I shouldn’t have left the house

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ever have one of those days where something feels amiss?  Like there’s a sinking feeling in your stomach or in your mind that something is off?  I can recall a few here and there in my life, and without much question, they’ve often times things have gone bad in some way shape or form.  But the important thing is to identify when days like this are transpiring, and knowing when to be extra careful with the little things, that might seem like auto-pilot in other times, like driving around.

I got pulled over for speeding on a road not that far from my house, because I mostly just wasn’t paying any attention.  I took for granted the typical behavior in which I drove on this particular road, and didn’t really consider the speed limit, and when I saw the cop standing in the middle of the road with his hand outstretched, I thought “oh shit,” and immediately knew what was happening.

Honestly, I’m not upset with the police, after all they’re just doing their job, and I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was the unlucky schlub who got caught.  I’m more upset with myself, because one, I should have identified how the day was going, because I had been in a funky mood the entire day prior, and two, I frankly didn’t even need to leave the house in the first place.  I went out, because I was bored, and I was on my way to go play some Pokémon Go because I thought it might cheer me up.

Yeah, I got a ticket for speeding while on my way to go play Pokémon Go.  It’s embarrassing to admit it, and it’s like the worst possible reason to ever get a ticket.  I wasn’t late for an important meeting, I wasn’t late to meet up for dinner or anything, nah, I just went out on a whim to try and go catch some Pikachus, and I got punished for my negligent driving while being out when I totally didn’t have to.

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Welp, that didn’t take long

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is one of those times where I’m actually glad that my site is still offline.  And even if it were online, this isn’t something that I would post immediately, and would keep this one a draft until the coast is clear.  Normally that’s kind of against the general idea of brogging, but there are special circumstances and exceptions in which I am more than willing to bend the rules with.

But if the post’s image isn’t the biggest hint in the world, let’s just go ahead and put it out in text:

My wife and I are going to have a baby.

Still feels a little weird and a bit amazing to having typed those words out in front of me, but there it is.  My wife is pregnant; I’ve never been keen on the idea of couples who use the royal “we” when referring to announcing a pregnancy, because let’s be real here, the woman is the only one who has to deal with all the physical burden of the whole process, so it’s her pregnancy, while I am the schlub who will do anything and everything I can for her while going through it.

She’s going to be a mom, and I’m going to be a dad.  An 엄마 and an 아빠.  Together, our brand-new family is going to be getting just a little bit bigger.

God damn, that didn’t take long at all.  Kids were never off the table between the two of us, and I always imagined that I would have at least one kid in my lifetime, but damn I didn’t realize we’d succeed at getting this plan off the ground barely two months after the wedding.  Sure, we knew what could happen once the safety net was removed, but I guess both of us didn’t realize that we’d be this expedient at getting the project launched.

I mean, I love efficiency as much as the next control freak, but damn.

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Johnny Dreamer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After watching Summer Slam, I had this thought in my head that I had spent an inordinate amount of time throughout the weekend watching a whole lot of mediocre wrestling.  However, despite the fact that I was looking forward to, and accordingly planned my evenings to watch both NXT TakeOver: Toronto and Summer Slam, in all honesty, I didn’t really think that there was any particular matches that I thought were going to be great.

Naturally, I prioritized TakeOver over Summer Slam, in spite of their perceived importance, and at least in my opinion, I wasn’t wrong in the fact that TakeOver was the better show.  The Summer Slam card was pretty weak, and the only match that really truly got me excited at any point was the Charlotte Flair vs. Trish Stratus match.  Becky and Natalya wasn’t a bad match, Ziggler getting squashed by Goldberg is an embarrassment to the company, Styles and Ricochet was okay, but nowhere near as good as their combined potential should have made it.  Bayley vs. Ember Moon exposed both wrestlers as good workers, but need someone to carry them to outstanding matches, and Kevin Owens vs. Shane McMahon just had no real emotion behind it.  Kofi and Orton was lame now as it was the 10 other times it’s happened in the last 12 years, Finn Balor getting basically squashed by a yet-again-and-again repackaged Bray Wyatt is going to lead nowhere, and Seth Rollins basically spoiled the entire match by guaranteeing a win the week prior.

