Tag: white people

Doesn’t pay to be white during #TRYHARDSZN2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Roux: Utah senior has perfect ACT scores, can’t get into MIT or even Brigham Young

Not going to lie, sure it sucks for this teenager whose dreams appeared to be crushed that his 1A and 1B schools have both turned him down, but I found myself laughing a lot while reading this because of the seemingly very obvious answers to his rhetorical questions of whhhhyyyyy?

But why was Trenton Caldwell rejected by both MIT and BYU? But because both schools didn’t say, he may never know.“It’s pretty frustrating because I really feel like if I knew what it was, I would be able to fix it lickety-split, but it’s just impossible really because I have no idea,” said Trenton.

I mean come on.  I don’t even need to Google the name “Trenton Caldwell” to know this guy is whiter than a Paul Ryan intern. A name like that, living in Utah, having Brigham Young as one of your top college picks? 

This is an amusing example of the effects of a gradually awakening culture, where the pendulum may have swung back in the opposite direction a little on the hard side, and it’s kind of disadvantageous to be white and applying for colleges these days. 

In one side of the room, you’ve got black and Hispanic kids applying for 120 colleges presumably for free, getting into 63 of them, and then boasting on the news about how blessed they are, and on the other side of the room, you’ve got Ben Affleck and Ben Affleck putting their eggs into the 1-2 schools they really really really really hope they can get into as well as a safety school or two, and getting turned down without explanation which is one in itself if they took the time to look in the mirror and thought about what their elders did, it almost seems about as fucked up as racial exploitation.

But buddy, nobody owes you any explanation, and let this be a good lesson as well as a sample of what awaits in the adult world.  You can be the most qualified applicant for the job of your dreams, have the paperwork, proof, references and be ready to explain why you’re a perfect fit, but if the HR recruiter got cut off in traffic on the way to the office, or their pour over was short 0.027 ounces, and they’re in a pissy mood, they will delete your application without an explanation on every single day that ends in the letter Y.

Really though, it must suck for Ben Affleck over here.  The day he opened up his test results and found out that he notched a perfect score on his ACT, he probably thought that the world was his for the taking.  MIT would undoubtedly be impressed with his perfect score and undoubtedly accept him.  Boston, here I come.

But no, MIT sends him a form letter of rejection, wishing him well on his future endeavors and sorry it didn’t work out for us.  And then to rub salt into the wounds, BYU turns him down too, and neither give anything more than a form response to why he didn’t get in.

All this being said, by the time the dust settles from #TRYHARDSZN2024, Ben Affleck will probably already be on reddit, truth social, or whatever alt-right internet groups bemoaning how much it sucks to be white now, and being earmarked as a promising recruit for whatever future Charlottesville incidents will occur probably not too far from now.

How to fix the wage gap

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among one of my group chats, the topic of wage inequality came up again, starting with the embarrassingly low salaries of WNBA players.  Basically despite being the female equivalent of Steph Curry, the #1 draft pick of the WNBA draft, Caitlin Clark, she who led Iowa into prominence and caught the imagination of hoops fans across the country, will basically be making a paltry $75,000, or something close to that, in her first season in the WNBA. 

It’s not often that I can say it, but I make more money than the WNBA salary, and I am not a professional athlete.

To put it in perspective, I’ve been doing a lot of daily research on history, in an attempt to simply enlighten myself with useless knowledge, but one of the things that I like to do is when I come across financial figures from various points in time, I like to punch in the numbers to compare to how the dollar amounts translate with today’s inflation.

Like for example, Alaska was purchased for $7.2 million dollars in 1867, and $7.2 million in today’s dollars would be like $155M or somewhere close.  And then off the top of my head, I could rattle off several baseball players who are on contracts for double that amount or more, putting into further perspective just how overpaid professional athletes not in the WNBA are.

Ford lit the world on fire in the 1914 when they instituted a $5 daily wage; I’m not sure how accurate internet inflation calendars really are, but basically that breaks down to a $19 an hour minimum wage, yet somehow across the country, less than half of that is still considered the federal minimum.

