Tag: travel

I kind of have to respect Mercedes’ game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t mention it because life has a tendency to get all up in the way, but a little before Labor Day, I made a small trip, and my first destination was Philadelphia, where I met up with some friends so we could watch AEW live, on account of a childhood friend we have who is on their payroll and could hook us up with some tickets.  However, it wasn’t just watching AEW live, it was watching AEW live at the, now 2300 Arena, formerly known as the notorious ECW Arena, known for being the home to, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

This was very much as case of being more interested in seeing my friends and the venue itself as opposed to the actual product being shown, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad of a show, since the narrative of the whole night was leaning hard into the fact that they were at the ECW Arena.

It also didn’t hurt that our seats were front row.

Anyway, there really was no point to mentioning all that other than to just mentioned that I went to see the ECW Arena for the first time which I really enjoyed, and the whole point of this post is to, once again, talk about Mercedes Moné, seeing as how she’s hoovered up a 12th blet, and has been proclaiming herself to be better than Ultimo Dragon, and apparently, I’m not sure what prompted it, but also better than Bret Hart.

Little does she probably realize that kayfabe or not, by bringing up Bret Hart’s name in such a manner will embark her on a personal beef with the Excellence of Execution for the better part of the next three decades, but that’s neither here nor there.

Loosely tying back into my experience at the ECW Arena, I did get to see Mercedes live, in an in-ring promo where she was glorifying some new backyard promotion’s title win.  Despite being in the front row, nobody could really hear anything, because whether it’s AEW’s equipment being shitty, or the acoustics of the ratty old ECW Arena, nobody was getting any audio, but it didn’t really matter because in spite of the backhanded praise I have planned for this post, it doesn’t change the fact that she still gives really shitty promos, and on the trading card talent scale, her promos are probably at like a 2 out of 7, primarily on account of the fact that she’s not afraid to speak, it’s just she sucks at it.

But that was back on Labor Day, and as of now, Mercedes now holds 12 different blets, and finally lots of the internet are finally beginning to acknowledge that in spite of the number of blets, only nine of them are actually titles, considering the number of asterisks surrounding several of them, like the Owen Hart Tournament blet being a trophy and not an actual title, the Queen of Southside blet being technically retired and not an active blet, and I’m guessing the recently won Ring of Honor Women’s Television blet has an asterisk on account of it being an interim title, despite the fact that Red Velvet wouldn’t have a chance against Mercedes in a clean bout.

I’ve said it before, on account of some of them being not actual titles, and many of them being titles for a bunch of backyard promotions nobody had ever heard of, this whole blet collector arc for her is mostly meaningless, and if that makes me a hater to say such things, so be it, but it’s my version of the truth as far as I can see it.

I could argue with troglodytes on the internet about this topic, but I really do not want to, which is why it ends up being a brog post on a brog that nobody reads, but I have to say that I think I’m beginning to see what her large scale scope game is in doing all of what she’s doing, and if such really is the case, I think I do feel that I should respect her in this regard, because when the day is over in the wrestling business, it’s better to be hated and analyzed and criticized over being respected, heroic, but otherwise invisible.

And Mercedes is doing a masterclass job of doing what she’s doing, and getting people noticing and getting people talking.  Shit, as much criticism I have for what her character is doing, this is like my fourth or fifth post about specifically her, so whatever she’s doing is working, and in that regard, she has my respect.

And what she’s doing specifically, I would say is ragefarming, because between being the cockiest heel since prime Ric Flair, Mercedes is also taking her arrogance to the internet, dropping quotes and sound bytes, saying shit that is deliberately and tactfully setting wrestling fans off and getting them talking and interacting and engaging with her, with websites and groups and other outlets that are all scrambling to monetize the exposure.

Speaking of Flair, he used to explain that the point of being a good heel is to be so disliked and hated, that people start getting antsy and itching to see you lose, and one of the true arts of the business is being such to where they will be willing to pay money to see it happen, and I think Mercedes is doing an outstanding job of fulfilling that first part, but me personally I don’t like paying to watch wrestling other than live, but I am going to be excited if and when she starts having to drop all these blets back to their respective promotions.

