Tag: fail

Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m a day removed from having gotten off of the Disney Treasure, and hoo boy do I really feel my age these days.  For the first time in all of the cruises that I’ve done before, did I feel a little motion sick on a cruise before, but thankfully that was very short lived, and I was able to sleep it off and remain normal throughout the duration of the trip.  Driving back home all the way directly from Port Canaveral, I found my back hurting pretty badly to the point where I had to take some ibuprofen, thus making it the first time that I’ve needed painkillers, just to make a long distance drive, something I’ve done countless times in my life previously.

And unsurprising, the sea legs sensation of feeling boat rocking on solid land is hitting hard, and it’s mostly when I’m standing still or trying to remain as motionless as possible does the rocking sensation kick in, and I anticipate this will be the case for the next week or so, as it has been for me on previous cruises.

But anyway, big ass famiry trip in the bag, and do I have a lot of thoughts about it.  As curmudgeon as it may sound to say, I don’t necessarily refer to this entirely as a vacation, because the truth of the matter is that wrangling my two kids, on a boat, is still a colossal amount of effort that leads to a lot of aggravation at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get fried and pissed off at undesirable behaviors throughout the week long journey through the Caribbean on an egregiously overpriced boat.

#2 hijacked almost every single evening of the trip, mostly on account of fatigue and a lack of napping, but it usually amounted to her refusing to eat, behaving like a little shit at dinner, and then me needing to walk her out of the restaurants or carry her from point A to point B, and thusly being unable to really enjoy large chunks of time.  I don’t love her any less, but that’s about as succinct of a description of what happened throughout the course of this trip.

Oh, and I’m sure she’ll never live this down, she also barfed on the very literal center of the boat; in the grand hall of the main concourse, right at the center of the stage, where they had a photographer taking pictures of guests.  Immortalized, and definitely one of those stories that we as parents will always be able to recollect whenever we want to embarrass her in the future.

Still though, there’s little I won’t do for my kids and famiry, and despite the fact that I was probably burning out more than I was at any state remotely close to relaxation, there were still numerous pockets of happiness that makes it all worth it, and when the day is over, I want my kids to experience things and see things and visit places, and in those regards, it’s easy to say that the trip was a success. 

My children stepped foot onto the soil of other countries, experienced things that aren’t easily available to us elsewhere, and they got to experience a boatload of things that made them smile, rejoice or just be plain happy to see a bunch of Disney characters.  As a famiry, we went swimming with stingrays and sea stars, ate a ton of decadent foods, and enjoyed beaches, pools and a whole lot of fucking sunshine.

Some other observations about the trip were that this was apparently a tremendously busy cruise on account of two major factors:

  • It was the fall break for numerous school districts in the country, with a large quantity of them being from Georgia; I’m not even joking if I said that probably 2-3 fifths of the cruising populous were from Georgia, with quite a bunch of them being from my county specifically. The shore excursion we went on, our boat was literally over half from my exact zip code, as we were all on the same fall break.  Mythical wife even had one of her own students’ family assigned two tables away from us, so we saw them literally every single night.
  • This particular cruise was a Halloween at Seas cruise, which meant that there was a specific evening dedicated to Halloween, complete with characters all donning Halloween costumes, décor changing to be Halloween themed, and most importantly for the littles, trick or treating on the ship.

However, let’s stay on that latter bullet, because I feel like that was a big contributor to what I did not necessarily enjoy about my cruise experience as a whole.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#155): the 2025 Famiry Disney Cruise” →

Unpopular opinion: weight dropping is weak

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I suppose it’s kind of an oxymoron that I preface this post with unpopular opinion; over the last few months of randomly commenting on public shit on social media, it’s safe to say that most of the opinions I have are typically unpopular and am routinely told by randos how stupid and how much of a loser I am for having them which in a way is not a bad thing because it makes me think twice about engaging anything on the internet and saving my opinions for my own personal brog where I will never have anyone telling me that I’m wrong.