For about a minute, we pondered on what the world would be like if even the most menial jobs making minimum wage, were still paying $19-21 an hour.  People would be grossing $3K+ a month if they could notch full-time hours, and that’s definitely closer to being able to survive in the world than where we are now.

Then came the rhetorical pondering of how fucked up it is that there’s such an inequity in wages in the world; leading me to snarkily blurt out that with wages like these, American employers might as well reinstitute indentured servitude, because if you’re going to treat people like slaves, might as well give them a roof over their heads and three square meals a day for the exploitation.

And then it dawned on me that if rich white people were forced to shelter and feed and give rudimentary human consideration to people, they would ultimately favor paying them more to keep the poors away from them, and right here, we’ve just fixed the wage gap.

I would absolutely want to tune in and watch, some politician in a suit, march into Congress or the Senate or the House or whichever place in Washington DC where white people argue over the state of the country, and with a completely straight face, propose reinstituting indentured servitude.  Obviously, don’t tell them why it’s being suggested, but I would wager that the intended result would undoubtedly happen, because as much as rich white people love turning the screws to poor people, the hate being around poor people.

If they were put into a position to where they not only had to be near them, but actually had to cohabitate with them, then there’s no telling just how fast they would agree to up wages across the board just to prevent such a ludicrous idea from even come remotely close to becoming reality.

And just like that, I’ve figured out how to close the wage gap up, real fast.  As the ancient Egyptians once paraphrased, slavery – it gets shit done.  But in this case, it’s indentured servitude, but it really is close enough to where the point remains.

Dad Brog (#131): Con Pollo es mierda

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Look at this photograph of Jennifer Lopez and Jimmy Fallon.  They’re laughing at all the parents whom they duped into buying their “collaboration” book, Con Pollo.  Frankly, I don’t know how my household ended up with this book, we’ve inherited a lot of books and mythical wife has a lot of books from school, and we’re often given books as gifts for the girls, because it’s known just how much we read to them.  I just know that I didn’t purchase it, because if I saw anything “authored” by Jimmy Fallon or Jennifer Lopez, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, especially if it was by both of them.

But somehow, this book exists in my home, and all I can think of it is just how much bullshit it is.  It’s 48 pages of a basic journey of a young chicken doing things throughout the day, but it’s more like 24, because it’s this format where query is asked two times, with the second time in Español.  I haven’t taken Spanish since the 9th grade in high school, but even I can recollect the basic words being spouted in this book.

In all fairness, it contains more words than MAMA or DADA or BABY like all of Fallon’s previous, and unfortunate New York Times bestsellers, which means that Jennifer Lopez probably used her IQ points to insert some basic words, in two languages at their most basic forms into this.

And then they slap their names on it and call it a day, and of course, because there are lots of parents who impulse buy because they see celebrity names on it instead of actually checking to see what the substance of the books themselves, this too is a New York Times bestseller.  Which further emphasizes the sheer lack of merit or sales numbers actually necessary to earn that seemingly important designation.

Frankly, it’s crap like this that exemplifies the notion that celebrities shouldn’t be allowed to write books, other than autobiographies.  Most of the time, they’re wholly unqualified to produce content that might actually have some influence on the young budding minds of tomorrow, as demonstrated by Fallon, who clearly roped J-Lo into putting her name on a turd to help fling it off shelves so that some rich fucks can get even richer.

I look forward to the future book audit where this fails to meet the cut, and ends up in the donation pile, so it can rot someone else’s shelves and collections, and be the fuck out of mine.

Wrestlemania XL brought to you by, MAGAlcohol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally I had intended on this post being a part of the post I had made about how Wrestlemania basically sold out as hard as a NASCAR event with how many sponsorships they’ve piled into the production of their grandest event of the year™, but I felt that it had some legs of its own and I had lots of jokes and puns that I thought were the best things ever, cementing my obvious status as the dad who makes dad jokes that are only hilarious to myself.

