Tag: observations

When everyone has a hundo, nobody does

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I do play a little bit pretty much every single day, I actually don’t have a whole lot of knowledge of what’s going on in Pokémon Go.  I don’t read the patch notes, updates, or even pay much attention to whenever Professor Willow shoehorns himself onto the screen to tell me of some missions that are afoot.  I just play a little bit every day, try and do daily research, attempt to complete as many of the weekly tasks as I can, hatch eggs, and make some modicum of progress in levels.

To what end, I have no idea, and typing this all out, I kind of realize just how fruitless my ambition in the game really is.  It’s just something that I’ve done for probably 99% of the time since the game launched a decade ago, and OCD me has just stuck with it.  I like to think that I want to get shinies and hundos and shiny hundos, and to have an impressive Pokédex of rares and strong quality Pikachus, but when the day is over, there really is no goal in place for me.

All the same, recently the game has been celebrating its actual 10-year anniversary, and despite the fact that I don’t pay much attention to the happenings of the game, one of the things I can say that that I wager not as many people as they might think can claim is that fact that I have regularly played since the debut of the game, and although my level and accomplishments in the game might not reflect it, it is true.

One of the major things the game has decided to do in honor of the decade-long survival of a mobile game, is that to all players, they have an ultra-super low-hanging fruit mission to where the prizes for completion are a Master Ball, as well as a guaranteed encounter with a MewTwo.  Over social media, it became apparent that this specific MewTwo encounter was a guaranteed hundo (perfect stats), and as is the case with MewTwo encounters, there is a decent chance that one could get a shiny.

Many have flexed screen grabs of their shiny hundo MewTwos; my own was not shiny, but that’s fine because I already have a shiny, albeit it is not a hundo, but I can be content with the fact that I now have a hundo MewTwo in my Pokédex, even if it is basically a free giveaway.

But unsurprising, there has been a faction of Pikachu Game players who have opined their general disappointment and low-key bitterness that the game has basically taken the prestige and distinction of having MewTwos of any quality, by basically giving everyone one, pretty much for free.

I get that sentiment; when the game initially released MewTwo, in extremely difficult raids, with extremely difficult catch rates, if you could be lucky enough to participate in the raid much less succeed in the first place, I went out of my way to join communities, find out where other players were gathering, and got my ass out of the house in order to try and catch them.  I was determined to complete my Kanto collection 100%, which was possible for me seeing as how I had actually traveled to places like Asia and Europe and gotten region-specific Pikachus like Farfetch’d and Mr. Mime, and now MewTwo was the last one to round out Kanto.

I remember how accomplished I felt when I finally got my first one, and how I declared myself a true lord of Kanto.  But then the itch of the Three PS3s guy kind of creeped into my brain, and I began to ask myself why stop with just one MewTwo, when I could have three?  It was a little bit of a grind, but I got my third MewTwo, but then it kept going, and going, and at the time I’m writing this, I have 22 MewTwos, which isn’t bad for someone who doesn’t live in like New York City or Seoul or any other high-density location where there are always 6 Pokéstops and gyms every square mile, where taking down the strongest of gyms is easy with high bases of players.

Needless to say, it is kind of a crappy feeling to know how many people are getting basically a free hundo MewTwo now just for participating, when it was so difficult to get them back when they first emerged.  It cheapens the rarity and sense of accomplishment of getting them in the past for the old heads like me who have been in the trenches of daily playing for the better part of the last decade, and I can understand the salt from players like us.

Naturally, there are contrarians to the detractors, and I’ve seen commenters on social media throwing up all sorts of analogies and straw man metaphors to try and shit on the people who shit on the event which just leads to the shitty wasteland that is a social media arena, and I’ve smartly decided to stay out of public discussion because I know I’d just get piled on for my opinions and I don’t need that, and I have a brog that nobody reads where I can air out my thoughts without any concern of rebuttal.

People complaining about free stuff, rich people complaining about too much butter on their lobsters, but the one that piqued my interest were those accusing the haters that they probably hated when the government paid off student loan debts.  I get the analogy, and see the similarities between people who have responsibly paid their student loan debts off getting salty over thousands of people suddenly getting them absolved, but at the same time it’s laughable that someone would even make the analogy of student loan debt versus Pokémon Go.

