Tag: observations

Writing out the quiet part?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been chipping away at FX’s The Bear.  It’s a show that was always on my radar as something that I should see, and there was plenty of reason for me to be interested in it on its own.  After going through all of Shameless, I was high on Jeremy Allen White, and FX has a history of putting out shows that seem to be right up my alley, and furthermore, among the team that was making The Bear reality was Hiro Murai, who directed numerous episodes of Atlanta, another show that I was very high on and enjoyed.

Admittedly, The Bear starts off a little slow, and it did take me a little time before the show clicked and I realized that I did in fact enjoy the show, but I have to also say that it’s a show that’s kind of hard to watch, because how heavy-handed the show feels sometimes, especially from the standpoint that pretty much everyone has their own wars they fight on a daily basis, be it with themselves, their families, from their pasts to their presents, and often times television is supposed to be an escape from the hardships of life, and I find it difficult to instead be watching the hardships of fictional characters instead.

Like, I can’t really binge The Bear.  This truly is a show that probably is best watched on a weekly basis, so you can decompress and digest each individual episode, before your energy bar of watching stressful situations is replenished and the following week’s episode can tax you next week instead.  Every time Carmy and Richie have a knock-down drag-out screaming match, I can feel my own anxiety rising, and it’s a testament to both actors and their on-screen chemistry that they can do that to viewers with having such explosive arguments that feel genuine and stressful just to watch, but it adds to why I have a hard time watching more than a single episode at a time.

But recently, I got to thinking, in light of hearing of all the Emmy acclaim that The Bear has been reveling in, was to compare the sheer volume of Emmy consideration and success The Bear had, compared to Atlanta.  After all, the shows are very similar in the fact that they’re both on FX and considered psychological comedy-dramas, not to mentioned the aforementioned directing by Hiro Murai in both series.

It’s probably not popular, and something that I wouldn’t write out in a public forum, but I would go so far as to say that The Bear is basically the white version of Atlanta, in the way that the show is presented, the style of situational humor, and that both are listed as comedies, but although I do get some laughs from some of the scenarios they present, I usually go to bed thinking about the last episode and how fucking depressing they are. 

Frankly the only differences is that one show takes place in Atlanta with black people revolving around a rap career, and the other show takes place in Chicago with mostly white people revolving around a restaurant business.

Needless to say, it was of no surprise to compare the apples and find out that The Bear blows Atlanta out of the water when it comes to Emmy nominations much less actual Emmy wins, and I feel like I’m kind of writing the quiet part out loud a little bit with the not-so subtle accusation of the overtly white-favoritism of The Bear compared to when Atlanta was tearing up FX in their four seasons.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying The Bear, and I still love Lip Gallagher, and I’m very enamored by the many of the other characters and actors in the show.  I’m not trying to demean The Bear and say it’s not as good as Atlanta, not in the least bit  But I just see a lot of parallel with Atlanta, and feel that without Atlanta, The Bear doesn’t even exist, and I’m more just irked by the obvious racial bias in heaping mountains of praise onto The Bear, when Atlanta was doing the same thing just a few years ago to way less perceptive results.

Thoughts on my first MLW show

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As the consummate pro wrestling hipster that tends to favor indy and smaller promotions when it comes to watching wrestling live, when MLW announced they were making a stop in Atlanta, and at Center Stage theater no less, my absolute favorite venue to watch wrestling at, I was excited when I got some of my boys together to go watch.

Despite knowing of their existence, some of the notable names to have emerged from them, and their general hierarchy in the power rankings of professional wrestling promotions, I’d never actually been to an MLW show before.  In the past, I just wasn’t that interested, and perhaps I didn’t respect them enough, but as my general appreciation for indy and smaller promotions has grown, I was looking forward to giving them a shot.

After all, they still managed to command Center Stage, a venue historic in the annals of wrestling promotion, having hosted everyone at some point, from the NWA, WCW, ECW to smaller rackets like NXT, TNA and GCW, so it should be a considered a rub in the positive direction if MLW could promote at Center Stage.

