Tag: owned

Must suck for all the career photographers out there

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I saw some content on the scroll of famed gymnast, Simone Biles, taking photographs on the sidelines of a Sunday Night Football game.  I didn’t really care to dig deeper beyond the surface of the post that I saw, but apparently she was quoted saying something along the lines of how it was a fun little side-gig for her.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen stories about how other retired professional athletes have gotten into photography as well; Ken Griffey, Jr. and Randy Johnson come to mind immediately.  And presumably because of who they are, they’ve been typically easily able to get onto the sidelines of countless major sporting events, and there have been quite a number of cheeky coincidences and posts about them doing photography at these things.

Like how Ken Griffey, Jr. doing photography at a home run derby, and how many participants and spectators have no idea that one of the greatest derby performers was on the field the whole time.  Randy Johnson has parlayed one of his most infamous moments in history into his personal logo, eliciting some chuckles among those, whom IYKYK.

In all fairness, the photography of all of these former athletes aren’t necessarily always bad, but at the same time, when retired professional athletes with basically unlimited money are capable of acquiring the best gear possible, with money not being an obstacle, they absolutely should be capable of producing high-quality photography, since their equipment would be capable of overcoming any of the numerous shortcomings they’d have as relatively novice photographers.

However, the thing is, going back to the title of this post, it must really suck for all the lifetime career photographers out there that don’t get the major gigs out there whenever a retired professional athlete with a side hobby, top-tier gear and connections solely because of their name gets them instead.  It’s really not fair when the Super Bowl rolls around, and photographers with decades of experience, who have been hustling their whole careers, and have been kicking and scratching for every connection and networking opportunity, gets pushed aside because Simone Biles or Randy Johnson are available, and it would be a fun story for their own social feeds to have these legends doing the photography for their event instead of people whom might really need the gig, its paycheck, and its potential to boost their own portfolios and perpetuate the cycle in a positive direction.

It’s classic rich getting richer, and those in control being too shortsighted to realize that their desperation for relevance and validation is really fucking people who really need the work and wages more than a bunch of bored rich retired professional athletes who think it’s a fun hobby to take pictures.  I smirk and take a modicum of enjoyment of seeing legends having fun in retirement, but it doesn’t take long for me to also realize that their retirement hobbies are also putting the screws to career working professionals out there, that need the work way more than they do, and that, really isn’t that cool.

Not sure what OP was expecting from Ric Flair

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

People: woman who purchased personalized Cameo video message from Ric Flair for her brother’s wedding disappointed when Flair cuts scathing promo about the perils of marriage

If the circumstances were any ordinary business doing wrong to a customer, I’d say probably 70% of the time I tend to side with customers.  Fuck businesses, most of the time.

But in the context of this story, you have Cameo, in which customers are consensually agreeing to give celebrities an open mic to say whatever they want, regardless of any direction or talking points they’re given, and then you also add fucking Ric Flair into the equation, and as history and culture have shown, nobody tells Ric Flair what to do or say.

I know OP turned to the internet to try and farm sympathy and gain support for her belief that Ric Flair did her and her newlywed brother dirty by cutting a vintage Ric Flair promo, completely against the concept of marriage, contrary to her intentions.  As stated, nobody tells Ric Flair what to say; man has been unscripted for the better part of his entire, legendary wrestling career, and Cameo wasn’t going to be any different than reporting to Vince McMahon, Ted Turner or Jim Crockett.

Her first mistake was not knowing enough about Ric Flair before agreeing to a Cameo arrangement; because in addition to the fact that nobody can tell him what to say, the man is 76 years old and lives in bars these days, daytime drinking and existing in a state of constant inebriation.

Furthermore, to anyone who might want to do some cursory research about Ric Flair before dropping a grand to have him film a video for them, they’d quickly see shit like “16-time world champion” and “Hall of Famer,” but also the fact that the guy has been married like 5-6 times with as many divorces.

