Tag: nostalgia

Dad Brog (#124): Should I be concerned??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I walked into #1’s room after her quiet time and was immediately met with the sight of Naoru and Kaoru AKA The Wrestling Cats, basically hanging off of the dresser.  My immediate reaction was that of amusement, but at the same time, I’m wondering if I should be concerned, because the first thing that came to mind was the comparison to the hanging corpses that are all over the various mansions in Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest.

Of course it’s just a child playing with her stuffies, but lately, #1 has really been into ribbons, string, tying knots and such.  I don’t really know where she’s getting it from, it doesn’t seem to be on the agenda at what they’re teaching in school, but for whatever reason, she’s been fascinated with fiddling with loose threads and ribbons and always tying them into knots or together, and in her quiet time, she’s been experimenting with decorating the lamp post or hanging things off the bed rail, and in this case, draped around the necks of her favorite stuffies and suspending them off of the dresser.

Really though, I just wanted to make the comparison to the visual of what I saw and accurate comparison reference to Castlevania II as what immediately came to mind when I saw it.  Perhaps my kid isn’t the one I should be concerned about if hanging corpses from a game from the 80’s is the first thing that I thought about.

Meeting Diamond Dallas Page

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This actually happened a little while ago, but life has just been busy, my drive to write has fluctuated tremendously over the last days and sometimes there’s a backlog of things that I want to write about first jumps around a bit.  But at the same time, this isn’t something that I wanted to not write about, because as far as my fandom in wrestling goes, this was still a pretty big deal, and half of the importance of meeting a known celebrity in a field, is being able to humble-boast about it on the internet to a small or completely non-existent audience.

But in between my vacation and my work-trip, I took a night out to go to an independent wrestling show, because it wasn’t really that far from my house, but more importantly, they had advertised an appearance from Diamond Dallas Page, a wrestler that I enjoyed a lot towards the end of the 90s and into the 2000s.

Most fans remember him as the guy who invented the Diamond Cutter, which is basically the basis for Randy Orton’s RKO, but aside from the things he accomplished in his wrestling career, there’s a lot he accomplished outside of the ring that are noteworthy and contribute a lot to why I admire the guy as much as I do, especially to the point where his name alone can sell me to go to an indy show.

I popped when he defeated Jay-Z in court, when the rapper decided that he could go ahead and just use the hand symbol for the Diamond Cutter without any repercussion, and lordy, did the guy’s arrogance prove him wrong.  Guys like Jay-Z typically don’t take any L’s in life, considering his wealth and business acumen, so it was tremendously refreshing to hear that he did the job to a professional wrestler of all people, with it being noted that the Jigga man settled with DDP outside of court in order for him to drop the lawsuit, as well as ceased using the hand symbol outright.

But what most people are probably very familiar with DDP these days is his yoga and fitness programs that the guy promotes tirelessly, because once people are able to get around the professional wrestler persona, and the power of positivity that seems almost too good to be true, the fact of the matter is that DDP has helped tons of people these days, overcome all sorts of physical boundaries and limitations they were told they would have, with his training programs and general life coaching.

From prolonging the careers of fellow wrestlers, to helping athletes from all wakes of life and sport regain a modicum of physical capabilities, to rescuing veterans, those with paralyzing injuries and other handicaps, DDP has made it his life promoting wellness, health and mobility for anyone interested, from regular people, retired athletes to those still in the wrestling industry.

So when I got to have my chance to speak with DDP, I basically told him that I loved him as a wrestler, but I think it’s what he does with his life now, that really has a more admirable quality to it, and that regardless it was an honor to meet the guy.

From all the times I’ve met wrestlers, be it through random encounters, minor league appearances or paid meet and greets, it’s really hit or miss to the types of personalities you get in person.  And often times, people are encouraged to not meet their heroes so to say, so they don’t disappoint you, but to absolutely no surprise, DDP was about as gracious and as layup of a good guy in person as they come.

Instead of just ushering people away and moving onto the next guy wanting to pay money, DDP for some reason decided to tell me a story about how he went to a boxing show, and he was eager to meet Ken Norton there, but in a random hallway he runs into Norton who was in a rush as he was, and it turns out that Norton was in a rush to meet him.  I’m not entirely sure what about me made DDP want to tell me that story, but it was still cool and entertaining that he gave me the time of day to hold up the line and tell me such, and with a second handshake and an autograph I was on my merry way.

