Now that’s what I’m talking about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: North Carolina man wins $1M from scratcher, has big plans

I’m pretty sure this is the plot to My Name is Earl, where a redneck finds a $20 in the parking lot, parlays it into a scratcher lottery ticket and promptly wins $1M prize.  TBS couldn’t produce something funnier, and they’re the home to All Elite Wrestling.  But congratulations and good on this soon-to-be former master carpenter for pulling off the luck streak of a lifetime.

Makes me think back to when I found a $20 outside the Cheetah; I feel like I should’ve parlayed that stripper $20 into some lottery tickets, instead of adding it to the pot of cash I was saving to get an iPad with, especially since that iPad is long since dead after its screen cracked.

But the best part about this man’s story, and why it’s such a no-brainer to warrant posting about in the brog was pretty obvious, which were his plans upon receiving his payout:

We are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they’ve got,” Hicks said after claiming his winnings.

It’s a lol quote if there ever was one needed, and I love how the man’s first meal idea after pocketing $425K large is Golden Corral, and he elaborates that he’s going to “eat everything they’ve got,” as if he’s now capable of spending more to get more, at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Forget about China Star Buffet kids, we going to Golden Coral!  Plus y’all get to have your own plates!

I’ve never been to Banner Elk, North Carolina before, but seeing where it is on the map, not that far from the unfortunately recently destroyed Asheville and surrounding Appalachia, I can’t be too surprised to assume that Golden Corral might be the golden standard for dining out options in that region.

Jokes aside, no shade and beef with Golden Corral; like much on this planet, I am not above it, and I in fact freaking love me some Golden Corral when the opportunity strikes, and frankly as much as I wouldn’t kick it out of bed, $425K isn’t necessarily life-changing money as much as it would be a great big windfall to catch up with, so honestly going with Golden Corral as the celebratory meal isn’t the worst option there could be.

Either way, I am a jealous fatty of this man for all of the above; finding a $20 in the gas station parking lot, winning a $1M lottery, and having the opportunity to celebrate with Golden Corral.  I tip my cap to this gentleman, and wish him good fortune in the wars to come; mostly with the IRS and his digestive system after eating everything at Golden Corral.

Dad Brog (#141): Role reversal

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There are times in which my kids bring home artwork they create in school, and in the case of #1, budding artistic talent is starting to emerge in the sense that she can now create with a relative objective in mind, and this is a family portrait that she drew, and I’ve been waiting her entire life for the day that she would create something like this.

I am going to frame it and cherish it forever.

But then there are all the other days in which my kids are absolute terrors, full of screaming, defiance, meltdowns, tantrums and more screaming, and sometimes I have to take a lot of deep breaths to try to not snap back at my children, and I ask mythical wife why we decided to have kids again?

In all fairness, most of the aggravating behavior is coming from #1 these days, and for as seemingly simple the supposed terrible twos were for us, it all seems to have held back until the age of four in this case.  I didn’t read enough dad literature to know if this is normal or not, but having a four and three-year old girls definitely has opened the door to its own unique set of challenges that I’m just guessing are a progression of time and growth.

The funny thing is, as much as #1 has become more obtuse about certain things, #2 has more or less reversed roles and become the chill one between the girls, and as often as #1 melts down, #2 is the one that’s usually cool as a cucumber in comparison and disposition.

Interestingly, and I should say unsurprising, a lot of this seems to stem from how much television we let the kids watch, as the vast majority of meltdowns typically start when it comes time to turn off the television and either take a break from screens, or get ready for bath time and bed, which has stretched even later, getting closer to 8 pm from 7, meaning I have even less time on a nightly basis to turn off dad mode and feel like a normal human being, that is when I’m not burning that time resetting the home every single night.

But when we don’t watch television, there’s no conflict over turning it off, and more often than not, certain triggers can be avoided.  But I’d be lying if that’s easier said than done, because sometimes, like when I need to prepare some meals for the kids, or just need a mental break for myself, an episode or two of a cartoon on Disney+ is just what I need in order to catch my breath, or buy time for something I need to do.

Either way, that’s parenting in a nutshell right now, and as I often stated, I don’t want Dad Brogs to only emerge when things are solely negative and I’m just looking for an outlet to vent since I don’t want to burden my actual human interactions to just spout off at how parenting is.

Things could be better, but they could also be worse; I love my kids the same every day, and for all the times they aggravate me with being kids, they also fill my heart’s bucket on a daily basis by just them being themselves, and occasionally bringing me touching artwork.

