Tag: comparison

Happy trails, Virgil

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lonely no more: Mike Jones, better known as former WWE wrestler, Virgil, passes away at the age of 61

I know it seems like every single wrestler from yesteryear that passes away was a favorite of mine in some way shape or fashion, and after twenty years of brogging, there’s no shortage of wrestler eulogies that I’ve written in my own way, at this point.

But Virgil, this guy, was truly a guy that I can’t say was necessarily a favorite of mine, but he was something of an icon in his own way, that I was fixated with, pretty much from the time I learned of his existence until the day he passed.

When I first got into wrestling, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I actually got into a WWF video game first, the arcade version of WWF Superstars, before I actually parlayed it into indulging in the real life variant of the game on television, into the life-long fandom that still maintain today. 

In the game, the final bosses were the tag team of “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase and Andre the Giant; but before you actually started playing against them, there’s like a 12-second cutscene prior to the match where you see “Mean Gene” Okerlund interviewing both DiBiase and Andre, but also standing with them was a jacked black guy in a shiny tuxedo counting money.

When I started watching wrestling, and the first time I laid eyes on the real-life Million Dollar Man, sure enough, there was the same jacked black guy accompanying him, holding the money, and that was when I first learned of the existence of the real-life Virgil.

Little did I know that he was named Virgil, as a personal attack from Vince McMahon to rival promoter/booker/wrestler Dusty Rhodes, whose real name was actually Virgil, and in only a manner that could come from Vince McMahon, he slapped basically a slave persona onto a black man and called him Virgil.

But throughout the years, it became quickly apparent that despite Virgil’s imposing stature and menacing scowl, he was tantamount to the WWF’s punching bag to the stars, and in just a few short years of getting into wrestling, I’d seen Virgil get his ass beat by Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man Randy Savage, and Hacksaw Jim Duggan among others.  He was a jobber before I even knew what a jobber was, a term I wouldn’t learn until like 12 years later.

Continue reading “Happy trails, Virgil” →

Wendy’s surging real hard to alienate customers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Scorched earth: starting in 2025, Wendy’s to explore surge pricing, where food costs dynamically change based on varying conditions; time, weather, demand

The knee-jerk reactions of the collective internet are probably exactly what anyone with a sensible brain would expect; full of bile, resentment, disdain, and a whole lot of declarations of never going to Wendy’s again, among other hard statements most feel comfortable spouting off on the internet without.  And absolutely nothing positive or with any hint of praise because nobody is in the 1% of greedy fucks who make these kinds of choices.

And who can really blame anyone for being disappointed and furious over this kind of announcement?  Fast food exists because it’s supposed to be cheap, predictable, reliable to exist, and not something where anyone rolling up to a Wendy’s has to think about not knowing what prices they’re going to see on the menu.

It goes without saying that this is a 100% cash grab, because everyone knows consumers aren’t going to be seeing “the low end” of the pricing model beyond perhaps those weird 30-minute windows in between breakfast and lunch time and lunch time and dinner, and that’s only if the weather conditions aren’t remotely hazardous.  Store personnel probably won’t be seeing any sort of monetary benefit to financial fluctuation, and in fact when some locations actually start losing business due to this reckless idea, their jobs will be where the difference in earnings will be made up from.

Unsurprisingly, most everyone knows it, and those who do, all hate it.  It’s flagrant greed and complete disregard for consumers, whose stress levels are already ratcheted up to the moon due to the completely imbalanced escalations of inflation versus wages.

Now I like Wendy’s food, there’s a reason why they’re one of the few burger joints that still manages to thrive, at least in the Atlanta area.  Burger Kings a few and far between locations, McDonalds is widely regarded as somehow unhealthier than Wendy’s, and there just aren’t enough Dairy Queens to compete against Wendy’s it seems.  Five Guys are already branded being egregiously priced, but at least they don’t (yet) flex their prices based on time and weather conditions.

But the thing is, I go to Wendy’s as frequently as I go to McDonald’s, which is to say practically never.  At least where I am, all the Wendy’s are completely staffed with the dregs of the dregs of society, and they’re completely unreliable, drive-thru lines wrapped around the building, that is if they didn’t decide to close up shop at 8:30 pm when they’re supposed to be Open Late.™  And the last few times I’ve actually eaten their food, as tasty as it is, my body definitely regretted it when I’m waking up at 2-3 am because my digestive system is revolting.

So I’m not concerned with my conviction at being able to further avoid Wendy’s if and when this bullshit surging comes to my area, because I don’t like late night toilet runs that aren’t on my own terms, but I still understand all the salt and all the rage and all the resentment towards the company all the same upon this news coming to light.

