I AM THE BURRITO KING

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
me with THE Willy of Willy’s

On July 1, the Willy’s Road Trip promotion began.  I knocked out eight locations off the bat.  On July 2, I knocked out ten Willy’s, including the daunting Athens location.  On July 3, I visited eight more Willy’s and on July 4th, I visited the last Willy’s and didn’t hesitate when I got to my computer to submit the photos of all my receipts.

I got notification that I was the first one in on July 5, but a brief explanation that my submission would have to be verified and confirmed before I was officially anointed the first winner of the Willy’s Road Trip.  I figured, eh, no big deal, this shouldn’t take long, and that I had nothing to worry about because I followed the rules and stayed within parameters the entire way.

But then the waiting began.  I didn’t hear back throughout the remainder of the July 5.  Did something go awry?  I didn’t hear back on July 6.  Did they dislike my tactic of getting a cheapo item at most of the locations?  I didn’t hear back on July 7.  Did they not like the fact that I didn’t blow up Twitter or social media with their hashtag?

I was getting anxious.  Why was it taking Willy’s longer to verify my handful of receipts than it took me to drive nearly 300 miles in four days to visit?

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Oh look, moar proof

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Bloomberg: The Braves Play Taxpayers Better Than They Play Baseball

For all the words I’ve spent talking about how the Atlanta Braves are a bunch of money-grubbing immoral crooks in regards to the covert planning and execution of the construction of ScumTrust Park, I’ve neglected the other branches of the Braves organization, namely the minor leagues.  And despite the fact that I far prefer minor league ball over the trash at the major league level, as far as the Braves are concerned, it turns out that they’re no less despicable in other towns too.

Now I knew about the swindling of the people done in Lawrenceville, when it came to bringing the Triple-A Braves to Gwinnett, since I know people who live up there, who don’t like baseball, who are less than impressed with the idea of having to pony up extra pennies on their daily purchases, to finance a ballpark.

However, it turns out that both the Low-A Rome Braves and the Double-A Mississippi Braves are also instances where the Braves moved teams to their current homes, after basically strong-arming their previous residences, giving them a tiny window to meet gargantuan demands, and when they predictably fail, pulling the teams and moving them to towns that had been prearranged to build ballparks at the cost of taxpayers, with hopeless promises of local financial stimulation, and a benefit to all parties, but then failed and saddled debts on the public, while the Braves and conspirators are last money in, first money out.

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Oh, Mets fans

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Why you so dumb?  Accused wife beater, Jose Reyes, given standing ovation and warm reception by fans at Citi Field in his first game back with the Mets.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand fully why there are Mets fans that love Jose Reyes.  Between 2006-2012, he was easily the most frighteningly good shortstop in the game.  He hit .300 from both sides of the plate, he was always a threat for extra-bases, and if he got on base, stolen bases weren’t a threat, they were expected.  His speed was unmatched, and his range at shortstop was maddening as an opposing fan, when Reyes managed to somehow be absolutely anywhere the ball was hit.

Jose Reyes was unmistakably the most exciting player in baseball for a great part of his time with the Mets.  It’s easily understandable why Mets fans loved, and still have positive connotations with him.

However it’s been a long time since 2012, when Jose Reyes won the batting title while on the Mets, before proclaiming his love for New York and then immediately signed a deal with the Miami Marlins, took his talents to South Beach, got traded to Toronto before getting traded to Colorado.  Along that journey, he (allegedly but really did) beat the shit out of his wife in Hawaii, which ultimately led to him getting suspended by Major League Baseball, and cut by the Rockies. And since the Mets have no faith in crybaby Wilmer Flores and are reliant on Asdrubal Cabrera to play shortstop, and David Wright hasn’t been close to healthy since 2014, they decided to bring the prodigal son back to where his career started.

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This breaks my baseball heart

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A god damn shame: All-Star pitcher Jonny Venters blows out his pitching elbow for a fourth time, requiring a fourth Tommy John surgery or face retirement.