In the grand spectrum of her career, it will be easier for her to parlay being a legendary heel back into a respectable face, as opposed someone who has to build up their fame and resume, and when the day comes, which I predict might be around next Thanksgiving, when Mercedes goes back to the WWE and becomes Sasha Banks again, she’s going to get a real needle-moving reaction, one way or the other, so the Four Horsewomen can have a massive blowup program with Asuka’s Team Japan with Iyo Sky, Kairi Sane and Giulia in a passing of the torch.

However, I still think the most defining period of Mercedes’s journey right now will be when it comes time for her to start returning the favor to all these companies whose blets she has right now.  My general scrutiny is that she may have stretched herself too thin to it almost being a no-win situation; if she bleeds her titles back piece meal, nobody will notice, but if she goes on a big tour of dropping titles in a sequence, a long string of L’s is going to make her look weak, and history has shown that Mercedes is not a fan of taking too many L’s in general.

If she pulls the losing her smile card, and starts relinquishing titles without having to take any defeats, it effectively kills whomever she does it to, and that’s just not good business at the end of the day, but I wouldn’t put it past Mercedes to keep this in mind if the thought of taking some losses starts to make her lose sleep.

Frankly, the only viable solutions are that a lot of companies will have to have some horsey, multi-women matches where Mercedes can drop blets without always having to take any pins or submissions, or she needs to start a feud with someone in AEW that reaches the level of hate that AJ Styles has reached in feuds with Dominic Mysterio or LA Knight, where they will be willing to cross seas and oceans in order to interfere in their matches and cost them in title defenses, thus keeping her somewhat strong in requiring interference in order to lose.

But anyways, because I’ve clearly got Mercedes unfortunately living rent-free in my head, and I’ve made yet another lengthy post overanalyzing what she’s doing, I’m wrap this up.  I think I’ve said everything that I’ve wanted to say this time, and normally I’d say I hope to not touch on this subject again, but there’s too much wrestling fandom and likely mileage in the Moné-train to not.

However, credit to where it’s due, Mercedes the Ragefarmer is holding a masterclass at ensuring people are noticing and people are talking, and in the wrestling industry such does require talent, and knowledge to parlay such reactions into positive, profitable careers.

Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m a day removed from having gotten off of the Disney Treasure, and hoo boy do I really feel my age these days.  For the first time in all of the cruises that I’ve done before, did I feel a little motion sick on a cruise before, but thankfully that was very short lived, and I was able to sleep it off and remain normal throughout the duration of the trip.  Driving back home all the way directly from Port Canaveral, I found my back hurting pretty badly to the point where I had to take some ibuprofen, thus making it the first time that I’ve needed painkillers, just to make a long distance drive, something I’ve done countless times in my life previously.

And unsurprising, the sea legs sensation of feeling boat rocking on solid land is hitting hard, and it’s mostly when I’m standing still or trying to remain as motionless as possible does the rocking sensation kick in, and I anticipate this will be the case for the next week or so, as it has been for me on previous cruises.

But anyway, big ass famiry trip in the bag, and do I have a lot of thoughts about it.  As curmudgeon as it may sound to say, I don’t necessarily refer to this entirely as a vacation, because the truth of the matter is that wrangling my two kids, on a boat, is still a colossal amount of effort that leads to a lot of aggravation at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get fried and pissed off at undesirable behaviors throughout the week long journey through the Caribbean on an egregiously overpriced boat.

#2 hijacked almost every single evening of the trip, mostly on account of fatigue and a lack of napping, but it usually amounted to her refusing to eat, behaving like a little shit at dinner, and then me needing to walk her out of the restaurants or carry her from point A to point B, and thusly being unable to really enjoy large chunks of time.  I don’t love her any less, but that’s about as succinct of a description of what happened throughout the course of this trip.

Oh, and I’m sure she’ll never live this down, she also barfed on the very literal center of the boat; in the grand hall of the main concourse, right at the center of the stage, where they had a photographer taking pictures of guests.  Immortalized, and definitely one of those stories that we as parents will always be able to recollect whenever we want to embarrass her in the future.

Still though, there’s little I won’t do for my kids and famiry, and despite the fact that I was probably burning out more than I was at any state remotely close to relaxation, there were still numerous pockets of happiness that makes it all worth it, and when the day is over, I want my kids to experience things and see things and visit places, and in those regards, it’s easy to say that the trip was a success. 