It was a mediocre show, and it really got me wondering why I put so much effort into keeping track of it sometimes.  Yet, I still feel this allegiance to the company that helped raise me, especially when compared to the rising AEW and other alternatives.

But back to TakeOver, it too was a slightly sub-par show in my opinion; it still makes it a better show than Summer Slam, since NXT’s bar is set so high, but in the grand scheme of things, I still think it was less than as good as I hoped it would be.  The best match of the night was undeniably the Street Profits vs. the Undisputed Era, which shouldn’t be surprising, because when you get four talented guys in a single fall tag team match, good things are capable of happening.  Velveteen Dream vs. Roderick Strong and Pete Dunne probably would’ve been better if it were a one-on-one match, but as often times is the case with the WWE, they love multi-competitor matches, and in my opinion, it tends to water things down.

Shayna Baszler vs. Mia Yim was a pretty solid match, but I feel like NXT is going to get themselves in trouble if they continue to bury their entire women’s division to Baszler; they simply don’t have the depth to make her as unbeatable as they’ve done over the last year.  With Ember Moon, Kairi Sane, Bianca Belair, Io Shirai and now Mia Yim now in the dust, they don’t really have anyone else to pose a threat unless they cop out and do some sort of convoluted multi-women bought where Baszler will lose without getting pinned or some shit, and that’s more of a Vince McMahon cop out than a Triple H one.

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It’s kind of like Battle Royale, but real

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In plot A, one classroom in the entire country is chosen, supposedly at random, where the students are pitted against each other in a fight to the death, where only the last one standing is allowed to live.  It is sanctioned by the government, and the end result is bloodbath with numerous fatalities and a tremendous amount of fear and distrust for the government, for continuously allowing this to happen.

In plot B, one or more public location(s) in the entire country, is/are chosen, supposedly at random, where people armed to the teeth with assault firearms, open fire at crowds of unsuspecting people, where only the people who manage to successfully flee or not succumb to their injuries, are allowed to live.  By virtue of consistently turning a blind eye to the issue of there simply being too many firearms too easily available, it is sanctioned by the government, and the end result(s) is/are bloodbaths with numerous fatalities and a tremendous amount of fear and distrust for the government, for continuously not doing anything about it.

The ironic thing is that not only is plot A obviously Battle Royale, but it’s also a work of fiction.  It’s a singular, annual event that happens once in a calendar year, and once passed, the students not selected throughout Japan can kind of exhale and breathe easy knowing that they’re safe from having to compete for their lives in a merciless death rumble.

Unfortunately, plot B is not a work of fiction, it is reality, and Americans do not have the luxury of being able to breathe easy once the last mass shooting happens, because it’s potentially viable to happen again, at any given time afterward.  It is also not exclusive to solely schools, although schools have typically been a frequent location for several of these horrific incidents.

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Praise for Amazon’s The Boys

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not often that I find shows that grab me, and really elicit a must-see response.  A lot of the time, I spend an inordinate amount of my evenings watching a lot of things that are okay, enjoyable to differing degrees, but when the day is over, they’re not things that I genuinely think I could probably watch again, or be willing to tell people to watch, and let me know when you watch it so that I can watch it with you, kind of shows.  I watch a lot of slice of life types of television, because they’re often times quick, simple, and are enjoyable to a degree where I can spend 30-60 minutes, and then walk away and not feel like I’ve wasted too much of my time.

Out of the blue, my brother texts me and asks if I’ve seen The Boys.  Nope, never heard of it.  But the timing was good, because I had just finished season 2 of Kakegurui, the gambling anime, which I had watched as something of a pallet-cleanser after the fairly lackluster Jessica Jones season 3.  So since all the stars were aligned for me to start something new, I gave it a whirl.

At the very first inkling of the plot coming together, revolving primarily around the corruption of superheroes backed by corporate, I was pretty much engaged.  My brother said it took him about five episodes to really get into it, but it latched its hooks into me after just one.  The sheer idea of compromised superheroes who are just as much shitheads as the vast majority of the population is an intriguing plot, and I was committed to watching more of it.