And leading up to the event, the card was coming together to be somewhat respectable, with noteworthy names and matches assembling, featuring guys like Matt Riddle, Kenta, TJP, Satoshi Kojima and PWI’s #10 wrestler* Mistico among others; but I obviously preface with that “on paper” disclaimer, because when it comes to smaller promotions, historically a lot of workers tend to work down to the level of their show, and I’ve been disappointed more often than not when it comes to actual performing.

*I say this dripping with sarcasm, because as decent of a worker he is, Mistico is definitely no top-10 wrestler, and I feel that he’s the equivalent of a DEI inclusion onto the list, solely to represent both lucha libre and a smaller promotion like MLW

What we were unaware of, was the fact that this was a double-taping, with MLW taping some online show called Pit Fighters, where supposedly every match was some gimmick, revolving around “X region of the world” and “deathmatch” and we were exposed to this really hackneyed card of matches where it would be a Tae Kwon Do match, a boxing vs. BJJ match where Donovan Dijak interfered and rescued the segment, and in one Taipei Death Match, which was surprisingly brutal, to where I was hollering that this was a snuff film, it actually featured a worker that was actually Korean in Ikuro Kwon, whom I had to look up as actually being born in Korea, so that’s actually kind of cool.

But all in all, Pit Fighters was a real chore to sit through, and I kind of felt bad for the friends of mine whom I roped into coming with me, having to sit through the bullshit, but fortunately things picked up a little bit, when we got to the actual live-airing of the MLW FIghtland show that we had originally expected the whole thing to be.

However, much like I had pointed out, despite some of the matches on the card sounding pretty decent, it overall was kind of meh.  Kenta and TJP had an okay match, but nowhere near as good as they’ve gone up against each other in NJPW, Dijak and Timothy Thatcher also was better when they faced off in NXT, and I don’t even really remember many of the other matches at this point, it was such a forgettable card.

The one thing that really made me want to write about this though, was throughout the whole night of taping,** there was one group that kept showing up through the night, which consisted of Bobby Fish, CW Anderson, Brock Anderson and this kid I’d never heard of before in BRG – Brett Ryan Gosselin.

**it should also be pointed out that the taping I think was done out of order, so the Pit Fighters that taped before Fightland, was actually intended to air after Fightland, so there was some wonky narratives going on

And they would proceed to declare themselves “The Rogue Horsemen,” and I’m not so certain that I wasn’t the only person in the theater to audibly groan at such a grasp at relevancy, and one my friends and I kept saying and agreeing that it was the saddest looking stable we’d ever seen in our lives.

So this kid, BRG, I can respect the showmanship and the B+ charisma he has on the mic, but he’s basically a Temu version of MJF, which is funny because so many people have called MJF a Wish version of The Miz, but regardless, BRG’s schtick just seems so regurgitated and he relies too much on cheap heat and calling the audience idiots, so I guess he’s exactly where he belongs in a 4th-5th tier promotion like MLW.

In all fairness, I like Bobby Fish, but the man is not getting any younger, and the numerous injuries he piled up in his later years in NXT as well as AEW have definitely taken their toll on him, but the man really is a tag team guy, that even in a small pond like MLW probably won’t be able to handle the toll of singles.

CW Anderson, I was actually surprised to hear and see him come out, because the last time I had seen him was in like 2019 at a really raw indy show in rural Virginia, where he wrestled The Hurricane in a high school gym.  But the man literally debuted in ECW in 1999, and he looked 40 then, which means he’s actually held up pretty well to only look 60 now.

But he’s teamed up with Brock Anderson, the son of Arn Anderson, in the obvious designated tag team of the stable.  The thing is with Brock is that despite being Arn’s son, he apparently got none of his dad’s talent, and Brock looks like a guy that’s in wrestling because plan A didn’t work, but neither did plans B through F, and he’s in the business pretty much out of no better options and that his dad’s name gives him the foot into any door.  He’s out of shape and poorly trained, and it was no more evident in his talent level than when The Andersons had a tag match, it was ancient CW who started the match instead of the younger Brock.

