Tag: television

Everyone on the internet is a Colin Robinson until proven otherwise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since my daughter’s been born, mythical wife and I haven’t watched a tremendous amount of television. I may have mentioned it before, but ultimately we’re hoping to avoid exposing our child to too much screen time until she’s around two years old, because we’d prefer to be parents who can stimulate their child’s brain without having to resort to plopping them in front of a television and hoping to let digital technology raise her. Needless to say, since having a kid, we’ve watched maybe a handful of things, mostly bullshit like 90 Day Fiancé or My 600 Lb. Life.

In addition to TLC’s greatest hits, one show in particular we’ve actually worked our way through has been FX’s What We Do In the Shadows, which has been great because the episodes are short, and the plot is funny in the mockumentary style of format. The cast is outstanding and the general plot is so ridiculous and quick-paced that it’s an easy show where we can watch one or two episodes, step away from viewing for a few days or a week, and then pick right back up without much difficulty.

After blowing through the two available seasons, I’d have to say that the one character that I enjoyed the most was Colin Robinson, the energy vampire. Mostly treated as a tertiary character, his whole spiel is that he’s not one of the traditional blood-sucking vampires, but rather one who feeds off of the energy of others, including the ability to drain from other vampires. He’s basically the troll among trolls in Nandor’s house, and in my opinion, he’s the funniest character among the entire cast.

There’s one episode in particular where he’s expanding on his powers to drain energy from victims by utilizing the internet, and then it occurred to me that Colin Robinson is basically the living embodiment of every internet troll on the planet. We re-watched the first episode recently, and there’s a line he mentions during the initial character introductions where “you probably know an energy vampire,” and then it hit me like a ton of bricks that he couldn’t be any more accurate that basically we all do.

Every anonymous internet troll, asshole whom you don’t know who chimes in on a social media conversation, is a Colin Robinson. An energy vampire who’s deliberately trying to deliberately trying to get under your skin and get you to tilt, so that they can drain your energy, even from afar. Once this connection is bought in, it’s actually quite amusing to envision the face on the other end of the keyboards in any sort of internet confrontation, probably looking like Colin Robinson, a bald, middle aged Dilbert looking guy. And as much as the Colin Robinsons probably got their rocks off on feeding on your energy, there’s something empowering to know that such a dorky looking dweeb is probably the one on the other end of the interwebs from any sort of online debate.

Nike’s Seinfeld Shoes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve struggled a little bit trying to get back in to the groove of regular writing.  Between the balancing act of trying do things whenever my child is napping, and the fact that I haven’t really found a good rhythm or inspiration to write about things, I’ve often times found myself sitting at my laptop with nothing much going on, other than scrolling through news sites and feeds to look for something to inspire me before ultimately killing time on YouTube watching chiropractor popping clips or scenes from Marvel movies.

But then I saw an ad, of all things, for Nike’s Alphafly shoes.  Supposedly, they’re causing somewhat of a stir in the running community, and I guess there are some tryhard enthusiasts out there who think they’re illegal or performance enhancing or something along those lines, but I can’t really care enough to delve deeper because I can’t really get over the fact of how fucking hideous they look.  With their gigantic, bulbous and protruding soles, all I can think of is that they’re basically the modern-day equivalent of the jump shoes from that one episode of Seinfeld.

Seriously, my mouth curled into a wtf face after I saw these things.  I gave a cursory google search to see what they were even capable of, but there’s so much noise and chatter about the legality of these things in organized marathons, that I can’t actually find any credible information on what the whole point of these shoes actually are, nor do I feel like expending the effort to dig any deeper.

Regardless, they’re basically Seinfeld shoes, visually.  And much like Kramer was pegged as looking like a special needs person when going out in public in them, I imagine anyone wearing these that isn’t actively in a competitive run would probably look similarly having these thick-ass shoes on while wearing jeans or ordinary pants.  But given the fact that they’re like 3” off the ground, I imagine a lot of height-conscious people might do it anyways, to make themselves look taller.  That’s the tradeoff however, for wanting to look taller than less mentally capable, I suppose.

Now that I’m caught up, I don’t know what to do with myself

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the better part of the last three months, whenever I had a free moment after work or when I wasn’t tending to the baby, I was basically working on getting the brog back up online.  At first, it was manually backing up the old posts, then it was sorting and organizing all of the unposted posts, and then came the arduous task of manually re-posting every post in chronological order.

As I’ve mentioned before, this whole task took approximately 82 days, and a few more to fine tune and tweak things and get ready for the day in which I would let people know and officially open as if I were some grandiose important entity.