My children stepped foot onto the soil of other countries, experienced things that aren’t easily available to us elsewhere, and they got to experience a boatload of things that made them smile, rejoice or just be plain happy to see a bunch of Disney characters.  As a famiry, we went swimming with stingrays and sea stars, ate a ton of decadent foods, and enjoyed beaches, pools and a whole lot of fucking sunshine.

Some other observations about the trip were that this was apparently a tremendously busy cruise on account of two major factors:

  • It was the fall break for numerous school districts in the country, with a large quantity of them being from Georgia; I’m not even joking if I said that probably 2-3 fifths of the cruising populous were from Georgia, with quite a bunch of them being from my county specifically. The shore excursion we went on, our boat was literally over half from my exact zip code, as we were all on the same fall break.  Mythical wife even had one of her own students’ family assigned two tables away from us, so we saw them literally every single night.
  • This particular cruise was a Halloween at Seas cruise, which meant that there was a specific evening dedicated to Halloween, complete with characters all donning Halloween costumes, décor changing to be Halloween themed, and most importantly for the littles, trick or treating on the ship.

However, let’s stay on that latter bullet, because I feel like that was a big contributor to what I did not necessarily enjoy about my cruise experience as a whole.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise” →

Clearly the world does revolve around me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Before I carve out some time to write about the famiry cruise vacation, I just wanted to briefly chat about the fact that in the one week plus a travel day in which I was mostly offline and then for the most part radio silent as far as (reliable) internet connectivity went, pretty much the whole universe moved as far as people trying to get in touch with me, work pinging me endlessly at times in which they never do, people calling, leaving voicemails, and all sorts of news or internet activity that I was completely incapable of getting to, or even knowing about beyond the hints that I could surmise from the odd capabilities of pretty much only being able to receive push notifications and texts through iMessage only.

Ordinarily, I lead a pretty boring life where not a whole lot happens on a regular basis.  There are times in which I get so bored at home or at work, where I’m practically begging for my group chats or friend groups to fucking pipe up and chat, and I get to points where I feel like I have to restrain myself from trying to initiate lest I feel like I’m spamming and that the people in my life don’t like me. 

When I’m able to be on top of things, I typically manage to do such, and all my apps and mediums are typically left tidy and clean, and I’m most of the time pleased about the minimal amounts of catching up I have to do, when I’m at the most indisposed with the kids or work for a few hours at most.

But seriously, it was almost comical at how much activity seemed to only happen when I was completely incapable of keeping up with it.  My Fridays are work from home days, and it’s like this unspoken understanding that most people are capable of skirting the rules a little bit and stretching the “from home” part, be it through running errands, tackling appointments, or in my case, attempting to get out of town without having to officially burn any PTO, as long as the work gets done and communication is not completely radio silent.

However, in the one Friday in which we deemed our travel day, I figured I could skirt my work day so long as I kept my one meeting, and made sure to respond to any work-related messages in a timely manner.  Naturally, my work meeting was at like 11:30, so that loomed over my head throughout the start of my drive, and it wasn’t until we were around Macon was I able to check that off of my list, and I got work pings pretty much all throughout the entire day, that required mythical wife to transcribe for me, or me to dangerously try and type out while driving, and at one point required me to pull off the highway, VPN in and try to intervene myself.

It went all the way until exactly 5 pm.

Yes, it was my obligation to have to be able to work until 5 pm, but on a Friday, I knew my counterpart who was also involved in the work was as aggravated as I was.

I told mythical wife to remind me not to try and skirt the Friday again in the future and to just burn the PTO.

As far as the rest of the trip was concerned in which I was more or less forced offline which wasn’t really a bad thing in the sense that I actually went to bed for healthy durations of time and didn’t get sucked into the internet vortex of scrolling and wasting time, what was weird is that I was still able to get push notifications of all the things that I was missing, but was really incapable of staying on top of anything. 

I get free international roaming and data, which was serviceable in the past, but I guess T-Mobile really sucks compared to Sprint, and Mexico aside, the data available to me in Grand Cayman, Jamaica and Disney’s private Bahamian island were all inept garbage, and may as well as have remained offline, so it got to a point where I was just like, fuck it, and gave up on even trying.