Who knew Dwyane Wade was an old Asian guy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Atlantic: The Worst Statue in the History of Sports

Usually when I link to a source, I write my own snarky little snippet, but in this particular case, I think The Atlantic’s verbatim headline, although a little heavy-handed, sums up the general sentiment and sets the tone for my own observations about Dwyane Wade’s freshly unveiled statue, outside of the BBC whatever name of the venue in which the Miami Heat play in.

But yes, the Dwyane Wade statue is pretty horrendous for a litany of reasons, and not just the fact that it looks absolutely fucking nothing like him.  Personally, I think he looks like an old Asian man, like Mr. Fuji from the WWF, but I’ve seen comparisons to Morpheus from The Matrix, as well as a laundry list of other NBA players past and present.

I can’t say that I was as big of a hoops fan to understand the significance of him pointing down, but the 14-year old in me automatically assumes that he’s pointing to his testicles, adding to the list of reasons why this statue is so historically bad.

Without (much) argument, Wade is probably the best player to be drafted and succeed with the Miami Heat, having won a championship with him being the 1A guy in like 2006.  If there were any time in his career in which his status should have been inspired by, I would’ve guessed the 2006 Finals, but I don’t really remember much about his performance other than the absolutely bonkers rate in which Wade went to the free throw line, and attempted over 90 free throws during the series against the Mavericks, en route to scoring like 200 points and winning the Finals MVP, so I guess having a statue of him shooting free throws wouldn’t have been that legendary.

Otherwise, as revered as he is in Miami, all I remember him for is being the guy that voluntarily gave up the driver’s seat of the team to LeBron James, which did in fact, net him two more championship rings, but basically tarnished the rest of his career as he basically became Robin for the remainder of it, to the point where he was one of the first really hilariously notable victims to a sports contract opt-out clause, where he opted out of his deal with the Heat, thinking he could negotiate more money, but was very wrong, and ended up having to crawl back to the Heat for the same money, but more years to earn it.

He would then bounce around between Chicago and Cleveland and eventually come back to the Heat where he could at least go out on relatively his own terms, ending where it all began, and actually have a farewell tour in the process.

I have no issue with Dwyane Wade, but in my opinion there’s no mistaking that he’s a guy that got owned quite a few times in his career, and I can’t help but find humor in those scenarios.  The fact that in what should’ve been one of his last few greatest career moments in his career, also ended up being a bomb as well, on account of a hilariously terrible statue that looks absolutely nothing like him seems fitting, as the guy basically finished up the second half of his career getting owned repeatedly; so really what really is the harm in one more instance of getting owned for D-Wade?

I don’t see it anywhere, but let’s just hope that the statue itself at least spelled “Dwyane” correctly; not that it should be surprising if they didn’t considering the asinine phonetically incorrect way he actually legally spells it, but it would be funny if it weren’t.

Every baseball kid’s dream ending, starring Freddie Freeman

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Bottom of the ninth tenth, down a run, bases loaded, two outs; in the World Series.

The only thing more that there could’ve been was a full-count, but Freddie Freeman had to go ahead and remove that extra drama by instead blasting the first pitch he saw deep into the outfield stands of Dodger Stadium, and just like that, the Dodgers and their $241M payroll burst from the jaws of defeat against the Yankees and their $309M payroll to take the critical first game of the 2024 World Series.

If this game had ended in a similar fashion at the bat of anyone other than Freddie Freeman, this post doesn’t exist.  Especially Shohei Ohtani, and especially Max Muncy whom I think is the living embodiment of the meme of the guy that is part of the group project that gets an A but doesn’t actually do anything but gets to talk about the A like he did.  If Ohtani delivered the game-winning hit, I don’t post.  If it were Muncy, I don’t post.  Even if it were half-Korean Tommy Edman, I still have a literal list of topics that I’d rather spend my time writing about.

But Freddie Freeman is a guy whom it is impossible for a person like me to feel even the slightest amount of malice or disdain for, even if his actions result in outcomes that I did not want, like the Dodgers getting any sort of wins over the Yankees in the World Series.  Dare I say, when he clobbered that first pitch and in that split second where he and only he knew it was gone, and he begun holding his bat up triumphantly like an Olympic torch, only for nanoseconds later the rest of the his teammates and all the fans in Dodger Stadium realized it was headed out and began their approving roaring, I felt happy for him and only him alone, because that’s what Freddie Freeman means to me.

I mean, this is the dream outcome of the dream scenario that every baseball kid dreams about in their backyard, at some points in their lives, and Freddie Freeman just fulfilled it better than anyone could have possibly done.  In a sport that tracks absolutely every single play, instance and scenario, this was literally the only time in the history of the game, where a World Series game had ended in a walk-off grand slam.

