Tag: reminiscing

Revisiting An Old Post: Stephen Strasburg’s 2016 Extension

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the best things I ever felt I implemented into my brog was the On This Day plug-in, which lets me look back to the date in all prior years in which there was a post, and read, cringe and laugh at myself for all the bullshit I’ve spewed throughout the years.  Occasionally, I’ll come across a post that I’ve written in the past, and think to myself, man, how much things have changed, or man, how fucking wrong was I about that?

Regardless, it serves to be potential inspiration for things to write about that aren’t the depressing-ass news of every single day in the world and it’s not that I’m so narcissistic that I source the inspiration for my writing to myself as much as sometimes I just don’t want to look at local or national news, because it’s all just so demoralizing, for humanity.

So, back in 2016, I wrote this diatribe about how the Washington Nationals were probably embarking on the path to becoming the New York Mets, because they were repeatedly exercising the contract strategy of deferring salary to way later in the future in order to maintain financial flexibility in the present, which is exactly one of the reasons on how the New York Mets became the laughing stock of baseball, because they deferred payment of $5.9 million dollars for one year of Bobby Bonilla, and somehow turned it into 25 annual installments of $1.3 million dollars, which it doesn’t take a math whiz to realize is vastly more than $5.9M cumulatively.

Back then, the Nationals had signed star pitcher Stephen Strasburg to a seven-year, $175 million dollar contract to stay with the team, where in the fine text of the deal was that the Nationals would pay him a large portion of his salary many years after the deal was done, to which baseball nerds love to ridicule deferred money, because they years in which they are paying are often times years in which the actual player themselves are somewhere else, or not even actually in baseball anymore, so effectively paying for nothing.

The thing is, the Nationals also had other players on similar deals, namely pitchers Max Scherzer and Rafael Soriano; and the thing that I had decided to zero in on was this window of time between 2024 and 2028, in which the Nationals would be on the hook for deferred payments to guys that will most likely no longer be on the Nationals, or even playing in Major League Baseball.  It would be a five-year window in which the Nationals would be paying a total of $127 million dollars to literally, no actual players.

Obviously, this is a giant epic fail, and we should all laugh at the Washington Nationals right??

Continue reading “Revisiting An Old Post: Stephen Strasburg’s 2016 Extension” →

Here we go again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Up until this week, I had no idea what the Colonial Pipeline was.  But when I heard that it had something to do with the supply of fuel to the southeastern region of the United States, my first thought was, hmm, maybe I should go fill up my tank.

Seeing as how I still have the luxury to be able to be working from home, I decided to dip out for a spell, at a time in which people might still be working, and head to a gas station, since I was sitting on just a quarter of a tank left, and I didn’t want to be in a position to if another fuelmageddon were to begin, I’d be left with my dick out with no way to get more gas for my car.

The first gas station I got to, every pump was full, but it wasn’t pandemonium yet.  I did one circle, and was able to get to a pump, but it turned out that the display screen was busted, in a constant state of reset mode, and I wasn’t able to actually use it to start a transaction.  I punted on it, as there was already someone waiting behind me, and I was technically on the clock at work, and I figured I should get back sooner rather than later.

I went to another gas station, which was deserted, and I was able to fill up without any issue.  I felt relief knowing that if shit did hit the fan, I would be okay, because since I work from home, I barely drive much as it is, and I typically have been filling up like, once a month, and I’d hope that if any fuelmageddon were to start, I could probably weather the storm; sure mythical wife who has to drive daily wouldn’t be so lucky and her problem would become my problem because that’s what good spouses do, but at least that would be one less car to worry about.

Later in the day, when I went out to go grab dinner, I realized that the shit did hit the fan.  The first gas station I passed had all their prices pulled, the sure-fire tell that they were out of gas.  The giant QT gas station that I occasionally go to because they’re the cheap gas was all out of gas too.  And across the street was a line onto the main road, for the diminutive 4-pump Shell station that wasn’t probably long with the size of their facility.  The picture above is a RaceTrac gas station that I had the leisurely position to take a photo of at a red light.

But here we are again, another fuelmageddon plaguing the Atlanta area.  I remember the last one in 2008 like it were yesterday, seeing all this mayhem over gas, and I really hoped that it wouldn’t get to those levels, because that shit was really scary back then.  Prices climbed to $4+ a gallon, and any stations if they even had gas at all, put a $40 max transaction, which for most vehicles with a fuel tank over 10 gallons, wasn’t ever enough to fill up.

Naturally, a lot of this bullshit stems from the fact that Americans are greedy motherfuckers who always feel the need to hoard and amass for themselves, with zero compassion for their fellow human beings.  Even at the first station I went to, I saw one guy filling up gas canisters, as if he were preparing for the zombie apocalypse, and if stations were running dry, that means other people were doing similarly all over the place.