Honestly, the most memorable things that happened in the night for me, were an appearance by Ernest “the Cat” Miller who hilarious did absolutely nothing at all when he served as a special guest scorekeeper in whatever convoluted wrestling/jiu-jitsu match that Matt Riddle was in.  Also, JBL showed up during the Andersons’ match against the Bomaye Fight Club, dropped their big guy with a short-arm Clothesline From Hell, and whispered something to Brock Anderson, which I’m hoping is not a precursor for him eventually jumping ship to the WWE, especially since Arn is back in their good graces, but it was cool to see JBL continuing his random appearing in various other promotions as of late.

Overall, being two consecutive shows in one night, the whole experience dragged on quite a bit, due to the general mediocrity of the talent.  The show started late, at like 7:20, and didn’t end up ending for about four hours, and by the end of the show, my friends and I were pretty exhausted and ready to get the fuck out of the city.

Bottom line is that if MLW comes through Atlanta again, I’ll either go by myself, or take a pass.  I’m glad I went just to experience it and learn more about what an MLW show is like, but like I said, I don’t think it’s something I need to do again any time soon.

Thoughts about the supposed Goonies 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t these days, and what’s declared to be real actually remaining real after a little bit of time, but for better or worse, at the time I’m writing this, it sounds like a 40-years later The Goonies sequel is really going to be happening.

My knee-jerk reaction is basically oh god please no whyyyyyy because I really wish Hollywood could leave things that are dead and resting, dead and resting, but seeing as how it seems like allowing The Goonies to have that privilege is coming off the table, might as well allow the ball to continue to roll and brog about it, since it’s evident that this has been on my mind over the last few days while I’ve been waiting for the smoke to clear on whether it’s legit or not, as well as trying to carve time out to write.

Needless to say, I’m not that thrilled with one of my legitimate all-time favorite stories of my childhood being drug out of the 80s just to capitalize on the low-hanging fruit of nostalgia, but what can I say, money is what makes the world go round.  And as Cobra Kai has proven, not every instance of a nostalgia-driven encore is entirely turrible, and although the likelihood isn’t high, I can only hope for the best as far as it concerns The Goonies.

Frankly, if this was ever going to happen, I feel like they’re 10-15 years too late, especially considering the fact that the intention seemed to always have been to bring back as much of the original cast as possible.  All of the OG cast at this point are all too fucking old to be parents to the next generation of Goonies, and they’re at this weird transitional age where they’re too old to be parents to kids but rather teens that are probably older than the original crew, but also a little too young to convincingly be grandparents to the next generation.

But push comes to shove, I’m going to have to assume that the children’s cast of this supposed sequel are probably all going to be the grandchildren of the original Goonies; Josh Brolin is 56 and Sean Astin is 53, and neither are going to convince anyone that they’re any younger than that, so as much as television and film likes to try to convince us that 30 year olds can portray teenagers with attitude, I think it’s probably best to age them up and make them grandparents instead.

Which would probably help to make more plausible the inevitable casting of minorities in the next generation of Goonies, because in the DEI world we live in now, it goes without saying that the next generation is guaranteed to not be a white boys + Data group, and is definitely going to be a little more colorfully diverse by the time this film comes supposedly drops in 2026 or so.

That being said, let’s hypothesize the next generation of The Goonies, apples to apples, because I think it’s obvious that it’s got to be the descendants of the original crew that will comprise the kids’ cast.

