IT WAS A MARTA ALL ALONG

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Conspiracy theory alert*: A crackhead was blamed, crooked bureaucrats’ public waste was the fuel, but MARTA lit the match

*this post is tongue-in-cheek (partially), as if I really have to explain myself

One of the snarky observations I made when I heard that the repair of I-85 was going to take until like Thanksgiving, was who stands to benefit the most from this?  And I don’t think I’m entirely wrong with thinking that, because as most Americans know, little is done in the United States for free, regardless of the circumstances behind them, and as accidental as the burning and collapse of I-85 was, someone(s) will undoubtedly walk away from the scenario richer than they started.

From the onset, I would’ve suspected that part of the delay of repairing I-85 would be the extensive time it took for bureaucrats and talking heads to debate, broker and spin deals with crony companies to contract out the labor work for the bridge repair, to see how many people could pad their pockets as much as possible, before any work was actually planned much less executed.  Naturally, these involved parties would the ones who would somehow take a disaster and turn it into a money-making endeavor, regardless of how miserable it’s making citizens and travelers with each passing day with a giant hole in I-85.

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I liked Iron Fist.  Sue me.

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the first time in a while, I had a weekend where I had really nothing planned at all, so I made the best of it by pretty much doing absolutely nothing at all.  Meaning, I took the opportunity to sit around and watch a bunch of television and movies that I’d been putting off for a while.

I’ve made it pretty clear that I’ve been pretty fond of Netflix’s Marvel catalogue, and throughout the last year, I’ve watched and enjoyed both seasons of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.  The objective for the choices of properties are obviously setting up an eventual run for The Defenders, but in order to get all the players onto the field, it was also obvious that Netflix would have to create and release a series about Iron Fist.

There was one obstacle that everyone including myself was a little dubious about the latter needing a series to be made about, and that’s simply the fact that among the Marvel Comics roster of characters, Iron Fist is pretty much a fucking lame property.

Such isn’t solely my own opinion, it’s often a very broadly accepted one.  Numerous writers have tried to varying degrees of failure, but the bottom line is that Iron Fist is a really, really weak property for Marvel Comics.  Almost completely incapable of carrying a series, about himself, Iron Fist found the most success when paired with other, stronger characters, in a complementary role, like Luke Cage

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APORKALYPSE NOT

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Surprise of the century, Hardee’s Aporkalypse biscuit was hardly the culinary miracle that fast food marketing attempts to make it sound like it is.  I mean, it’s not like I was expecting the greatest breakfast menu item in history, but it’s almost meme-worthy just how much this fell into the category of marketing versus reality.

Eating satisfaction-wise, it’s actually decent.  Sure, they ignored my request to put no egg on it, but since Hardee’s uses a washcloth folded into fourths and calls it an egg, it’s easy enough to remove without fear of any embryo remnants wrecking my digestive system for the afternoon.  But combining bacon, ham and sausage and drowning them in two cheeses is pretty self-explanatory when it comes to satiating a fat guy’s craving for a breakfast biscuit.

I think the biggest fallacy of Hardee’s is that they market something called the Aporkalypse, but completely fail to include all the porks that the restaurant offers.  Because adjacent to the sign on the window that boasts the Aporkalypse, there’s also a giant sign for this pork chop and gravy biscuit that they offer.  Yet the Aporkalypse boasts all this pork but completely fails to offer up a prevalently marketed pork!

Fat guy problems, yes I know.

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lol Braves: Ryan Howard, really?

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SMH: Braves sign Ryan Howard to minor league deal

I can only imagine the things the talking heads said to themselves/one another to justify thinking that this was a fantastic idea.

“This guy has killed us for years.  He’s hit 52 home runs against us.  We should get him!”

“This guy has killed the Nats/Mets/Marlins throughout his career.  We should get him!”

“This guy is a former rookie of the year, MVP and a World Series winner.  We should get him!”