And that’s really all there was to it.  The wrestling show itself wasn’t bad as far as indy promotions go, and I saw some potential as well as names I recognized from previous times I’ve bounced around the area watching indy wrestling, but really the whole night was all about trying to meet DDP, and mission accomplished.

I look forward to having an office wall to hang my autographs off of one day, because DDP is definitely one that I’m glad to add to the collection.

Happy Trails, Bob and Arleen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Talk about an absolutely brutal week as far as fandoms, nostalgia and symbols of millennial childhood go.  Wrestling fans had to endure the passing of a legend, and a sudden departure of a star that wasn’t anywhere near the heights he was destined for, but then fans of the same television I grew up watching had to bear witness as a legend passed, and an icon that defined basically an entire television series.

I don’t particularly have a ton to say about Bob Barker or Arleen Sorkin, at least nothing new from one of the many countless tributes on the internet there are for either of them, but it hit me enough in the feels when both of them left us to where I still feel like at the very least, documenting it in my own brog to try and emphasize at the very least, my appreciation for them and what they did.

Obviously, at 99 years of age, it’s easy to say that Bob Barker did not leave us to soon, and he most definitely lived a full and successful life and career.  Cue the bittersweet jokes about how if anyone was going to ace the big wheel game of getting as close to 100 without going over, it’s Bob Barker.

But like many, the OG Price Is Right was the show that we all watched when we were home sick from school, or over summer vacations, because at least where I grew up, it was always on at 11 am, obviously not a time in which we could watch it at school.  But Bob Barker’s talent was so effortlessly immense that it didn’t matter if you were nine years old, 29 years old, 59 years old or 79 years old, his delivery, his smooth on-screen charisma and charm made him watchable, made him entertaining and made the show the legendary program it was, all because of him.

I always enjoyed watching the show, playing along with the showcase, screaming at the television when contestants didn’t ever seem to realize that the items on the show were always marked up 5000% and undershot their estimates, and of course loved Plinko.

Drew Carey’s variant of the show is garbage in comparison, and as far as I’m concerned, the show ended when Bob Barker retired.  There was once an incident where a contestant hit the nail on the head in the final showdown at the end of the show, and Drew Carey immediately deadpanned him and killed the episode, because he thought that the guy must have been cheating; most everyone was quick to point out that if that had happened under Bob Barker’s watch, he would have sold it like the greatest achievement of mankind, and made it into a memorable event. 

There are just some things that can never be replaced, and Bob Barker is most definitely one of them.  The show is better off discontinuing, than to let Drew Carey sink the prestige and equity that Bob built with his legendary run.

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We’re long past how the mighty have fallen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: WWE Hall of Famer, Tammy Sytch “Sunny,” pleads no-contest to vehicular manslaughter under the influence, faces upwards of 25 years in prison

I haven’t really kept tabs on Sunny since her gradual disappearance from the world of professional wrestling, but when the story came out a while ago where she killed a guy in a drunken car crash, it opened the doors to wondering how her life had gotten to this point.  The last time I really saw her was when RAW had their 1,000th episode, and I remember thinking how she had held up pretty damn well, but it’s abundantly clear that the last 12 years of her life most definitely have not.

I knew she had some legal issues and had been in and out of jail a few times, but nothing seemed more than her own dumb choices of DUIs and being flippant about parole or unauthorized travel, so despite her poor judgment, at least she wasn’t like a hot mess of violence or more than a drunk for a criminal.  Frankly, her manslaughter charge, as tragic as it is that it resulted in loss of life, was just her doing what she had been doing, but to an extreme point, seeing as how she allegedly blew a ridiculous .280 BAC, which is almost as impressive as Johnny Damon’s also-Florida drunken escapades.

So we’re long past the point of stating how the mighty have fallen, because over the last twelve years, ‘ol Sunny has fallen quite a bunch of times, but not to as severe of a degree as this one.  Goes to show that being one of the original OG breakers of the internet back in the day really doesn’t have any monetary worth, although like many people in my generation, probably feels she would have thrived in today’s society with what they had at the table back in the day.

Honestly, the only reason this post came to fruition was the .280 BAC and how it reminded me of how amused I was with Johnny Damon’s DUI.  Frankly, I was never really a fan of Sunny, even if she was supposed to be eye candy, and as time has passed, aside from her personal demons, I’ve never really heard much good about her ever.  She was not well-liked in the locker room, mostly due to her ego on top of the typical chauvinistic culture back then, but much as come out with her extramarital affairs and basically how she cuckolded her husband Chris Candido numerous times, which doesn’t really jive with my ideals.