Of course, it goes without saying that with chaos comes people who try to profit, and there’s been no shortage of reports all over of people trying to re-sell fuel at egregious markups, which is nothing short of disgusting.

However the best part about this whole post is that as long as it took for me to write it is about how long the offline status of the Colonial Pipeline lasted, and at the time I’m writing this, it’s already been reported to be up again, and hopefully that means that fuel production will resume again to normalcy pretty soon.

But my biggest hope is that every asshole who hoarded and amassed gasoline over the last 48 hours, is stuck with canisters of gas in their garages and homes, that nobody needs, and they have to eat the cost of having stockpiled, while it deteriorates and stinks up their properties with noxious fumes.

People never fucking learn that their greed seldom results in anything good.

Albert Pujols is totally going back to St. Louis right?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t been paying attention to baseball enough this season to know just how poorly Albert Pujols has been.  I mean, I knew he was very much on the decline phase of his career, as Father Time is undefeatable and even the deity-like Albert Pujols would eventually meet his maker as well, but I was still pretty surprised to see when the news broke that Pujols was going to be designated for assignment, which is a way to say released, by the Angels.

I mean this is Albert Pujols we’re talking about; as much as I was amazed by him throughout his career, he just seemed like one of those guys, that if anyone were going to show any ability to stand up to Father Time, it would had to have been him.  The guy has over 600 career home runs, only behind Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and two cheaters, has over 3,000 hits and has won multiple championships, which makes him an easy first ballot Hall of Famer, and these are the guys that tend to play forever.

But like I said, time catches up to everyone, and even the almighty Albert Pujols has reached the end.  I just never thought he would ever be someone who would have gotten DFA’d, but that just goes to show just how much the game has changed these days, and the Angels, no matter just how much talent they amass, just can’t seem to ever succeed, but by DFAing Pujols, they seem to think that there’s a chance to turn things around despite being last place in the AL West, instead of letting Pujols have a farewell tour, like many of the greats before him have had.

Regardless of the baseball geek logic and arguments, there’s no way Pujols ends his career this way right?  He’s totally got to go back to the St. Louis Cardinals, right?  Sure they’re currently in first place, have Paul Goldschmidt at first, and have literally no need for Albert Pujols, but I’d be hard pressed to believe the vast majority of Cards fans wouldn’t want to see the prodigal son return to St. Louis.

Either way, I don’t really care so much as this is more of one of those icons of a nostalgic time makes the news and gets my mind churning.  About nostalgia.  Because Albert Pujols totally needs to go back to the St. Louis Cardinals, and despite how much I dislike their squeaky clean franchise, it just seems like a storybook ending that could possibly happen, in spite of logic.

Man though, this is just all also a reminder of just how much time flies.  I remember when Pujols signed with the Angels on a ten-year deal, and hearing that this was the final year of said deal, I’m just kind of like wtf, it’s really been ten years?  When I was a kid, there was a big deal when the Washington Bullets signed Juwan Howard to a seven-year deal, and how sad I felt when he almost left before coming back to D.C.  An eternity later, I was living in Georgia, eating out at a restaurant on my own dime, and seeing a Houston Rockets game on television, where Howard was coming off the bench, and was in the last year of that same deal.

Now, I’m seeing the ends of ten-year contracts as if they’re single seasons of a Netflix show, and the professional athletes I’ve watched play their respective games are aging and deteriorating at a rapid pace, and I’m once again reminded of just how fast time seems to fly the older I get.  I feel like in two years, Ronald Acuña, Jr. is going to be 38, playing first base and relying on nothing but home runs to justify his existence in MLB.

Minari: chicken soup for the Korean-American soul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I finally got around to watching Minari.  I didn’t watch it because of all the Academy Award acclaim it was getting, nor did I watch it solely because it was a film about Koreans, starring Koreans and was produced by mostly Koreans.  I’ve been wanting to watch Minari because based on the premise of the film, it was something that I knew was probably going to hit home to a Korean-American person like me, and I went in knowing that there were probably going to be a lot of moments of reflection, reminiscing, comparing and probably shit that was going to make me cry.

Without giving anything away, the basic plot is a Korean family moves from California to Arkansas, primarily so that dad (Steven Yeun) can chase his dream of starting up a farm.  Naturally, this is a cause of culture shock for Koreans to move into rural middle America, and the struggles and rigors of surviving and adapting at the same time.