But anyway, I’m at the gym, more specifically I’m in the locker room changing out to get ready to head back up to the office.  And then I hear a thud; right past the walls to the men’s locker room is the little alcove of the gym where the dumbbells are situated, and there are 1-2 benches for people to do some dumbbell lifts.  Usually once, sometimes twice in a work week, I utilize these dumbbells, especially since my gym has no barbells or any free weights that would be useful to really do some swole seshes.

A few minutes later, another thud, of weights being dropped onto the ground, after what was probably a grueling, failure-inducing set of god-knows-what to push a man to the limits to where he feels the only logical option is to abandon ship and drop their weights to the ground, completely unconcerned about floor damage, or any collateral damage of rolling or bouncing weights.  Granted, the heaviest weights available at my gym are two 50s, but considering the majority of the people in my building, it’s still sufficient if you know what you’re doing inside of a gym.

I’m in the shower, and then there’s an even louder thud, and I’m beginning to think that whomever is using the dumbbells is increasing weight in between sets and slamming heavier and heavier weights based on the sheer magnitude of the thuds.

While I’m getting dressed comes one last thud, that kind of shakes the ground, and one of those impacts that you can feel in your bones.  There’s some extra clatter, and then the sound of the weights clearly having rolled or bounced into the drywall on the other side of the wall I’m standing in front of and I’m finally thinking to myself, what the fuck, dropping weights is fucking stupid, and a sign of weakness, because anyone with any modicum of strength and control would probably be able to workout without hitting such catastrophic failure points to where they have to start slamming their weights on the ground like when Hogan slammed Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III.

Yes, I know all about hitting failure and the importance of it in order to achieve certain levels of growth, but I actually know the guy in question who was dropping the weights like he were in a Rocky training montage.  He’s definitely not a bodybuilder, and is probably like 155-160 lbs., tops.  I know he’s into crossfit, considering the crossfit shirts I’ve seen him wearing, and it’s evident where he picked up the habit of dropping weights.  Which is fine, when you’re at the crossfit gym, and all of the crossfit clowns are flinging and dropping and slamming their weights all over the place, but not while at the minimally loaded work office gym.

Not only are there already holes and dents in the drywall from gee I wonder wear, the floors are minimally padded with an appropriate floor covering, but the fact that the floors are hollow sounding, I don’t imagine 80, 90 or 100 lbs of weight being slammed onto the ground is great for the long-term.  This isn’t a crossfit gym, and it’s barely a real gym in general.  It’s a repurposed section of an office building that had some basic gym equipment placed into it, that’s convenient for casual and/or knowledgeable exercise enthusiasts to come and get some work in, not for crossfit clowns to come in and fling shit around and lift weights with shitty form.

The bottom line is that, I think weight dropping is stupid, weight dropping is potentially harmful, and weight dropping is just weak, in general.  Fewer things seem a better indicator of strength and ability to harness that strength than being able to control not just the press of weight, but also the return of it, and I frankly don’t want to hear any nonsensical bullshit about how I’m not hitting failure and hampering my own gains.  I workout in order to maintain good health, not train for the next fucking Olympics, I’m not trying to break floors and walls and make tremors when doing so.

I always knew Ken Rosenthal was a little prick off-camera

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo: FOX sports reporter, Ken Rosenthal, getting dragged on the internet for his behavior of inadvertently knocking over a photographer and giving him a death stare instead of any sort of apology or help getting up

I’d be willing to wager that lots of baseball fans whom might have a shred of similar thinking to I might, probably all agree that there’s something about Ken Rosenthal that probably gives off this air of potential dick.  And then seeing video evidence of him accidentally trucking some poor Brewers photographer, and then instead of any sort of offering to help or motion of remorse, he just stands glaring down at a prone person on their back, uncomfortably long, before returning to conduct an on-field post-game interview; that’s all the internet needed, to race to the conclusion that most of us probably already hypothesized – Ken Rosenthal is a douche.