Man is doing shit like Cameo and getting drunk off his ass 25-8, because he clearly is over  marriage and probably owes a boatload of money to a number of ex-wives, and if there were any worse of a person to have film a Cameo for you to put marriage over, it’s Ric Flair.

The funny thing is that, and I’m too lazy and not caring enough to follow up, if I’m the brother who received this Ric Flair promo, I’d still probably think it was the greatest thing in the world, even in spite of ol’ Ric telling me I’m making the greatest mistake of my life.  And if the new missus were someone worth keeping around, she probably would too.

If anything at all, Ric Flair, deliberate or most likely not, made this whole thing one of the most memorable and legendary wedding gift stories her brother would ever have.  If Ric cut a white meat babyface promo about how he’s so lucky and marriage is beautiful and wonderful, and how gives his blessings, ain’t nobody going to remember it in a month, a year, or at their 10th or 20th anniversaries. 

But Ric cutting a scathing heel promo, that’s something everyone would remember until the end of time.  It’s what the bride and groom will talk about for years.  OP, in spite of her current disapproval and dissatisfaction with it, will remember it all the same.  Any friends, family, guests or anyone who’s ever seen it, they’ll remember it and make references to it.

In fact, it’s a scenario where all parties win in the end, because it’s also probably going to do wonders for Ric’s Cameo demand, with people with loose pockets and too much money will be more inclined to take a chance on Space Mountain and hire Ric to do some personalized messages for them.

But even if takes some time before OP realizes that she will get a W out of this whole scenario, as far as tryna farm sympathy and support because she regretted acquiring the services of Ric Flair, ain’t going to happen.  This is her turd, and until she starts to understand the resounding success of her efforts, she’s got to accept that it’s an L until she does.

Owned. WOOOOOOOO

So, like maybe 350 lobsters stolen?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

FOX local: an estimated $400k worth of live lobsters headed for Costco locations in the Midwest hijacked

A few years ago, I made a joke when there was a story about how a truck full of ramen noodles was heisted, how all in all, maybe $4.79 wholesale cost worth of product was actually lost.  That the physical truck must have been the size of the Venezuelan land train that was transporting gasoline in the fourth Fast & Furious installment in order for it to amount to the reported cost of theft.  That the thieves could probably make way more money on the scrap cost of the truck as opposed to black marketing ramen noodles.

Well, this is kind of the polar opposite of that joke, with a reported $400k worth of live lobsters getting stolen on the way to Costco stores.  Where given the cost of inflation and white man greed, there were maybe like 350 live lobsters actually stolen, even factoring in the fact that they were headed to bulk bargain land Costco.  I also like how they say locations, as in plural, in Illinois and Minnesota as if they’re trying to convince people that $400k worth of lobsters is more than perhaps two whole stores’ worth of inventory.

I also like how the article uses the word hijacked, because when I hear the term, I think of the scenes from Fast & Furious where a team of Vin Diesel’s street racers in slammed Honda Civics corner semis and use grappling hooks and daredevil jumps to subdue, incapacitate and eject truck drivers before making off with their cargo.

Because instead of a land train getting hijacked, the more likely reality is it was probably like a singular Ford F-350 that was just boosted from a roadside motel’s parking lot, where the thieves had no idea that they booty they were plundering were even lobsters.  The driver was probably safely sleeping in a shitty bed with cigarette burns in the comforter.  And in this case, the inventory is definitely more expensive than the vessel, and I can’t make the remark about how the truck would yield more in scrap than the cargo.

I don’t imagine live crustaceans having a very high black market value, considering the pain in the ass it is to prepare them, well, but in the grand spectrum of things, it’ll suck for those two stores in the Midwest for those rich assholes who want Costco-priced lobsters and won’t be able to get any for a month until the next shipment can arrive, and even then, the cost will inevitably go up for all stores, since Costco is the type of company that probably wouldn’t want a single region to shoulder the brunt of the increase when all can instead.