Student loan debt is a legitimate problem in the world, and there are very real-world consequences for those who have struggled on account of them.  Pokémon Go is a fucking phone game, and nobody at all has endured any sort of legitimate struggle on account of it.  But from a semantics standpoint, yes it is similar; tenured lifers who have put in their 10,000+ hours suddenly getting to see filthy casuals get to reap similar rewards with a fraction of the effort, it does make sense.

The thing is, this isn’t even the first time that Niantic has pulled this shit of lowering the bar and giving tons of shit away for free in order to boost engagement, downloads and player participation.  A few years ago when I went to Korea, I was psyched to be able to catch a Farfetch’d, and I went kind of out of my way to get one, and I felt so proud when I did.  But literally that same trip, Niantic dropped this event where players could briefly get regional Pikachus from other regions, meaning those in the west were able to get Farfetch’d, Mr. Mime went to the Oceanic, Tauros went to Europe, and Kangaskhan came to Asia.

It’s hypocritical for me to have felt a similar salt since thanks to that event I was able to get Kangaskhan without having to go to Australia/NZ, but I did admittedly feel salt that Americans were able to get Farfetch’d without having to be in Asia, like I was at that very time.  They didn’t earn it, and I did feel annoyance when I’d see like Facebook friends who I know long abandoned the game, who were posting about how they’d logged in for the first time in. years just to get it, and smugly proclaim how they intended to hibernate immediately afterward.

But at the end of the day, it’s still just Pokémon Go.  In two weeks, everyone will have forgotten about this whole thing, and as time passes, everyone’s hundo MewTwos won’t mean shit, especially if like 70% of them will be in accounts that will just go dormant for months to years.  But it’s still interesting to see the whole shitshow of Niantic dropping an event, and the inevitable clash between the lifers, versus all of the filthy casuals who pop in and feel as entitled and deserving to the same benefits that those who have actually put in the work to get beforehand already have.

If only I were in my 30s again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There have been multiple times in my life in which I have thought that I was born in the wrong time.  Like whenever I see professional gamers and how revered they are in Korea and how worshipped they are in the gaming community, I think to myself that maybe that could’ve been me, had I been born in like ten years later than I was, where my parents wouldn’t have discouraged and shamed my love of video games and instead nurtured and encouraged them, and maybe I could’ve ended up like Faker or Daigo or some other professional gamer that makes millions of dollars playing video games and streaming video games today.

Lately, I’ve been having those similar thoughts again because for whatever reason, the social media algorithm has decided to start providing me reels of all these people who basically do nothing but film themselves, going around doing mundane things by themselves, but usually prefaced with a caption of “single 30-something does X in a day,” and it’s a 45-70 second reel of them going around, doing mundane things, with the underlying hook being that they’re doing it peacefully and without anyone bothering them.

Grocery shopping, visiting some local restaurant, going on a run, hitting the gym, driving around, eating some more food, cooking food that they’ll eat, getting and/or drinking a fancy coffee; running some mundane errands but doing it at their own pace and leisure.

These videos will all have hundreds to thousands of reactions, comments and seemingly very high engagement numbers, and although it might be all by bots, the stats are still stats, and undoubtedly these people are making money doing such.  They all have templated formats, cold opens and tiny gimmicks, presumably to make them who they are, but at the root of things, they’re still just doing mundane crap, and it just so happens that they’re not all unattractive blobs of humanity, they’re admittedly watchable.

I just can’t help but think that if I were in my 30s now, when I was single forever, and had pretty much nothing but time on my hands when I wasn’t working, I could be in on this hustle, and be making a bunch of videos about my mundane life and presumably be getting paid to do it, and when I got tired of doing it, I’d have a million bucks in my bank account to where I could have the seed money to perhaps embark on to my current life, but with moar capital backing me up.

Seriously, I’m not sure I could churn out content at the rate as many of these creators do, but I think about the things that I have done in my life throughout my 30s, and wonder if some things would be worth making content out of.

  • 30-year old single Korean-American travels to X to visit MLB team/park/city
  • A day in the life of a 31-year old Korean living in Atlanta
  • How a 32-year old single Korean guy prepares for standby travel
  • 33-year old single Korean guy gets stranded in Minneapolis
  • Dragon*con with a 34-year old single Korean guy
  • 35-year old Korean guy visits Korea for the very first time

Shit, I could do what a lot of the creators do now.  Albeit perhaps with less of the extravagances they subtly like to flex, like how all their cars seem to be way high-end, or they have designer belongings, but I like to go to coffee shops and restaurants, and I could film myself walking into a gym or an H-Mart.  Film myself going to my computer “to work” and all the other inane bullshit that all these creators do.