I haven’t followed baseball too fervently all season, but one thing that I have been keeping tabs on all season was the progress of Jonny Venters.  Between 2010 and 2012, he was pretty much one of the best relief pitchers in all of baseball pitching for the Braves, and I was a super fan of this guy with a ridiculous power sinker from the left side, making All-Star sluggers look pedestrian and notching strikeouts and delivering in the clutch as easily as a mathematician reciting the times tables.

But in 2012, the dominance ride came to a crashing halt as Venters tore his UCL which is to say blowing out the elbow, which means the three letters that no professional athlete wants to ever hear: TJS, Tommy John Surgery.  This would be the second time in Venters’ career that he would undergo the surgery, as he had his first one while climbing up the Braves’ minor league system. 

TJS’s are no joke, since the rough summary is that the rehabilitation process usually requires months of painstakingly droll and monotonous rehab before actual strength and muscle training can even begin.  The average timeline of TJS rehab ranges anywhere from 12-18 months, so it’s not only is it an invasive surgery, it removes players from the game for a lengthy time, chewing away at their already limited playing careers’ clocks and hampering earning potential.

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The breakdown of the Willy’s Road Trip contest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like the overcompetitive tryhard psychopath I am when it comes to Willy’s, burritos and competition, when I heard about the Willy’s Road Trip contest, and decided that I was going to do it, naturally it turned into a situation of “ha ha, you’re crazy Danny,” to a degree of planning and execution that really probably makes the people around me crook their head a little bit before looking at me next.

So yeah, when I was giving a lot of thought about how I was going to approach this, I decided that I was going to finish it as fast as possible, and came up with a route that would optimize hitting as many Willy’s on particular days, so that I could achieve this optimal finish.

What I was banking on was the fact that among the 27 Willy’s locations, four of them were within office buildings that had limited, Monday through Friday hours, hours as swift as 2:00 p.m. in one of them.  I figure those four would trip up most other psychopaths (if there are any), because the contest started on a Friday, and those most gung-ho about it would have to be as nuts and have as little of a life as I did in order to get them tackled as soon as possible.

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Without villainy, what would people talk about?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Giving fandom a bad name – known “ball hawk,*” gets into game reserved for military servicemen and women, boasts about the baseballs acquired at said game on social media, gets immediate backlash to hilarious results

*a person whose life’s mission is to acquire free baseballs at baseball parks by any means necessary, whether they are caught, picked up, found, retrieved via frighteningly obsessive engineering, or begged for

Because I actually detest the existence of this particular ball hawk, I won’t actually use their name.  I don’t want to give them any named acknowledgement, and I honestly believe this person is sociopathic enough to periodically run Google searches on themselves to see what the internet is saying about them.

Anyway, tonight, there was a very special baseball game played.  Frankly, it’s probably one of the only meaningful games the Braves will play in this season, and there’s an extremely high chance that the only reason the Braves were chosen to play in this game is that because they’re simply the closest Major League Baseball franchise geographically to the desired venue.

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This is what insanity looks like

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Superstition would dictate that I would never share the details of any contest that I was interested in.  I know far too many talented people out there whose skills, acumen and tenacity render me the equivalent of like a toddler when it comes to particular contests.  Call me selfish, but sometimes I’d rather not have the super-talented people I know in my life not beating the shit out of me in any forms of contest.

But in an ironic sense that because of the server outage, nobody will actually read this until god knows when, I feel like I can talk about this contest whose hat that I’m going to throw my name into.  Without concern of jinxing it, or having anyone I know being better than me at it and winning it out from under my nose.

Thankfully this is a contest that I’m fairly certain nobody I know would, much less could, or even want – to challenge me in.  Because most people I know aren’t obsessive and insane about burritos, and typically probably have better things to do with their time and lives.

I got an email from Willy’s, the burrito chain that holds a dear spot in my gluttonous heart.  Long story short: visit all 27 Atlanta-area (plus one in fucking Athens) Willy’s locations, take a picture of the receipts, and try and be one of five nutjobs to be first to submit. 

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