Even with the FBI purportedly being on the case, I would wager that this is one of those news stories where nothing is going to be resolved, nobody is going to get caught and it’s just going to be forgotten except in the annals of a personal brog that nobody knows exists.  I doubt that this is really so much a high-stakes organization arranging these kinds of heists as much as it’s some petty crooks with some theft skills playing burglary roulette and just hitting a mini jackpot in hitting up a ride with 350 lobsters in it.

But we got lobsters, highway hijinks, and the opportunity to make repeated Fast & Furious references, so it’s the perfect story for me to brog about. 

Score a point for staggered episodic television

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

An interesting thing happened to me recently – I caught up with a bunch of television and I had nothing to watch.

I was on the treadmill doing some incline walking, and I had reached the end of episode S0504 of Stranger Things.  But as the credits began rolling, there was no rapidly scrolling next episode button ready to shotgun me into the ensuing episode.  I had reached the end of what was released, because Netflix has strayed from what made them who they are and like many of the bigger titles they’ve dropped over the last few years, they’re deliberately staggering the release of them, presumably to maximize how long they can milk content to their viewers, but more likely to ensure that those pleebs sharing passwords have a little more difficult as far as trying to bilk trials and get all the content for free in a concentrated amount of time.

Later on in the evening, mythical wife and I were watching S0203 of Culinary Class Wars, and Korean television is notorious and deliberate in how they break episodes apart.  So when the episode ended, at an obvious cliffhanger as far as delivering results of cooking challenges go, the same thing occurred; credits begin, no next episode button.  Returning to the landing page of the show, is the becoming all-too familiar sight of “New episodes releasing on X date” prompt on the following episode, and suddenly we no longer have anything to watch.

Combined with shows that already operate in weekly episodic releases like Pluribus, and Disney+ and even HBO Max are known to stagger their content with shows like Daredevil: Born Again and even silly crap like The Chair Company, and it’s apparent that the pendulum of television consumption has already passed the precipice where all shows were required to drop entire seasons at a time, lest they would be doomed to fail, to kind of swinging back in the direction of olden times, where such is no longer a requirement in order for a show to succeed.

The funny thing is, I don’t really hate it.  Anymore, at least.  Sure, there are times where I get lost how into a show I start becoming, and it’s a definite do not want moment when you realize that there is no next episode available to watch, and you have to wait for it, but at the same time, for people like me, who always feel strapped for time, the forced break from spending more time watching television isn’t necessarily always a bad thing.

I caught up with Pluribus and thought to myself, welp, with no more episodes to watch, I may as well go do something else, and although what I may or may not have done after watching television might not necessarily have been more productive or satisfying, but the point remains is that I did them 60-90 minutes earlier than I would have, had I watched, just one more.  And being able to tackle those things 60-90 minutes earlier means I wound down my day that much sooner, and I ultimately get more sleep which is always a good thing considering I have to get up at ass o’clock every single day without exception.

Also by not having shows drop entire seasons at a time also helps eliminate that FOMO or rather, fear of not getting spoiled, because inevitably there are people, websites, social channels and/or other internet entities that speed run every new piece of media that comes out, and then spoils the ever-living fuck out of them on social media platforms for people to accidentally see while they’re doomscrolling.  I have to say it’s liberating knowing that within a short amount of time, I’m caught up and at the same stage of Stranger Things as the vast majority of enthusiasts of the show, and that there’s pretty much no chance that I’m going to get spoiled to the inevitable ending, because it hasn’t officially dropped yet.

The point of all this is, that I’ve made jokes about how the money-grubbing direction of the media market is going to inevitably push people back towards the development of what’s basically old school cable television, but in some regards, by passively going back to methods of the past, all these television platforms are inadvertently re-training the olds, and training the kids of today about weekly episodic releases or programs complete with advertisements, and I feel like within 2-3 years, we’ll be back to the resurrection of formal cable television, but people are actually going to like it instead of constantly threatening to cut the cord. 

Maybe it’ll be delete the apps when this age arrives, and everyone will be so arrogantly gleeful about uninstalling Netflix and Disney+ to sign up for cable services.

Cable2 is going to be so lit.