What was endlessly amusing to me is that I feel like Steven Yeun, since rising as a star from The Walking Dead, I feel like took his appearance in David Chang’s Ugly Delicious to heart a little bit, where Chang’s circle-jerk of celebrity friends was giving him a little bit of shit for being able to make it as a big-time American star in spite of being Korean, and almost since then, has been doing a lot of roles that inject him into his Korean heritage.  Despite the fact that his Korean sounds a lot like most Korean kids who did a lot of their growing up in America, it’s his attempts to sound like fresh-off-the-boat English that had me cracking up. 

But if there’s anything that was truly right about the entire film, it was undeniably Youn Yuh-Jung’s role in the film, playing grandma Soonja.  Obviously her performance was justly recognized seeing as how she was a shoe-in to win best supporting actress and did such, becoming the first Korean actor or actress to win an Academy Award.  But she shines from the moment she shows up in the film, and it makes me reminisce to my own childhood, where my grandma often stayed at my home to fulfill the same role as Soonja did, being the free babysitter for primarily me since I was the baby of the generation.  My grandma wasn’t nearly as hands-on, or quite nearly as sassy or show as much personality as Soonja did, nor was I nearly the shithead to her as David was to Soonja, but it definitely gets the memories flooding through the gates.

Frankly, there’s a lot of parallels to the film I could feel with my own life, seeing as how both my parents were also chicken sexers growing up, and how my family grew up in rural Virginia, which wasn’t nearly as remote as Arkansas, but was still similar in the sense that there probably were like 15 Koreans in the entire town, with some of them being relatives.  And I imagine just about every Korean family in America could probably feel some sort of kinship to the film as I did, and just about everyone in my own family has stated similar feelings themselves.

There’s a lot of subtle symbolism and interpretation necessary in the plot and its happenings throughout the film, and at first blush I was kind of perplexed at the way the film concluded, but when I lay in bed thinking about it, most of it kind of falls into place, and it makes me admire the film even more than I did while watching it.

Bottom line is that the film really is like chicken soup for the Korean-American soul, and although it’s nowhere near as critically acclaimed or attention-getting as Crazy Rich Asians or Parasite, but in my opinion, is still a tremendously important film for Korean or other Asian cultures to try and watch sometime.

Year One of Forever (New Father Brogging, #036)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If it’s not clear by now, I’m a very nostalgic person.  I get kicks out of internet content that puts the spotlight on things in the past, I take enjoyment in reminiscing, and one of my favorite features of theFacebook and one of the only things that I routinely indulge in is the memories feature that shows you the things you may or may not have posted on that day in previous years. 

With that latter thing, I was pleased to see that I could integrate such a function into my brog when I got it back up and running again, and even if I don’t have the time to write, I try to make a few seconds each day to refresh my main page and glance at the kinds of slop that I’ve posted in prior years, most of which is poorly-aged trash, but occasionally there are some things that I’ve churned out that even I look back at positively.

Naturally, March 5th will forever be immortalized as an important date in my history through the end of time, but before we get into the sappy meat of this post that I’ll likely have a hard time remaining dry-eyed while writing, I like to glance back at my own history, to see what trash I’d written in the past that I could make the lame joke about how that was the focal point of historical Marth 5ths of yesterday instead of the obvious.

It’s funny to think about how in prior March 5ths the most important things in my life were getting Garen in an ARAM game of League of Legends, or how I appeared to have been triggered by an SNL skit where they took a cheap shot at Waffle House, or when I found out that of all the Marvel properties in existence, fucking Morbius is the one that is slated to get a film, starring none other than the gross-looking STD-riddled magic troll, Jared Leto.

Obviously, everything changed in the March 5th of 2020, when one of the most important milestones in my entire occurred, and has permanently elevated the date to a point where anything else in the past has become inconsequential and white-noise, and only exists to be ironic, and where in the future I won’t even bother planning on posting anything on the date, and try to manage any non-birthday posts to occur before or after the date alternatively.

Regardless, it’s been approximately one year since the birth of my daughter, my first child, and pretty much the largest event that has occurred in my life.  Sure, getting homes and getting married are massive deals in their own rights, but neither involve the manifestation of another human being coming into the world, so I think I have to give the torch of priority to this specific birthday, the first of forever, as far as the rest of my life is concerned.

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Not sure if sad or Oh, Atlanta

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Pretty sure this wouldn’t be news if it weren’t tied to Shaquille O’Neal: Atlanta Krispy Kreme owned by Shaq basically burned down

Not entirely sure how I feel reading this.  The fact that I’m writing about it speaks to the fact that it clearly triggered some sort of response in my brain.  I maintain the fact that this wouldn’t have made national news if there were no ties to Shaq, but it is somewhat of a deal for those Atlantans who all hate change, are attached to their city’s things, and come out in droves when something they haven’t thought about in years changes or is harmed.

