Tag: famiry

Derailing tradition, much to my dismay

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Well, if I felt that my recent lack of angst and anxiety were reason for having difficulty finding things to write about, consider it my brog’s lucky day as both angst and anxiety have returned with but just a few mere phone calls with my family, to put me back in a state of mind where I want to vent to people around me, but don’t really want to burden anyone, so it turns into ultimately a great big vomiting of words onto whomever wishes to read them.

I won’t get into extensive detail, but I’ve made no secret about my parents getting divorced, and as much as I’d have hoped it would have been an amicable and clean separation, naturally it was and is not, and suddenly my plans over the Thanksgiving break that I had leisurely looked forward to have turned into a period of time in which I am basically dreading.

Why?  Because I’m going home for Thanksgiving.

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Thoughts on Disney World

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

During the brog’s layoff, one of the things that I did was what’s apparently been somewhat of an annual tradition in recent years, which was a trip down to Florida to visit Disney World as well as Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights.

It’s something I enjoy greatly, because I enjoy Halloween-themed events, roller coasters, and ultimately most of the evenings result being spent in Epcot’s annual Food and Wine Festival, which is pretty much one of the greatest events in the world to me, since by the time I’m done with it, I can typically claim that I’ve eaten the entire world, and lots of the countries’ kiosks brings out some excellent quality grub and booze to begin with.

Except for South Korea, which is pretty much the biggest disappointment since like the 2007 New England Patriots. Seriously, just about every booth in the park has people indigenous, or at least of the ethnicity of the country’s booth they’re working for, except for South Korea’s. Furthermore, the food is about as good as one might expect from a place that says “Korea” but has a bunch of white people working it. When your options are the disappointing “Asian” pork taco from last year, and a “Kimchi Dog,” it’s like offering a Mexican person visiting from Mexico, Taco Bell or Del Taco.

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D*C 2014: In conclusion

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Before I pull the plug on all of the Dragon*Con-related subject matter for the next eleven months or so, I just wanted to write a little something as a finishing touch to all of the content I’ve tried to squeeze out of the annual occurrence.  How about my ability to take the topic of D*C, and turning it into nearly two full weeks worth of content?

As I said in my first post about the convention, this year’s D*C wasn’t the best ever, but it was far from the worst.  I can’t say that I go into any D*C with any grandiose expectations, because that’s really just not my nature; building up too large of expectations, or any at all, seems kind of like a recipe for disappointment, and I’d rather not have any of those, if it could be helped.

That being said, this year wasn’t much different than any of the past few years in the sense of it’s primarily me walking around in circles, looking for people to take pictures of, and taking pictures when I see things I want to take pictures of.  Along the way, there are occasional friendly faces, and we stop and chat, hang out, or spend some time together, before the cycle repeats itself until the sun goes down, and then I drink a lot of beer, and sometimes drink too much.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Sunday

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In spite of all of the mad rushing and hard work put into the weeks and days prior to the coming of this year’s D*C, there was a surreal moment on Sunday morning when I woke up, and thought to myself, “is it really Sunday already?”  Needless to say, the weekend quite literally felt like it flew by way too fast, and there was that melancholy feeling of wanting to see as many people as I could during the day, and to empty out my cooler as expediently as possible before the end of the convention.

And after feeling like I had too tiny a number of photos taken on Saturday, I really wanted to spend a good chunk of Sunday doing what I really enjoy doing the most; simply walking around and taking pictures.  Eventually the daylight hours gave away to night, and as has been something of a thing I’ve enjoyed doing, felt the compulsion to dress nicely.

Really, I just wanted to wear my wingtip shoes, that there is probably zero photo evidence of anywhere out there, but if I was going to wear wingtips, I needed to dress accordingly to match it.  Which brings us to the suit vest and tie.  I LIKE TO DRESS NICE, OKAY?

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Fifth Age Taric summary

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More than a few times, I ran into a few League of Legends costumers the following day, and picked up conversations with them, before I came to the realization that they had no idea who I was, and that I was probably some weirdo.  Well, they’re correct in the weirdo assessment, but more than once I pretty much realized that they didn’t recognize me, and I had to remind them that I was the “Pink Taric from earlier.”

Overall, I was very pleased at how well received Armor of the Fifth Age Taric was from people, especially League fans, and it was admittedly nice to be in a costume that could legitimately rival the vastly more aesthetically pleasing looking women that I was privileged to be grouped up with in terms of popularity and cult following.  It’s like for every rando dude who just wanted a picture of hot chicks in tight costumes, there would be like two legit Taric fans to sing my praises about how truly truly outrageous my costume was.  No disrespect to the ladies, but this is somewhat of a new sensation for me.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Saturday

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Saturday’s gallery is vastly smaller than what a normal Saturday gallery should be, but that’s entirely due to the fact that I myself was in costume for a good part of the late-afternoon into the evening hours.  Now as much fun as I had being Fifth Age Taric, I’d be the first to admit that I spotted a lot of things that I’d really liked to have taken pictures of, had I not been in costume.  And Taric’s not exactly the kind of costume where I could sneak a point-and-shoot with me to take some B-roll shots, since both my hands are occupied in costume.

Regardless, most of Saturday’s highlights are lots of League of Legends costumes; I wandered around the gigantic group shot area outside of the Hilton, and waited out the group pictures, since to be perfectly honest, I hate taking pictures of monstrously sized groups, preferring more to take pictures of individuals or in small pairs or troikas.

Not saying there’s no pictures of things not LoL-related, but it’s pretty obvious to what has and is my preferred subject to take pictures of.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Friday

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Admittedly, and embarrassingly, I admit that I spent the vast majority of Friday morning/afternoon dealing with a rager of a hangover from the previous night’s shenanigans.  That being said, I kind of felt like I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I normally do at a D*C, but at the same time, I was wondering if there were many things that me personally, wanted to take pictures of.

I’m not saying that what was out there was utter garbage, but it’s no secret that the unofficial rule of costuming is that the big guns come out on Saturday; Fridays are like for the secondary tier of costumes, or something along those lines.  After all, I can attest to having more than one conversation with friends and acquaintances that echo such a sentiment.

Regardless, there was still plenty of things to take pictures of, and again I’ll have to remark about how I’m disappointed in myself for being so negligent and unpracticed to have gone the entire weekend with my new camera and new lens operating without the image stabilization that an amateur like me probably really needs.

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