Not sure how I feel about a Hulkamania biopic

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Netflix to develop a Hulk Hogan biopic with Chris Hemsworth playing the role of Hulk Hogan

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this.  My knee-jerk reaction is “oh fuck no, how dare someone try to profit on my nostalgia??”  But when I take the time to read about the details of this project, there are more reasons to feel like it might not be as terrible as I initially would assume it would be.

Namely the fact that Hulk Hogan himself is overseeing the whole thing, and that it’s going to be distributed by Netflix.  And Netflix is pretty solid when it comes to creating original content that doesn’t always suck beyond belief; and it’s funny that I hold more stock in the fact that Netflix is helming this over the fact that Hulk Hogan is consulting over his very own biopic as reasoning it might not be terrible.  As much as I love the Hulkster, the guy hasn’t always been the bastion of good decision making throughout his career and life.

Don’t get me wrong, my optimism for this is kind of at like a… 40 out of 100, in that I think there’s only a 40% chance that this is going to be any good.  Netflix or not, it’s probably going to be a trainwreck all the same, because although Hogan and Netflix are involved with this, it’s worth mentioning that one of the producers in this is still Eric Bischoff.

Look, nothing against the man himself, but as history has shown, combining Hogan and Bischoff has led to a notable amount of failures.  They basically tanked two separate wrestling federations when they got together, and who knows how many other business ventures they’ve sabotaged, inadvertent or deliberately.  It’s no secret that both could probably benefit from the payday of a Netflix project, but if this is the only reason why they’re doing it, it’s doomed to fail before it even gets off the ground.

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Here’s a crazy idea for MLB

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Fans don’t care when millionaires squabble: Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright latest to opine about the current state of MLB where free agents go unsigned, thinks a strike is becoming inevitable

A part of me thinks, or at least wants to declare, that if baseball goes on strike again, I should just be done with MLB, because punishing fans because two sides of ridiculously wealthy parties can’t come agree on which side should be entitled to more money.  It’s a ridiculous squabble no matter what way it’s looked at, where it’s abundantly clear that neither has any concern of how it looks from the perspective of those not a part of it.  But the reality is that I like sports too much, and even if there were a strike, and then they come back at a different time, I’d probably still end up watching again, much to my dismay.

On one side of the fence, we have the players, where many players have been very outspoken this offseason, about how it’s becoming ridiculous and indefensible that some very prominent free agents, namely Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel have not been signed yet, and Spring Training has literally just begun.  Ironically, nothing has been heard from the actual “victims” of this trend, and all remarks have been coming from mostly players who are currently locked into cushy, long-term, multi-million dollar contracts, because it’s easy to fling stones from pedestals.

On the other side of the fence, we have the ownership and front offices of all the Major League Baseball teams, whom throughout the last decade-plus, have all entered an era where statistical analysis has risen to prominence, and through such number crunching and analytical predicting, it’s taken a tremendous toll on how they view the financial worth of players, all across the spectrum. 

In layman’s terms, teams themselves have become risk-averse and less willing to haphazardly sign players to ridiculously long and high-dollar contracts, fearing the high possibility of “bad contracts” bogging down payrolls and inhibiting the team from succeeding on a long-term basis.

In short, the players are accusing the owners of being cheap and hoarding the revenue for themselves, calling them greedy.  They want more money to go in their pockets.

In short, the owners are telling the players that this is the way the game is evolving, and that they need to deal with it and get with the times.  They want more money to stay in their pockets.

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Love this fire from Craig Calcaterra

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Go on, get ‘em Craig: NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk writer Craig Calcaterra lights into the Atlanta Braves front office after their apparent ambivalence for the success of their baseball team

I don’t follow a tremendous amount of sports as much I once used to, but there are a couple of names that I’ve grown to really enjoy and respect throughout the years.  Joe Posnanski and Tom Verducci come to mind pretty quickly, but after reading this scathing editorial by Craig Calcaterra, I have to say that I think he’s ascended to that level of “this guy often piques my interest, no matter what he’s talking about.”

I’m not going to bother narrating the things that he wrote, because his piece in itself is pretty brilliant, mirrors a lot of the same thoughts that I have about the Atlanta Braves, Major League Baseball and professional sports itself, but I just really want to extol just how much I loved the fire coming from Calcaterra.

He’s totally right; the Braves are operating as if they think that their fans are idiots.  Unfortunately the arrogant front office, most notably represented by president Terry McGuirk and GM Alex Anthopolous, aren’t entirely wrong either; lots of the Braves’ fans are idiots.  Lots of baseball, and professional sports fans are idiots.  Most fans of anything in general are often idiots.  Not that there’s anything wrong with some blind faith in the things that people like, but when it comes to analytical thinking, that’s just stuff that some people don’t want to do, and it unfortunately puts them into the category of being idiots, as far as front offices are concerned.

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Gee, I wonder why??