Sure, I’m sure there will be lots of challenges and rebuttals that the only thing that tops this is a walk-off grand slam to outright win the World Series or comparing it to Joe Carter’s Series-ending walk-off three-run blast in 1993, but if we could just kick the nerds out of the room for just a second, and simply marvel at the magical moment we just witnessed.

Back to reality though, nothing changes with the fact that I still want the Yankees to win it, for the sake of my wife and her family, and the put a damper on Ohtanimania, and this heartbreaking L belongs to nobody but Yankee skipper Aaron Boone.  Why he trotted out a cold and rusty Nestor Cortes to face three-straight MVPs in extra innings is a decision that I already question, and imagine armchair baseball strategists and Yankee fans all around also question.

Aside from the fact that Cortes was colder than a pint of Häagen-Dazs buried at the bottom of a chest freezer in the garage, having not pitched since September, he’s a junk ball starting pitcher that relies on deception and trickery over having sheer, stuff, to get batters out, much less three straight MVPs in Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman. 

Personally, I have this belief that starting pitchers are not ideal candidates to come out in relief, especially in extra innings, because pitchers are often neurotic creatures optimally comfortable in defined roles, and a guy like Cortes has been a starter for most of his Yankee career, and starting pitchers are mentally okay with an occasional hit and an occasional run, because as starters, they have the cushion of knowing they’ve got several innings behind and beyond them for the team to battle on their behalf.  All that cushion vanishes in late and extra innings, and more often than not, starting pitchers don’t fare well in those scenarios.

In all fairness, Cortes did manage to get demi-god Ohtani out, thanks to the gutsy selfless crashing into the stands catch by Alex Verdugo, but when I heard that Mookie was getting the intentional walk so that they could go lefty-vs-lefty with Freeman, my face literally made the wince emoji .

Now Aaron Boone has been applauded before in understanding modern baseball strategy, but going Cortes vs. Freeman will be one that I’m sure many will be questioning for a long time, especially if the Dodgers outright win the World Series.  Freddie Freeman is a career .273 hitter against lefties with an .804 OPS which is nerd speak for he hits left-handed pitching very well.  Conversely, Mookie Betts has never recorded a hit off of Nestor Cortes; granted, both sample sizes are extremely small, limited to a single game earlier in the season, but when it comes down to it, I would rather have taken my chances on Betts than Freeman, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s a shame too, because a lot of standout Yankee performances are wiped out in this loss; Gerrit Cole’s six innings because apparently 5-6 innings is applause worthy in today’s baseball, the aforementioned Alex Verdugo catch into the stands, Giancarlo Stanton continuing his torrid postseason run with another home run, and for me, Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s bonkers baserunning in the tenth that gave the Yankees their one-run lead going into the final frame is a shame to have wiped by Boone’s questionable management.

Make no mistake though; in order for this moment to be preserved in immortality, the Dodgers must win outright.  Much like Chisholm Jr.’s baserunning will be forgotten in the loss, Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam will be reduced to a statistical anomaly if the Dodgers don’t win the whole thing.  And as much as I have genuine love in my heart for the man, I’m still pulling for the Yankees, and hope that this one magic moment is the extent of Freeman’s contributions to the Dodgers’ cause.

Oh, South Fulton #47

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: South Fulton taxpayers ‘livid’ because mayors wants to give himself a raise

It was 7:10 am and I was in the kitchen groggily pondering my life while getting ready to start preparing breakfast for the kids, when I saw the headline for this article pop up on my Echo.  My brow furrowed, and my knee-jerk reaction was what, fuck that when I pulled out my phone to look up the story to find out more.

I’ve said it many times that despite the fact that I’ve long bid good riddance to South Fulton county, I still have a casual interest in the goings over there, because I do believe that in spite of all the corruption and ironic bad behavior that will always render the place a swampy swirl, I do feel for those that are good, that still live there and believe in the place, even if I don’t, and want good for those people.  And my knee-jerk reaction was that a mayor giving himself more money for a region that seems incapable of improvement, doesn’t sound like a very good idea for those people.

But then I read the context behind the headline, and my attitude changed fairly quickly.

Turns out the Mayor of the City of South Fulton was making a paltry $47,676 a year.  The caveat to it is that for whatever reason, it was in a part-time capacity, and there are all sorts of easy jokes about how it’s possible or why it’s just part-time explains why South Fulton is such a wasteland, but in terms of numbers, the mayor was making a wage that frankly I don’t think is necessarily livable in the Metro Atlanta area.

