Tag: observations

The year-end post, circa 2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year in which I begin to look back on a year as a whole, and determine whether or not it was a “bad year” or just another year.  Not to sound too pessimistic and nihilistic than I already to and serve as just a reminder, but the idea and fantasy of “good years” seems a bit outlandish and not really within the realms of reality, at least when you look at the type of person I am and the state of the world currently.

So when I try and reflect on 2024 as a whole, I don’t have much good to say about it.  Frankly, with a few exceptions and caveats to coming unsurprisingly overarching blanket statement, 2024 was not a particularly great year.  Other than the obvious results of the presidential election and the inane bullshit that led up to it, there weren’t any epic catastrophes that I was really aware of, but the rest of the year just felt like a death by a thousand cuts kind of year, where there was just way more negative bullshit that nicked and jabbed all year long to lead to where I’m feeling beaten and exasperated with life and the state of existence now at the end of it, than had there been a lot less.

The thing is, above all else, I’ve been pondering on whether this was just a down year, or rather just symptoms of being in my 40s, where it seems like the difficulty of life jumped exponentially, from where it was in my 20s and 30s.  There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think to myself, when did life become so difficult to where it feels like every single task in every single day begins to feel like pulling teeth?

I have this conversation occasionally with my sister and some of my similar-aged friends, but I’m curious to whether or not this is just a rough patch in all our lives collectively, or if this is something of a rite of passage for all people who hit their 40s, and things just start taking a turn for the worst more often than not.

Being in your 40s means everyone’s parents are now well into their twilight years, and in the landscapes of our lives, death’s presence grows and occupies a larger space than in our younger years.  I think about if every generation goes through this, which they most undoubtedly do, however, the generations of now and tomorrow live in a way more connected world where information is immediate and accessible, so the news, usually bad news, travels quicker, and it’s way easier now to be exposed and be aware of it all, more than it’s ever been in generations past.

Continue reading “The year-end post, circa 2025” →

Of course white people need their own version of Squid Game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker: US remake of Squid Game by David Fincher confirmed

Here’s the thing, I actually really like David Fincher.  Man did Fight Club and Mindhunter, two titles I hold in extremely high regard.  But I do harbor some sour grapes for him for being the cocksucker who will apparently be spearheading an American-localization of Squid Game, which seems about as essential as little silicone pot attachments to prop open your lids or hold your ladles.

Obviously, I am hardly a fan of any time Hollywood gets their greedy grubby claws into an idea that is not inherently theirs, but then whitewashes the fuck out of them because white people in America are too xenophobic and/or illiterate to consume anything that isn’t produced in America or has subtitles and requires reading to comprehend.

Squid Game is already an amazing series with fantastic visuals, storytelling, writing, music and overall production, and requires absolutely no remaking.  But Americans are too fucking lazy and unintelligent that one is apparently in the works to be made, which we all know is going to have nothing but bullshit American actors and performers, and out of respect to the Orientals, they’ll probably cast one Asian guy to be the American equivalent of Abdul Ali, who was the token foreigner in Korea, except that’ll probably end up being Henry Golding.

Benedict Cumberbatch will undoubtedly be Gi-Hyun, and the Red Light/Green Light doll will be remade to look like Sabrina Carpenter.  And because they’ll want to have some diversity, and we all know “diversity” in American means “black people,” they’ll have Tiffany Haddish be the Front Man, except that it’s now the Front Woman, where they can kill two birds with one stone by having a black woman in a prevalent role.

Like I said, David Fincher is a good director whom I do like his works, but it definitely is a bitter pill to swallow that he’s taking point on a flagrant example of white washing.  Squid Gmae doesn’t need recreation.  American audiences need better education and reinforced understanding that the world does not cater to them.  Accept that outstanding media can come from other countries and learn how to fucking read subtitles.

As Ho Bong-Joon said,

Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.

It’s astounding the arrogance of America to take something wildly successful and not requiring of any recreation, and doing it anyway, and wasting inevitably an ungodly amount of money and resources to do so, when instead better stories and content could have been created instead.