None of those are wrong statements, but they’re mostly applicable to the first half of his career, before a torn ACL pretty much destroyed his career after 2011.  The reality of the situation is that since that injury, he’s been a shell of his former self, batting .226 and hitting an average of 19 home runs a season, which isn’t terrible, but this is also a guy that once clubbed 58 in 2006 and 284 in his first six full seasons, regularly putting the fear of god into opposing pitchers and fans of other teams.

In all honesty, this really isn’t a bad signing.  It’s a minor league deal, which basically means that Ryan Howard is basically getting a set minor league salary while he’s playing in the minor leagues trying to prove that he’s still capable of playing baseball, and if he gets called up to the majors, he’ll get a pro-rated major league minimum salary, minus any incentives worked into the contract.  It’s a very low risk, high reward deal for the Braves, and if they didn’t pull the trigger, undoubtedly someone else would have.

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The whitest thing I’ve ever done

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Last weekend, mythical gf and I went to South Carolina to see the Carolina Cup, which is a series of horse races.  Leading up to what, I have no fucking clue, but it was billed to me as an event of drinking, eating, drinking, socializing, drinking and if you’re lucky, you might even get to see a horse run by.  I mean, it sounded like a good idea to me, honestly.

Now I don’t intend for the title of this post to imply that I did not have a good time, quite the contrary, I enjoyed myself a good deal, and I would be happy doing it again in the future.  But make absolutely no mistake that the headline is 100% accurate, and of all the things I’ve ever done in my life, there is without any hesitation, question or debate that this was undoubtedly the whitest thing I’ve ever done.

Men frolicking around in linen suits and/or khaki everything, with shirts featuring more pastels than Crayola’s Easter crayon collection.  Women wearing gaudy dresses and gigantic doofy hats.  And food and alcohol pretty much everywhere, and for an event that’s revolves around four horse races, people bring enough to indulge for at least sun up until sun down.

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Maybe fourth time will be a charm

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I don’t pay nearly as much attention to baseball as I once did, despite that we’re living in kind of the era of the immediate, where tweets, alerts, push notifications and other means of instant communication exist to stay on top of things very easily if one really wanted to, like baseball news.  Often times, I miss out on Braves news much less any news around baseball, because I simply am not that deeply involved like I once did, and everything that happened in the baseball landscape was something I wanted to know.

However, among the things that I regularly Googled and checked on from time to time, was one of the pitchers that I really, really enjoyed watching and was a fan of: Jonny Venters.  Long story short, he was once an unhittable relief pitcher on the Braves, utilizing a left-handed power sinker from another planet, and even achieved All-Star status for his immense talent.  But the injury bug struck, and he underwent the dreaded Tommy John elbow surgery, and eventually he was released by the Braves.  Didn’t matter where he went, I knew that I was going to root for Jonny, and so I always kind of kept an ear to the ground even when he was signed by the Rays, fully knowing that it was going to be some time before he was cleared to pitch again.

Last summer, things looked really optimistic, and Jonny Venters made his way into the minor leagues to work his way back up.  Personally, I was stoked to see him taking the mound again, and I grew excited at the prospect of him getting back into game shape, and then getting called up by the Rays, who would unleash the power sinker from the left side onto the mostly unsuspecting American League.

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APORKALYPSE NOW

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Last weekend, I drove past a Hardee’s in South Carolina, and I saw on a fairly nondescript roadside sign saying “APORKALYPSE IS HERE.”  The sign was pointing at a Hardee’s, but the name “aporkalypse” definitely caught my attention.

Was this a rogue franchise making up an item?  Or was this something on a broader-scale release?  It didn’t matter what, I couldn’t stop repeating the word in my head, and I felt that I had to know.

Man, it’s hard to imagine the times in our lives when we all didn’t have smartphones and mobile internet, and couldn’t acquire information at the drop of a hat, wherever we were.  Thankfully being out in the sticks of South Carolina wasn’t enough to choke out mobile data and I was able to Google what aporkalypse was, and now I know what I’m going to have for breakfast over this weekend.

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