like Danny Almonte pretending to be 11-years old when he was actually a 14-year old flame thrower, except all the cards are on the table with McCormick and everyone knows he’s a bullshit ninth-year senior.  You can’t even call him a senior at this point, he’s like geriatric grade level.

And it’s bullshit that this is allowed.  What’s going to stop a program from recruiting or transfer-portal’ing a squad of 7th-9th year seniors and fielding a roster full of grown-ass men, who are all hardened and crusty from being 24+ in age, already divorced, and having notes to leave practice early so they can pick up their kids from daycare before they get charged by the minute if they’re late.  But when they take the field, they’re a squad of physically mature beasts who have been around the block a few times, and ready to stomp holes into the opponent who has an 18-year old kid at QB protected by an O-line that’s an average age of 20.5.

McCormick needs to fucking end this live-rendition of Van Wilder and get the fuck out of the game already, because it’s embarrassing and bullshit that a dumb jock is allowed to keep staying in school to play football when he’s closer to AARP eligibility than NCAA.

Writing out the quiet part?

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been chipping away at FX’s The Bear.  It’s a show that was always on my radar as something that I should see, and there was plenty of reason for me to be interested in it on its own.  After going through all of Shameless, I was high on Jeremy Allen White, and FX has a history of putting out shows that seem to be right up my alley, and furthermore, among the team that was making The Bear reality was Hiro Murai, who directed numerous episodes of Atlanta, another show that I was very high on and enjoyed.

Admittedly, The Bear starts off a little slow, and it did take me a little time before the show clicked and I realized that I did in fact enjoy the show, but I have to also say that it’s a show that’s kind of hard to watch, because how heavy-handed the show feels sometimes, especially from the standpoint that pretty much everyone has their own wars they fight on a daily basis, be it with themselves, their families, from their pasts to their presents, and often times television is supposed to be an escape from the hardships of life, and I find it difficult to instead be watching the hardships of fictional characters instead.

Like, I can’t really binge The Bear.  This truly is a show that probably is best watched on a weekly basis, so you can decompress and digest each individual episode, before your energy bar of watching stressful situations is replenished and the following week’s episode can tax you next week instead.  Every time Carmy and Richie have a knock-down drag-out screaming match, I can feel my own anxiety rising, and it’s a testament to both actors and their on-screen chemistry that they can do that to viewers with having such explosive arguments that feel genuine and stressful just to watch, but it adds to why I have a hard time watching more than a single episode at a time.

But recently, I got to thinking, in light of hearing of all the Emmy acclaim that The Bear has been reveling in, was to compare the sheer volume of Emmy consideration and success The Bear had, compared to Atlanta.  After all, the shows are very similar in the fact that they’re both on FX and considered psychological comedy-dramas, not to mentioned the aforementioned directing by Hiro Murai in both series.

It’s probably not popular, and something that I wouldn’t write out in a public forum, but I would go so far as to say that The Bear is basically the white version of Atlanta, in the way that the show is presented, the style of situational humor, and that both are listed as comedies, but although I do get some laughs from some of the scenarios they present, I usually go to bed thinking about the last episode and how fucking depressing they are. 

Frankly the only differences is that one show takes place in Atlanta with black people revolving around a rap career, and the other show takes place in Chicago with mostly white people revolving around a restaurant business.

Needless to say, it was of no surprise to compare the apples and find out that The Bear blows Atlanta out of the water when it comes to Emmy nominations much less actual Emmy wins, and I feel like I’m kind of writing the quiet part out loud a little bit with the not-so subtle accusation of the overtly white-favoritism of The Bear compared to when Atlanta was tearing up FX in their four seasons.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying The Bear, and I still love Lip Gallagher, and I’m very enamored by the many of the other characters and actors in the show.  I’m not trying to demean The Bear and say it’s not as good as Atlanta, not in the least bit  But I just see a lot of parallel with Atlanta, and feel that without Atlanta, The Bear doesn’t even exist, and I’m more just irked by the obvious racial bias in heaping mountains of praise onto The Bear, when Atlanta was doing the same thing just a few years ago to way less perceptive results.