I sure hope Murakami likes the taste of defeat

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: latest Japanese sensation, Munetaka Murakami, signs with the Chicago White Sox on a 2-year, $34M deal

When Murakami’s name, and his intention to pursue a move into MLB made it to American media, I was one of many who had the same thought – go to the Dodgers.  Failing that, he’d go to the Yankees, or Red Sox or Mariners; teams who have had a good relationship with Japanese players and media.  Or maybe even the Phillies or Blue Jays, teams with big wallets and feeling the pressure to win now.

So when news broke that he had signed with the Chicago White Sox, all I could do was throw my head back and laugh heartily, because I don’t really think the man could have picked a worse place to land than the Southside of Chicago.

Like, did Murakami do any research before making his choice, or did he just leave everything to his agent/representation to do all of it for him and make the decision on his behalf?  I feel like it has to be the latter, because I can’t imagine any ballplayer would voluntarily go to the Chicago White Sox, unless they were like a hometown kid out to try and prove a point or something, and even that’s a stretch of a hypothesis.

The White Sox are coming off of their third straight season of losing 100 games, and two years removed from literally setting the all-time record in losses with their historic 121-loss season.  If I’m a free agent hot shot wanting to make a mark and set a team on fire, the White Sox are absolutely the worst team to try and accomplish such.  Even if his hitting prowess does translate well to the Majors, it won’t change the fact that the rest of the team sucks, and the only rookie* record that he’ll be chasing will how many walks he’ll be issued when the rest of the league starts pitching around him.

*term used loosely  on account of the fact that he has 7 seasons of NPB experience, but MLB is a slave to appearances

Plus, just about everything else about the organization sucks, from their management who has clearly no motivation to win much less put a competitive team on the field and seem to be going through the motions of pretending like they’re rebuilding while more than likely just churning and trying to just make a paycheck, to their shitty ballpark which is basically the living embodiment of the stigma of shit being on the south side of cities being, shit.  Obviously, he is under no obligation to live on the Southside of Chicago once he relocates to the United States, but traffic in the region is pretty turrible, and he’s going to be playing an interesting game of either living near the park and being remotely close to the Southside, or living somewhere nice but run the risk of being victimized by the shitty traffic of the city.

What’s even funnier to me is that above all else, from a holistic perspective, everything about this deal already seems like a big-ass L from the onset.  Not that a $17M annual salary is anything to scoff at, even for professional athletes, but for a guy with the name, pedigree and aura as Murakami, not to mention MLB’s gigantic raging boner for Japanese players, I feel like he’s taking a really big settling deal, especially considering the fact that he landed on the White Sox.  There is no team in baseball that wouldn’t benefit from a guy that, even if his aggregate production were slashed to account for the league and culture shift, and he became “just” a 20HR/80RBI guy, there are definitely teams who pay more for that, and it’s hard to believe that it was just the White Sox that came knocking.

I get that his general MO of high-power, low-contact is concerning for many, but Kyle Schwarber literally just signed for $30M per year over the next five years.  Sure, teams are taking a gamble when it comes to his character, ability to gel with a clubhouse and they have no idea what his presence will do to a team’s chemistry, but I still feel like that Murakami probably left at least $3-5M per year and another year on the table with the deal that he took.  I mean, good for the White Sox and when the day is over I’m not going to lose any sleep over any dude getting the short end of the stick, but I just feel like Murakami’s camp really dropped the ball at getting their man paid, and signed with a team that doesn’t absolutely suck.

Either way, I sure hope he really doesn’t mind losing, because he is going to be doing a whole lot of it over the next two years.  Maybe it’s all part of the plan to take such a short-term deal, because by the time his two years of Southside prison are up, the Dodgers or Yankees will be in dire need of a new DH, and then if he’s been playing his cards right, would be the most ideal candidate to swoop in and then sign his big fuck-you I’m Japanese bitch contract then.  He is after all, just going to be 27 around that time, still very much reaching his physical peak.