I mean just look at him, with his vast collection of dorky bow ties and his spray tans and bleached teeth.  Always ready with an artificial smile for the camera.  I get that he’s in media, and he’s trying to cultivate a brand for himself, so that he’ll always remain employed and not lose his job to some hotties working their way up in sports journalism.  But there’s always been this air of arrogance and inflated sense of entitlement that he belongs in MLB reporting or something that I can’t really capture in writing, but just trust me bro, it’s there kind of feelings.

Like, if you were to ask him about baseball in general, I bet he wouldn’t be able to name all 30 MLB squads, or be able to snap back with a favorite player if asked.  There’s just something about his whole presentation and existence that seems fake and artificial and just like this dorky little brother syndrome of clinging to MLB coverage that nobody would really miss if he were gone,

And then he has to go and get caught on video, reacting abruptly and as genuine as a quick reaction makes us do, and of course he gets a pass for running into a person, everyone in existence has done that before.  But it’s the death stare, and the disrespect, and the sheer lack of regard for another human being that has gotten the internet up in arms, and I am here for the Ken Rosenthal dragging, because the Braves suck, and it’s shit like this and all the Dodgers’ close no-hitters getting fucked that sustain my interest in a fledgling baseball season.

Seriously, the way Rosenthal was glaring down at this poor photographer, the closest thing I could liken it to was when Scottie Pippen dunked all over Patrick Ewing in the 94 playoffs, and then stood over him and glared down.  That’s the level of disrespect I gathered from this five second moment of him, and it entertains me tremendously seeing how such did not go unnoticed from the rest of the internet as well, and the ensuing reactions from all over the internet.

Especially funny are all the other rando people on the internet all basically saying the same shit I am of, I knew he was a [pejorative] all along, and then they cite the same shit that I did, most notably the bow ties.

Either way, I’m sure some calculated and hackneyed apology that nobody is going to buy is on the way, but as far as blunders of the 2025 MLB season, as entertained as I was by asshole Ken Rosenthal, I don’t think he’s going to have a snowball’s chance in hell at toppling Philly Karen.

Wrestlemania XLIII in Saudi Arabia? Thanks I hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I heard the rumblings that Wrestlemania was going to be held in Saudi Arabia in 2027, I had two thoughts run through my mind:

  1. This was always going to happen eventually, I guess most of us wrestling fans didn’t expect it to happen just yet. When the WWE got in bed with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, most fans saw a gamut of dollar amounts being thrown around as the cost of the union, with the only thing in common being that they were all ridiculously high with absolutely nothing measured in millions, but billions.  There was always talks and rumors that eventually Wrestlemania would make its way into the kingdom, but honestly I figured that at least Europe would have gotten a shot to host a ‘Mania before Saudi Arabia, but as is the way of the world, money talks.

  2. Regardless, I hate it. I’ve always been vehemently opposed to everything in regards to the WWE’s partnership with Saudi Arabia, and the only reason why I spite-watch the shows that they hold out there is that over the last few years, they’ve actually woven storylines into the Saudi shows as if they were going to Birmingham, Alabama for a PPV, and I have FOMO on any progressions in them.
    Yes, I know that makes my wrestling fandom a little bit (more) gray, but at the end of the day, I’m still a fan of the business, and I like to consume as much of it as I can, even if I don’t like the town they’re in.

But I am not a fan of the Saudi culture, which no matter how many billions they dump into the world economy to try to change the world’s perspective on them, doesn’t change the fact that they exist in a reality where women are full-stop, a full-ass tier beneath men, and there is absolutely nothing a woman could to do change the status quo.  Forcing them, as well as all visiting women to adhere to their bullshit laws of being completely covered up and probably other nonsensical things that would probably result in a beheading if violated.

Furthermore, they’re a culture of extreme homophobia, transphobia and just plain opposed to the LGBTQ+ community entirely.  Frankly, they’re just a culture of extreme prejudice in general, and early on in the arrangement, it was known fact that if Sami Zayn were to even step foot in the country, he would probably be killed, due to the conflicts in Syria and him being a native Syrian.

