It took over a year for the rest of the pleebs to figure this out?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, it seems like the Braves-related news just isn’t stopping these days.  I’m beginning to feel like my offline brog is getting a little saturated with a singular topic, but then again, I’m off-fucking-line, so there’s really no concerns that anyone but myself is ever going to recollect these words, because I would wager money that anyone who returns to my brog one day will glaze over any subjects like this one.

BUT, it took an actual news investigation to conclude that ScumTrust Park might not be anywhere near close to “paying for itself.”

I mean… no shit.  The sky is also blue, water is also wet, and I wish I had more disposable income.

I have to say the teaser video did kind of intrigue me, because it not only cites ScumTrust Park as an example of how the Braves fleeced local taxpayers into paying for their ballparks, but also two of the three minor league facilities that house Braves affiliates, the one in Jackson, Mississippi, and then the one right up the road in Lawrenceville, the respective homes to the AA-Braves and the AAA-BravesStripers.  Yeah, they’re struggling too, after the Braves duped those towns into building their crappy ballparks as well.

I can’t say that I’ve been compelled to watch the news, but I have to admit that I’m intrigued by this story, and might actually have to make an effort to check it out on television.  Or hope the actual video report up online for convenient viewing, because I kind of want to watch it.

But it’s not like it’s going to be anything remotely a revelation for me, I am however curious to see what the rest of the sheep think about the topic, considering it’s taken them over a year to realize that it perhaps wasn’t the best idea in the world to undertake a baseball stadium.

Salt, thy name is the Philadelphia Eagles

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know a lot of people hate the New England Patriots.  I hear it, the arrogance, the constant winning, allegations of Spygate, Deflategate.  Bill Belichick is a genius, Tom Brady is a god, etc., etc.  They get accused of cheating, but then while under the microscope, they go ahead and win some more.  They’ve been penalized and have had key players suspended, but then they come out and win some more.  I get why lots of sports fans (fake, fairweather or otherwise) love to hate the Patriots.

But there was absolutely zero chance that I was going to cheer for the Philadelphia Eagles.  Now I’ve never really had any problem with the Patriots, and I respect the sustained success of the organization, in spite of all the allegations, so it was a no-brainer that I’d prefer the Patriots over the Eagles, but we’re in a delicate timeframe right now where Eagles fans are insufferably but justifiably overjoyed right now, and anyone who was supporting the Patriots are either hiding, pretending like they didn’t care, or doing whatever it takes to not have to eat the crow of a demoralizing defeat.

However, I can admit the defeat.  I’m not really a Pats fan, but I am definitely an anti-Eagles fan, and despite the fact that Super Bowl LEE was actually a really good game, it makes me feel queasy to accept the reality that the Philadelphia Eagles are Super Bowl champions.

The Eagles deserve congratulations, but they won’t get any from me.  Fuck the Eagles.  They won a really exciting game, and they made pretty much no mistakes.  I loved Doug Pederson’s play calling, and he went for it in manners that made my inner Madden giddy, and his ballsy shot calling is undoubtedly led the Eagles to the victory.  The fact that the game had one punt and over 1,100 yards of offense was a testament to how high-octane it was. 

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Suck it, nerds

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This couldn’t have been scripted any better: Jeopardy! contestants struggle to answer rudimentary trivia about football, ironic hilarity and passive-aggressive bullying from Alex Trebek ensues

Seriously, this couldn’t possibly have occurred better even if it were scripted by Seth Rogen or Sarah Silverman.  The desperate avoidance of the category, from all three contestants until it was absolutely the last thing left on the board, and then the defeated resignation from all three that their scores were condemned to be final where they were, seeing as how none of them thought they had a cake’s chance at a buffet of getting any of them right.

And then to make matters worse, not only was the studio audience beginning to laugh track at their pathetic lack of knowledge of the country’s most rabidly popular professional spectator sport, they began to start getting lip from the biggest dweeb of them all, Alex Trebek.  Who completely abused the fact that he had the answers right in front of him and could easily pretend like these were basic, easy questions, regardless of if he knew the answers to them or not.

Seriously, it never fails to astound me that Jeopardy! contestants can rapidly nail the correct questions to shit like “Philippe Cozette and Graham Fagg had a handshake in this location” or “Alfred Dreyfus was among the thousands who marched through the streets of Paris during this 1902 funeral procession,” but they don’t know what a fair catch is?

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Exposing convenient revisionist history

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With Marvel Studio’s Black Panther on the horizon, spouting all sorts of racial rhetoric about it being historic and things other than a comic book movie, Washington Post contributor Sonny Bunch drops Mjolnir on the truth of the matter: before Black Panther, there was Blade.