Among the numerous sponsors that the WWE allowed to dump money into ‘Mania this year, this particular one stood out leaps and bounds above the others for me, one because of just how uncomfortably white-wing it comes off, but also finding out that they’ve basically bought Cody Rhodes and plastered their branding all over his American Nightmare™ bus, but we’ll circle back to that part later in the post.

On purpose, I’m not going to use mention their name because fuck them for being some creepy dog whistle white-wing racist undertone company, but as if that doesn’t set the stage enough, that’s basically the gist of what their commercial and branding seems to exude.

It starts with a catch-phrase that does rhyme but doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue so easily, and I want to play the Stewie Griffin game with their name, because of the “wh” in it, and that serves to ramp up the difficulty in saying their name or mocking their jingle.

But as the commercial continues to unfold, it’s as if they’re continuously doubling and tripling down on their pride of being whiter than, well, a right-wing gathering, because as the scenes change to larger and larger groups of what appears to be solely white people, it’s apparent that this is a company that really gives no flying fucks about DEI and they want viewers to know that.

They even have a ridiculous line where they ponder why Moscow gets the mule, and while looking up the YouTube video to take a screen grab from, they’ve already posted a recipe for “American Mule” which is basically the exact same thing as a Moscow Mule except not Russian; which in itself is laughable considering so many orange guy disciples love Russia as much as he does.

As the commercial ends, only one word or phrase popped into my head: MAGAlcohol, because that’s precisely what the fuck this shit actually is. 

I’m not much of a vodka drinker, other than the sparse times where I like a cranberry vodka, but I kind of feel bad for the spirit itself.  MAGAlcohol makes me not want to have any vodka in general, because it’s murdering the entire category for me as if it were a white cop pressing his knee on a defenseless black man’s neck on asphalt.

Getting back to Cody Rhodes, I was abhorred when footage of him arriving to the Linc was shown, and Corey Graves was being a good soldier, by not failing to mention that his entire bus was also co-sponsored by MAGAlcohol, and I could feel my eyes widen at the disgusting sight of it.  Just when I was beginning to soften my stance on Cody Rhodes, and beginning to turn face on my opinion of him, he has to go and associate with MAGAlcohol, and I’m pumping the brakes at how much I want to support him. 

In some regards, I get it, he’s the American Nightmare, his ring attire is basically a Homelander from The Boys skin, and he’s a white guy from Georgia.  There’s few guys at his stature in the business that would be as worth co-sponsoring as Cody Rhodes.

But he’s also a pretty sensible, intelligent human being, from what I can surmise from interviews and the way he conducts himself in and out of the business.  I would’ve assumed that he would’ve been a little more cerebral than to associate himself with a company that clearly has no hidden agenda on whom they want their demographic to be.

Oh and his wife is also black.  I know that Brandi Runnels seems to be as white-washed as perhaps I am, but when push comes to shove, white folks wouldn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus if there was an incident that needed a minority scapegoat and she was within eyesight.

Perhaps it was out of his control, and it was the bigwigs at the E that forced it onto him.  But I would’ve also figured Cody, by now, and at his position within the company, would have the ability to veto this if he really wanted to.  But as so many legends in the business have so often said, the business is all about as making as much money as you can, because there will come a day when you can do it anymore.

Not that I think Cody was starving before his associate with MAGAlcohol, but accepting more money when you’re already rich is among the whitest things a white guy can do, so unfortunately, as much as The Story has been compelling, there is a little turd in the celebratory punch bowl, that most definitely does not make it go down so sweetly.

Re: the literal selling out of Wrestlemania

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I’d wait until both nights of Wrestlemania had passed before passing on any sort of judgment, but this is fresh on my mind, and I’ve got this small window of time to write where it’s not enough to take a nap or do anything other than knock out a quick brog post.

The title of this post is not indicative to what I thought the quality of the show, at least Night 1 was for Wrestlemania, but it’s to refer to the fact that this show, and probably going forward future shows, had more sponsorships than a NASCAR race.  Prime energy drink, Snickers, Dude Wipes, Credit One, some Insurance company, and some super creepy right-wing sounding vodka company that I’ll circle back to later, but it was evident that every match had a sponsor, commercials were being aired in between every match for non-premium Peacock subscribers.