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About as shocking climate change: bill proposed to the Georgia House, would make it easier for independent and third-party candidates to run for office

It should be no surprise that barely-red state Georgia would want more third-party candidates to clog up the polls in the future; look no further than the last, very public and highly scrutinized race for the vacant governorship of the state.  Yosemite Sam narrowly defeated Stacey Abrams, 1,978,408 votes to 1,923,685, a difference of 54,723 votes.* 

*does not account for all absentee and/or disqualified ballots, the legality of which is another conversation

However, also included in the results was some libertarian schlub, who managed to garner 37,235 votes.  Obviously, in a scenario where there were only two parties available to vote from, it is no guarantee that all 37,235 of those votes would definitively have gone blue, but even if like, 60% of them were to have gone blue, it would have forced the election into a run-off situation.  Sure, there’s no guarantee that even in a re-vote, the results would have changed, but it might have been a wake-up call to ambivalent Georgians to get off their asses and vote, but if anything at all, it would have kept hope alive, which is something that not just Georgia, but the country as a whole is sorely lacking in these days.

The point is, I very much do believe that the Libertarian party kind of fucked Georgia in the last election, and I wish that they had a modicum of ability to read the room and understand the importance of standing down in a very critical scenario.  I seriously don’t believe a single Libertarian candidate over the last two decades have felt that “they’ve got a shot!” when it comes to entering any single political contest, and it was narrow-minded and arrogant, and frankly kind of troll-like for Ted Metz to even bother running in 2018.  In an election that literally came down to the wire, the votes that the Libertarians usurped were all wasted, and could very well have helped swing the state not just blue, but denying a low-life like Yosemite Sam from taking office.

So naturally, it shouldn’t be a surprise at all, that the same people who benefited the most from the presence of a third-party most certainly wants more third-parties to get their feet in the door.  Because until the Democrats of Georgia can amass enough votes and numbers to overcome all the suppression and tampering and still beat out the Republicans, the presence of third-parties will always be working against them, leading to yet another hurdle for them to overcome in order to try and flip the state.

Some Black Mirror shit coming to life here

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A little while ago, my gym brought in these three new stationary bikes.  Expresso bikes.  They do that every now and then; bring in some new cardio equipment, presumably to try and get people to actually work on their cardio instead of doing the age-old practice of bogarting elliptical machines for 30 minutes and calling it an adequate workout.

At first glance, they don’t look like anything special, they look like some fairly standard, nondescript exercise bicycles – except that they have a screen affixed to the front of them.  Obviously, with the constantly advancing rise of the digital world we live in, it’s no shocker to see screens ending up on bicycles, when there are already screens attached to various other bicycles, treadmills and elliptical machines; distraction is the key to long cardio sessions, and if screens can provide some distractions, then maybe some fat sweaty Atlantic City sweat hogs might actually lose some weight.

But it’s not television that these screens broadcast; users have the option on what they want to have broadcast between different settings of paths, some interactive studio training, or interactive games that can be played while bicycling, utilizing your own cycling as the controller.

Honestly, I’m intrigued by these Expresso bikes, and if I weren’t always in the mindset that running is really the only acceptable form of cardio, I’d be willing to give these a try.  Frankly, I’m under the belief that gamification is an effective way of teaching and training, and if making an exercise bike more fun by adding games or creating competition is going to be what it takes for some people to get up and exercise, I think it’s pretty cool.

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When you look at Super Bowl Leee that way…

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Super Bowl Leee was a fantastic championship game… if it were soccer.

Not because the punters made more news and excitement kicking the ball a combined 14 times, setting some obscure records in the process.  But in the sense that it was an extremely low-scoring affair that resembled more of a soccer game that fútbol americano enthusiasts love to ridicule.

Seriously, when the game went into halftime with New England up 3-0, I was really hoping that that would be the final score, because it would be ironically hilarious to have a Super Bowl be decided by a 3-0 score.  The “best” teams in the league duking it out, only for a single field goal to be not just the decider, but the only score of an entire 3-4 hour affair.  It would roughly be the equivalent of a soccer match where the final score is 1-0.

And although it didn’t end up being 3-0, it was still an embarrassing exhibition that really was 10-3, before there were some more kicks, with the Pats getting an insurance field goal before the Rams booted their own; and it figures that both teams would have missed field goals, because Nantz and Romo made it very clear that throughout the entire season in the Georgia Dome Mercedes-Benz Arena, no Falcons or any opponent kicker had missed a field goal, 31/31 overall.

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Life is fleeting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, a work colleague of mine passed away, inexplicably.  She wasn’t much older than I was.  I saw her on Monday from afar, as I no longer sit right next to her like I used to before my promotion.  Apparently, she left early, citing that she wasn’t feeling well; and nothing more was thought of it, because the seasonal flu was very much on our floor, and numerous people had already succumbed to it, and were either already called in sick, or were leaving early.

Little did I realize that it would be the last time I would ever see her.  It’s frightening to think of life being as fragile as that.  As we were primarily co-workers, there’s only so much that I really knew of her, but I never knew if she would have any health issues to where the flu or byproducts of the flu could actually become lethal.

But aside from being “just” co-workers, this was a person that I probably would have considered my closest confidant at work.  I don’t fraternize with my peers a tremendous amount, and especially now that I’m in management, I didn’t necessarily always feel that it was that appropriate, so it somewhat of a big deal that she and I were as candid and frank with each other in our own hushed conversations throughout the work days. 

When I was still an artist, she was my coordinator, and we had a working relationship that was just about the epitome of a well-oiled machine.  We came into our departments at relatively the same time, and each went through our series of lumps learning said departments, and the first year of working together was bumpy at first, but solely in work process, and not personally.  She was an extremely hard and diligent worker who chose to be in our department, whereas I was assigned to it; she wanted the challenge of dealing with a complex department, while I just liked having a job.

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