  • Mikey will be represented by his granddaughter to be the leader of The New Goonies™; naïve and adventurous, and willing to believe in the remnants of One Eyed Willy’s treasure in the caves.
  • Brand will have married a black woman after Andi dumps him after high school, and their biracial daughter will then have married a black man, and therefore can cast a black male actor to be the descendant of Brand. He will naturally be the muscle and the big brother of the crew.
  • Chunk’s (despite the fact that Jeff Cohen lost all his chunk and is rather fit these days) grandson will be the most likely original Chunk, as in be a chubby Jewish boy who will somehow end up in a Hawaiian shirt and plaid pants, and act as the primary comic relief because it’s funny because he’s fat.
  • Mouth’s grandson will probably be ambiguously biracial, and I foresee someone looking like the next generation’s Mario Lopez will be playing this role. He will undoubtedly be as snarky and blabbermouthed as his grandfather.
  • Data being pretty traditionally Chinese despite the fact that Ke Huy Quan is from Vietnam, will have a granddaughter representing his role, and although she won’t have the trench coat or the backpack full of gadgets and crowd-control inventions, will still be the techie brains of the crew who will probably be good at MacGuyvering shit for the team when they need it.
  • And because the white quotient is starting to get outnumbered, Andi will have a cute granddaughter that probably will look like Sabrina Carpenter taking her place in the next generation, so that Brand can have a potential romantic interest, as well as giving the next generation of young boys something to be confused about through their own respective adolescences.
  • Which brings us to Stef, whom Martha Plimpton has accepted with grace as being the “last” one, will undoubtedly have had an adopted son/grandson, probably white, so that white people still have a slim majority in representation because that’s how Hollywood be, will resume Stef’s legacy of being the tail end of the team, and to provide as much contribution as his grandmother.

As for the actual plot of this film, who really knows what it’s going to be about.  If Chris Columbus and Richard Donner couldn’t figure something out throughout the last 30 years of Donner’s life, I don’t have much faith that anyone else is going to have any better ideas, but it really doesn’t matter. 

If this is going to work, it’s going to have to take place in Astoria, it’s going to have to involve the remains of One Eyed Willy’s treasure, because everyone knows at the end of the OG, the Inferno sails away into the Pacific Northwest, so I’m going to guess that there’s still caches of treasures in the remains of the caves, or perhaps additional ships that The New Goonies can go search for, but as long as the spirit of the film doesn’t stray too far from the original, it stands to believe that this might be able to be as popular with the next generation of kids as the original was to my own childhood.

What kind of irks me though is that I legitimately had plans on saying fuck it, and going to Astoria for my next birthday, by myself, because it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do in my life, and I’m no longer going to expect or even attempt to bring anyone along for the ride, because of people I know, nobody really wants to do this except for me.  Hopefully news of moar Goonies in the future doesn’t re-ignite other OG fans to want to make the same pilgrimage, and ruin my original fandom spurred on by news of a supposed sequel in the works.  Or worse off, by the time I get there, filming has started and I get monstrously cockblocked at seeing all of the original stuff that I had always wanted to see and walk in my own nostalgic life.

Only time will tell, and if any of this shit impacts my future travels, it’s only a question of just how pissed and disappointed it’ll make me.

Things White People Like: the new Ford Broncos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The funny thing about Things White People Like is that it’s rarely like a gradual thing.  It’s always, you wake up one morning, and then suddenly white people all over the place are doing/having/partaking in the exact same thing.  Building black and white homes, falling head over heels in love with Major League Soccer, embracing Korean food, etc, etc.

It’s almost like there’s a gigantic group chat for nothing but white people, and they come to consensuses on what things they decide to declare “theirs” and the following day, every single one of them embarks on claiming it, before any other dirty non-white demographic can get their grubby hands on it.

But let’s talk about the new Ford Bronco; and this isn’t the first time I’ve written about the Ford Bronco and in this identical context, but it’s just because it seems like White People have hit another gear in Liking this Thing that it warrants another posting.

Also, I know the car has been out for a while, so it’s not really new anymore per say, but the thing is I call it such out of a lack of wanting to refer to it by its chassis or model year because that would require looking things up and I don’t care about white people enough to want to exert such effort.  But also because by calling it the new Ford Bronco also implies that the old Ford Bronco is a leper of a vehicle and all of them are undoubtedly OJ Simpson cars, and not the Jesus Jeep-replacement that seems to be exclusive to white people only.