But in the week in which I was off the grid, aside from work blowing me up, there was apparently all sorts of shit happening in the world that got a lot of my shit blowing up.  Wrestling events, sports happenings, interesting news in general.  Family gatherings, friends reaching out, and even a friend of mine getting engaged.  My dad, whom my sister and I are dealing with the things that occur in later stages of life, has been making a lot of questionable independent decisions, one of which caused his bank to contact me, naturally while I’m out of the country, to ensure its authenticity, which spiked my stress and anxiety at being incapable of handling it.  Family chats blowing up trying to arrange future things, multiple friend group chats exploding with topics and takes that I’d ordinarily like to participate in.  All the while, being pretty much offline for seven nights.

I understand that this is among the pinnacle of first world problems.  But it was almost comical at just how much the world moved just as soon as I was completely unable to witness all the happenings of it.  To the point where even though I’m home and beginning the settling in process, I wanted to blurt out this diatribe before taking any time at even attempting to ease back into the connected life, before anything else, not to mention the component of where I had the above graphic in my mind, and where the Photoshop sometime steers the post.

I guess we know who’s vying to be the next Spirit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Some friends and I were bullshitting on the topic of how Spirit Airlines is seemingly knocking at death’s door, about how if and when Spirit goes under, who takes their place in the airline pecking order, as the new budget airline that will absorb the lion’s share of ridicule and be the butt of all airline travel jokes?  Surely, one would emerge, seeing as how that’s just the natural order of nature, that if the weakest link of any category were to be cut off and killed, that someone would inevitably become the next in line.

The obvious choice would be Frontier, which is basically just Spirit Airlines but branded in green, as far as being a budget airline that lives on nickel and diming the fuck out of their customers, but for those who play it smart, a fairly serviceable option to get from point A to B.  And as someone who has flown both airlines on multiple occasions before, they really are pretty one and the same, and it would stand to believe that when Spirit goes under, those who already didn’t think Frontier was the ass-end of the airline industry, might not have any choice in the matter.

However, a surprising* contender appears to be emerging, as far as being a strong candidate to be the next Spirit, and that would be the once-reputable, once-universally beloved, once-proclaiming to love their customers, Southwest Airlines.

*or not, given the general direction of the company over the span of the last two years

Over the span of the last 12+ months, Southwest has made a tremendous amount of operational changes, with almost none of them being remotely beneficial to consumers.  First, it was them ceasing the whole open seating policy they had, which, to some was welcome, but to others, a sign of conformity and how they were taking one step closer to becoming another United or American or any other middling airline.  Then, in a move that definitely rose the ire of travelers, was the implementation of baggage fees, when for years prior, they boasted how bags flew free. 

And just over the last few days alone, Southwest has continued moving in conceivably the wrong direction, by announcing a large slew of route cuts, that will adversely affect lots of travelers from having direct options, and even had the audacity to try to spin that layovers were opportunities to see different parts of the country.  For as long as it took them to get their hooks into Atlanta, it looks like they’re already trying to reduce, with supposedly over 50% fewer flights this time next year, departing from ATL.

But one new development that is sure to draw the wrath of the internet as well as many around the country is their redefining of the large passenger policy, which was previously that large passengers could purchase a single seat, and get a second seat por gratis, if the flight could accommodate it, which was polarizingly applauded by many as a firm stance of allyship of inclusion of people of all body shapes and sizes.  Under their new policy, large passengers will have to preemptively purchase two seats if they know they will need them, and refunds of the second seat would be taken into consideration but not guaranteed, presumably on a case-by-case basis.

The latter is still probably better than what most other airlines offer, but it doesn’t take a genius to anticipate that the wrath of the internet is just going to see this as a sign of Southwest hates fat people, and when perception becomes reality, they become just like all the other airlines in the end.

The point is, Southwest is seemingly giving no more fucks about customers, contrary to the general brand reputation of theirs over the last two decades prior.  They’ve made it crystal clear that they are trying to profit in a competitive market, which is white people speak for, we know we’d probably be fine operating like we had been over the last half century, but we want to make more money now, so we’re going to say fuck the people and just do what everyone else is doing in order to achieve that.