Aside from the obvious cash grab that this is, it’s also an obvious phishing expedition; Wendy’s looking for markets where they can hike up costs, based on the markets whose numbers don’t seem to be affected in customer order numbers regardless of price surging.  So probably big cities full of people with deep pockets, where people already spend like they’re out of touch with the classes in a position lower than their own, will inevitably have their general costs raised permanently, because make no mistake, surge pricing will inevitably come to an end, once Wendy’s realizes the maximum price points every region could sustain while not losing too many customers.

So as much as I’d love to see this become the beginning of the end for the company as a whole, and we’ll see some Wendy’s burn to the ground as if there were a Black Lives Matter demonstration going tits up outside them, it’s unfortunately going to end up with a shitty fast food company getting all the information they need in order to jack up their costs and ultimately make even moar money, while the Americans that have no choice but to sustain themselves on fast food, suffer even more.

Few things make me as entertained as professional athletes getting owned monetarily

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: NBA player Tony Snell owned when nobody picked him up, denying him from hitting premium pension benefits; MLB player Blake Snell owned because nobody wants to sign him, among other notable free agents, despite being the reigning NL Cy Young winner

Man, there’s few things that are amusing to me than hearing stories about professional athletes who get owned, financially.  A bunch of out-of-touch grown-ass man-babies who didn’t learn how to manage their finances or don’t seem to realize the privileges they have getting paid egregious amounts of money for being exceptionally good at playing children’s intramural sports. 

And I love how the media feeds us these stories as if we should feel bad for these guys, as if we the regular people will be able to relate and agree that they’re getting screwed or something, by some evil employers and/or corporations.  Nuh-uh, doesn’t work that way, and I don’t think I’ll ever feel bad for any professional athlete not getting the six or seven figures-plus that they think they deserve, while short of me finding the recipe for instant money, I, or anyone like me, will never see seven figures at any point in our lives.

So let’s start with Tony Snell, the fringe basketball player, whom we’re supposed to feel bad for because no team in the NBA wanted to pick him up, and give him a 10th year of service, which would qualify him and his entire family for “premium” pension, which encapsulates lifetime medical for him, as well as his spouse and children.  It’s also pointed out how his sons are both on the spectrum, and made to sound like it’s a tragedy that no NBA team, especially a curated list of teams that had an available roster spot, would pick him up and let him ride the bench so that he could get full medical for his family.

Last time I checked, autism is not cancer, nor is something that is life-threatening, and isn’t something that only the offspring of professional athletes are subject to.  Millions of people across the planet are on the spectrum or deal with autism and they most certainly don’t have the safety net of insurance to help out with some of the nuisances that living with autism can cause, and Tony Snell having to deal with kids with autism doesn’t make him a tragedy, it just makes him like millions of other parents who have kids with it as well.

Furthermore, according to Spotrac, Tony Snell has made $52 million dollars in his career.  For playing basketball.  And that doesn’t include any endorsements or sponsorship dollars he might’ve made at various points in his career.  Even assuming that half of that was hoovered up by Uncle Sam, he’s still probably cleared $26M in his lifetime.  Most Americans won’t even see $1M in their lifetimes, and we’re supposed to feel bad that someone who’s cleared probably $26M isn’t going to get free healthcare from the NBA?  As the kids say, (get) the fuck out of here.

I also love the part where other like-minded snarks like me pointed out his wife’s lavish spending habits, showing where most likely the vast majority of his $26M+ fortune has gone throughout the last nine years, and why it’s likely that he’s reliant on premium healthcare in order to get some care for his kids.  I think it’s obvious where the problem really lies, and it’s not the cost of healthcare, it’s not awareness for autism, and it’s not the NBA’s current system that only allows the premium healthcare to those who can clear ten years of service.

Now on to Blake Snell, the pitcher, freshly removed from winning the NL Cy Young, which makes him one of the only pitchers in history to have won both an NL and an AL Cy Young, is still unemployed, even after Spring Training camps have opened across MLB.

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Catching up with Shoresy, saying farewell to Letterkenny

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I’ve found myself able to catch up with season 2 of Shoresy, as well as the 12th and final season of Letterkenny, and seeing as I don’t think I really have a ton to say about either of them, and the fact that one is a spinoff of the other, it seemed appropriate to lump them into a single post and save myself the anxiety of making separate posts for every fucking show that I manage to catch up to.