I want to say that I’ll refuse to watch an inevitable Squid Game remake, but I’m not going to kid myself, curiosity and the inevitable want to make a scathing comparison might make me do so, regardless of my vitriol for the idea in the first place.  The want for brog content is endless, and if it inspires writing, I’m usually game for just about anything.

**I actually gave this some more thought after I had initially written this, and I think I’ve figured out why there is a perceived need for a white people version of Squid Game.  I’ve seen a lot of memes and reels about Squid Game as of late, and I’ve noticed that almost all of them are referring to characters solely by their player numbers.

And it’s my belief that this spurred the want for a variant of Squid Game where the characters can have good ol’ American names like Dave or Harold, so that white people can avoid the indignity of being exposed for not being able to, or having to suffer the potential embarrassment of having to pronounce ching-chongey foreign names like Gi-Hun, Sae-Byeok, Geum-Ja or Abdul Ali, when they want to inevitably talk about Squid Game with other people.

Because if there’s one thing white people really dislike, it’s feeling self-conscious about potentially sounding racially insensitive about other cultures, so it seems like classic white people logic to instead of learning how to properly pronounce Korean names to just instead drop millions on millions of dollars to just remake Squid Game altogether, where Gi-Hun can go by Timothee, Dae-Ho can be Kaiden, Nam-Gyu can be Trent and In-Ho can be Hunter.

Now it makes perfect sense to why a white people version of Squid Game even needs to come to fruition.

Dad Brog (#144) – Watch what you say, lest the sponges absorb

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the numerous gifts that the girls had received over Christmas, was this little toy nail salon by Melissa & Doug™, propagating stereotypes of Asian business owners in America.  I’m not the type of dad that’s too manly and too masculine to play with whaterver my kids want to play, so I joined them at the kitchen table to demonstrate what I know about the nail salon business, not to mentioned the set does actually give a pretty detailed ordered list of what is perceived as the typical, getting nails done routine.

Naturally, I couldn’t just play with my kids without injecting a little bit of my customary humor into the scenario, so I would jokingly mention that during various parts of the getting nails done journey, this is where we (the one doing the nails) speak in a different language, not mentioning that the speaking being done, is talking shit about the customer right to their face, among their peers, because everyone knows all these Vietnamese and Korean yentas pull this shit and have been doing so since the dawn of the business model.

I nearly lost it when I switched roles with #1, and she was the one doing my nails, and how she would girl-splain to her little sister the order of tasks during getting nails done, and when she got to the part of primpting the cuticles and drying nails, she said “this is where we speak a different language now” and I actually did lose it, thinking back to the moment.

And then I sighed and had to remind myself that I really have to be careful of the things I say around my kids, because they are sponges and absorb everything they hear from their surroundings, and it really doesn’t take more than hearing something once or twice before they do so, and begin formulating how they can use it themselves.

For years, I’ve always referred to the second Christmas tree that we put in the upstairs landing of my home as “the jihad tree,” because it’s the tree where mythical wife has a jihad against any ornaments that aren’t Disney related for the bigger, fancier primary Christmas tree that resides downstairs, are allowed to be hung and displayed on, and I’ve made it my own personal tradition to deliberately amass the gaudiest and silliest and most unwanted ornaments from the discount bins from the year before to be hung on it.

Considering my kids go to school at a Jewish establishment, I figure it’s for the best that they don’t pick up on the terminology of jihads, and worse off explain it to their peers and teachers that we have a jihad tree at home, so it’s been referred to simply as “dada’s tree” instead.

Unfortunately, the worst was when my kids picked up on the slip up of profanity, and I remember hearing on the monitor during their quiet time, my oldest saying the word “fuck” and my eyes bugging out of my head at realizing what she had said.  Or when the kids picked up on “damn it” and blurted it out themselves.

There was a period of time when I, wouldn’t necessarily let it fly, but I would let it slide, banking on the then-notion that they were too young to pick up on it, or its context, but those days are long behind us.  Now it’s onto “oh poop” or other innocuous remarks, where I still don’t really want them to pick up on the context of them, but at least they’re not going to get us as parents a stern nasty eyeballing if they were to repeat them out in public.