But now that I’ve accomplished the task of getting the brog back up, I really don’t know what to do with myself in my free time now.  Since I’m still on paternity leave, my only real tasks are tending to my daughter, but when I put her down for naps, and she goes to sleep for the night, suddenly I have anywhere from 2-5 hours in the day in which is me-time that I don’t really know how to fill anymore.

Sure, I’m still going to be dedicating time to writing and looking for things to write about, but since there’s no massive backlog and queue behind it anymore, I’m back to the days where posts are mostly going to be one at a time, save for those times where I write a bunch of things and put them in the can for a rainy day.  But otherwise, I’m not going to be spending all my time on my site anymore, and I’ve been perplexed on what to do next now that I’ve accomplished the one big thing for myself that I had set out to do.

There’s always a gargantuan backlog of shit I want to watch on television, which would be nice, but I’m a person who really needs to immerse myself into media to really take it in.  Basically meaning, if there’s any risk of possibly getting interrupted, I probably won’t bother starting it, and what with the fact that my daughter sleeps anywhere from 35-60 minutes, there’s no sense in starting any shows which episodes are in the 45-55 minute range, because inevitably I will have to cut it short to get my child, and then I’ll be annoyed (not at the kid) at having to stop early.

So that effectively knocks out hour-long shows and movies, and limits me to 22-30 minute shows, which are fewer and further between save for signing up for a Quibi account and I don’t want to add monthly subscriptions these days anyway.

I can’t really hit the treadmill, because my usual sessions are 32 minutes, but that’s not including the need to change, shower and cool down, and if my daughter wakes up at the short end of a nap, then I’ll be a sweaty monster that has to dirty up my child which I’m not going to voluntarily do, so that nixes that idea.

So far, I’ve just been dicking around on the internet and watching YouTube clips and seeking out wrestling belts to throw my money away further into.  Otherwise, it’s not lost on me that this is the epitomal first-world problem to be having and when the day is over, I do feel a sense of accomplishment that I’ve got the brog back up and it makes me happy, and that I’d rather be in this position rather than the former times in which I’d wish to have my brog back up, and it weren’t, and my thoughts and words would stay confined to my own digital storage.

New Father Brogging, #013

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes, I feel like that guy from Lost, Desmond I think his name was.  The guy who lived in a bunker or some remote cabin, and had to keep entering the numbers into a computer every 100 minutes or so, or else some indeterminate bad thing was going to happen.  If I recall correctly, as I never really watched the show past the first season, and had to kind of catch up on it through reading synopses of it on Wikipedia, it was his negligence at entering the numbers at one point is what led to the plane crash that put all the show’s survivors onto the island in the first place.

But instead of risking a gigantic electromagnetic pulse being released, I’m at the perpetual mercy of my daughter’s feeding schedule, which has shown to be a feed every single 90-120 minutes, depending on if she can actually manage to nap in between in the first place.

Unsurprising, with my life more or less in repeated 90-120 minute chunks of time, one can imagine that it’s difficult to accomplish much in between.  Especially considering that anywhere from 20-30 minutes of that chunk of downtime is occupied by the time it takes for her to actually drink all her milk, resulting in really, an hour plus of time in which I don’t have to be feeding her.  Not to mention the fact that, as she is but a small baby, she commands an extraordinary amount of attention, lest she cry or become fussy.

Needless to say, there are some days in which become very mentally and physically challenging, when I know it’s a delicate and difficult balancing act between doing my actual job’s work, and being the attentive and hands-on dad that I wanted to be.  It’s these days where I struggle to not grow too frustrated, and feeling like I have no real time for myself, because this is what I signed up to do as a parent, and something that I need to remember that it’s never just about me anymore, especially now, but I can’t help it sometimes, and still have days where I’m just grumpy and short.

Unlike Desmond from Lost, the chances of earth-shattering catastrophe isn’t likely if/when I let too much time lapse between feeds/naps, but given the wailing that my daughter is capable of when she’s over-tired or over-hungry, and it might as well be capable of making parents feel like their heads are going to explode.

Regardless, I know this is something that will eventually pass in time, but the whole point of writing out things like this, is so that I can always remember the things I think during the whole timeline of raising a child for the very first time, and perhaps one day, some random person will get into my writing, and read this, and if they’re going through the exact same thing, know that they aren’t alone, and that the things they’re experiencing are very likely not exclusive to them.

