The zombie apocalypse starts in Vietnam

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is how it starts: skin care center in Vietnam conveniently happens to be using the exact same logo as the Umbrella Corporation, the “fictional” company from the Resident Evil franchise responsible for “accidentally” creating the T-Virus which started the global zombie apocalypse

In other words, UMBRELLA IS REAL AND IS IN VIETNAM.  Start stocking up on ammunition, first aid spray and green and red herbs.  Engineer some convoluted locks and puzzles based on chess pieces, piano sonatas, and shattered crests of mythical creatures.  And start writing out your thoughts in diaries and start scattering pages around your homes, with discreet clues on how to solve your puzzles and unlock your locks so that Jill, Chris, Rebecca and Leon can find your shit after we all die and then reanimate.

This is pretty close to how the plot started in the movie franchise, with Umbrella’s public guise being one that started off with cosmetics and health wellness while privately dabbling in the world of viral pathogens and some sinister science to ultimately be weaponized and sold for ridiculous profits.  It’s a little too close to home that a clinic in Vietnam is all about the skin care, but happens to be using the verbatim exact same logo as the Umbrella Corporation.

I guess the Capcom conspiracy theorists who wrote out the plot to Resident Evil 6 were a little off in estimating that a zombie outbreak would be in China, but that’s still close enough to Vietnam to believe that maybe these hair-brained video game plots couldn’t be based on some sort of potentially lurking truth.

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Unfortunate demise of a cultural icon

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I remember telling any of my friends from out of town whoever came to visit Atlanta that we would have to go to Gladys Knight’s Chicken & Waffles.  Seldom did anyone disagree, because regardless of how they felt about fried chicken or waffles separately, nobody could deny that there was some bit of intrigue about having them put on the same plate and served simultaneously.  It didn’t hurt that the food itself was decent, and the location was pretty central to the city, making it easier to do anything else afterward.

Throughout more recent years however, myself along with many other kind of stopped going to Gladys Knight’s.  Maybe it was too touristy, maybe being featured on Man v. Food and other travel shows made the place too mainstream and too avoidable for hipsters like me.  Not to mention the idea of chicken and waffles has been borrowed by so many other restaurants throughout the city, many of which have found ways to make it better than the originals.

Regardless, it’s still to hear about a culinary trailblazer like Gladys Knight’s restaurant getting shuttered and basically condemned now.  Especially, in the manner in which all this transpired, which is long story short, Gladys Knight’s shithead son using the family restaurant as a drug front, getting busted several times and murdering the business in a slow agonizing death.

Seriously, it’s bad enough that Atlanta lost an iconic restaurant that, but it’s sadder to hear that it basically ruined a family relationship between mother and son because the son is greedy, selfish and an asshole, and mom just wanting to distance herself away from his bullshit.

No, Gladys Knight’s wasn’t the best chicken and waffles in town, but they were amongst the first to bring the cult-like combination to the city in the first place.  Furthermore, they were in a location often times mired in political strife and kind of a key point of contention for the future of the city.  Had the Peachtree/Pine area ever gotten back on their feet and improved, Gladys Knight’s was basically at the center of it, but instead, they’re not just another boarded up storefront in an area that’s already plagued with ghetto and failure, and not even the Empress of Soul herself could withstand the hood.

When a movie is treated like more than a movie

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really planning on going out and seeing Wonder Woman.  Not because I’m a sexist pig that refuses to support a film with a strong leading woman, but because I’m just not really that interested.  One, it’s a DC Comics film, and I know there’s a fallacy of predicting the future based on the past, but if the last few stinkers were any indication, it’s probably not going to be that great.  And two, the monumental amount of attention and press that this film has received, regardless of it was actually about the film or not, has put this movie on a plateau of expectations that I just don’t think can realistically be reached.

Had Wonder Woman just been released like any other comic book movie, I might’ve had more interest in seeing it.  I mean, this variant of Wonder Woman was introduced in such an epic manner, giving a modicum of life and interest to the steamer known as Batman v. Superman, that it really shouldn’t have been too difficult to expect that a stand-alone Wonder Woman should be just fine.

Now I know that as a man, it’s not really my place to speak on behalf of women, but I still have a lot of opinions on how the buildup and arrival of this movie has basically taken on a life greater than the film itself, and I think that it’s kind of unfair to the film and those who worked on it, that it’s being treated as anything other than a feature film that people will pay money to hope to be entertained by, and little else.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Gal Gadot is awesome.  If anything at all, I feel like I’ve been a fan of hers longer than most sudden Wonder Woman fans are, because I’ve enjoyed her throughout the later Fast & Furious films, where she plays Gisele, who isn’t just eye candy, but another strong female protagonist not defined by her role in the lives of men.  I know she served in the Israeli army, which explains why she’s so rock hard and convincingly tough, because she actually is, and nobody needs to give me an elaborate dossier for me to know that I appreciate her.