And when the cameras aren’t rolling, basking in the largely positive ratio of engagement scores that my content is generating, and waiting for all the digital media money to start rolling in, and encouraging me to keep going.

Nah, instead I’m in my mid-40s now, married with kids, and I’m not saying that they’re the reason why I couldn’t embark on a new career of being a content creator, it’s just that I know that content creation is an largely, wholly time-consuming endeavor to embark on, and personally it’s more important to be present with my family and children versus getting caught up in the rat race of trying to produce, film, edit, and post content, and knowing my luck, by the time I get the machine rolling, the content creation bubble will pop, and it won’t be nearly as lucrative then as it is now.

And ironically, the new moneyball of making money, would be getting a fucking job, doing it, and getting these periodic things called paychecks.

But, nothing is ever going to change until I get in on things, because I am begrudgingly the master of the universe, and nothing happens until I decide to get involved.  If I did what the single 30s somethings are doing today, it probably wouldn’t be nearly as monetarily viable as it is now.

Let’s talk about House of the Dragon

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[boilerplate warning for potential spoilers as if I had any actual human readers]

Originally, I had wanted to write about S3 of House of the Dragon sooner, but other topics and a lack of time kept pushing it and pushing it and I never really got to it, but seeing as how the season finale has come and gone, it seems topical enough again to warrant writing about.

But I would have to say that this has probably been the most stressful season of House of the Dragon, or maybe even any season of any other Game of Thrones or sub-brand season before this one.  Not because of all the fighting, bloodshed, death or political cunning, but mostly because of how relatable to real life this season was, in the sense that there was a whole lot of talking, not a lot of action, constant planning and setting up, wheels spinning, character incompetence, and by the time anything really happened in the season finale, it was more a combination of “it’s about fucking time,” and “let’s just get it over with.”

In other words, S3 of House of the Dragon was a lot like a corporate job, and that, was the most stressful thing in the world for me to have to watch, and completely stifled much of the potential enjoyment there could have been.

Despite ascending to the crown, Rhaenyra Targaryen basically turned into middle management, and that was the initial impetus for wanting to write about the season.  It didn’t matter that she had risen to Protector of the Realm, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, poor Rhaenyra basically spent the lion’s share of the season embroiled in managerial squabbles of overhead consolidation upon a merger, rapid-fire personnel changes, disgruntled customers, as well as the sheer custodial woes of moving to a new office.  She became an overwhelmed and overstimulated corporate manager who thought she was fit for the role but quickly discovered that all was not what she thought it was going to be, and she and her kingdom suffered tremendously as a result.

I couldn’t have cared less about what Aegon and the creepy crippled foot fetish guy were doing on their merry adventures, or what the Hightowers were trying to accomplish in the shadows, but every time I saw Rhaenyra sitting on the Iron Throne listening to the small folk squabble and complain and beg for resources, I’d feel my blood pressure rising, and then she tries to go hide to compose herself, and there are fucking rats all over the castle, and it’s like every person in corporate who gets overwhelmed by their jobs, tries to go home for any bit of reprieve, only to find the bullshit of homeownership waiting for them there.

The season was like Westerosi Office Space and I don’t think George R.R. Martin realizes that he could have a pretty fun project on his hands if he could stop eating lobster and counting his HBO money long enough to add one more thing to his to-do list, a hundred bullet points underneath not-finishing Winds of Winter.

Needless to say, in my personal opinion, S3 of Houes of the Dragon was pretty booty.  Mythical wife and our au pair, whom we all watched the show together, they both were ahead of the curve with turning on the season than I was, and by the time we got to the finale, it was like dragging them into the media room to get this shit over with, while I didn’t really think it was that bad until I really started to think about it.

The biggest takeaway for me from this season, as well as the series as a whole frankly, is the fact that it hasn’t done a very good job of making any characters that I really liked, much less cared about.  I haven’t read Fire and Blood like I did the entire five books of A Song of Ice and Fire so I don’t really know if there will be any characters that I’d like, but as far as the show goes, House of the Dragon does a shitty job of making relatable or interesting characters worthy of liking or caring about.