Obviously, Blade happened way before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and long before there was an odd existence of Marvel movies between FOX, Sony, and whomever produced the turds of Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider, and the poor Jessica Alba Fantastic Fours that I’m too lazy to expend the few seconds to Google.

But for all intents and purposes, Blade is still a Marvel property, and therefore seeing as how the title of the film is named after him, makes him the first ever Marvel production starring a black person in the titular role.  As much as the internet and the rest of the world really want to claim Black Panther is this evolutionary revolutionary, in the grand spectrum of comic book films, it’s really not.  It’s just another addition to a library that’s way bigger than lots of people want to believe, for the sake of pushing a very expensive agenda in order to expedite the recouping of a gargantuan budget.

I love this article because Bunch does a great job of anticipating arguments to his article, and stomps them out before they can even be made, like pointing out all the other films, as small and as obscure as they may have been, being made in ages prior to the current internet, that have long beaten Black Panther to the punch as far as identifying black directors, black soundtracks, and other black things that are especially under the microscope now that we’ve traversed into February, the vaunted Black History Month. 

I hope he dropped a mic after this piece went to publish.

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A glimmer of hope

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this story* about a local man in-College Park, Georgia-who heroically cockblocked the issuance of bonds on a technicality and successfully stalled the procedures that would have begun the motion of a sporting arena being built, so that the Atlanta Hawks could have a local developmental team. 

In College Park, Georgia.  One of the most dangerous cities in the entire state.

*This is unfortunately behind the AJC’s pitiful paywall, but frankly you can just hit the stop button as soon as the page opens to dead stop the script that tries to tell you that it’s paid content, and usually the essential text has already loaded by then

As much as I admire the moxie of this individual, he’s unfortunately simply prolonging the inevitable, and delaying yet another sporting venue that the city doesn’t need, because Atlanta is obsessed with sporting facilities and will stop at nothing to have arenas soon for cricket, eSports, and another popular local activity, urban ATV riders running from the police.

But he did buy some time in which even the dimwits at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution could even think that maybe, just maybe, building an arena in College Park, for the Atlanta Hawks, just might not be the best idea in the world.  Or at least putting into words the very obvious revelation that stadiums and monstrous convention centers are not at all profitable and ultimately end up hurting the people they’re built near, but obviously not the investors and corporations who came up with the ideas to build them in the first place.

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More time to raise costs, duh

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Less surprising than Grayson Allen tripping someone again despite saying he’s grown out of it, the Atlanta Braves’ spring training saga yet continues on, this time revealing that the team has signed an extension with the Disney Wide World of Sports for the 2019 season, with the writing between the lines meaning that the new facility in Sarasota, won’t be finished in time.

Who would’ve thunk it?  That in spite of the $100M+ budget and all the promises and plans in the world, the magical construction of an entire facility in a calendar year seems to be viewed as potentially unrealistic.

In all fairness, the Braves do deserve a little bit of credit at identifying the potential for failure this early, and moving forward with a logical contingency plan.  And as much as I bet Disney would have loved to have turned the screws to the Braves and told them that seat’s taken and that they would have to find somewhere else, the reality is that almost all of the teams in the Grapefruit League want to be in a coastal town, so Orlando is kind of screwed for Spring Training once the Braves depart.  So clearer heads prevailed, and the Braves get one last partial Spring Training at Disney, and Disney gets to cash in on that sweet MLB money for one more spring.

But it’s still a failure in the sense that the Braves made all these grandiose plans and basically gave Disney their walking papers, but when their shit started to seep through the cracks, they kind of had to crawl back to the hand that’s been feeding them for the last few decades for their safety net.

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Well, barbecue sauce is delicious

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Short story shorter: man loses his shit when Waffle House doesn’t have barbecue sauce, goes to jail over it

Oh, Waffle House, how I love thee.  No really, I love Waffle House.  I go at least once a month regardless of how healthy I decide to try to be for a week.  In fact, in the morning of the day that I’m writing this right now, I went to Waffle House.  I had a heaping mound of hash browns with chili and onions on it, and a side of sausage.  It was delicious.

But anyway, as much as I love Waffle House, there’s no mistaking that it’s a magnet for odd stories and interesting characters.  Some, not as savory as others, and in the case of this Macon Waffle House, unfortunately a volatile and very hostile customer, hell bent on getting some barbecue sauce.

Now I’ve been to Waffle Houses in at least five different states, and I can’t say that I’ve ever once seen barbecue sauce available at a single one of them.  It’s always ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce, and sometimes there have been A1 and/or Heinz 57 and/or the occasional Waffle House-branded imitation steak sauce that’s almost like A1 mixed with Heinz 57. 

But never barbecue sauce.

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