So I’ll start with the final season of Letterkenny, and if I really had to boil it down to a singular statement, I would say that it’s about time that the series finally wrapped up, because honestly the series really could have ended in season 9 with the hockey story arc, which was probably the last time that the series really had any sort of centralized story, and wasn’t as randomly bouncing around like it were Canadian Seinfeld.

Season 10 was clearly designed solely to build up and soft launch the arrival of the Shoresy spinoff, but Season 11 had basically no point at all, and I’m pretty sure I compared it to Ocean’s Twelve, in the sense that it felt like it was a working vacation for all cast and crew, and they phoned in an entire season in the process.

Which brings us to Season 12, where little time was wasting in the cold open of the first episode that this was the end, which was about as appropriate as it could be, considering it was a series about small town Canada, so them literally running out of stories to tell seems about as appropriate as it could be.

It was a gallant effort to have at least some small stories, about Derry and the Degens, as well as a poignant reminder of small town living and feeling stuck in time, but at the same time, it felt like the show was trying to check off a list of characters to have some screen time in the final season, and considering every episode is just 22 minutes, it’s not a lot of screen time available to give, as well as tell a concurrent stories in the process.

The ending was chill and it did feel like there was some heart in it, but at the same time it felt very small and not necessarily fitting for a series that churned out 12 seasons.  For a series that had some really incredible culminations of storylines, this ending felt more like they ran out of gas as opposed to reaching a destination of a satisfying conclusion.

All the same, I look at the series with a general fondness, but it’s a lot like anime; really good when all cylinders are firing, but an ending that kind of feels lacking and unsatisfying.

Which brings us to Shoresy, because when talking about the shows together, I have this feeling that the decline of Letterkenny coincides with the arrival of Shoresy, because as Letterkenny limped their way through their final two seasons, the first two seasons of Shoresy were definitely above average in storytelling and general execution.

Upon the finish of season 2 of Shoresy, I’m left feeling wanting more, and looking forward to future episodes, because they’re telling a very linear and straightforward plot, and it feels to me that both Keeso and Tierney definitely shifted more and more of their eggs from Letterkenny’s basket to Shoresy, and with Letterkenny concluded, the sky’s the limit for the future of Shoresy now.

There’s definitely more heart and emotion put into a lot of the characters of Shoresy, and it’s like they have fewer spotlights of characters to really care about so all the focus really stays, or eventually returns to Shoresy himself, and no matter how wacky his teammates get, it always comes back to the captain, who drops the most meaningful anecdotes and quotes that touch the people around him as well as the viewer the most.  Must be nice being both the writer of the show as well as the star.

Either way, as appropriate it is about two shows about small towns and their small worlds, this post really doesn’t have much else substantial to be blathering on about.  Letterkenny was an entertaining ride when it was firing on all cylinders, but the ending left a lot to be desired.  It just felt like everyone involved with making the show was tired of it, but they felt the need to wrap it up.  But Shoresy feels like they took all of the people who were still all-in on making more Letterkenny and funneled them into a project in which they could give their all, and still create a show that feels like it’s being made by people who still care, and like I said, I’m looking forward to more of the show in the future.

The case for Trevor Bauer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’m paying much attention to the baseball offseason other than the big name moves that are spoon-fed to me through mainstream media, but there’s one name that I’ve been very curious about to see what happens: Trevor Bauer.

Long story short, Bauer was accused of sexual assault, suspended by MLB, went to Japan to keep on pitching, eventually found innocent and legally exonerated, but remains unemployed, despite having put up a solid season in NPB and remaining in game-ready shape.

And today, Trevor Bauer has basically declared that he would play for free:*

For a team that doesn’t want to commit multi years, hundreds of millions of dollars, or many elite prospects for a Cy Young award winner, they could sign me for the league minimum and pay 0 incremental dollars over what they have to pay to that roster spot anyway. Just another option for teams that want to win and don’t want to break the bank.

*League minimum, last time I checked was $725K which is a ton of money, but largely negligible as office supplies as far as a Major League Baseball organization is concerned

It’s obvious at this point, Bauer is grasping at straws for a job, and I’m sure that if were able to secure one, he’d probably fairly easily be able to re-establish his value and get back to Major League fuck-you money again, but it’s evident that there’s some league-wide black balling of Trevor Bauer, despite the fact that legally he’s in the clear.  Sure, there are other accusers and probably civil suit(s) somewhere in the background, but by and large we still have a man that has been found guilty of nothing, but is still being punished by today’s societal standards that perception is reality.