Revisionist history culture is concerning

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it

-Winston Churchill

[2020 note: I basically made this exact same post three years ago, starting in a similar manner]

Not long ago, I saw that Community was available on Netflix, which was pleasing to me.  Community was one of those shows in which I’d only seen sporadic episodes in no particular order, depending on whichever group of friends I’d hang out with and happen to catch an episode or two at their point of watching through the series.  However, crushing on Alison Brie withstanding, I liked the show, and I always thought it would be a good idea to binge the series in order if the opportunity ever presented itself.

One episode in particular that made me think “whoa, this show is really clever” was the episode that most widely seems to be known as “the D&D episode.”  Not giving anything away, but the Community gang plays a game of Dungeons & Dragons for a particular motive.  However, if there’s one scene in the episode that really sticks with most viewers, it’s of Ken Jeong’s character, Chang, completely painted black and wearing a white wig, because he wants in on the game, and assumes LARPing as a dark elf would get the job done (spoiler: it doesn’t).

But it’s a little bit of a jaw-dropping scene because in all technicality, it’s still Ken Jeong in complete black face (and hands and presumably all other flesh).  But the thing is, he’s not trying to imitate or ridicule black people, he’s just trying to get in character as a dark elf.

Well, I just learned that that episode of Community won’t be available on Netflix anymore.  In fact, any episode of any show, and presumably any movie, that features any non-black character painting their skin tone as to appear darker, has been scrubbed from Netflix’s library, in light of the rampant racism problem, running roughshod in America currently.

Blackface, has suddenly shot up the charts as a hot button, and all throughout the world of media, there’s a whole lot of retroactive scrubbing being done, to eradicate all proof of any show, person, entity or whatever, partaking in blackface at any point in history.

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New Father Brogging, #010

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A thought that often crosses my mind is that I can’t believe the world that my daughter was born into.  And then I feel really sad about it, despite knowing that she very well won’t remember any of this stuff, but one day she might read about it in history books or any sort of resource that outlines the happening throughout history.

It’s bad enough she was born right at the very start of when coronavirus came into the United States and was shortly declared a global pandemic, literally changing the landscape of the world where the vast majority of educated people began to take shelter in their homes, to minimize the spread of a new disease.

But in a way that can only be described as amazing, a global pandemic still managed to get pushed into to the backseat by the more recent civil unrest that’s boiled over on account of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and very recently George Floyd in Minnesota, with the latter being pretty flagrantly executed by a white police officer, when his neck was low-key crushed under the knee of the cop.

As I’m writing this, all across the country, there have been countless protests, many of which escalated into riots complete with looting, and there are hundreds to thousands of people who have been physically harmed, gassed, tazed or impacted by some form of crowd control.  The police are widely viewed as the enemy now instead of the agency that’s meant to serve and protect, and it’s times like this in which I’m kind of glad that one, I don’t live/work as close to actual city-proper Atlanta as I used to, and two, add the staying home as yet another ironic benefit to there being a fucking pandemic.

It’s a very sad and scary thought to think of this being the world that my first child was born into, and I feel like the generations before her have already let her down in fostering a world that’s supposed to be safe and better for the future.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #010” →

Let’s talk about the AEW TNT Championship Belt

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was in high school, some of my friends had this backyard wrestling fed, that I occasionally participated in from time to time.  My “ring name” was The Yellow Meanie, which was a play on the fat blue haired blob in ECW who went under the name The Blue Meanie, except this was more racist in the obvious sense.

One day, for no other reason than boredom and an idea for our own amusement, I took an old weight belt, some cardboard, packing tape, spray paint and most importantly, an empty box of Popeye’s fried chicken, and I created the Popeye’s Championship Belt.  It symbolized absolutely nothing at all, but regardless I brought it into our backyard wrestling federation and began “defending” it, and cutting promos about how important and prestigious it was.

That kind of logic, is basically what comes to mind when thinking about All Elite Wrestling’s new don’t-call-it-a-mid-card championship belt, the TNT Championship; yes, named after the network in which AEW airs its one and only program, Dynamite.

They’ve literally named a flagship championship after a television station, as if they didn’t seem remotely aware that networks can change, whether the network themselves re-brands or re-identifies, or the network changes directions, decides they don’t want professional ‘rasslin on their network anymore, and dumps them off to Spike TV or Destination America. 

Additionally, they’ve designed the belt to the specific current TNT logo, again, ignoring the fact that in the last ten years, the TNT logo has changed twice prior, and could very well change again in coming years, as Turner is such a volatile company that’s always knocking on the door of being acquired by FOX every year, resulting in endless rounds of layoffs that many people I know in Atlanta have been victimized or threatened by but that’s another story.

Continue reading “Let’s talk about the AEW TNT Championship Belt” →