Honestly, I know I’ve said my piece about how I feel about Saudi culture, and I don’t much see the point in typing in circles and doing it again.  I just hate that the WWE has finally pulled the trigger on SaudiMania, and we’re less than two years again from the showcase of the immortals™ having to be broadcast from a culturally backward country at very likely an extremely inconvenient time to account for time zone, and I’ll probably get completely spoiled to everything by the time I can get to watch it, because not only can the internet never shut the fuck up, the WWE themselves has a really nasty habit of firing off emails in real time to the show, announcing critical results in order to hock their shitty overpriced merch powered by Fanatics™.

However, I had another thought while pondering this post: if there were ever a time for AEW to launch a genuine tactical strike against the WWE with the sole intention to gain industry footprint, I think this would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

Like, AEW books a show on the same weekend, entirely to counter and challenge SaudiMania.  Absolutely load the card, spread it over two nights.  Collaborate with everyone, especially since all the smaller and indy feds that love to book in the WWE’s gravity during Mania weekend probably won’t be able to do so if they’re in fucking Saudi Arabia, in order to help stack the card.

Hold it at EverBank and not Daily’s Place, where they could fill probably 50-60k, which would be a huge economic win especially since April is not football season, and since Daddy Shahid owns the team, it’s probably basically a free venue less the cost of event operations.

Run it free with existing subscription on HBO Max with any additional charge, to mitigate one of their biggest handicaps against the WWE, which is the fact that they effectively still operate on a pay-per-view model.

Capitalize on all of the western and global WWE fans who probably won’t be able to get into SaudiMania for fear of getting beheaded or just plain not being able to afford the royal cost of tickets.  Emotions are already high and resentful towards the E for running in Saudi, and if there ever was a moment in time to try and flip any fans, this would absolutely be it.

Over the last year, WWE hasn’t been shy about running counter to AEW, even though they claim that they don’t view them as competition.  And maybe it’s because they are still kind of the little brother in the real/unreal rivalry between them, AEW has for the most part avoided running shows on dates that the WWE had “claimed.”

But I’m just saying, I feel like if there was ever a chance for AEW to take the offensive and have it do some noticeable impact, running a mega show right on top of SaudiMania’s dates, could possibly be effective.  A combination of fan resentment and the likely time difference could lead to it running almost entirely unopposed, and if they deliver, could have some massive effectiveness at closing the gap with their competition.

I’m not saying such would make me a massive AEW fan for life, but I think I’m in a position where I’d prefer to see the E take a ding for their poor decision making, and if it means supporting their competition, so be it.  I don’t hate AEW by any stretch of the imagination, I just find their brand of product to be puzzling at times, but it does not meant that I wouldn’t want to see them succeed as well.  AEW being prosperous is good for the industry as a whole, certainly more than an arrangement with fucking Saudi Arabia.

Jayden Daniels is about as Japanese as a NASCAR Toyota

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There was once an episode of King of the Hill where there was an all-Asian country club in Arlen that just kind of out of the blue began trying to woo and get Hank to become a member.  It was later revealed that the club needed to have at least one non-Asian member to get some sort of sponsorship with the PGA, which would culminate with a visit from, “the greatest Asian player in the history of the game – Tiger Woods.”

Ultimately, Hank realizes the ruse and not wanting to be a token whitey, declines the membership.  Khan, desperate to gain clout with the Asian elite of Arlen ultimately decides to hang with his redneck neighbors instead, and we have a fairly happy ending for the main characters.

But the point of this backstory is mainly revolving around the joke about how Tiger Woods is the greatest Asian golfer in history, despite the fact that most of America doesn’t identify him at all by his Asian heritage, despite the fact that his genetic background contains a fairly substantial amount of genes originating from China and Thailand.