I mean ultimately, that is the goal of every business in the world, to make money, but there are ways to do it and keep integrity and respect of the people intact, but that of course, often comes at a cost in itself, and when a bunch of old white guys run all these corporations, integrity and respect quickly fall to the wayside in pursuit of those extra nickels and dimes.

But it is funny how rapidly Southwest is selling their soul in order to go from successful company to asshole-rich successful company.  A part of me begins to wonder if Southwest isn’t deliberately tanking their company in one of those strange-but-typical modus operandi of businesses slashing expenses in a massive manner through liquidation and layoffs, in anticipation of a company sale or merger, and that Southwest is somewhere in a process of selling the company or getting absorbed by another airline.

And if so, a little more to be poured out for the airline industry, because within the guts of Southwest Airlines exists the remnants of AirTran, the budget airline that did succeed, and that I flew the shit out of, because they accomplished absolutely everything I needed out of an airline at reasonable costs.  Spirit and Frontier never could accomplish the things AirTran did, and AirTran did so well, they got assimilated into Southwest, who like Microsoft or Adobe basically did in so in order to kill a competitor.

Regardless of what happens to Southwest’s business in the future, if there was ever a bigger red flag of how they could become the next Spirit, look no further than the terminal incident out of Orlando, where a Southwest passenger went ballistic, and assaulted a terminal worker, as well as smashed up some monitors.  It’s funny because if this were actually Spirit, the lady would have been tazed and arrested within moments of the first aggression, but it’s like Southwest still has a lot to learn about unruly passengers, and she went unchecked for a while before presumably getting dealt with long after the cameras stopped rolling.

But if Southwest continues down this downward spiral, anticipate way more of this bullshit, and their gates will become the future places to meander to when you have a long wait before your flight after Spirit is gone, with hopes that you might see a street fight or a massive hot mess passenger meltdown.

Las Vegas sucks now, plain and simple

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every time I come across posts or articles about the general downward trends of Las Vegas tourism, I just scoff and remind myself to hold my tongue and save it for the brog, because I think I’m in the minority now about my feelings and attitude about Las Vegas.

But as the subject of this post says, Las Vegas sucks now, and is a far cry from the place that I used to go to multiple times a year, and it makes me sad to see just how much it’s changed and how I just now have absolutely no desire to go back any time soon.  And like I said, I think I’m in the minority here, especially among my friends who all seem to think the place is still good, regardless of if they acknowledge the changes or not, and as to not be the Debbie Downer, I more often than not, keep my feelings unspoken since I don’t want to be accused of peeing in the pool.

But yeah, Las Vegas sucks now, and I fully understand why their tourism and revenues are trending downwards, and feel little opinion other than the euphemism that this is the bed they made, and they have to lay in it.

Sure, COVID had a lot to do with their state of collapse, as a city so reliant on tourism was absolutely decimated when the whole world was encouraged to stay put, but the whole city didn’t do themselves any favors once things started to return to normalcy.  It’s like the whole place went into this determined recoup-mode, and decided to up the cost of just about everything in sight in order to make up for lost dollars from the pandemic, and as often the case whenever any business raises costs to justify something, once that something has been justified, they grow so used the revenues that they make no attempt to revert or reduce, and as is the case with Vegas, they actually doubled down and kept increasing the cost of everything to further push people to see how much they can get away with.

See, the Vegas I remember and loved, it wasn’t $Fuck you.99 per night to stay anywhere on the Strip, and there weren’t Ticketmaster-amounts of resort fees every night.  Parking was often free, which justified getting a rental car so we didn’t have to get taxis everywhere, and could occasionally explore the city beyond the Strip.  Food, sure, had its upscale joints where you could feel like a baller, but there were also plenty of options where you could get a cheap meal or just enough to satiate hunger, and it not be an automatic $100+ bill.

Every resort had a buffet, and I can say that I’d been to almost all of them at various points of my life, from the Riviera’s, Aladdin’s, MGM’s, Mandalay Bay’s, and my guiltiest of pleasures was the Rio’s Carnival World Buffet, where on two different times, separated by years, I managed to get the same server who had this creepy, Igor-like demeanor, but was still nice and did his job well.  But, they’re all gone now, with to my knowledge, the only ones truly left and worth a damn, being like Caesar’s Palace, Bellagio and Cosmopolitan.