Either way, it’s a good thing that they can’t read, much less know that dada has a brog that’s been up and running for 23+ years.  I can’t imagine the day they eventually realize and learn about it, and if they care to read about the journey of my life through my brog, realizing that their dad sure wrote a ton of shit and profanity, even if he tried his best to suppress it in speech while they were growing up.  But one of these days, that bridge will be built and eventually crossed, but I’ll deal with it when that time arrives; probably with a brog post.

I hate to admit it, but I support this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo – orange guy vows to end daylight savings time, citing it as ‘inconvenient‘ and ‘very costly’

I don’t hide the fact that I’m not a fan of the orange guy, or really any politics for that matter, but especially since I had children, I’ve always bemoaned how much I loathe daylight savings, and would tongue-in-cheek say that I would support anyone who worked in favor of eliminating it.

All because some farmers in like 1069AD felt it was too dangerous to be out doing their shit in the pitch darkness of an early morning, the whole world had to deal with this bullshit concept.  Don’t get me wrong, farmers and agriculture are undoubtedly important to the functionality of civilization, but I feel like there have been enough studies done throughout modern times that have debunked the real need for it in the grand spectrum of things.

Clearly, those who are not in agreement of the lack of necessity of daylight savings are not parents, or apparently, rich white 1%-ers whom seem to be the ones trying to justify the elimination of it in, citing it as a hinderance to earning potential. 

I don’t get to capitalize on the bonus hour, because I have young children who don’t know what daylight savings is, and neither do their circadian rhythms are, so it usually ends up as a morning where they naturally wake up at 6:45 am because their bodies think it’s 7:45 am, with the difference is that my phone has adjusted for the hour change, and I’m getting up at the same time they are, with the difference is that breakfast is not ready, I haven’t had coffee or a bathroom break, dog hasn’t eaten or gone out, and it’s just a colossal shitshow that takes days of adjustment.

And then the spring forward, not only am I exhausted from losing an hour, the kids are tired and groggy from losing theirs, and everyone has a miserable day, capped off with the fact that there’s school and work the following day and it’s no longer the life where I can just sleep in on every single weekend day of my life like I used to prior to having children.

Screw the farmers, and parents who are afraid of their kids having to stand at bus stops in the darkness, need to work with their communities and neighborhoods to improve infrastructure, or have better thought out locations for bus stops and use their heads and common sense to get out of the way of moving vehicles.

All I’ve always said is that I don’t care if we stay in daylight savings or spring forward, I honestly don’t know the official designation between the two, I just want to outright eliminate the shifting of an hours twice a year bullshit, and never have to deal with it again. And if it makes me an asshole to stand on the side with those arrogant rich white fuckheads, so be it, because I fucking hate daylight savings and want it gone as much as they do.

Only What We Do in the Shadows could end like this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Going into the sixth season of What We Do in the Shadows, I wasn’t aware that it was going to be the final season in the series.  I just figured it would be yet another hilarious installment of the series and that we’d eventually continue to get more Shadows in the future. 

All the same, I wasn’t really bothered by the news; not because I didn’t like the show enough, quite the contrary, but I’m of the belief that even if it means having to say goodbye, it’s always best when a series is able to go out on their own terms and leave while there’s still something left in the tank, versus a series that has been dragged out way too long and crawls to the finish line only to have a metaphorical bullet put in their head, two seasons too late.

WWDITS has been one of the better shows over the last few years in my opinion because it’s just plan hilarious in its absurdity, from writing, to format, and acting, and fewer things are indicative of a show’s influence and general popularity than its ability to pull A-list cameos and guest appearances, and it was always amusing to see the scale and frequency of guests as the series progressed, because it was clear that the popularity of Shadows was rising with each successive season.

But as was referenced numerous times throughout the finale, all good things must come to an end, and although I do think Shadows stuck the hardest thing to do in the realm of storytelling, putting out an ending that doesn’t suck, the whole sixth season really was kind of one long farewell, with each episode allowing for characters to make their last appearances, wrap up character arcs, as well as letting the cast and crew air out some meta jokes and references.