Because that’s basically precisely what the NFL is doing when they start declaring Jayden Daniels the first ever Japanese quarterback in the history of the league.  Apparently, despite the fact that he appears to identify as a black man, he has a great-grandmother who was Japanese, and has thusly decided to honor an ancestor three generations removed, by putting a Japanese flag on the back of his helmet, which basically served as the impetus to this whole story.

Depending on the genetic backgrounds of his predecessors, Daniels is probably no more than like 12.5% Japanese; I don’t know what percentage of indigenous someone needs to claim in order to get to run a casino, but I imagine it’s somewhere slightly more than 12.5% in order to do so, but that’s not stopping the NFL from seeing potential dollar signs and cultural outreach with Daniels’ pithy amount of Japanese in his genetics.

By saying the first-ever Japanese QB, you’d think they were talking about someone who looked like Ken Watanabe or Hiroyuki Sanada.  Don’t get me wrong, Daniels is a good looking kid, but to say Japanese guy and flash this guy’s face?  As the kids say, the fuck outta here

NFL be grasping at some real low-hanging fruit in tryna spin this shit into some global outreach, and that the NFL is a global game on par with futbol.  If they really wanted to really glorify football americano in Japan, they’d talk about shit like how when Japan crushed the USA in some foreign exhibition, if they really wanted to garner interest in the sport overseas.

Jayden Daniels is an outsanding player and has managed to bring a feeling of hope back to Washington Football, but he’s about as Japanese as the Toyota RAV-4 driven by the MAGA idiot down the street who flaunts his racism and hate for all that aren’t white, and the NFL looks like a bunch of clowns trying to portray him as anything other than such.

Who didn’t see this coming with AI?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago when I went to Adobe MAX, little did I realize that this would be the year in which the whole event would basically be this gargantuan circle jerk over the advancements of AI.  I mean, fuck me for thinking that I’d be able to go attend some panels and workshops and perhaps maybe learn a few things or tricks about the software I use on a regular basis, and not just listen to all these pitches about how AI is going to impact them all, feeling like one of the only clear-thinking attendees that saw that most everything was being developed with the intention to ultimately usurp all of our jobs in the near to distant future.

However, as big of moonshot ideas existed over the capabilities of AI, I knew what was more likely to occur first – a whole lot of fucking nonsense.  Like, a metric containership fleet load of fucking nonsense, especially once most AI tools, apps and functions were made available to the general public.  And it was going to be a matter of time before AI-generated content was going to permeate and eventually run rampant across the internet, mainly throughout social media, and then even more so than originally, absolutely nothing would be seen as genuine or authentic, and even more everything would be forced to be put in question on its authenticity.

I mean, we’ve crossed that bridge quite some time ago now, but it hasn’t been until more recently that it bubbled up in my mind to be worth throwing up some words onto the brog to spit my two cents out about the topic.

It’s like, most everyone probably has a story about a person(s) they’ve known in their lives that were the people who always latched onto a joke or a meme a little harder than everyone else, and well after the general heat of a joke has simmered down, they’re the ones still spamming it, referencing it, and inadvertently assisting the killing of it for others.

Yeah, if you’re reading this, you probably know what I mean.  And it’s okay to say if you’ve been that person before, lord knows that I’ve definitely been that person multiple times in my life.

What I’m getting at is that AI has made it easier for people to become those people, who overuse and help kill jokes and memes faster, and frankly it’s doing a disservice to the virality and general heat of a good joke or a meme, when looking back at something, and the sheer amount of bullshit surrounding them drowns out the original material from the onset.

For example, the Phillies Karen saga, when it first started, that shit was nuclear hot.  A perfect example of a story gone viral, with it absolutely exploding.  Video clips, internet witch hunting, just about every news outlet and op-ed in the world throwing their two cents into the well.  But then about 2-3 days later, the memes began, first through just bad photoshops, but then came the AI-generated images, where the first few were clever and fist bumps for those who jumped on the horse early, but then shit rolls downhill real fast when every would-be comic on the internet that knows how to write an AI prompt wants to try and get their jokes in for whatever attention-seeking reasons.