I loved all sorts of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire, mostly side characters like Bronn, the Hound, and Podrick Payne.  Many other characters commanded respect like Brienne, and Davos, and when the day is over, I clearly am declared to House Stark, because they’re a bunch of honor-bound squares like me that always wants to believe we’re making the right choice.

House of the Dragon has no such characters that I feel any sort of care, relation or really any shits to give about towards, and that was its biggest handicap for me, personally.  Nobody was really likeable, or respectable, and I found that to be key in deciding that the show as a whole is clearly weaker than its predecessor, and nowhere near as good as Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Otto is no Littlefinger.  Ormond, whom I was not sold on within five minutes, as the big bad of the season, was clearly no Ramsey or High Sparrow as a boss character.  All the kids except for maybe Baela are all dumb shitheads who pretty much all get or are going to get what they all deserve.  Corlys, in spite of his station and title pretty much does nothing, like ever, and let’s not talk about Grand Maester Orwyle who epitomizes the guy in the office that has an important title but goes to extraordinary lengths to hide and do absolutely jack shit.

I kind of did like Gwayne Hightower, since he was this constant voice of reason, who had a knack for surviving, and I had to respect the hustle.  He was probably the closest thing to a character that I had any affinity towards, despite the fact that I wanted to see the rest of his family get slaughtered.  But everyone else could drop dead at any point and I wouldn’t have cared.  Even the main cast, were all obnoxious and neutered and nerfed the whole season, save for maybe Daemon, but by and large, my point remains, there were really no likeable characters in House of the Dragon, and to me, that is pretty much the chief reason why I think the show as a whole suffered, and will probably continue to suffer in future, insufferable seasons.

KOREAN JOHN CENA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I have an observation that I want to share with others.  But I sometimes have this anxiety of feeling like I make other people feel like I’m too frequent a social media poster, and I don’t like feeling like I’m the only one in some of my group chats that starts conversations or blurts out random things, and frankly social media is trash and is often times not worthy of the things I have to say, so thank goodness I have a personal brog for me to use as an outlet, even if nobody will ever see it.

But even if it’s just a statement that really doesn’t need much explanation, it then makes me feel like I need to write more words about it to justify making an entire post despite the fact that I have no real rules about what I write on a personal site but that’s just one of those weird self-imposed obligations I hold myself to, but if there’s anything at all, it’s a good exercise to endlessly be practicing my writing.

I just finished watching 참교육 which for all the white folk is Teach You A Lesson on Netflix.  When I first saw it popping up on the home screen, I couldn’t help but notice that the obvious main character of the show (김무열) was a dead ringer for John Cena, but if he were Korean.  Like seriously, it’s basically John Cena’s face with Korean eyes and black hair, but generally the exact same jaw line, cheekbone structure and silhouette of his head.  I couldn’t get over it, and always said to myself, or aloud when I saw him, KOREAN JOHHHHHN CENAAAA

Then because big brother is always watching, I got a preview reel of it on social, and I watched as Korean John Cena was killing a bunch of high school punks with defense, getting them to swing and miss and wail on each other, and then I thought to myself, yeah ok, this might be interesting to watch after all, and when the moment was right, I dove right into watching.

My mom would have called this an 엉터리 show, which is Korean for trash or bullshit, and from a literal point of view, yeah, it might be.  But I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy the it, because the plot was very linear, situations were exaggerated heavily for emphasis, it wasn’t a season of 26 episodes at 94 minutes each like a lot of Korean shows tend to drag on for, and of course, it had Korean John Cena.

And the best part is that his character, ERPB Inspector Na Hwa-Jin basically was like John Cena, in the sense that he was basically permanently Super Cena where nobody could hurt him, he was always coming out on top, and always seemed to have the moral high ground no matter the circumstances.

Hopefully the show doesn’t achieve the level of popularity to where white folks feel the need to re-make it for white people, even if the very Korean tropes featured throughout the show mostly wouldn’t hardly apply to Americans, but never underestimate white peoples’ ability to appropriate and twist things in order to make it work for whitey.  However, if this were ever to come to fruition and an American version of Teach You A Lesson starred actual John Cena in the leading role, then maybe it would have a chance.  Lord knows the role is tailor made for him.