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=/

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That emoji is kind of how I felt when I read about Mein Fuhrer deciding for the whole country and pulling out of Paris Climate Agreement.  I don’t really know how to explain why I felt sad by it, it’s not like I’m the greenest person on the planet either; I don’t go out of my way to recycle, although I am cognizant about turning off lights and shutting down electronics that aren’t being used.  That’s the kind of person I am when it comes to climate concerns, if that paints any picture at all.

I think it’s more a sense of dissatisfaction at a situation where pretty much the vast majority of the American public can agree that, not even for just the sake of the climate, whether it’s believed in or not, there’s nothing really wrong with trying to reduce pollution and find simple and efficient ways to not be so wasteful, but the guy in unfortunate charge of the country seems to operate at this seemingly predictable reverse psychology methodology, so whatever the people wants, he simply does the opposite.  So when the vast majority of Americans are saying to not leave the Paris Climate Agreement, he decides to leave, joining like, two other countries as the only countries in the entire fucking planet that isn’t a part of it.

And then to add insult to injury, there’s always the tagline at the end that claims to “be for America’s best interests,” that I can’t even believe for one second that those who say it can believe it.

By now, I’m entirely convinced that if Twitter started proclaiming that they hoped that this administration would never end, the Comemeder in Chief would resign full stop right then and there, because he’s so accustomed to doing whatever it is the American people don’t want.

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A new genre of horror

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Over the last few months, I’ve watched a lot of television shows and movies, that albeit good and entertaining, I’ve noticed an unnerving possibility that these stories could be realities.  Such in themselves transcend a typical horror genre of jump scares or traditional psychological fright, and seem like it’s becoming something of a new genre of horror, in the horror that such fucked up stories could be modern day reality, with just a few realistic tweaks to the world here and there.

Black Mirror and Get Out come to mind pretty quickly, but what really pushes the ball down the path is The Handmaid’s Tale, which the present story is disturbing and disheartening, but it’s really the series of flashbacks that really invoke horror, as modern American society crumbles and deteriorates into the dystopian, Christianity-driven world of Gilead.

That’s really the horror of the show; believable, relatable situations, that especially in today’s modern society, feel like things that could very easily happen with just a little bit of coercion in the wrong direction.  Dystopian inequality?  Just a few wrong bureaucrats voted in away.  Legalized xenophobia?  Same impetus.  Fahrenheit 451 becoming a reality, technology evolving into wrong directions, people getting hanged in public, these are all things that feel like they could become common place with just a few wrong decisions from society here and there.

And I feel like storytelling of today is very much aware of this new genre of horror, and is capitalizing on it, leading to such frightening and captivating television and film.  Much like trainwrecks, they’re hard to turn away from, but goddamn does it provoke thought and make you wonder just how close to chaos it feels like the “real” world is actually operating under, and if things will ever get better, or are all these nihilistic ideas a little too close to reality, and it’s not so much a matter of if, but when shit hits the fan and these stories become reality.

Photos: Momo-con 2017

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[2020 note] This is more or less lost content that I never made a post about from 2017.  But it’s basically the photo dump of all the photos I took at Momo-con that year, and because I imagine photo galleries are the one thing that never gets old from the rando-internet traveller, they’ll always have some relevance on the web.

I vaguely remember this was the first time I was getting to use my new L-series lens at a convention, and thinking how heavy it was, but the photo quality that came from it was worth it, as I had some photoshoots of mythical then-gf in her Sweetheart Annie costume, as well as my famiry friends rocking Bioshock cosplay.

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SSDPSTBUS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Same Shit, Different Public Swindling Tax Burdening Unnecessary Stadium. 

Obvious, wasn’t it?

The irony is that it might sound like my exclusively sour grapes at my disagreement to the existence of ScumTrust Park, but such an egregiously overblown acronym can seamlessly be utilized by any one of the many sports venues constructed within the last 15 years that were constructed under similar shady circumstances.

But anyway, surprising nobody at all, the Braves are performing at the level they are expected to, regardless of the fact that they are somehow in second place in the absolutely dreadful NL East.  It’s not their fault that there are a litany of other teams that are somehow miraculously worse than the Braves, and it makes me feel like I have to do math and show my work to prove that there are enough teams with good of records as there are as many teams with abysmal, worse-than-the-Braves records out there.

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