By the time they got to the actual last episode, there was no feeling of rushing or urgency to wrap everything up, and it almost masterfully done how they allowed for the final episode to be an open book where they could do what they did, be playful and creative and tighten the bow that they had worked the entire season tying up.  It was entertaining and bittersweet, because there’s this tongue-in-cheek awareness of what the audience is feeling, and the writing and characters do a good job of navigating between the fourth wall’s fourth wall, speaking to both the documentary’s audience as well as the television viewers as well.

The finale is a fun joyride, the final love letter to the series as a whole, that successfully wraps everything else up, allows for some of the show’s greatest hits and tropes to make final appearances, and manages to weave in multiple endings and teaser finishes in a fun and whimsical manner.

Personally, I wasn’t sure when the final credits would start rolling, because in this day and age, episodic time constraints aren’t as concrete like they used to be, and it’s not out of the ordinary for finale episodes to have longer run times in order to have a little flexibility.  But when they finally got to the final minutes of the series, I thought they ended it magnificently, and only in a way that Shadows could do.  Part bittersweet, part heartwarming, part gotcha, and of course, entirely funny.

By the time the episode was actually-actually over, I was left with a feeling of satisfaction and general happiness to have been able to been witness to what overall was a fantastic show, and I’m happy for the series to go out on top, instead of limping to the finish.

And metaphorically speaking, it feels nice to end the year’s television watching on a high notes as well as this one.

Terry Bogard in SF is basically Sonic in Smash

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to pretend like I follow or even care about the state of the video game industry, beyond if there’s anyone I know within it that relies on it to stay afloat for the health of their wellbeing.  But a while back, I heard that Terry Bogard from the Fatal Fury series was going to be made available as a playable character – in Street Fighter 6; and my eyebrow scrunched and I tilted my head like a dog when hearing something confusing.

Why.. is a Fatal Fury character being released in Street Fighter?

Clearly, somewhere along the timelines of SNK, my guess is that business had to go so tits up at some point to where they began to have to sell off or lease off intellectual property, and stronger entities like Capcom are more than willing to invest in established IPs if they’re made available.  And so, despite being one of the Street Fighter franchise’s most prominent competitors, Fatal Fury has basically relegated themselves to being the uncomfortable victim company in a metaphorical merger.

So Terry Bogard, the de facto main character and protagonist of the Fatal Fury franchise, is now novelty DLC character in the Street Fighter franchise.  Supposedly, Mai Shiranui is on the way as well if she’s not already out, and that seems appropriate too, considering she was the pin-up for basically all of SNK, and was their answer to Chun Li as far as having a strong female character with sex appeal.

But it all seems kind of weird and awkward to see the fate that seems to have befallen SNK to where their strongest characters are basically being loaned to the Street Fighter franchise, despite the fact that at one point, they held their own, and existed as a viable and competitive alternate to them.

It reminds me of when I saw Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character in one of the Super Smash Bros. games.  The main character of the franchise that was spearheading Sega’s determination to overthrow Nintendo’s position in the video game industry, now just a playable character in one of their massive library of titles.  And I’ve read plenty about the history of Sega and their proud and defiant history of trying to compete and defeat Nintendo, which adds to the feeling of sadness and defeat that they’ve gotten to the point where their IPs were absorbed by Nintendo, and at the mercy of their discretion at what would see the light of day in the future.

That’s kind of what it feels like to me, seeing Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui and any future Fatal Fury or other SNK characters showing up in Street Fighter or any future Capcom title for that matter.  There’s an air of defeat and quite literal ownage, if it is true that Capcom has purchased the rights to their competitors IPs. 

But let’s not chalk this up as a complete win for Capcom here; no, getting ahold of other existing characters just means Capcom can remain on cruise control as far as creating new and interesting characters goes.  The company hasn’t really had an original idea in seemingly over a decade now, leaning consistently on remakes, remasters, re-releases in all of their signature franchises, like Street Fighter and Resident Evil.  Packaging all their old arcade beat-em-ups into these overpriced collections and hitting them with a high pass filter and claiming they’re remastered.