When I was live-or-die by the Braves on a daily basis, I’d probably be in support of the blackballing of Bauer here; the Atlanta Braves must remain pure and respectable and the high standard of integrity that can only come with wearing The A.  But I’m not that guy anymore, and I am still a Braves, fan, for lack of a better term, albeit a shitty one that probably hates the team more Taylor Swift fans love Taylor Swift, and I’m tired of seeing the Braves overachieve throughout the regular season and flop in the postseason like it were the 90s again.

Yes, I know we’re just three years removed from the Braves being World Series champions, but with teams this talented, expectations this high, and a contention window wide open, a team has to strike while the iron is hot, and I feel that the Braves are squandering their chances by being so Braves-ey, and constantly thinking they’ll continue to get overachieving performances out of their roster for the rest of this contention window.  The lack of depth in starting pitching has been exposed over the last two years, and the team shit the bed in free agency this off-season in addressing this need, while fans continue to sing the praises of general manager Alex Anthopolous as if already won the next World Series.

I would much, much, much rather see Trevor Bauer take the hill in a playoff game over Bryce Elder, or even a late-season tired Spencer Strider, whom both have shown the tendency to run out of gas by the time the playoffs start over the last two years.  And it would be nice to have a reliable starting option in the wings if there’s another late-season Max Fried injury, or Charlie Morton’s 40-year old arm starts to go, or it turns out that Ian Anderson can’t bounce back from injury or that any of the fringe starters they got are better served in the bullpen.

Trevor Bauer got knocked around when he first got to Japan, but he still compiled a solid overall season in the land of the #1 ranked baseball nation on the planet, where he had a 2.76 ERA and 130 strikeouts in as many innings, a solid  9.0 K/9.  He would slot into the top-2 of any starting five in baseball, and it would literally cost any team the same cost as it would to pay the 26th man on the roster, whose primary job will be the late-inning pinch runner for the team’s veterans.

There’s absolutely little more than the Braves, and their stat-geek fans love, more than saving money, and a willingness to take the league minimum, is about as big of a money savings as there possibly is.  Nobody does what Trevor Bauer did, because the MLBPA won’t let them, but seeing as how Bauer was blacklisted, he’s obviously not a part of it anymore because he’s not actually employed by MLB at the moment, so here we are – an ace-caliber pitcher showing his hand and telling the world that he’s willing to play for peanuts so that he can re-establish himself in Major League Baseball.

And just to put the kibosh on the perception that the Braves are too high and mighty to pick up an innocent miscreant like Trevor Bauer, let me remind Braves fans of some of the guys in franchise history who were actually guilty of crimes against women:

  • 1995, beloved skipper Bobby Cox was arrested on assault charges against his wife
  • 1997, Chipper Jones revealed to have had extramarital affair with a Hooters waitress; also impregnating her
  • 2012, Andruw Jones is arrested on assault charges against his wife
  • 2021, Marcell Ozuna is arrested on assault charges against his girlfriend

So let’s not act like the Braves, or Major League Baseball is some holy organization where saints play.  Yes, Trevor Bauer is kind of an arrogant prick, is a super bro on his socials, but he’s legally free and clear, despite previous accusations.  He’s an obvious upgrade to any team’s starting rotation, and he would cost a team practically nothing, so let’s not duck the obvious fact that he’s getting the Colin Kaepernick treatment here.

But make no mistake, someone will bite eventually.  MLB is no NFL, where there are (allegedly) numerous QB options “better than” Kaepernick, MLB teams always need pitching help, and one team will bite eventually.  Whether it’s two weeks left in Spring Training, or a July acquisition after watching him pitch in the independents or at a private showcase, baseball teams always need pitching, and a cheap and free and clear pitcher of Trevor Bauer’s capabilities will not go unemployed all year long.  But it will be a one-season deal, because once he takes an MLB mound again and proves he still can get the job done, he’ll be back to making millions in 2025.

I know it’s not going to be the Braves, because they’re too high and mighty on their own brand and reputation, but I would be absolutely stoked as a fan who wants to win if it were.  I would love to see the Braves meet the Dodgers in the NLCS, and a very motivated Trevor Bauer marches into Dodger Stadium and fires a statement shutdown performance against the organization that let him hang out to dry.

Someone else is definitely going to get the bargain of the century, when they blink first and sign Trevor Bauer, and I’ll be waiting to harvest my e-cred for when I’m right about this layup of a prediction.

Dad Brog (#128): Breaking Dada again (in a good way)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a long time since I made a Dada post.  It’s been a long time since I’ve actually taken the time to write, for the matter.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write, I just simply have had no time to write, because my life is chaotic, my kids come first, been too busy, and it doesn’t help that I’m insufferably neurotic about having the right conditions to take the time to write.