Very literally, Wrestlemania sold the fuck out.  They’re probably making millions of dollars in doing so, and I don’t judge that, but for a company that used to have zero in-ring sponsorship and usually relying on a singular chief sponsor per show, it is a stark contrast of the yesteryears, the generations of wrestling fans are hell-bent on creating a rift from then and now.

Prime had the top turnbuckle, and their logo emblazoned in the center of the ring, and it made Cody Rhodes look like he was kissing the Prime logo during his entrance.  Dude Wipes appeared to sponsor more matches than anyone else, and there’s something to be said the demographic when company that manufactures basically baby wipes for grown men has such sponsorship flex during a professional wrestling event, especially the magnitude of Wrestlemania.

My brother was the one who pointed it out, but he brought up the query on if it was fucked up or not, that the match that had a team of three black women, was the only match of the night to have been sponsored by WingStop.  I didn’t notice it at first, but once it was pointed out to me, I couldn’t not see the giant-ass WingStop logo lighting up the LED apron board and on the ring barrier throughout the match, and it definitely falls into the category of that’s fucked up.

Like seriously, surely there are marketing people at the E, and at some point, they’re milling among themselves, or coordinating with their sponsors, namely the WingStop people, and somewhere at some point, while divvying up the on-screen advertising, made the conscious decision that the match featuring Naomi, Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill, was the appropriate time to advertise WingStop.  Not that I was trying to be an eagle eye, but I don’t recall seeing them advertise again after that match.

I haven’t paid that much attention to the card for Night 2, but I do know that there is a match featuring Bobby Lashley and the Street Profits, and I have this sneaking suspicion that WingStop might be the chief sponsor for that match too now.

Everyone else can get Dude Wipes for the colossal amounts of shit that much be swirling around the city of Philadelphia’s sewer systems from 150,000 neckbeard wrestling fans converging in a single location.  Too bad most of them will believe their claim that they’re flushable, because there’s no such thing as a flushable wipe, and the streets of Philly are destined to be overflown by sewage at some point sooner rather than later.  But I guess such wouldn’t really be that far off from daily life up there.

Of course it’ll be Duke that kills a tradition

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Source: #8 Duke loses to unranked Wake Forest, students storm the court; Duke center Kyle Filipowski allegedly injured by fan during the mob, coach Jon Scheyer calls for an end to storming

The low-hanging fruit is that if Duke could just stop sucking and getting upset by lesser-heralded opponents, they wouldn’t have to deal with other schools’ fans storming the court on them.  Furthermore, we’re long past Coach K’s retirement and it’s apparent that Jon Scheyerface isn’t helming a perpetual national champion anymore, so if the NCAA could stop overrating the fuck out of Duke and having them in the AP Top-10 all the time, then maybe opponents will stop thinking they’re upsetting Goliath every time they eat another L, and fans won’t feel the need to storm the court.

Put me in the segment of sports fans that is particularly enjoying the new reality that Duke is far from the automatic win they used to be, and regardless of the diminishing importance of beating Duke is becoming, it’s always a pleasure to see them take a loss.

But here’s the thing, I can see where Jon Scheyerface is coming from, as well as all those who are in support of his remarks to plead with an end to court storming.  Just because it’s a long-standing tradition across the college athletics landscape, most notably in football and basketball, and just because it’s something that’s “always been done,” it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t ever been a potential risk to tons of student athletes and team and venue personnel, and it doesn’t mean it’s really ever been right.

It’s just that this particular season, there have now been two noteworthy incidents where players have gotten bodied by jubilant fans storming the court, where Iowa’s Caitlin Clark was trucked by a fan, and now Dook’s Kyle Filipowki* took a tumble and had to be helped off the court.  If there’ve been any other incidents in the past in hoops or football, none have really made the media such as these.