It should also be mentioned that one of the former mayors of Atlanta once was discovered in an audit to have spent upwards of $20K doled out to employees as prizes and bonuses for holiday parties, to give a barometer of how much reckless spending there is in this general region.

But yeah, the mayor of the City of South Fulton is currently making $47K and wants to bump himself up to $85K; the article states that it’s a 78% increase presumably to increase outrage, but it’s really 55%, and frankly, for doing the thankless job in a wasteland, even if it’s at a part-time capacity whatever that entails, I don’t think is an unreasonable amount to propose.  It’s not like he’s asking for six figures to do the seemingly nothing that all the politicians in the Metro area do, and frankly it’s not like he hasn’t earned some money for all the efforts he’s tried to put into his jurisdiction.

For context, after being elected, he deliberately moved himself into one of the sketchiest apartment complexes in one of the most sketchiest parts of town, to try and prove to his constituents that he was one of them and was a man of the people.  He eventually had to bail because unsurprisingly a place like that had tremendous mold problems and it was threatening to the lives of him and everyone who lived there (the complex has since mostly burned down, “accidentally”), but this is the kind of guy that he tried to be, as a politician.

Regardless, there are many in South Fulton who are deemed as livid because he wants a little bit more money to part-time reside over them, and after seeing the numbers, I’m not opposed to it anymore as much as I think a lot of it should be past-services due. 

It’s like that scene in Ocean’s 13 where the dice factory goes on strike, and Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict hears the number $30,000, and is all like $30K for every employee?  And then is informed that it’s just $30k is what they’re demanding in total, and everyone’s just basically like.. that’s it?

That’s how I feel about this guy asking for a little bit more money.  It’s not an egregious amount, and it’s frankly too modest in my opinion.  I know it’s easy for me to say not being my tax dollars and my money, but if anyone were to offer me a 55% raise to go live back in South Fulton County, I’m not doing it.  Not even for a 100% raise, because there’s no way I could afford to live in a secluded fortress away from all the bullshit, not to mention the agony commute I’d be putting myself into again.

Man is just asking for a modest raise to continue living in a part of town that mostly everyone has given up on and doesn’t believe in, and even if he is one of the many Metro Atlanta politicians blowing smoke, $85K a year seems like a rounding error in comparison to some of the flagrantly irresponsible spending going on around the rest of the Metro area.

I will never understand the repeated 50/50 booking of Bron Breakker

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was chatting with some of my bros about Jey Uso’s long-awaited singles championship when he won the Intercontinental blet from Bron Breakker, and my first remark was along the lines of, well I hope they don’t give the blet right back to him in 3-4 weeks, because this has basically been the exact recipe that the WWE has been doing with Bron Breakker since he debuted back in 2021.

For whatever reason, Bron Breakker always has two matches with a guy when there’s a title involved, and by the time the second match is over, Breakker is the one coming out with the title.  50/50 booking in professional wrestling is when two sides trade wins, with the goal of each party getting an opportunity to look like the stronger side once, but in the end the benefit is minimal if at all, because both parties will have taken an L.  It is often criticized by the fan community and I can’t say that I disagree with the notion, and I’d rather a guy be used sparingly and sell a feud on character work and promos as opposed to there being a series of matches where both guys come out no better than which they started.

Like, here’s a list of Bron Breakker’s championship 50/50s since emerging in the WWE ecosystem:

  • Tommaso Ciampa: Loses on 10/26/21. Wins NXT Championship on 01/04/22
  • Dolph Ziggler: Loses NXT Championship on 03/08/22. Wins NXT Championship on 04/02/22
  • Sami Zayn: Loses on 07/06/24. Wins Intercontinental Championship on 08/03/24
  • Jey Uso: Loses Intercontinental Championship on 09/23/24. Wins Intercontinental Championship on 10/21/24

Like, I’m not pulling this pattern out of my ass, since Bron Breakker has emerged onto the scene, this has been precisely how he’s been booked, and I don’t know why.  After three years, he’s proven himself to be a tremendous talent, very much the genetic heir to his family lineage from his dad Rick Steiner and uncle Scotty.  He’s demonstrated the ability to work with all sorts of styles of workers, from all-around talents like Ciampa and Ziggler, small technicians like Carmelo Hayes, to bruisers like Gunther. 