Drinks were plentiful, and thankfully is still the case, free as long as you’re gambling, but for when you weren’t blowing all your money away, a domestic beer didn’t cost $20 plus a tip.

Which brings us to gambling, where across the board, the cost to play has risen to where the last two times I went to Vegas, I was basically done after a single day’s gambling.  I used to be able to bring $500 in cash, and manage to have a pretty fun long weekend; I could be lucky enough to play with some house case from time to time, and when the trips were over, be able to come back with a little left.  Now, $500 can’t get me through a single day, which was almost literal when my last trip was just 24-hours, with gambling time being less than four of those hours.

Casinos hardly bother with fluctuating table minimums anymore, and the lowest on the Strip is like $15, which is a perfectly uneven number to where anyone who wants to play a hundo, has almost no possibly way of playing an exact amount at $15 a hand or spin of anything without having an embarrassing remainder, or need to buy back in, and it makes me think of the New York MTA and how their fares are mathematically strategized so that it’s almost impossible to zero out a fare card, and the city rakes in millions a year on forfeited remainders.

The bottom line is that Las Vegas has completely abandoned even remotely trying to cater to anyone that isn’t at the very least, upper class, or can at least pretend to be for the duration of a trip.  Middle-class and lower schmucks like me can no longer afford to go there comfortably, much less have a good time, when we’re being gauged left and right, having the city wishing they could charge us to breathe.

I’m of the belief that there’s way more money to be made in catering to everyone, and my favorite stories in business are always ones where companies have embarked on such strategies and have found immense amounts of success in doing such, like sports teams that lower their tickets, concessions and accessibility and then they make record profits.  Apps that are released for free, but then rake in millions on ad revenue and in-game micro-transactions.  Look at Wal-Mart, whose last time I checked was #1 on the Fortune 500 for the last 30 years, because they cater to the lower class, and they make fuck numbers of profits every year in doing so.

And Las Vegas turning their back to those under the upper class line, screams of elitism, catering to the wealthy and those arrogant enough to demand exclusivity, I enjoy reading and seeing things about how their numbers aren’t doing as hot as they probably wish they were doing.  I love reading comments full of shade and criticisms from people who feel similarly to how I do, abandoned and resentful, and pining for a Las Vegas that they once loved so much, they used to “joke” with their friends about exploring looking for a rental property.

Like I said, this is the bed that they made, and it’s what they have to lay in, and I hope that one day, Las Vegas can get back to closer to being the city I once loved and hopefully in time for me to have some more memorable trips with my friends and my family.

Hate to see it, but it’s not like it isn’t deserved

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC: Fewer international tourists are visiting the United States; economic losses estimated to be ‘staggering’

Like the subject says, this is one of those things that most Americans probably wouldn’t like to see or know of, but at the same time, it’s not like it isn’t deserved, and I can only hope that there are more businesses whose owners and managers that voted for the dumbass orange turd in Washington are being affected by this over those who didn’t.

Like, America was no saint of a destination before dumbass orange turd took office again, but now that he is, I can’t imagine why anyone outside of the United States would have any real inkling of desire to visit it, save for experiences like, Disney World or Las Vegas.  But frankly, even those probably have better alternate options, like the numerous other Disney properties in Europe or Japan, and casinos in Macau or Italy.

I always go back to this particular story of how I came back from an international trip, and had a layover in JFK, and had to clear customs there before catching my next flight back to Atlanta.  I remember seeing these foreign tourists struggling immensely to get through customs because they spoke little-to-no English, and the customs agents were all salty New Yorkers who spoke nothing other than English and basically the faces of these tourists were miserable and scared, and I felt bad that this was basically how their trip was starting in the United States.

Meanwhile, mythical then-gf and I had gotten back from Germany or Korea or wherever we were, and the customs agents in all these places spoke English, weren’t miserable New Yorkers, and were by and not entirely unpleasant experiences getting past them to our destinations.  I remember when we got out of the airport in Munich, and there were already holiday booths and vendors and it was airy and pleasant, and compare that to walking out the door of JFK or any American airport, which is usually just a lot of unhinged drivers trying to pick people up, power-tripping security blowing whistles and screaming at people, and just a whole lot of ugliness, and I always wonder why anyone with a brain would actually want to visit the United States.