*which sounds about like the whitest name in the world, even for a Dook player

As traditional and exciting it is to see a court storming, it really is a recipe for disaster where it’s a miracle that things haven’t gotten worse than these isolated incidents throughout the years.  Hundreds to thousands of people, swept up in emotion and excitement of being on the right side of a victory, rushing towards a central point where there might still be opposition present, trying to process an L while going against the flow of human traffic; suddenly accessible when they typically aren’t, because a venue’s security has long since been physically overwhelmed.

The reality is that a court storming can happen at any point of a game, not just the finish, and there is literally nothing a venue could do about it.  There is nothing short of employing the Justice League to guard the access points to the court or field from being swarmed by hundreds to thousands of rushing human beings, and even the most imposing of security will get overwhelmed by a mass of people eventually.  Unless there is a ratio of security that is closer to 1:1 and not 1:500, court storming is literally impossible to prevent from happening.

It’s just that traditionally, there is an understood agreement and civility that saves court storming for upsets of heralded opponents.  Dook has done a good job historically, be it through their students, alumni, PR and brand management, of becoming the school that everyone loves to hate, and seemingly regardless of their rank or position in the NCAA rankings, has probably been the school to have to deal with the most number of court stormings against over the last 25 years or so, so in spite of my general disdain for the school, I actually do understand where the concerns over court storming come from.

Like I said, it’s easy to make the joke that maybe if they just stop losing, they wouldn’t have to deal with it, but the concerns and potential dangers are no less real when it comes to when it actually happens.  Frankly, I don’t think Filipowski was actually hurt as much as he was more trying to cushion his bruised ego for taking an L against Wake Forest, much like any player who gets rocked in any sport suddenly having an spontaneous injury announced afterward to try and salvage their ego.

But if court storming actually does have action taken against it, regardless of the fact that nobody can really stop it from happening, all eyes are going to be on Duke as the party responsible for attempting to kill a tradition that has been a part of college sports almost as long as the existence of college sports.  And as much as people who didn’t go to Dook generally revile Dook, this outcome would probably, undoubtedly make things much worse for them, and probably set up a situation where even more schools will feel the compulsion to storm on them if they ever lose in their houses.

Would be pretty impressive to be Kyle Filipowski, because it would most definitely put him up in the upper echelon of Hated White Duke Player history, with Christian Laettner, JJ Redick and Grayson Allen, but unlike them, it’s not because he was so good at basketball as much as he was trying to kill off a timeless tradition and change the general landscape of college sports.

The case for Trevor Bauer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’m paying much attention to the baseball offseason other than the big name moves that are spoon-fed to me through mainstream media, but there’s one name that I’ve been very curious about to see what happens: Trevor Bauer.

Long story short, Bauer was accused of sexual assault, suspended by MLB, went to Japan to keep on pitching, eventually found innocent and legally exonerated, but remains unemployed, despite having put up a solid season in NPB and remaining in game-ready shape.

And today, Trevor Bauer has basically declared that he would play for free:*

For a team that doesn’t want to commit multi years, hundreds of millions of dollars, or many elite prospects for a Cy Young award winner, they could sign me for the league minimum and pay 0 incremental dollars over what they have to pay to that roster spot anyway. Just another option for teams that want to win and don’t want to break the bank.

*League minimum, last time I checked was $725K which is a ton of money, but largely negligible as office supplies as far as a Major League Baseball organization is concerned

It’s obvious at this point, Bauer is grasping at straws for a job, and I’m sure that if were able to secure one, he’d probably fairly easily be able to re-establish his value and get back to Major League fuck-you money again, but it’s evident that there’s some league-wide black balling of Trevor Bauer, despite the fact that legally he’s in the clear.  Sure, there are other accusers and probably civil suit(s) somewhere in the background, but by and large we still have a man that has been found guilty of nothing, but is still being punished by today’s societal standards that perception is reality.

When I was live-or-die by the Braves on a daily basis, I’d probably be in support of the blackballing of Bauer here; the Atlanta Braves must remain pure and respectable and the high standard of integrity that can only come with wearing The A.  But I’m not that guy anymore, and I am still a Braves, fan, for lack of a better term, albeit a shitty one that probably hates the team more Taylor Swift fans love Taylor Swift, and I’m tired of seeing the Braves overachieve throughout the regular season and flop in the postseason like it were the 90s again.