The 6,000 lb. letdown

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of My 600 Lb. Life, and I was extremely disappointed when the show seemingly came to a slow, uneventful finish after the conclusion of season 13.  Periodically I would Google the show to find out when there was going to be another season, which turned into if there was going to be another season, and all I’d ever find are vague speculations of legal troubles between the production company and TLC and other fans speculating that perhaps Dr. Now was perhaps calling it quits considering he’s 80 years old and should rightfully probably be enjoying retirement without the stress of holding human lives in his fingertips on a regular basis.

Eventually, my curiosity petered off, lost to the passage of time and finding other things to think about.  Recently however, mythical wife brought to my attention that Dr. Now was back on television, albeit no longer called My 600 lb. Life and no longer on TLC.  Rechristened The 6,000 lb. Diaries with Dr. Now, on Lifetime/A&E, I came to discover that this show had been on since fucking 2025 and I’m asking myself how in the world did this not hit my radar, we’re over halfway through 2026 and I had no clue that this show even existed. 

I know that I’m a busy parent, endlessly struggling to keep his head above water and often times miss out on all sorts of crap, but shit goddamn, you’d think one of the numerous algorithms, AI or other big brother-ey crap out there in the world would have brought to my attention the return of Dr. Now to television and made me aware of this last year.

Either way, despite the fact that I have an endless list of television and movies that I want to watch, I shot 6,000 lb. Diaries to the front of the line because I had to see what the fuck Dr. Now was up to now, after all this time.

First, I love the notion that because of the title of the show, people at A&E/Lifetime/TLC/whoever else is under that giant fucking Disney umbrella had to look for the right ten people to have in the first season, so that they could maintain their claim that the total weight of all subjects combined to be at or over 6,000 lbs.  Like there probably had to have been some 590 lb. cruiserweights who were on the show’s shortlist of people to be featured on the show, but their diminutive statures risked the entire show’s aggregate weight down to like 5,967 lbs., so they got passed over for Caleb who weighed in at 804 lbs. and guaranteed that the show could definitely be called 6,000 lb. Diaries.

Anyway, mythical wife and I dove right in, with high hopes and anticipation for some more juicy trainwreck television, and some classic Dr. Now snipes and savage heat.  I was so excited about the season that I didn’t even bother to wait until finishing the entire season to post about it, because as much as I’d love to binge watch anything anymore, with barely two hours of free time a day, shit just ain’t happening.

So five episodes in, and I’m disappointed to have to say that unfortunately I’m not impressed.  Like, at all.  There are a lot of changes to the show’s general format, some decent, some not quite so, but the high-level biggest change of the show really is the noticeable reduction of, the man himself, Dr. Nowzaradan (Bariatric Surgeon).  And when Dr. Now is on screen, it’s almost as if he or someone else has told him(self) to cool it and tone it down with the zingers and the heat, and viewers are not getting any savage snipes or cold remarks that made him such a legend during My 600.

Additionally, and I’m not saying that I deliberately want to see everyone fail, but every single subject of The 6,000 has been successful, at meeting their initial weight loss goals, getting approved for surgery, and getting said surgery, before dropping some more weight post-op, before the episodes end.  It’s not that I’m against them finding success, it’s just that every single subject I’ve seen so far are all genuinely decent-to-likeable people who aren’t trainwrecks, aren’t behavioral problems aside from their overeating, and frankly just aren’t the quality of trash television that made My 600 such riveting television.

I know that says more about my person than anything else, but I’d wager that I’m not the only one feeling this upon watching The 6,000 after being long fans of My 600.  Mythical wife said to me that the show has become too wholesome when I’m wanting trainwreck, and that’s why I’m struggling to get into The 6,000 so much.

Just about everything has changed going from 600 to 6,000.  No longer does the show start with the crushingly sad music, where the subjects trudge out of bed, take a shower before eating an entire family’s worth of breakfast by themselves, go see the ‘doctor in houston’ where Dr. Now gives them the plan, they say they can do it, fail to meet the first weight loss test, get sad or mad, Dr. Now rips into them, they fail again, Dr. Now rips into them again but orders them to get therapy and move to Houston, they move to Houston or not, and the show usually runs out of time before they can get surgery and we never know what happens to them because most people probably aren’t so diehard they’ll wait for the Where Are They Now sequels to every subject.