And that’s exactly what the new Ford Bronco appears to have become for White People – a Jeep replacement, because Jeeps have become attainable and acceptable to people of all other races and colors, to the point where White People feel the need to flee the Jeep brand and go find something else to claim for themselves.

I went to go visit my brother not long ago, and we’re parking in a parking lot and in front of us is a Korean guy monkeying with the soft-top of his Jeep, clearly getting it lowered so that he can indulge in the beautiful beach town weather that we were at.  I said to my brother, that this guy was an example of why exactly the Ford Bronco has become a de facto White People car, because minorities are progressively getting more and more of their hands on Jeeps, and they can’t stand it.

Fewer things make it more obvious that new Ford Broncos are Jeep replacements than the fact that they’re basically designed to be Jeep clones, but with Ford badges and the little bucking bronco emblem on them.  From color selection, aesthetic trims, and just the overall silhouette of them, they’re basically the Temu version of a Jeep, since Fords in general short of a hand-built GT500 or Shelby Mustang are all cheap adult-sized Tonka toys made out of plastic, zip-ties and minority labor.

One of the kickers though, was this time I saw a new Ford Bronco with a rubber ducky in the windshield, which is a major thing that the Jeep communities does with their whips.  The funny thing is that I saw a photo of a similar vehicle on theFacebook on some Jeep community that I don’t know why I was shown a post from, but the general consensus of that post was that of internet rage, animosity and disdain for a new Ford Bronco owner for ape-ing a very Jeep-ism for their own shitty ride.

Seriously though, I haven’t yet once, seen a single new Ford Bronco, where the driver wasn’t a white person.  Mostly females too, but every single new Ford Bronco driver I’ve seen has been white.  I’ll probably do a double take if the day ever comes that I see a driver that isn’t Ben Affleck.  The funny thing is that there’s actually a home in my community that was completely repainted to be white with black trim and accents; guess what the lady who lives there drives?

Interestingly enough, Ford being Ford, their name does hold enough weight to where despite the fact that they’re a Jeep clone, Hummer appears to be trying to now clone them, with their new Hummer models that are supposedly launching in 2025.  Considering the fact that they look very similar to new Ford Broncos, I feel like these are going to be a strong candidate of White People cars to flood towards if a few minorities manage to get their hands on the keys.  And when it inevitably happens, I guess it’ll be time to add a new entry to the list of Things White People Like.

Eviction Notice: the excessively multi-generation household

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the most part, I enjoy the neighborhood that I live in.  The vast majority of the people who live here are friendly and/or mind their own business.  This one Karen in the neighborhood whom I had some heat with actually died a few years ago, and her surviving family is a big sausage party that seems to mind their own business.  We do have an HOA, but it is run by the community and not outsourced to some bullshit company, and our annual dues aren’t egregious and we do actually get a few parties throughout the year to kind of justify the money we dump into the HOA.

But let’s just be real here, there are always going to be households in everyone’s communities that ruffles a few feathers, and obviously I am no exception.  Some behaviors are less savory than others, and depending on whom one might ask, might be perceived as anything as total assholes to first-world problems.  Instead of trying to ignore the problem or the neighbors, we just fantasize about waving a magic wand and straight up just evicting from the existing in the neighborhood; nobody wants to see anyone hurt, you just want them out of your neighborhood, and hopefully replaced with someone else who doesn’t suck.

The difference is, most people keep these general grievances to themselves or within their own households, but for people like me, they become brogging content.

The first household that comes to mind as one that I’d like to magically evict from the community is what I like to refer to as, the excessively multi-generation household.  This is a home where the actual homeowners are probably right at or adjacent to full-blown senior citizen status and are most likely original owners of their home.  In fact, they themselves are rather nice and polite people, and I’ve never had a negative interaction with them before.

It’s just the circumstances in which their household exists that causes me some annoyance, and probably to others in the neighborhood if they were to stop and think about it.