Yes, I know we’re just three years removed from the Braves being World Series champions, but with teams this talented, expectations this high, and a contention window wide open, a team has to strike while the iron is hot, and I feel that the Braves are squandering their chances by being so Braves-ey, and constantly thinking they’ll continue to get overachieving performances out of their roster for the rest of this contention window.  The lack of depth in starting pitching has been exposed over the last two years, and the team shit the bed in free agency this off-season in addressing this need, while fans continue to sing the praises of general manager Alex Anthopolous as if already won the next World Series.

I would much, much, much rather see Trevor Bauer take the hill in a playoff game over Bryce Elder, or even a late-season tired Spencer Strider, whom both have shown the tendency to run out of gas by the time the playoffs start over the last two years.  And it would be nice to have a reliable starting option in the wings if there’s another late-season Max Fried injury, or Charlie Morton’s 40-year old arm starts to go, or it turns out that Ian Anderson can’t bounce back from injury or that any of the fringe starters they got are better served in the bullpen.

Trevor Bauer got knocked around when he first got to Japan, but he still compiled a solid overall season in the land of the #1 ranked baseball nation on the planet, where he had a 2.76 ERA and 130 strikeouts in as many innings, a solid  9.0 K/9.  He would slot into the top-2 of any starting five in baseball, and it would literally cost any team the same cost as it would to pay the 26th man on the roster, whose primary job will be the late-inning pinch runner for the team’s veterans.

There’s absolutely little more than the Braves, and their stat-geek fans love, more than saving money, and a willingness to take the league minimum, is about as big of a money savings as there possibly is.  Nobody does what Trevor Bauer did, because the MLBPA won’t let them, but seeing as how Bauer was blacklisted, he’s obviously not a part of it anymore because he’s not actually employed by MLB at the moment, so here we are – an ace-caliber pitcher showing his hand and telling the world that he’s willing to play for peanuts so that he can re-establish himself in Major League Baseball.

And just to put the kibosh on the perception that the Braves are too high and mighty to pick up an innocent miscreant like Trevor Bauer, let me remind Braves fans of some of the guys in franchise history who were actually guilty of crimes against women:

  • 1995, beloved skipper Bobby Cox was arrested on assault charges against his wife
  • 1997, Chipper Jones revealed to have had extramarital affair with a Hooters waitress; also impregnating her
  • 2012, Andruw Jones is arrested on assault charges against his wife
  • 2021, Marcell Ozuna is arrested on assault charges against his girlfriend

So let’s not act like the Braves, or Major League Baseball is some holy organization where saints play.  Yes, Trevor Bauer is kind of an arrogant prick, is a super bro on his socials, but he’s legally free and clear, despite previous accusations.  He’s an obvious upgrade to any team’s starting rotation, and he would cost a team practically nothing, so let’s not duck the obvious fact that he’s getting the Colin Kaepernick treatment here.

But make no mistake, someone will bite eventually.  MLB is no NFL, where there are (allegedly) numerous QB options “better than” Kaepernick, MLB teams always need pitching help, and one team will bite eventually.  Whether it’s two weeks left in Spring Training, or a July acquisition after watching him pitch in the independents or at a private showcase, baseball teams always need pitching, and a cheap and free and clear pitcher of Trevor Bauer’s capabilities will not go unemployed all year long.  But it will be a one-season deal, because once he takes an MLB mound again and proves he still can get the job done, he’ll be back to making millions in 2025.

I know it’s not going to be the Braves, because they’re too high and mighty on their own brand and reputation, but I would be absolutely stoked as a fan who wants to win if it were.  I would love to see the Braves meet the Dodgers in the NLCS, and a very motivated Trevor Bauer marches into Dodger Stadium and fires a statement shutdown performance against the organization that let him hang out to dry.

Someone else is definitely going to get the bargain of the century, when they blink first and sign Trevor Bauer, and I’ll be waiting to harvest my e-cred for when I’m right about this layup of a prediction.