Positive way to start the season

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s not really much more to say about this game than this perfect image brought to us by ESPN. 

Usually when commentators always talk about how great of a defensive coordinator Bud Foster is, are games in which Tech ends up giving up like 28 points and losing. But in this game, it was like the entire Hokie defense had the power pill from Pit Fighter the way they absolutely manhandled the FSU line and repeatedly dropped them for losses.  Seriously, FSU probably should have had around 17-21 points based on how many times they had been in scoring position but then either fumbled or simply weren’t smart enough to bother challenging the one sure touchdown they had.

Whatever though, I’m very pleased with the result of this game.  As is often the norm, Tech tends to beat the teams they need to, but then lose to anyone ranked higher than they are.  Sure, it was a #20 vs. #19, but Tech was the lower rank, and I’d have bet money that they would’ve lost. 

In spite of the win, the offense was still very suspect; full of some boneheaded penalties or bad snapping, and if FSU should’ve had 17-21 points, Tech really should have had closer to 40.  Killed drives, penalties and a 4th and goal failure all resulted in points left on the board that won’t cut it against teams like Notre Dame and Miami later this season.

Regardless, it’s great to have the college football season back.  Although my hopes for Tech weren’t particularly high prior to the season, a big win against FSU and Miami already shitting the bed renews some reckless hope that maybe this’ll be a fun year overall.

Watch, with me admitting to that, Tech will lose five games and be right on track for another year of like, the Independence or Military toilet bowl games.  But at least we got this shit started on a good note.

Photos: Dragon*Con 2018

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[2020 note]: this is unposted content from 2018’s Dragon*Con.  I actually sat on these photos for nearly two full years, because as my post-2018 Dragon*Con post alluded to, I had kind of a forgettable time, and I skipped out in 2019 to zero regrets, and had no plan on going to 2020, even if coronavirus weren’t a thing.

It wasn’t until I began to chronologically catch up to Dragon*Con 2018 did I realize that I never touched the RAW photos, and I broke my posting stride just to make sure that these didn’t slip through the cracks and never get posted.

Looking back at these photos, the sheer fact that there are only 60 photos should be sign enough of just how unenthused my heart was going into this convention.  I used to want to shoot hundreds of pictures, but a combination of my inability to enjoy the con, not really seeing things that make me want to shoot, and I guess being at the wrong places at the wrong time to not see the things I wanted to see, leads to a really small photo count.

But it’s the ones with friends that matter the most, and ultimately I’m okay if there’s more of those photos than of people I don’t necessarily know.

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Another Dragon*Con in the books, another year of future uncertainty

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By now, I’m pretty sure I’ve written the same post a few times over, over the last few years, as another Dragon*Con is now in the rearview mirror, and I’m left pondering on whether or not I want to go the next year, if the con is still something for a person like me, and wondering just what the heck is different between myself from absolutely everyone else who also goes, but still thinks it’s the greatest event in the world.

This isn’t to say that I thought Dragon*Con 2018 was terrible or bad by any stretch of the imagination; quite the contrary, I did enjoy myself several times throughout the weekend, I treasure the time spent with the friends that I saw, have remorse for the idea of not seeing other friends swept away in different waves amongst the alleged 75,000-82,000 attendees throughout the weekend, and I took some pictures here and there.

As we know, Dragon*Con is by no means an economical event, and if the whole experience weren’t over $700 a year, it’s kind of a no-brainer that there’s still merit to going year-in, year-out.  One of the things I often pondered if simply getting older and having life priorities shifting around has something to do with my perpetually declining enjoyment of the convention, but seeing as how there are plenty of people who are older than me, with children and/or much later stages in their lives who still think it’s the best event in the world, this is a theory that holds no weight and alternatively points at the notion that my brain the one with the hang-ups, not my age.