You can take the trailer park trash out of New Jersey, but can’t take the New Jersey out of the trailer park trash.  Especially when they relocate to the trailer parks of Florida instead.

But if I really have to have a last word on this, I suppose it’s for the best for all parties that Sunny gets the book thrown at her.  Not only will she be taken off the streets and be one less liability of a driver to not DWI and kill any other innocents, perhaps some nice quiet time in incarceration is what she actually needs to try and overcome her personal demons.

Dad Brog (#114): Of course she picked the J’s

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Welp, this post didn’t age well: a long time ago, apparently back in 2017, I made a post questioning the existence of Air Jordan shoes, for toddlers.  Like, Air Jordans were developed to be Michael Jordan’s signature line of athletic shoes for when he was in the act of playing basketball, but almost instantly they became anything but athletic shoes to anyone other than MJ or any other basketball players who wanted to be like Mike or were also under contract to Nike.

They became status symbols, reasons why people were killed, eventually becoming acceptable as formal wear and/or a stylish option that could be paired with just about anything at all and be met with an approving nod.  Eventually J’s would be released for women, and much like it was back in like 1988, Jordans were about as popular as they’ve ever been, if not more than they were when they burst onto the scene.

And then I saw a kid that could barely walk, rocking some MJ 12s, and was like wtf, why does a toddler need J’s???

But this was six years ago, and now I have a three-year old enrolled in a hip-hop dance class for the next season of her dance school’s year.  No tap shoes or ballet shoes for this class, it’s about sneakers.  Now I’m probably a little bit more of a sneakerhead than mythical wife is, but she knows that J’s are still the cream of the crop when it comes to stylish sneakers, so naturally she trolls the shit out of my by deliberately steering my daughter into wanting some J’s of her own.

And as much as I didn’t want to plunk down the $60 for a pair of shoes that most likely won’t even be able to fit her by the end of the dance year, the idea of my own kid rocking her own J’s wasn’t entirely undesirable.  Naturally, when Nike opened their Disney vault and basically made every iteration of Air Jordans available and customizable to the Nth degree, the 9-year old in me that loved MJ 1’s got my own pair, and in spite of the price tag, I like the idea of my kid having a pair of her own 1’s, regardless of how absurd it is that there are J’s for toddlers in the first place.

So here we have it, it took some steering from the wife, but the seed was planted in #1’s head, and she picked out the MJ 1’s out of several options that she also picked, and through process of elimination, naturally landed on the J’s as her pick for hip-hop class.

$60 poorer, but at least I’ll have pride of having some matching kicks with my kid, doubly when she outgrows them, and bequeaths them to #2 to where they’ll get a second life.  And if I can take care of them well enough, maybe I’ll sit on them to where I can flip them on like StockX in the future for its original investment in like 15 years.

It’s the little things

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When mythical wife told me that we were going to go on a field trip for Father’s Day, I thought that perhaps we were going to head to the ballpark and catch a game.  The Braves were at home, they were playing hot, and there’s usually some sort of Father’s Day promotion or giveaway associated with the day.  Plus, we haven’t been to the ballpark since like 2021, and a nice day game seemed like a viable option for Father’s Day.

But when I saw her punch in “Columbus, GA” into the GPS, I knew what we were doing.  She probably knew I knew, because she knows how fixated I am on these sorts of things.  Regardless, it very much was a me kind of thing to be doing, but obviously with the introduction of kids into our lives, things like me are fewer and further apart, so it really was a welcome idea to turn the clock back a little bit and do something completely random and time-consuming for what really amounts to so little in the grand spectrum of a day.

We went to the newly opened Tim Horton’s in Columbus, the very first in the state of Georgia. The first of allegedly 15+ to come in the state.  But as much as I love their iced cappuccinos made of crack like they were actually made of crack, I really didn’t have much thought about trekking all the way to Columbus for it, because they’re nearly like two hours away from Atlanta.  Especially since there’s already a proposed location in Atlanta, even if it’s in the shitty Midtown area.  But I was willing to wait out my first ever Georgia iced capp for when they were closer to where I was, and not Columbus, Georgia.

However, mythical wife knows me pretty well, and this is totally the type of thing I’d do in my previous life.  And so we made the journey down to Columbus to the first-ever Timmy’s in Georgia.

