Traffic is never bad for bad teams

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently, traffic expectations for SunTrust Park are not as bad as expected when the Braves are playing home games.

This shouldn’t be a surprise when the Braves are about to finish off a dreadful season in which they’ll be at least 10-11 games under .500 and whose third-place ranking in the division is solely on account of being in the worst division in baseball.  They played 37-44 at ScumTrust, which says fans had a better chance of seeing an L every time they stepped foot onto the new ballpark.

Also, Atlanta sports fans are fickle and fair-weathered and only show up to games when the teams are actually winning.  Since the Braves are a bad team this year, it should come as no surprise that traffic is not terrible, because people aren’t really going to that many games, especially once the honeymoon period of new ballpark ended, leaving only a below-average team playing in ballpark built with dirty money.

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This is America, circa 2017

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Something that should never happen: a man is ashamed and full of regret because he decided to stand during the National Anthem, because it broke solidarity with the rest of his peers

Try to take a few steps back and look at the scenario as a whole: this is a man, a veteran, who served the country so that people could have the freedom to make individual choices – is full of regret, because he chose to stand for the National Anthem.

As an American, this is an absolutely heartbreaking story, and as I’m sure so many people say on a regular basis these days, just what the fuck is wrong with our country?

I’ll be honest: when Colin Kaepernick first refused to stand for the National Anthem last season, my knee-jerk reaction was disdain and vitriol for a player I didn’t care for as a player.  But through lots of deliberation and pondering opinions from all around me, I’ve kind of come around to a more neutral position that can see both sides of the argument.  Personally, I’ll never not stand for the flag and/or the National Anthem, but I can’t really say I’m going to criticize those who choose to peacefully protest the gesture, as long as they’re doing such because they legitimately believe in it and aren’t just being sheep, in light of current America.  After all, having the freedom to choose to stand or not is basically the quintessential point of American freedom.

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No logo > bad logo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve observed, people like having logos for things.  Whether or not they actually need one or not, there’s this innate feeling that having a logo makes something official or real for many, which I guess explains why there are so many logos out there in the first place.

Which brings us to Gwinnett County unveiling what’s supposedly going to be their new logo and identity; naturally, it’s hot garbage, and basically a blatant rip-off of well, Google.  It looks like the Chrome logo, and the font is almost identical to Google/Alphabet’s typeface.

Seriously, it’s basically the Chrome logo, if the Chrome logo extended their primary colors further into the center of the circle and had the colors overlap.  But in the case of the Gwinnett logo, the overlapping doesn’t even make sense; red and blue make purple, not yellow, and green and red or blue makes some pukey colors, instead of light blue or light green.  This is some light urple kind of color theory we got going on here.

And then we get to the county’s new slogan, “vibrantly connected” in all lower case no less.  Because lower case is casual and not shouting, and the handwritten typeface tries to double down on that kind of feel.  I’m not sure what it means to be connected vibrantly, because I think a connection is a connection; whether it’s done with energy or not, once a connection is made, it doesn’t seem like something that can be measured quantitatively.

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What a surprise

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Who could have seen that coming?  Final vote gives the official green light to the Atlanta Braves to break ground and begin construction on their future Spring Training facility in Sarasota, Florida; with an estimated cost 33% higher than originally expected

I can’t cross-reference on the fly like I used to because another shocker of the century, my site is still down, but I’m pretty sure that when the Braves originally claimed an estimated price tag of $75M for their new Spring Training digs, I immediately stated that the actual price tag should be somewhere in the neighborhood of like $120M, because that’s just how sporting venues work; they estimate low to make it not sound completely terrible, miss the mark entirely, but proceed anyway, and leave the egregious amounts of difference up to taxpayers to make up.

“The project now carries a price tag of $100.56 million, according to financing documents provided to North Port commissioners, up from the previous estimate of $75 million to $80 million.”

Yeah, that’s not a surprise at all.  I’ll be more surprised if these numbers don’t manage to crawl and creep up closer to the $120M that I had estimated, because lord knows if the Braves are good at one thing at all, it’s usurping funds out of unsuspecting taxpayers and wasting it on shit that benefits only them and gives nothing back to those it’s coming from.