But as I stand now, a day removed from the convention, and having had some time to decompress and try and gather my thoughts, I’m once again left in the position on wondering if I want to bother going again next year, and teetering on that seesaw of leaning towards no.  Granted, that’s pretty much been the case every year for the last like 2-3 Dragon*Cons I’d been to, including the one before the one I took off to go cruising in Europe alternatively, but the fact of the matter is that I keep having these thoughts, because I keep seeing this pattern of wanting to go to this event that costs a lot of money and I’m not having nearly as much enjoyment out of it as I hoped I would versus the fear of missing out and letting that be one of my primary impulses to going regardless.

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Of course only for China

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Look at these Oreos.  At first glance, they look like they would be like.. pumpkin spice Oreos and green tea matcha latte Oreos, or some other flavors that white people go bonkers over.  The point is, they would be flavors best categorized in the sweet column, because Oreos are cookies and cookies are sweet snacks.

But they’re not pumpkin spice or green tea matcha.  They’re not even food colored regular Oreo icing to match some seasonal variant.  In fact, they’re not even sweet flavored cream to begin with.  They’re actually hot chicken wing and wasabi flavored Oreos respectively which begs the question, who in the fuck would want to eat Oreos of such devastatingly different and not-sweet flavors?

The answer is actually quite simple: China.  These Oreos are thankfully not available in America and only available in China.  This is where I’d say that I hope that they stay there, but we all know the gluttons and sadists of the world will all be curious and through like third-party overcharging services, people traveling abroad and other means, this shit will infiltrate all other parts of the world, and it’s going to pique a lot of curiosities globally of what they might actually taste like.

Frankly, I want to say that I’d hope to never know what either of these would taste like, but I’d be lying that I wouldn’t give it a whirl if one or both of these were presented in front of me.  I can’t imagine that either of them actually tastes any good, especially the hot chicken wing flavor, but damn would I be curious to find out for myself definitively.

Really, the bigger questions are why such horrid abominations must exist in the first place.  For a country that has so many refined ideas for cuisine, they sure have some wacked out ideas of what good junk food is supposed to consist of.  I mean come on, chicken and chocolate cookies?  The fuck is that idea, and what kind of opium-induced hallucinogenic lunacy created that idea to come to fruition in the first place?

Only in China, apparently.

Being unsatisfied is what being a wrestling fan is all about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since I don’t have cable television anymore, I can’t watch RAW or Smackdown anymore.  I keep up with storylines primarily by the convenient litany of condensed highlight packages that YouTube channels generate that have extremely short shelf lives before the WWE Internet Police™ gets them all taken down.  But by the good graces of a close friend, I have WWE Network access, and I’m still able to enjoy NXT on a weekly basis, as well as the monthly pay-per-view shows, that are the culmination of each month’s storylines.

There are lots of weekends where during the evenings, I find myself with a dearth of things to do, and I think to myself, “man, I wish this were [name of WWE ppv] weekend.  Now would be the best time to sit back and enjoy some wrestling.”  But because it isn’t, I ultimately end up laying on the couch and playing Fire Emblem Heroes on my phone, and wonder why it’s suddenly 11 p.m. and that I should probably get ready to get some rest for work or a Sunday morning jog.

And then there are weekends like this past one, where it was in fact, SummerSlam weekend, where wrestling fans not only were privy to watching the annual SummerSlam, but by virtue of being a big show, also NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 4, on Saturday night.

It goes without saying that fans like me look forward to the NXT show more than the main roster show, but frankly, there were reasons to be optimistic for SummerSlam as well.  Smarks probably looked forward to matches like AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe, based on their history of solid matches in Ring of Honor and ironically, TNA, and the Seth Rollins vs. Dolph Ziggler match seemed like a sleeper show stealer, since both guys are obsessed with trying to steal the show.  Personally, I was looking forward to the Daniel Bryan vs. the Miz match, since it was clearly one of the storylines that has been slowly built for years, and could have been one of the more entertaining matches on the card.

Smarks also probably bemoaned the presence of matches like Brock vs. Roman #68, Jeff Hardy vs. Shinsuke Nakamura because Jeff Hardy is old and busted now, and personally I didn’t want to see the inevitable squashing of Alexa Bliss at the hands of Ronda Rousey.  But maybe that one is just me.