I was curious to whether or not the place was going to be slammed or not slammed, because Tim Horton’s is still a Canadian company, and there’s no guarantee that the yokels of Columbus really knew what was going to be put in their little town.  I feared the place would be a shitshow, but fortunately when we got there, it wasn’t that bad.  If we were driving through, it would’ve been a wait, but after the drive down, I wanted to go in and take my time a little bit.

Unfortunately, despite the name and brand being brought down here, the service and performance of the staff were still reliant on locals, and despite the fact that the restaurant was just three days open, and they were overstaffed to the gills, they were still completely overwhelmed, and they took forever to fulfill even the most basic of orders.

And unfortunately, they kind of messed up on my order, by completely forgetting to give me my hash browns, and more importantly, botching up my iced capp, the one thing I really wanted.  Granted, they botched it by making it an Oreo iced capp, which was delicious in its own way, but I still wanted a regular, vanilla iced capp, with no shit in it.  I didn’t notice it until we were gone, because it wasn’t mixed very well, and it wasn’t until I got a chunk of Oreo coming up the straw did it dawn on me, but at least I still got sort of what I was hoping to get.

Either way, for Father’s Day, yes, mythical wife and I drove two hours each way, so that I could get an iced cappuccino.  It was worth it, and I look forward to the next time I can have another Timmy’s iced capp, and hopefully it will be correct then.

But it’s the littlest things that make me happy, and short of my yearly belt photo with my daughters, there’s not really anything else I could have asked for.

How did the Ford Bronco become such the white peoples’ car?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I had a pretty white span of existence.  Sure, this doesn’t help detract from the narrative that I’m a Americanized banana of a twinkie kind of Asian person, but as the circumstances have it, my family and I spent a few days on the road, stopping in Savannah and for the first time in my life, visiting Hilton Head Island, which is about one of the whitest places in the country.

Seriously, thinking back to the time spent in HHI, I genuinely can’t recall seeing more than one other person of color, and that person was also Asian which is to say that I don’t remember seeing a single black person while out there.

We stayed at a bougie resort for a few days, and lounged in the pool, went to the beach and even went to the Salty Dog Café, which I’m only aware of its existence because of an old neighbor of mine growing up always seemed to have a lot of Salty Dog Café apparel.  For the record, the dining experience was pleasant on the water of a relaxed beach community, but the food and the prices were not quite as satisfactory and I could be content with the rest of my life if I never experienced them again.

But overall, it was a pleasant trip spent with my family and I got to watch my children have a lot of fun in the pool, in our suite, on the beach and chowing down on all sorts of junk food we typically don’t always make available to them at home, and in spite of the shade I spout about HHI being a really white place, it’s also a really nice place, and I’d definitely be open to going there again in the future, and hopefully for longer.

However, to get to the point of this post, as the subject goes, I’m very curious to how the new Ford Bronco seems to have become the official car of white people across the country now.  When Ford announced that they were reviving the name and creating a new vehicle to resurrect the car, I couldn’t possibly have been more indifferent.  In fact, I was more perplexed and wincing over such news, because to me, the Ford Bronco has forever been tainted and etched with death and scandal since OJ Simpson led the LAPD on the most televised chase in history after he “didn’t” murder his wife.

Apparently such reaction and recollection didn’t resonate with the white people of America, because since they started rolling off the line, Ford Broncos have been snapped up and are being driven like crazy by white people all over the place.  Seriously, I haven’t seen a single Bronco driver on the road that isn’t white, and they’re often times being driven with the arrogant mentality of “I have one and you don’t,” because of the sheer demand for these murderer cars.

And I can’t help but be curious to why the Ford Bronco has caught on with white people with such enthusiasm, when I can’t shake the association of the car’s reputation of being what a tried-but-not-found-guilty murderer drove notoriously.  And then be further curious to what kind of message it sends that not only is the Ford Bronco more popular than it’s ever been in history, it’s apparently solely within the white community itself.

All shade aside, it really is fascinating that it’s so rabidly popular.  Aside from the whole, being OJ Simpson’s car, the Bronco is still a Ford product, and I will probably never not think of all Ford products being cheap, plastic turds with questionable build quality and reliability.  Even when I was on the market for a new car a while back, and told myself to wipe the slate clean with all makes and models, Ford was the first maker to get slapped back onto the blacklist after test-driving the option I had earmarked as a potential car, because it felt cheap, performed like shit, and was blown out of the water by every other option.

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