Instead of attempting to create and innovate, Capcom would rather get throw money and purchase other properties, even of their competitors, and just merge them into their existing machines and hope that people continue to spend their cash on their shit.  And that’s how we end up with Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui in Street Fighter.  It’ll be fun to see whom they trot out next, surely guys like Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi need to make their way in, but beyond them it’s anyone’s guess at who and how they’ll manage to shoehorn any other Fatal Fury names into a Street Fighter roster without bloating it up to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 proportions.

Let’s talk about how much mobile-first development sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a topic that has been sitting in my living document of potential writing topics for a while, but never seemed to make it out of the queue, because of well, life.  But the other day, I saw a meme that I’d seen a few times before, but for whatever reason, it bubbled up this topic, and then I found myself in a position and headspace to where I might be able to write about this, finally.

But basically the meme was about how, [paraphrased] my most millennial trait is that large purchases must be done on an actual computer, or whatever equivalent to that general message that exists.  And being a millennial, I wholeheartedly agree, for a myriad of reasons, that large purchases really should be done on an actual computer and not on my phone or any other mobile device that I have.

Flights, vacations, experiences, large expenses, yeah, I don’t want do any of that shit over my phone, because I’ll never fully trust mobile data security as much as I would my own home’s personal wi-fi, not that that’s any better, but it just gives me peace of mind that it is.  Additionally, checking out on my phone leads to all sorts of room for error when pecking in on a mobile keyboard any sort of PII, billing and shipping information, and the last thing I’d want is a critical purchase to fail or bounce, because I entered in something incorrectly on account of being on a little-ass phone.

And then there’s stuff like Rakuten and other shopping plugins that I have installed in my personal computer’s browsers that I don’t have on my mobile devices, that might get me a little bit of cashback here and there; sure, earning 1% back on a $100 purchase might not seem like a lot, but all those nickels and dimes can eventually amount to something in the future, especially if you’re not paying them any attention and they just continue to accumulate quietly.

And finally, I’m old and paranoid, and I like to have records of the things I spend my money on, so I have a penchant to take screen grabs and print to PDF confirmation screens and purchase confirmations, because at some point everyone goes through that paranoia of when a confirmation email doesn’t come immediately, and you’re left wondering if your purchase actually went through, and if you’re actually going to get what you ordered, and that your money wasn’t going to be tossed into the aether, to have to be fought and disputed for in order to retrieve.

So yes, I do believe that big purchases are best done on personal computers, even at the risk of sounding old and dated to a bunch of young shitheads whom I don’t give a fuck what their opinions of me are in the first place.

However the problem is that in this ever-changing and ever-evolving world, is something that I’ve had varying amounts of objection throughout the years, which is mobile-first development – the practice of developing websites and e-commerce platforms that are designed to be optimally used by those on phones and tablets, with the conversely resulting secondary and B-tier performance for those on personal computers.

I’d wager that most people I know have been in situations where they’re trying to do something on the internet, like visit a site, make a purchase or do something at their laptop or their computer, to little success, and then whether it’s themselves or someone within proximity goes “hey, let me try it on my phone,” to where they have instant and easy success – this is a prime example of mobile-first development.

Well anyway, it’s bullshit, and I hate it, that the internet is becoming more and more in favor of mobile-first development, and little by little alienating those people who still use laptops and computers, and gradually phasing out those of us olds who actually like to make purchases of any size on devices that aren’t the same things that we play games on and doom scroll while we’re sitting on the crapper.

Phones are great for making purchases like food orders, or quick rage purchases on Amazon Prime when the store you’re in is out of what you’re looking for.  Tickets, or social media sales platform transactions that aren’t really that big of a deal.  That’s the extent of mobile shopping that I’m interested in.  To each their own, and I’m sure the generations after me are fine with shelling out thousands of dollars worth of travel, electronics and experiences on their phones while sitting in traffic or dicking around on their phone while at work, but my old ass likes the ceremony and ritual of making large impactful purchases from the comfort of my own computer, preferably at home.

Welp, this wasn’t as great of a post as I thought it could’ve been, but whatever.  Mobile-first is bullshit, and it annoys me whenever I identify when companies are obviously putting mobile device commerce at the top of their food chains over all other means of completing transactions.  *coughDELTA