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Batista will be in for a rude awakening

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know Dave is on this little high of thinking he’s a something big shot because he’s a former WWE champion and that he played Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, but I don’t think he realizes that he doesn’t have as much clout as he thinks he does.  But thinking that anyone is going to join him much less care, by threatening to walk away from the franchise if Marvel-Disney doesn’t reinstate director James Gunn after firing him for inappropriate tweets from a lifetime ago, he’s going to be in for a very rude awakening at the results that will ensue.

I’m sure he got the impression that the actors could make a difference, after Chris Pratt’s earnest attempt to pen an open letter and get all the stars of the franchise to sign off on it, but in spite of his experience in the public eye as a public wrestler, he’s still relatively green when it comes to the world of Hollywood, which at the very core of it, gives zero fucks about any human being, cares only about money, and fully understands that absolutely anyone is expendable and replaceable.

Furthermore, I’m sure ol’ Dave thought that the cast and crew of Guardians were tight as knots when he made his declaration of wanting to opt out of future Guardians films if they didn’t bring back James Gunn, but the reality is that Gunn or not, the franchise is going to continue, and ain’t nobody from the righteous and current-hotness Chris Pratt all the way to James’s own brother Sean, who has been a bit part in the both films so far would be willing to walk away on solely principle from the money, prestige and exposure that a Marvel Studios film provides to all those involved.

Frankly, Dave Bautista has a tremendous amount to learn about way Hollywood works, and as much as admire his determination to stick to his guns, it’s simply not the best idea for a guy that barely has a handful of films worth mentioning under his belt to be trying to make such waves in an industry where the ensemble cast around him is most certainly not as willing to join the cause. 

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The sociological entertainment of Crazy Rich Asians

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As someone who agrees that Hollywood is whiter than a Republican national fundraiser, I knew it was something of a social obligation that I should go out and watch Crazy Rich Asians.  I never read the book, nor did I have any inkling of an idea of what the plot was about going into it, but I still figured it would be a good idea to support any progression for Asians in a white-dominated industry, if we want to have any modicum of a chance of earning any respect up in this motherfucker.

The movie itself was fine.  Fairly predictable and extremely formulaic, but refreshing in the simple sense that every face didn’t look like Finn Wittrock or Balakey Lively.  Constance Wu carries the film brilliantly, and it’s super gratifying to hear her speak in her actual voice and not as over-the-top tiger mom from Fresh Off the Boat.  I didn’t even realize it was her until seeing her name in the credits although I thought she looked familiar, but Michelle Yeoh’s presence as a cunningly savage rich Asian mom is like an anime where you can feel an aura emanating from her whenever she comes on screen.

It kind of goes without saying that I rolled my eyes at the casting of some hafu named “Henry Golding” as the male lead of the flim, when surely it most certainly could have been cast to an actual Chinese or other Asian guy that didn’t look like a cross between Lawrence from Westworld and a young Ralph Macchio.  But seeing as how this film was being released in white Hollywood (oxymoron?), there had to be some compromise to make sure white power had some degree of a tether to their oppressive natures.  But it’s okay, because as bland and useless of a character Nick Young was, the film had no intention of being carried by him in the first place.

There’s one character in the film whose storyline carries almost zero correlation with the main plot at all, and could presumably not been needed at all whatsoever.  I’m going to assume it’s vastly different in the book and has more of a connection, but for the film’s sake, I’m going to assume it was included probably solely because the actress involved in it is somewhat known, extremely pretty, and needs to have requisite screen time in order to justify her casting.

As for the rest of the film, it had some fun characters and was moderately enjoyable, even with the obnoxious people in the theater, to where I couldn’t decide which was worse between the incessant commentary in Mandarin from the girls next to me, or the incessant commentary from the stereotypical black women who felt the need to very loudly opinionate on everything.

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