Ghibli-fied images.  Deep-fake videos.  AI-generated scenarios of Phillies Karen in various other movies, shows or stories demanding to be given possession of X.  Like, it’s funny for the first two seconds, but as the heat cools off, the constant stream of bad AI-generated content ultimately makes people like me wish that the original source of the meme never happened, so that I wouldn’t have to be subject to such bad abuse of AI tools to make up for the lack of creative talent that exists out there.

This is just one example of how AI is hurting the internet.  Who cares about how easy it makes students cheat in school, and how it’s acting like a miracle writer for people to lazy to do it themselves.  Who cares about how it’s able to take redundant, menial tasks and complete them in seconds, and who cares about the maybe 2-3 good things that AI has managed to accomplish.  It’s fucking with good memes and news and jokes, and this bullshit is the real lifeblood of the internet that perpetually bored scrollers and surfers need to get us through each day.

And because every motherfucker in the world has access to AI tools now, the amount of bad and lame bullshit content constantly overtakes anything real in a matter of time, and like I said, it gets to a point where you see so much turrible shit that you eventually wish the source of it never existed in the first place, regardless of how good it might be, in order to spare everyone from seeing lame shit.

As far as my opinion is concerned, the jury’s still out on if AI is still going to really be worth it in the long run.  I’m inclined to lean no, since I see it more than likely impacting my career adversely before I prosper from its existence, but one thing I do know about it now is that it’s polluting the internet with a lot of bullshit, which is pretty profound considering just how already full of nonsense it was before AI was made available to everyone.

LOL Dodgers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo: Dodgers fall to the Orioles after the O’s score four runs in the 9th inning after being no-hit for 8 2/3 innings

As I’ve said a few times this season, mostly after the Dodgers were getting pwned all season by the lowly Angels, they’re probably going to be fine, and they’re probably going to be in the World Series later this season.  But man, when the Dodgers do fuck up, they fuck up in the most hilariously embarrassing ways possible.

I mean there’s honestly a much smaller list of ways to lose in a more embarrassing way than no-hitting a team through 26 out of 27 outs in a game, only for the opponent to go completely gangbusters with no more outs to play with and walk off in the blink of an eye, and I like to imagine Dodgers fans all around the world who were watching, anticipating witnessing a no-hitter, only for it to not only fall short, but for the wheels on the team to entirely fall off, and to immediately lose the game moments afterward.

In baseball, among the multitude of geeky stats and charts out there, is the win-expectancy metric, which measures the chance of victory for a team based on the outcome of every single pitch and out of the game.  The Dodgers went from 99.9% of winning the game going into the 9th inning, to a 100% loss in the span of minutes, and for fans like me, fewer things is more gratifying, satisfying and enjoyable to see than of all teams, it happening to the Dodgers.

I love all the people involved in this whole debacle too; the fact that it was Yoshinobu Yamamoto whom was on the precipice of greatness but then losing the no-hitter, the shutout and the complete game in one fell swoop, when he surrendered a home run to Jackson Holliday, a kid that I’m hoping still flourishes into the superstar that he was touted to be.  And then Blake Treinen, a kind of creepy right-wing bible thumper, who was brought in to close out the game, immediately walks two guys and gives up a hit to further deflate the Dodgers’ cushion from “salvage the win” to “oh shit we might actually lose.”  And when he failed to close out the game, they bring in Tanner Scott, the poor schmuck who is put in the unwinnable position to close out the game with baserunners on, naturally fails to do it, and the Dodgers go from 99.9% W to 100% L just like that.

It’s nonsense like this that I absolutely live for as a baseball fan, and despite the fact that the Dodgers are still the front-runners for another World Series, if they fail, everyone will be pointing at games like this one, or their inability to handle the Angels or Pirates, as reasons why they suck in spite of their go-zillion dollar payroll.