But until then, we’ll see how much he can tolerate being on a squad that’s all but assured to lose at least 85 games a year for the life of this deal, and if he’s still got the willpower and cojones to try and be a baller, or if he’ll be just another White Sox player whose had the life sucked out of them.

In other news, there is such a thing as the National Lacrosse League

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

YT: two lacrosse goalies fighting at an NLL game

When I first saw this clip, one of the first things I thought to myself was, how old is this player that took off the jersey with the logo that look precariously similar to the Washington Capitals logo?  When he turned around, the male pattern baldness on his head shone like the fucking diamond on top of the pyramid in The Mummy Returns, and I thought to myself, man, high school boys got it rough if they’re going bald this early in their lives.

But then I learned that the NLL at the corner of the screen stood for National Lacross League, and it wasn’t an abbreviation for some city or province in Australia that I’d never heard of in my life, so that meant that these guys were somewhat grown men, playing lacrosse professionally, and I’d just learned that there was such a thing as the National Lacrosse League, that actually affords a bunch of Chads, Trents, Jaxsons, Rhetts and Wyatts the opportunity to get paid to play lacrosse.

The only thing that I can fathom being whiter than the NLL is the crowd of people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th.

Secondly, I wondered what in the world had to have been said or done in order for the two goalies to get so triggered to where they thought the absolute next and only option was to start throwing hands?  I admit that I don’t really know anything about lacrosse* beyond it’s a bunch of white guys using nets on sticks to try and get a ball into the net of their opponents.  But I do know that said nets are a substantial distance away from one another, and a quick Google search says that they are 100 yards apart, which is the same distance between endzones in futbol americano (a real sport), so that’s quite a distance between nets, and their goalies.

*to the point where my hands don’t even have the muscle memory to type out lacrosse properly; seriously, I’ve forgotten to write the ‘e’ at the end of it at least six times at this point, and I keep having to correct it

Needless to say, I’m curious to know what the heck possibly could have been said or done between these two Chads from so far apart, to where they mutually agreed to meet up and start swinging.  Surely, there had to be a preexisting beef that just needed a spark to ignite physicality; maybe they had a disagreement about a Charlie Kirk podcast or one accused the other’s dad of insider trading or something, either way, the wussiest fight in the world was still the result of it.

Seriously, when both guys shed their MegaZord’s worth of armor, it was basically two guys whose offseason regimen is clearly 2-3 cycles of P90X, and they really had no business trying to throw punches.  Neither guy went down, there was no blood or even the slightest indication of a bruise, and I’m guessing even before the first punch was thrown, one or both of them probably felt the sense of wtf am I doing, but because they had started it, it had to happen, regardless of how pathetic it ended up being.

Regardless, poor form though, from both Luke and Trey.  This fight was enough to get NLL some ESPN exposure to where people under rocks like me can learn of their existence, but not nearly to the quality to where I talk about it any other fashion than ridicule and airing out my grievances with white guys.  Had they gone a little more full R-word and maybe hit a good pro-wrestling move like this kid dropping an avalanche head-scissor Fame-Asser, then people might be willing to put a little bit of respect on the NLL’s name.

Money woes, the 2025 edition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago, I got an email that was clear to be pertaining to the settlement of some class action lawsuit that I clearly put my name in the hat in, some time ago.  I do that when I can, sign up to be a plaintiff for class action lawsuits, when they are applicable to me.  Sometimes, the eventual payoff is nothing more than a few bucks, if even currency at all, but there have been some in the past that I’ve actually gotten some substantial money from–a true set it and forget it kind of reward that’s always welcome if and when they inevitably settle.

This particular settlement wasn’t paltry; it was like $129, automatically deposited into my PayPal account.  Ordinarily, this would be something that’s I’d be happier about, since a basically free $129 would be welcome at any time of my life, and it’s not that I’m not welcoming any sort of monies incoming, it’s just that especially over the span of the last month, I’ve been hit with constant atom bombs of expenses, and I was already two feet underwater before December started, but now I’m basically in the line of sight with the Titanic currently, and $129 is going to do absolutely dick or butt as far as my current levels of debt is concerned.