I’ve got a laundry list of topics that I want to write about, and it will be a challenge to retroactively try to get into the headspace necessary to write about them and try and fool my zero readers that they’re fresh and happening when they did but it doesn’t mean I won’t try either.

But this post, at least, is about as a live and real-time, genuinely written on the day in which the thoughts formulated in my head, which is about as good of opportunity as any to get back on the writing horse and hope that it gets the ball rolling again to where I can also knock out some of the other things I’ve wanted to blab about over the last few weeks.

One thing that I’ve always looked forward to as a parent, was the day in which my kids’ creativity developed to where they could start creating, things.  Drawings, paintings, sculptures, whatever, but tangible things that they make from nothing.  And over the last year and change now, with both of my kids in school, my kids are sent back home on the regular with papers of general scribbles and some developmentally appropriate artwork that they do, and me, being the sap that I am, have basically saved everything, no matter how inconsequential or scribbly they might look to others.  They’re my kids’ first forays into artwork, and for the time being, I’m hoarding them like I want to end up on TLC, and look forward to looking back at them with my kids in the near future.

But today, I come home from work, and when I’m reading to #2 on the couch, #1 comes to me with a person made out of bristle blocks.  She says, this is Dada.  Nobody notices it, but my lip immediately pouts for a second, because I’m cracking just how touched I am at the seemingly innocuous gesture that means the world to me.  Moments later, she comes back with another one, shorter, and says that this is me, and puts it next to the Dada figure.  I have to stop reading at this point because I’m holding back tears at this point, because I’m breaking in the best way possible, and my sniffles I try and act like it’s the seasonal bug that’s been passed around my household over the last week.

After I tell her how much I love them, she vanishes again, and minutes later comes back with yet another figure, the smallest one of the three, and says this is sissy, and I’m just about the happiest dad I’ve felt in a few days at how much I love these kids, and marvel at just how much they seem to grow on a daily basis.

Naturally, #2 destroyed them before I could take a picture of them, but I’m sure now that they’ve gotten such a positive reaction from me, #1 will probably make them again, to which I will definitely require some photographic chronicling of such happy thoughts.

All the same, I’m really looking forward to the day when my girls start making stuff like bracelets and necklaces, and I can’t wait to wear colorful and vibrant accessories that don’t match any of my office attire or anything else I wear, because fewer things will have more meaning and be more treasured on my person than the things that my own kids make, especially if they’re meant for Dada.

Anthony Rendon is hilariously unbelievable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol: Angels third baseman, Anthony Rendon, goes on the record, opining that the baseball season is too long and that it should be shortened

We got to shorten the season, man,” Rendon said. “There’s too many dang games–162 games in 185 days or whatever it is. Man. No. We gotta shorten this bad boy up. Let’s go.

Here’s why this quote from this particular player is amusing for all the wrong reasons: Anthony Rendon hasn’t played even 60 games a season, much less close to 162 games, in four straight years.  Granted, 2020 was the COVID-shortened season, but between 2021-2023, he’s played in just a diminutive 30% of games that the Angels have had.

Furthermore, he’s halfway through a contract that’s paying him $245M over seven years and it’s safe to say that he’s basically already on the hall of fame of worst free agent contracts in baseball history.  To say that he’s been a bust is an understatement, the guy has been ducking his job as if his job were to avoid playing in baseball games by any means necessary.  He’s been mysteriously injured for the last four years with no real understanding to what’s been ailing him, and he even got himself suspended for a week, when he got involved with a heckler in Oakland.

As many internet comedians have pointed out, he shortens his own season anyway, so it seems redundant that he’d put himself in the line of fire like this in the first place.  But I think my favorite observation was one that I had myself, that basically nobody seems to hate the game that has made him a gozillionaire, more than Anthony Rendon:

Love something as much as Anthony Rendon hates baseball

The man is truly unbelievable.  I feel for the Angels, because between losing Ohtani, they’re stuck with an albatross like Rendon, who clearly has phoned in his career at this point, and will stick around nursing injuries and pretending like he can’t play for the remainder of his deal, and after banking $245M bones, I don’t even think he’s going to bother doing the thing where he starts trying to play hard again within the last two years of his deal, so that he could possibly try to position himself to getting another big contract.  He’ll be 35 and 36 in the final years of his contract, and considering he already hates playing baseball right now, there’s absolutely no way he’s going to try and stick with a job he hates so much in 2-3 years.