So the OG owners here, they have like 3-4 grown adult children, whom have all appeared to have gotten married themselves and spawned numerous children.  One of these adult offspring still lives in the OG home with their spouse and children, presumably in the basement, seeing as how they have a finished basement with a separate entrance.  Which brings the resident count to somewhere between 5-7 people, including the OG elderly husband and wife.

The thing is, the other adult kids are always over at the OG parents’ house, along with all of their entire families, so it’s like at any given point the house is overflowing with like 10-15 people, depending on how many of their adult kids are over with their kids.  It doesn’t take a genius to surmise that the adult kids are over as often as they are, because grandma and grandpa are near, and usually willing to be free childcare, while their parents can coast with their lives knowing they have trustworthy hands available to parent in their laziness.

As a result, this is a home that always has a full driveway, and almost always has cars spilling out onto street parking, which is something I always find obnoxious no matter the circumstances, especially in a community like ours where just about every house has a driveway that can accommodate 6+ cars without breaking a sweat.  Plus, their home is situated on both a hill and a curve, which means that all other passing traffic has to exorcise extra caution when passing their home, because they won’t be able to see past whatever truck, minivan or SUV is parked on the street.

It’s not just about the parking malady they often create with their reliance and exploitation of the OG owners.  It’s the fact that all the adult kids and their own offspring take advantage and enjoy all of the benefits that actual homeowners are privy to, just because their parents still live in the home and maybe they once did too many moons ago.

When we have a block party, their household rolls up 15 people deep, when two are actual HOA due paying homeowners and the rest are their freeloading kids and their kids on top of it.  They come an eat a ton of food and their kids play on the bounce house and water slides that our community rents for children of the residents.  It just irks me in an unpleasant manner that no, I don’t want to just, not worry about, because it’s bullshit and it’s not fair to the rest of the community that actually lives here.

One year, we had a pool opening party, and this entire household rolled in 14 people deep.  Again, they’re helping themselves to the food that my dues went towards, but worst of all were all their fucking kids in the pool, splashing and taking up space, and I’m trying to enjoy wading around with my daughters, while these freeloaders are just all over the fucking place inadvertently splashing my kids with their rambunctiousness.

I’m not the only one to have noticed this exploitation of the rules at least as far as the pool is concerned, because when the pool opened up this year, as a gentle reminder when the rules of the pool were distributed for the season, there was an interesting new bullet stating that “only eight people allowed per household,” which I’m fairly certain applies to pretty much just them.  But it’s not like anyone can really enforce it, and I’d wager money that there’ve probably been multiple occasions in which these leeches took over the pool 12+ people deep.

The funny thing is, even though I’m not particularly keen on how much this household takes advantage of the general friendly disposition of the community, I’ve never had any negative interactions with them, personally.  Whenever I’ve spoken with any of the adults at any of our community functions, they’re all nice and cordial, if not aloof and a little negligent when it comes to parenting.  I’m sure they’re decent human beings as individuals.

But when the day is over, I’d rather just evict the entire household.  Just this past weekend, I had to wait an excessive amount of time while OG granddad struggled to back a trailer into the driveway, because there were already four other cars in it and a truck on the side walk, so just being able to pass was impossible until he was finished.

Had the home been occupied by one of the more normal households, with single families, no more than 2-3 vehicles and no freeloading adult offspring, the roads are clearer, safer and less congested with overpopulation bullshit.

So in conclusion, if I had a magic wand that could humanely remove them from my community, evicted!

Dad Brog (#139): the days are getting longer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I realized that it’s been a while since I did a dad brog, and in spite of my insistence that they weren’t intended to be solely sounding boards for the gripes and complaints I have about the challenges of parenting, there’s no denying the fact that the vast majority of the 138 editions of Dad Brog before this one probably were.  Parenting is hard, yo, and anyone who says that it isn’t is either not as hands-on or present of a parent as I am or they’re rich and/or lazy and have others doing the parenting for them.