Years ago, I used to have this thought process that when shit was going poorly, expenses would just start coming in from out of nowhere, at around $300 at a time.  Unexpected bill, car issue, pet emergency.  Eventually, it kind of went up to $500-600 an incident; needing tires, appliance malfunction, unexpected kid-related expense.

Over the span of the last month, it’s clear that the rubric has once again changed for the worst, and it’s like the array of unexpected expenses are just starting at $1,000 a pop, with no ceiling on them.  The fucking bus-passing ticket cost me a grand, new tires for my car are exceeding $1,000, another critical expense that I had no lead time to prepare for was like $6,000+.

Naturally, like many people who understand what the concept of economics is have pointed out, the rate in which people are compensated at the rate in which expenses globally have increased are not even in the same galaxy of being commensurate, and it all leads to the conclusion that this has basically been the worst financial year of my entire life.

And I say such without any hyperbole, or trying to deliberately exaggerate for effect, this year, twenty twenty-five, has been the worst year of my life as far as finances go.  I have never racked up as much debt in my life as I’ve racked up this year, and there are very long and uncertain futures as far as paying such debts back without them suffocating me any worse in the future as they are doing in the present.

My outgoing expenses are obliterating my incoming earnings like Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland, and an ungodly amount of expenses typically just fall back onto my credit cards, neither of which have a particularly favorable interest rates, and it’s in my best interests to pay them back as soon as possible as to not get sucked into the vortex of interest.

And the worst part is that almost none of these expenses are really the case of me being an irresponsible shithead and having overleveraged myself or living way beyond my means.  I have a wife.  I have kids.  I have an au pair.  I have a family member that seemingly absolutely refuses to help me help him.  I’m basically everyone’s fucking ATM and everyone’s fucking safety net.  All of which amounts to everyone vacuuming up my money, leaving me with absolutely nothing but scraps, debt, anxiety, depression and a whole lot of pent-up frustration.

So as one might be able see, getting a free $129 at this current juncture of my life doesn’t really have much impact.  It merely scratches at a mountain of debt that has materialized massively especially over the last month.

Needless to say, I’m depressed as fuck, which is kind of sad considering we’re in the throes of holidays currently.  I can’t afford to Christmas shop, and even if I could, I’m so over gift giving again, because I’ve been in such financial peril for so long now that I can’t get in the right headspace to where I can be happy to give gifts because I could afford them without jeopardizing my ability to survive.  I’m sick of feeling obligated to have to get gifts, and I would rather receive nothing so I didn’t feel like I had to reciprocate, and the only gifts that I actually want to see are those going towards my children.

I’ve been so depressed that I can’t bring myself to write about the number of things that under normal circumstances, I’d want to carve out some time to write about.  The John Cena retirement.  Philip Rivers’ return to football coincidentally timing with his existing retirement benefits nearing expiration.  Mick Foley vs. Politics.  Pluribus, the latest Vince Gilligan masterpiece.  The Braves actually not having a shitty offseason for once.  Notre Dame being bitches about missing the CFB playoffs, and the shitshow that the CFB playoffs are doing to bowl season outright. 

These are all things and topics that I notated to myself as things I might want to brog about, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to do so, because when I’m not working, I’m parenting, when I’m not parenting, I’m fretting about finances, and when I’m not fretting about finances, I’m cleaning up my house because nobody else gives a fuck to help out.  And if I’m lucky, I get a little bit of time for me to get my daily exercise and Duolingo in, and then it’s off to bed where I have to be the first one up every single fucking day because nobody else is going to ever relieve me of, duty.

I’m always operating against a clock of some sort, I have no time for myself, I’m drowning in debt, with no relief in sight.  I am a tiny solitary planet of stress, anxiety, depression, frustration and rage, with no relief in sight.  Everyone in my life deserves to get a better version of me than what’s currently in existence right now, but short of the momentary glimpses of light that my children bring me, without more help than the nothing I get from the world, this is the only version of me that is available.

Happy holidays, everyone.