6,000 has done away with almost all of that, all the way down to the music and title cards, which are now more positive, sky blue and uplifting.  The subjects are bubblier, and are all equipped with personal cams to record “diaries” which make up a chunk of the show’s viewable content, probably saving A&E a lot of money with fewer camera personnel to have to follow.  Gone is a lot of filler footage, mostly of their struggles, like inability to move, complaining while traveling, pigging out on fast food in the parking lots of adjacent Walmarts and general bickering with their enablers. 

The episodes are anywhere from 39-55 minutes, which kind of shows just how bloated My 600 episodes must have gotten with all that filler trash footage.  And as I’ve often said, I’ve grown to appreciate shorter episodes as I’ve gotten older and value my time more, but at the same time, I’m missing the trainwreck drama of the old format, even if it meant only watching one 88-98 minute episode a night.

I feel like holistically everything changed, probably because the old format of My 600 was probably sucking the souls out of everyone, from the viewers to Dr. Now himself.  It’s like they’re trying to course-correct 13 gradually degrading seasons of My 600 with a faster-paced, more uplifting format, focusing more on the victories and not so much the struggles, and with way less Dr. Now on screen, seeing as how the man is 81, and has probably spent the better part of the last 13 seasons getting beat down by all the failure stories and all the asshole subjects that TLC was probably deliberately hand-picking to get the spiciest television out of their interactions with an exasperated and burnt-out Dr. Now. 

At the root of it, Dr. Now is still a very real and very legitimate doctor, and it’s probably providing a lot of chicken soup for his personal and professional soul to have his wins and success stories being shown nationally, instead of all his fuck-ups and failures being the only ones that make it onto television, even if the Assanti Brothers and other trainwrecks were some of the most memorable episodes of the My 600 library.

It seems evident by his on-screen interactions with the subjects of The 6,000; five episodes in, and I haven’t heard a single biting zinger or cutting remark to anyone who’s sitting in Not-Room 5 which is another noticeable format change, having them all sit in a completely different room than where every episode of My 600 was filmed in.  He still calls out shortcomings of missing a goal by 6-10 lbs., and is quick to identify who the enablers are, but he’s also seemingly calmer, and even apt to show some personality or humor.

I get it.  But I miss the savage Dr. Now, even if it was probably to the benefit of nobody actually in the room.

Change is inevitable, and when the day is over, change in the direction of wanting to be more positive is not a bad thing, even if it means less entertainment for callous cold hearts like me.  However, in the world of television and the game of ratings, I’m going to go out on a limb and make the assumption that The 6,000 lb. Diaries won’t have nearly the success that My 600 lb. Life did, and I don’t really know if I’m going to be in any rush to complete the season of the new show.  Disheartening, but that’s the reality of television sometimes.  As Eric Bischoff once said, controversy creates cash.

Dad Brog (#175): Oh I see where I stand

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Early in my parenting journey, among the numerous cliches and unsolicited advice I would receive because dads for some reason are seen as the lovable oafs of families incapable of even the most basic shit, were always a bunch of Ninas parroting stating caution for, The Terrible Twos™ where presumably toddlers at the age of two become some sort of nightmare children, where parenting takes a rampant difficulty spike and makes us want to blow our brains out.

Sure, I’m sure if I go back into my brog’s archives there are all sorts of dad brog posts between 2022 and 2023 where I probably hated what my life was being at that time, but in the grand spectrum of things, year two for both my kids weren’t any harder or worse than life’s ordinary challenges at those times.

The terrible twos can be for terrible parents, because they weren’t really a big deal in my household.

However, nobody once heeded me any sort of warning for the Terrible Sixes, because throughout the duration of year six for my elder child, holy poop has she become an insufferable little shit at time, full of melodrama, exaggeration, but mostly an endless amount of complaining about damn near everything.

Mostly boredom, which I’ve always believed to be the primary obstacle in harmonious living for children.  But it doesn’t matter that we have multiple regions of my entire home that look like a Toys R’ Us was resurrected and then imploded, plus all the crap they have in their bedrooms, my kids have the audacity to claim that they’re bored at almost any time in which they are not being actively played with.

I love playing with my kids, but I’m a sensible person who occasionally likes to have moments where I can pretend like I’m not a dad and can sit and stare at nothing, or look at one of the numerous memes and texts sent to me by a friend or my brother, like any other adult of our times.