That being said, let this be a dad brog that isn’t going to be just one gigantic bitch-fest as much as it’s just catching up on the life of being the parent that I am, because as I’ve stated before, this series of posts doesn’t have to be nothing but complaints and gripes, because as hard as parenting is, there’s plenty to love about it as well.

There are lots of times in my life where I sometimes and just watch my kids being kids, and there’s still a sense of disbelief that one, I have kids, and two that I somehow ended up with two girls.  Some might find it hard to believe considering they’re four and three and therefore I’ve been doing this for a while now, but I don’t know, I’m not going to imagine that I’m the only parent out there that feels this when they look at their kids, no matter how old they are, and it’s during these little moments where I sometimes just smirk and chuckle at the combined absurdity and satisfaction that the existence of my own children bring to my life.

Both kids are in school five days a week now, as opposed to the three-day part-time school schedule they had the year before, mostly on account of the school no longer giving us the option for three-day anymore, so my wallet is definitely feeling the pinch and will continue to feel it for another year, before it gradually starts getting better when #1 begins elementary school and #2 the year afterward.

All the same though, as much as I bemoan the financial burden of private schooling, I feel that the results speak for themselves; my kids are both sharp and intelligent and bright, and I’m often awestruck at some of the things they say or demonstrate that makes me go wtf, at how much they’re developing.  #2 has demonstrated a really great memory, and she has routinely been whooping my ass at the variety of memory card games we play, at her ability to recall the positionings of matching cards.

Just the other day, I was being lazy and was dicking around on my phone a little bit while around my kids; #1 rushed off to the bathroom because she’s fully potty trained now and more often opting to use the actual bathroom instead of the children’s potty we have in the kitchen, while #2 is still working things out.  I started to get up to go help, and she immediately shut me down and told me, “keep looking at your phone, I’ll be okay,” and I was just left there with this flabbergasted look and feeling on my face, where I couldn’t be mad at basically getting shut down by a four-year old, but also low-key called out for being on my phone.

Needless to say, I put the phone away after that.

Staving off boredom is basically the name of the game for me as a parent now, and we’re at the stage where the kids don’t really want to play with toys or read books as much as they want to do physical activities like run around, play tag, hide-and-seek and just burn energy.  It’s frustrating when it’s nuclear summer outside still, and I have to be very mindful of letting my kids play outdoors at the peak parts of the sun and heat, and I’m very much looking forward to the full changing of seasons, to where I might be able to let them go outside and play more, so we can all get a win in that regard.

And inevitable as it is, the kids’ bedtime has begun stretching longer, which means that my window of non-dad downtime has been getting smaller, much to my dissatisfaction.  Whereas we used to have the kids up in the bath by 6:30, in bed by 7:00pm, we’ve been adding 30-40 minutes to the routine now, and by the time the kids are down in bed, it’s nearly 8:00pm if not past it a few minutes now.

Obviously, this was always going to inevitably happen, but it just means that my window of time in which I reset the house, tidy up, clean dishes, pack lunches and anything else, before I can really sit down and relax, is basically becoming non-existent.  I’m lucky to free by 9pm, and if I have any ambitious preparation for the following day, then 10pm more likely.

But it’s really not the end of the world, because I realize these days, I’m so stripped down of everything that used to make me, me, that when I have free time, I don’t know what to do with in the first place anymore.  And with so little time to do anything even if I could, I just don’t; as fatalistic and depressing as it might sound, I’ve gotten to the point where it’s just kind of acceptance and I’m not really mad or depressed about it, it’s just something that I hope that when one day when I inevitably do have more time, I might be able to reclaim some of the things that I’ve had to put on back burners or in storage while I focus on being a dad first and foremost.

My kids are always priority #1, and everything else is a distant second.  The best part is that with their increasing potty control, I’m growing more trust to take them out with me, even if it’s both kids and I, because they’re really not going to learn how to exist in the world if they don’t go out into it, and two-fold, it helps stave off the perils of evil boredom when I can have things planned for them to do with me.