I have to say that I’m kind of impressed with Amazon’s batting average, as it pertains to shows its released.  Granted, I’ve really only delved into stuff like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Electric Dreams but as far as I’m concerned, for a network that is trying to shake itself out of the shadows of Netflix, The Boys is a solid contributor to helping them achieve such lofty ambitions.

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Dannyspeak: Overpopulated Days

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like most people out there, we tend to have our own personal vernaculars.  Phrases that we use, mostly in private, but sometimes out in the wild, which occasionally requires explanation.  Most of the time, people scrunch their eyebrows and are dubious about the use of particular phrases, but occasionally others adopt such things, and introduce it into their own vernacular.

I don’t know why, but I’ve often felt the compulsion to write about my use of the general term “overpopulation;” it’s sat in my drafts file as a topic to write about on more than one occasion, but I’ve never actually taken the time to actually write about it.  Seeing as how my writing habits have become quite strained throughout the last few weeks and months, mostly due to work trying to suck the ever-living life out of me, I’m always trying to improve my motivation and capability to write, and no matter how bad things get, writing is the one hobby and outlet that I really do not want to let fall too far off the rails, and much like being able to run a mile at any drop of a hat, I always want to be able to write whenever I feel like it.

There are two places in which I most frequently decide that the world is too overpopulated: the parking lot at work, or at the gym. 

Being the creature of habit that I am, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I wish to park in the same parking spot every single day.  In order to accomplish that, I realize that I need to pick somewhere that isn’t necessarily rockstar parking, right next to the entrance of the office, but somewhere where I could (hopefully) reliably get the same spot on a regular basis.  That being said, my preferred spot is one floor up from the main entrance, but fairly close to the stairs, so I can traverse one flight of stairs and be at the aforementioned rockstar entrance.

For a while, it was pretty nice, getting the same spot on a daily basis.  I knew I could be five minutes earlier or five minutes later than the usual arrival time, and it would be there, and I took comfort in knowing that I basically had a consistent place to park.

But then, much to my dismay, I rolled into the parking lot one day, and there was a fucking pickup truck in my spot.  It pissed me off royally, and I hoped this was a one-off occurrence.  But then the truck was there the next day, and several other days in which I happened to be off by a few minutes.  Even after I rattled off a nice little streak of getting my spot back for several consecutive days, this fuckface would still take my exact spot whenever they managed to get there before I did.

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Jessica Jones S3: The Insufferable Adventures of Trish Walker

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I personally would rank Jessica Jones to be on the lower tier of the Netflix Marvel Universe, as long as it has that Marvel nameplate at the front of it, I’ll still inevitably watch it.  Considering the fact that I’ve watched everything from Daredevil, the Defenders and even Iron Fist, I had to do due diligence and finish up with Jessica Jones; especially since this was truly the swan song last of the Netflix Marvel series, thanks to Disney starting their own service, this was really going to be the last time we’re probably going to get to see any of the Defenders any time soon.

Overall, I didn’t much care for season 3 of Jessica Jones.  Frankly, it could barely be called Jessica Jones, since 90% of the season revolved around the insufferable Trish Walker and her ascent into becoming the ultra-lame Hellcat, although they don’t actually use the name at all throughout the show, except for one episode title that most people don’t actually read while they’re in the throes of binge-watching a show.

Don’t get me wrong, despite my general ambivalence for the season as a whole, I still recognize the show as still having strong writing, with fairly complex and intriguing storytelling, it’s just that I didn’t like particular character(s), but ultimately the goal of storytelling is to elicit some sort of response from the viewer.  By that regard, Trish was written very well, because it was extremely easy for me to dislike her and all her insufferable traits as a person.  But it was almost delving into X-Pac Heat, to where I was just getting sick of the character, but not quite to where I was willing to walk away from too much Trish.

But I digress a little; if not for Trish becoming so insufferable, it probably doesn’t help the story arcs of Malcolm or Jeri Hogarth, because ordinarily they’re pretty pedestrian characters on their own, but seeing them after 15 minute chunks of Trish bullshit makes them welcome reprieves, and storylines worth caring about, that is, until they collide and intertwine with Trish eventually.

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