But recently, in one of her self-agonizing bouts of boredom, #1 was going on and on about what she wanted that would undoubtedly succeeding at defeating her boredom, and I simply asked her, what about what I want?  Her response?

it doesn’t matter what you want, dad…

Okay.  I just got The Rock’d by my own kid.  Needless to say, nobody found it more entertaining than I did, and I laughed heartily for nearly three straight minutes, at my kid saying such a dick thing to me, all because of the way it was said.

Needless to say, she didn’t get what she wanted, and I didn’t cave, but nor did I really get to chill out, and probably looked at my watch and wondered what the fuck I could do as a parent to try and find some sort of push/win-win scenario where we can pass the time without too much trouble.

Either way, the point remains that year six has proven to be what I imagine what other shittier parents think they have when dealing with the Terrible Twos.  The difference is that six-year olds are more developed, cognizant and aware, know more vocabulary and can speak their tantrums into existence, which mine is, frequently, versus a tiny two who’s still learning the endless depth to what the world has to offer.

This is why I always scoff, roll my eyes, and laugh at anyone out there without kids who thinks at all that their lives are difficult.  Y’all MFers just won’t get it; and it doesn’t matter what you think.

Braves Job Alert: mid-tier Latino pitchers pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I saw a news article about how a former Atlanta Braves pitcher, Carlos Carrasco, had signed with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization.  This tingled my spider-senses because it was about baseball, it was about a guy who had been on the Braves, it was about Korea, it was about the KBO, where I had just seen a game for the first time, and it also just so happened to have featured the LG Twins; who lost to the Doosan Bears in spite of being the team with the better record when they play, but hey that’s why the play the games.

Anyway, in spite of my general ambivalence and distance from the Braves and just sports in general, I am familiar with Carlos Carrasco, because he was a guy on the team that it seemed to be notorious that he was cut from the major league roster pretty much every other week, before being re-signed by the Braves, pitch in a game or two, before being designated for assignment again, and the cycle would repeat itself, seemingly over and over again.

That’s not the kind of distinction any player should want, but for a bad sports fan like me who is more often times fascinated by the weird and interesting happenstances of sports, it’s how I remembered who he was.

It was in the 2025 season that I first noticed the pattern of Carrasco being jerked around, because it seemed to happen a lot, way more than I’d noticed it happening to any player before.  I mean, Uncle Jesse Chavez got a similar treatment in prior years, especially by the Braves, but not to the frequency in which it was happening to Carrasco.

According to Gemini, Carrasco’s 2025 season actually was, the most extreme case of revolving door roster ping-ponging for any player in history, as the poor guy was released and brought back an unprecedented seven times throughout the season. 

My knee-jerk reaction was that this had to have been related to the cheap-ass Braves wanting to save money and that the small gaps in between his cuts and re-signings, they’d be absolved of having to pay prorated daily wages, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how contracts work and that he was still due his contracted amount, and that his roster spot was more valuable and the chief reason for constantly shuffling him around. 

But at the same time, I don’t think the cheap-ass Braves’ payroll department was complaining about the lack of logistics and per-diem envelopes they were saving by the occasional absence of his physical being, so fuck those cheap bean counters all the same.

But the thing is, and I touched on it a second ago, with Jesse Chavez getting a similar treatment before Carrasco, is that I’ve come to the scientifically proven conclusion* that the Atlanta Braves seem to require the need to have a Latino pitcher of the mediocre, swingman variety, that they will jerk around back and forth on the roster and give them absolutely no chance to breathe, settle in, or genuinely feel like a part of the team.

*As much as I don’t want to have to explain that this is tongue-in-cheek, and that I have zero readers, I’ve been dealing with a lot of astonishingly stupid people on the internet and that’s my bad for engaging communities in the first place

So, it started, or rather I actually noticed this, in 2024, with the aforementioned Jesse Chavez; the man was already beloved in Atlanta, and prior to 2024, already had four prior stints with the Braves, including being a member of the 2021 World Series squad.  But after his championship contributions, the team didn’t get caught up in recency bias, let him walk, and he signed with the Cubs in 2022, where he did not start well, and in April, was traded back to the Braves, where he suddenly turned back into good Uncle Jesse, and pitched so well that the team was able to sell high on him and traded him to the Angels that August.  Apparently, changing out of his Braves uni made him suck again, and not even a full month later, the Angels cut him, and take a guess who was waiting to pick him back up?  The Braves.  Naturally, he pitched well for Atlanta again, and there was a funny narrative that was born about how he sucked for everyone except the Braves.