Furthermore, like the above photo shows, there’s a meme out there of all sorts of countries around the world, where people say they’re going to visit, when they’re really referring to small sections of each respective country; like all the weebs who say they’re going to Japan are really referring to Tokyo or Osaka, all Koreebs are really visiting Seoul when they say Korea, Paris to France, London to England, and frankly most Americans aren’t aware that Amsterdam is but a city in Holland and not the country itself.  The same applies to the United States, where most anyone from outside of it, when they say they’re coming to visit America, really is saying they’re visiting places like New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Washington DC, or Disney World (obviously not Orlando).  Everywhere else is pretty much not America as far as the eyes of the average tourist goes.

All the same, as much as I hope nobody I know is affected by the financial windfall of dwindling tourism, it’s one of those scenarios where it’s smirk-worthy with that I told you so kind of vibe, that this was inevitable to happen with the current political regime that basically has told everyone else outside the country to fuck off, and them being surprised that nobody wants to come visit anymore.

It’s like if people are getting hurt by this development on account of shitty leadership, a lot of people have nobody to blame but themselves for voting for a leader who’s so racist and xenophobic and is the chief reason why tourism dollars are evaporating and that nobody wants to come visit America.  But at the same time, it’s not like this should be anything of a surprise, once our glorious leader kept flapping his gums about America’s so-called superiority, so I guess all I can really say at this point is, owned.

I feel like this was probably one big misinterpretation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

DFP: Bomb threat on a Spirit Airlines flight in Detroit forces evacuation

I just want to start off with, I understand that bomb threats are no laughing matter, and good on all airline, airport, local and county personnel and authorities for doing the right thing and evacuating everyone and ensuring that all was green.

But I just feel like given the combination of circumstances, location, time, and nature of people who are flying Spirit Airlines, there’s probably some critical context missing from this story that probably leads to everything being one gigantic misunderstanding.

First of all, this happened in Detroit, which is one of the saddest and most depressing places in the country that I’d ever been to.  It’s a blue-collar place with a feeling of defiance of defeat in the actual city itself, and much like airports like Atlanta, Dulles, the airport is located way the fuck far away from the actual city proper and are the only things that stretch the city zone maps to retain the name.

Did you also know that Detroit has the highest concentration of Middle Eastern immigrants in the country?  This was news to me when I first was told this factoid, but then when I was on the prowl for as many Tim Horton’s locations as I could find, I found one inside of a Middle Eastern grocery store, and I realized such factoid was probably right.  Somewhere in this paragraph is the unfortunate stereotypical parallel between painting those of Middle Eastern descent or appearance with bomb threats on airplanes, and my mind assumes that this could’ve been one of those Harold and Kumar moments where someone might have seen a brown-skinned person on the plane and lost their shit, leading to this whole debacle.

Second, most everyone knows the jokes, memes and stereotypes that go along with Spirit Airlines.  I’ve flown with them more than I care to admit, because it’s hard to ignore a $97 RT versus a $397 RT on Southwest or Delta for a 90 minute flight, so I’m quite well aware of them myself on a first-hand experience.  Unruly, loud, hostile, and other pejoratives to describe the people who fly on Spirit Airlines, it wouldn’t be a far stretch to imagine the word “bomb” being muttered by any of these folks, regardless of the context, but as the FAA and TSA and whatever government agencies have conditioned us, bomb is bomb, and when the tragic word is whispered, shouted, muttered, uttered or screamed, all systems come to a halt, and the authorities are sent in.

Third, check the time of when the incident was reported – 7 am.  Which means that this flight was boarding at like 6:15 am, which means people have been at the airport since like 5 am or earlier, and I don’t care who you are, when you’re on that crack ass of dawn flight, there’s a way higher chance than normal that you’re not going to be in a good mood.  Now multiply that being in Detroit, and flying with Spirit Airlines, and you’ve got an entire aircraft full of extra ornery motherfuckers who are well past beyond edge, and somewhere along all these circumstances the word bomb popped out, and then all shit hit the fan.

Again, kudos to all those involved in security and operations for following protocol and ensuring the safety of everyone on the flight and in the airport.  But given all the moving parts and variables in this situation, I can’t help but feel like there probably is a whole lot of things that were taken out of context and lead to a wholly excessively unnecessary scenario.