50/50 booking should be reserved for guys greener than Breakker, but I feel like they’re doing it anyways, because of his general age.  Pro-wrestling has this archaic philosophy that everyone should pay their dues and apparently for a very long time.  Furthermore, a guy like Breakker has to always be weary of being accused of succeeding on account of nepotism, so I have to assume that all this 50/50 booking is being done to help him pay his dues, despite the fact that I think it’s doing more harm than it is good to have him eat so many losses, when he’s clearly set up to be one of the torch bearers for the company in future years.

So I guess writing things out, I kind of answered my own question to why Bron Breakker is being 50/50 booked so much.  I don’t necessarily agree with it, but as long as some old philosophies remain, even the most talented of guys will have to learn to eat some shit sandwiches because all their predecessors did too.

That being said, the tease of Bron Breakker vs. Jacob Fatu will be interesting.  I would’ve said that the new Bloodline would be beginning an amassing of titles with Jacob getting his first taste of singles gold, but that would be problematic when it would come time for Solo to try and nab one of the World titles, and I think we all know nobody’s dethroning Cody or Gunther.  But let’s not pretend like the ol’ E won’t 50/50 Bron against Jacob Fatu as well for a fairly meaningless title change just to help advance the Bloodline storyline which is in my opinion starting to border on becoming dragged out too long and with too many players in place.

But hopefully, the E will just stop booking him like this inexperienced rookie, and just let him have a monster run with the gold, because I genuinely believe he’s the future, and it’s important for him to be established as such, when the time comes for him to start being the man.

Even if when he is in performance mode, he’s the color of Hulk Hogan mixed with a Costco rotisserie chicken.

FOX’s Shohei Ohtani coverage is out of control

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Let’s get one thing out of the way – I have no dislike for Shohei Ohtani.  Even if he is Japanese and the world has basically fetishized him into oblivion, I don’t have any beef with the guy.  He legitimately is basically the greatest player to have played the game of baseball at this point and seems like a pretty humble and level-headed human being.

But the way FOX and the rest of the media world has continuously forced him down the throats of every baseball fan, sports fan or just television watcher, is definitely making me sour on the concept of Shohei Ohtani, and it goes without saying, is among the chief reasons why not one iota of my being won’t be rooting for the Dodgers to take the L in the World Series.

Nobody likes being told what to do.  I don’t like being told what to do.  I definitely don’t like being told what I need to like, and the way FOX has gone so ridiculously out of the way to put Ohtani on this pedestal has been ridiculous and embarrassing frankly, and not even being teammates with Freddie Freeman, whom I will always be a fan of, and would ordinarily be okay with him winning another World Series with someone else as long as it weren’t with the Dodgers.

The “X Time Away from Shohei Ohtani” was mortifying to discover that FOX was doing, and I’m glad to have been watching more AL playoffs as opposed to the NL, because it seemed inevitable that the Dodgers were going to win the pennant after vanquishing of the Padres, and although I didn’t witness any of these obnoxious bumpers myself, I saw plenty of screen caps and memes enough to know just how much I hated them.

This is the kind of thing that would make me hope for failure and ineffective at-bats, but because he really is that incredible of a baseball player, of course he delivered in many of these long-called for at-bats, which added to the e-bile I felt in my thoughts about the Shohei Ohtani coverage.

Like, whether it’s on television, or on various social media platforms, or ESPN or any other sports sites, one of my go-to snarky remarks is that I can hear the Oriental gong going off whenever Shohei Ohtani is being discussed, because that’s just how much he has caught the imagination of the collective world with his baseball talents.  It’s almost obnoxious to know that he’s actually a pretty decent dude, notwithstanding the potential gambling problem/scandal from the start of the season which was kind of refreshing to think that amid all of his Mr. Perfect-isms, he was flawed too like the rest of us.

Either way, I thought that I would have more to say about the subject than this, but I basically got my point across.  Enough with the Shohei Ohtani coverage, and at this point, him winning the World Series with the also-insufferable Dodgers is the absolute worst-case scenario there is as far as baseball is concerned.  It validates flagrant spending, egregious marketing of Japanese superstars, and makes a whole lot of obnoxious front-running Dodgers fans happy, which I can’t abide for.  I’d rather side with the devils I know, and actively root for the Yankees, if for nothing at all, would make mythical wife and my mother-in-law really pleased to see the Commissioner’s Trophy being hoisted in the Bronx.

But my parting thought, as insufferably obnoxious the Shohei Ohtani coverage and the Japan fetish has been these playoffs and this season, shoutout to Tommy Edman for being the NLCS MVP; that’s right, a half-KOREAN guy being the best player on the Dodgers for going 11-for-27 with an OPS of 1.023 and a home run.

Suck it, weebs