Uncle Jesse would sign and stay with the Braves for the entire 2023 season, and because he was on the Braves, he pitched well, enough to where he parlayed it into signing with the White Sox for more money the following season.  He bombed out in Spring Training and the Sox were forced to cut him, and naturally the Braves would pick him back up, and with someone else picking up half of his salary, would deliver again.  And then he’d sign with the Texas Rangers, suck, and of course the Braves would snatch him up again.

Which brings us to the 2025 season, where at 41, the magic was wearing off, and even in the magical Braves uni that gave him so much strength in the past, Chavez had become the next victim to the undefeated Father Time, his ERA ballooned up to 9.00, and the revolving door roller coaster began.  Two times he was cut and picked back up, with the second one of those he wasn’t even used, but it was at his third cut on July 17, 2025 that Chavez would declare his retirement from the game outright.

And on July 31, 2025, Carlos Carrasco was called up from the minor leagues.  I don’t know if he realized it, but he was basically going to be filling the void that Jesse Chavez had left behind, and he would remain on the squad for two weeks before getting his first cut, and then be brought back to finish out the season, literally one day later.

November 6, 2025, Carrasco would be cut by the Braves which is funny because the season was already over, but this would effectively be start of the 2026 season, where he would be about to make history:

11.06.25: cut by Braves (1)
11.08.25: signed by Braves
04.30.26: cut by Braves (2)
05.01.26: signed by Braves
05.07.26: cut by Braves (3)
05.08.26: signed by Braves
05.31.26: cut by Braves (4)
06.02.26: signed by Braves
06.12.26: cut by Braves (5)
06.15.26: signed by Braves
06.26.26: cut by Braves (6)
07.05.26: signed by Braves
07.09.26: cut by Braves (7)
07.22.26: signed by LG Twins

The scary thing is that this was just half of the season.  Imagine how many more times Carrasco would have ping-ponged in the months of July and August alone, before September call-ups would have probably done him in.

My knee-jerk reaction was naturally of amusement, and how Carrasco was probably thrilled to be getting a steady paycheck and probably have a consistent locker to use for the remainder of the 2026 season, even if he had to pack all his shit and go to Korea.  But the results speak for themselves, in his first start, Carrasco pitched seven perfect innings against the Doosan Bears, setting himself up to look like a demigod in Korea after being a training dummy in MLB.

Which brings us to the third guy in the picture above, Elieser Hernandez.  He’s no spring chicken at 31 years of age, and his MLB experience is nothing to sign about, having around 300 innings over six years of MLB experience, pitching in a variety of roles.  His career ERA was 5.10 prior to coming to the Braves. 

However, with the departure of Carrasco, Hernandez was called up on July 19, 2026, and he made his presence felt for Braves fans when he came out of the bullpen in a slugfest with the Baltimore Orioles on July 24, 2026, and pitched three innings of one-hit ball, getting the win.

He was promptly rewarded for his heroics by getting cut by the Braves on July 27, 2026, but he would re-sign with the team one day later.  Three days after that, he’d pitch three innings in a win against the Washington Nationals, notching an old-school three inning save, and I’m sure there’s some obscure stat where Elieser Hernandez is the first guy in MLB history to have his first two appearances with a team getting a Win and a Save, with a DFA in between.

Guess what happened two days ago?
August 3, 2026: Elieser Hernandez released by the Braves.

But then guess what happened one day ago?
August 4, 2026: Elieser Hernandez signed by the Braves.

Obviously the game is different now than it was five, ten, and twenty years ago.  Roster management is more important than it’s ever been, especially for poor teams and crying-poor teams who need to maximize their processes and efficiencies as optimally as possible to hope to have a prayer at competing against the Dodgers and their billion-dollar payroll of superstars that don’t have to be micromanaged.

And I’d be naïve if I didn’t assume that this is the kind of behavior that every team does to a degree, and that it’s not just the cheap-ass Braves doing it.  But it funny to conclude with the narrative that the Atlanta Braves have this mandatory requirement to have a Latino pitcher to be repeatedly spinning through the ringer, cutting and re-signing over and over again, and frankly it’s probably this kind of front office bullshit that will surely be a bullet point of contention this off-season when the owners and MLB players union embark on their collision course for next season’s inevitable strike.