Frankly, moving out to the burbs and being at peace with the fact that I don’t really miss the city at all, and I’ve long passed the days of where I used to feel like I should have some finger or limb still associated to something in the city, so I could feel like I could always have a stake in all-things City of Atlanta.  And unlike the people who probably never went there because doughnuts are inherently bad for your health, but are pretending like they care about this Krispy Kreme getting severely damaged, I do have many memories of this particular place.

Ponce de Leon Ave. is one of the major thoroughfares in the actual City of Atlanta, and just about everything on it people tend to get attached to, like Murder Kroger, Paris on Ponce, the Plaza Theatre and the Majestic, the old Kodak building, among other things.  The Fellini’s on Ponce was a place where I’ve had lots of meals with friends and in the very rarest of times a few dates.  The Plaza Theatre was one of the go-places to watch indy flicks, and although I never was interested, where Rocky Horror allegedly took place.

But the Krispy Kreme on Ponce, this was the place to get late night donuts after a Braves game, get donuts after eating at somewhere like Cameli’s or Willy’s, or in more than one instance, an excuse to duck out of traffic and circumvent a red light by cutting onto North, but then actually stopping for two donuts and coffee instead and then passing through.

And like in the photo above, when friends would come in for past Dragon*Cons, and actually wanted to leave the con-space and see shit outside of the then-three hotels, where we’d go to stop and get donuts spontaneously, because we saw the red hot-and-ready light on.

The reality is that I’m sad that a place of business is going to be put on indefinite hiatus until it comes back, and make no mistake, it will come back because Shaq is rich as fuck and is real business smart, and not likely to let his investment of a Krispy Kreme on prime central real estate go to pot.  But I’m not really that sad that this happened, because like me, there are lots of people reminiscing about a simple doughnut shop and thinking about happier memories, and I know that when this place comes back, it’ll ultimately be business as usual, but for at least a week or so, I’m sure they’ll have a blowout of a return which will once again put this place in the news and most likely be an appearance by Shaq, and Shaq is always amusing to me.

New Father Brogging, #034

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I wait until I finish a series before I write about it, but I feel like writing right now, and there’s no guarantee that feeling will last later.  But I’m just about finished with The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix.  Although some of the subject matter about substance abuse is a little uncomfortable watch, not because I can relate so much as it’s just not always pleasant watching people degrade themselves through the things they do to themselves, it’s an excellent series that I’ve enjoyed very much and hope the finish is as strong as the series has been.

It’s a show that’s legitimately made chess seem as cool as I typically think it is from a metaphorical standpoint into actually being cool to watch a series that revolves around it.

Whenever I run on the treadmill, I’m usually watching wrestling highlights or shit on the WWE Network, most notably any of the documentaries that the service continuously puts out much to my delight because if there’s one thing that the WWE does very well, it’s produce documentaries.

Among the documentaries that I enjoy the most, are usually the ones that are about the female talent.  Alexa Bliss, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, and most recently, an episode of Chronicle about Bianca Belair, which was especially good, because she’s a particularly extraordinary woman in the sense that she’s probably pound-for-pound the best athlete in professional wrestling, but also a hell of an artistic talent that designs and fabricates all of her own ring attire.

What I’m getting at is that especially lately, I’ve been enjoying watching stories, be them fiction or documentaries, about strong women, because as a dad to a daughter, it lets my imagination run wild about what my own little girl can grow up to be when she hopefully becomes a strong, talented and intelligent woman one day.

I’m not saying that I want her to be a chess grandmaster or a professional wrestler, specifically, but what I do want for my kid, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she were a boy or a girl, is for her to find at least one thing; one hobby, one activity, that they can hopefully become passionate about and hold onto through adolescence.  Swimming. Drawing.  Gymnastics.  Piano.  Martial arts.  Anything at all; multiple would be great, but I really just want her to have at least one thing, that she can hold onto, and make into some sort of lifelong habit.

One of the few regrets I have in my life is the fact that of all the things that I was doing as a kid; piano, Tae Kwon Do, basketball, drawing, Japanese language; I never really held onto any one of those things, never persevered through adolescence with any of those potential talents, and I let the talents and skills erode and fade away over time, and I can only wish that I didn’t, and that I could be above average at any one of those things today.

I don’t want my daughter to make the same choice, and obviously I know there’s a fine line of her voluntarily maintaining an activity versus being volun-told to stick with it, with the latter obviously leading to inevitable failure, but all I can do is really hope to encourage and let her make her own choices with her life, and watching stories of strong females in the world today gives me hope that there’s an endless bag full of possibilities for my daughter in the future.