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Air Jordans for toddlers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The other day, I was at the store, and I found myself waiting in line that was moving at a snail’s pace.  After I had spent several minutes looking over the inane crap available in line that stores hope consumers will impulsively buy, I noticed the woman in front of me carrying her child.  The child couldn’t have been more than like 2-3 years old, and it was still in diapers.  And in spite of the fact that the child was at an age in which it still was not in full control over their own bowels, on its little tiny toddler feet were, Air Jordans.

Yes, the crown jewel of athletic shoes, or shit, just shoes in general these days, considering everyone and their mother seems to wear Jordans in just about any condition.  But anyway, this toddler in diapers and with a good possibility that it couldn’t walk, was wearing little toddler-sized Air Jordans, indicative by the distinctive style and the trademark Jumpman logo on it.  Naturally, my knee-jerk reaction is simply, WHY?

I think the bigger surprise in this is when I decided to look up the toddler Jordans, it turns out that they’re not $150+ like grown-up Jordans tend to be, leading to people waiting in egregious, overnight lines in order to get them, and occasionally leading to gun violence for when those who are poor but armed decide to utilize crime in order attain their own.

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Requiem for Dexter

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Four years late to the party, but I’ve finally finished watching all of the Dexter television series.  Back around the start of season 7, I made an off-hand remark to a friend that I hadn’t even seen season 6 at all, and was promptly recommended to skip it.  Before I could get the statement “still, I should watch it” out of my mouth, this friend blurted out the big reveal of the season, and said that he was saving me trouble and doing me a favor, allowing me to skip ahead to 7.

Naturally, my reaction was to just stop watching it outright, and a year later, the final season came and went, and I’d been none the wiser to the television happenings of everyone’s favorite forensic expert/serial killer.

With a lot of house shit done, and life somewhat kind of settling back down, I’ve had lot of time on my hands to watch television, and I’d been doing just that.  And in the span of the last two weeks, I’ve basically gone through all three of the last seasons of Dexter that I had never watched before, and one good thing about having such a gap, was that I even forgot about the big reveal that my friend had spoiled for me years prior.

And it’s good thing too, because it’s pretty much the reason why I don’t really trust anyone’s opinions about any show or movie except my own.  When the day is over, I’ll come to my own judgments, and there are plenty of times in which I feel completely different than what the hive mind of the internet tends to think.

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In memoriam of the greatest: Bobby “The Brain” Heenan

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I’ve written a lot of eulogy-like posts about wrestling personalities who have left us, but this one in particular really hurts.  I don’t think I’ve pulled any punches about those whom I’ve admit to not being the biggest fans of, like when Roddy Piper passed, or Dusty Rhodes or even Chyna, but I’ve always had things to say about all of them.  That being said, when I say that this one really hurts, it’s because it is amongst the saddest of wrestling deaths in that not only the fans, but the industry as a whole has lost a genuine trailblazer and a man who whether they realized it or not, laid down the groundwork for generations of wrestling personas to this very day.

When I first got into wrestling back in like 1988, I was privy to have started watching in a time when Prime Time Wrestling on the USA Network was one of the flagship programs for the then WWF.  I can remember some of the matches I saw back then, like Ultimate Warrior vs. Haku, Mr. Perfect vs. Tito Santana, and Shawn Michaels vs. the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase.  This was during a time when WWF programming was typically several squash matches featuring stars versus definition jobbers, with a few of the aforementioned matches sprinkled in towards the end of each hour.

However, one of the other things viewers saw back then that stuck with me, was the studio segments featuring none other than Bobby “The Brain” Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon.  They would take care of the business aspect of television, such as promoting pay-per-view shows, live events (always at the Capitol Center), as well as doing typical wrestling commentary.  What I always remembered about those segments was that for a while, in front of Heenan’s spot at the desk, he had a “Ravishing” Rick Rude action figure standing over a fallen Ultimate Warrior action figure.  Little did I realize it was at that very time, Rude was feuding with Warrior over the Intercontinental championship, and basically Warrior was systematically going through the “Heenan Family” stable of wrestlers to get back to a point where he could and would eventually challenge and re-gain the belt.  But being a kid, I was just enamored by seeing action figures I wish I had very badly, on television in plain sight.

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