Either way, as I had hoped, in some respects parenting will never be easy, but in many other respects, it really has gotten easier, as my kids have aged.  When I no longer have to worry about any pooping accidents or malicious wetting incidents, I will have even more trust at bringing my kids out more often to see the world around them, and even more will be easier when I don’t have to always be mindful of where the closest bathrooms always are.

I can’t wait for Xavier Woods’ heel turn

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lots of long-time wrestling fans are smarter than people like to give them credit for.  The wrestling industry is at its best when they treat the fans with a modicum of respect for their intelligence and don’t go out of their way to dumb things down that questions it instead.

At this point, I can confidently believe that Xavier Woods’ heel turn isn’t so much just being hinted or teased, it’s definitely something that’s going to happen with the only question really being is just, when?

As much as I was a fan of the group, let’s not deny the fact that The New Day has been dead for the better part of the last few years.  One member of the squad has always been injured at various points throughout this span, and as much yeoman’s work the other two have done in their absence, the fact of the matter is that The New Day has always been a three-man group, and whenever it’s unable to be such, it means that The New Day isn’t really there.

With the unfortunate neck injury that has basically retired Big E at this point was really the nail in the coffin for the group, and it’s like Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston have just been chugging along under The New Day banner, mostly out of a general lack of ideas of what to do with them in the meantime.  They’re both trustworthy hands, their brand is still popular and easy to stay over, but the reality remains that them and the group have just been a dead idea walking.

And then they just plucked Odyssey Jones out of NXT and went boom, you’re The New Day member #3, and I’m just like, nah dog, I’m fuckin out.  No disrespect to Odyssey, but it’s kind of low-hanging fruit and insulting that they just take a big black wrestler and throw him into The New Day with the express purpose of replacing Big E’s spot.

However, the best thing to emerge from this is that it appears that The New Day are back in the general plans of Creative™, and the wheels are in motion for the ultimate dissolution of the group together, culminating with what appears to be a heel turn for Xavier Woods, who has been the one member of the group to have been overlooked and not given a genuine chance at singles success for over a decade now.

They’ve teased Woods’ seeming lack of satisfaction of the inclusion of Odyssey Jones, there’s been remarks on live television about how Woods is the only member of the original squad to never have won a singles championship, and Woods himself has been doing an excellent job of facial expressions, body language and subtle, non-verbal performing that’s adding to the fuel that something is about to catch fire.

The only problem is that when the match is lit, and heel-Woods is initiated, I have this sneaking suspicion that the result isn’t necessarily going to be what the WWE is going to hope is going to happen, and the fans are going to pop like motherfuckers when it happens.

Kind of like when Becky finally snapped and decked Charlotte Flair during the pre-The Man days, the crowd went bonkers in support of Becky’s heel turn, because Becky Lynch was a performer that the fans had gotten to know, earned their respect, and drew empathy from the notion that they’d been held down and been a bridesmaid far too many times.

I feel like Xavier Woods is in a similar boat, and regardless of how he’s portrayed on television, he’s been building his personal brand for the better part of the last 10+ years on the internet, utilizing Up Up Down Down for people to get glimpses of Austin Creed, and there’s probably a notable amount of overlap between fans of Austin Creed and fans of Xavier Woods, and I predict that when Xavier Woods finally, goes heel and beats the fuck out of Odyssey Jones with a chair, and then plasters Kofi Kingston with a shot to effectively close the book on The New Day, people are going to pop, because the spotlight will suddenly be on Austin Creed, a guy that’s never really had the opportunity to have it, and they will all be excited to see how he handles being given the ball.

Just the thought of singles feuds for Xavier Woods, with inevitably Kofi, Sami Zayn and Jey Uso definitely seem like the types of programs that would get me to actually put effort into keep up to date with the product, but the question really is when they’re going to happen.  All the same, I can’t wait for it when it does, and let’s hope Creative pulls the trigger at the appropriate time, and doesn’t wait too long like they used to do so often throughout the early 2000’s.