Tag: comparison

Thoughts on The Walking Dead “Finale”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although I can’t promise that what words come from my fingers in ensuing paragraphs might not be blatant spoilers, don’t read too much into the quotation marks in the title.  S11E24 of The Walking Dead was most definitely the finale to the series, but there’s a lot of nonsense in the final eight minutes of the runtime that very much implies otherwise, and that’s all I’ll say about that, at least not without a tastefully placed cut.

Honestly, leading up to the long-coming series finale, I actually did not have any high expectations that it was going to be any good.  Frankly, I still maintain that the series still peaked with Negan and the Saviors, which I think was season 7 or 8, so that means the last 3-4 seasons have definitely been on a downhill trajectory.

However, all things considered, in spite of the low bar I had set, the final episode was actually better than I had anticipated.  Without giving anything away, the episode resolves the supposed final conflict fairly early on, so the rest of the episode was actually allowed to breathe and methodically wind things down, instead of a mad dash of trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible in a sloppy manner /coughGameo Thrones.

I make the analogy a lot, but The Walking Dead also feels like the Rurouni Kenshin bell curve, where the television series peaked hard with Shishio and the Kyoto arc, but then went downhill until the series was mercifully ended.  TWD’s surprisingly positive finale still doesn’t save it from a similar fate, and much like Breaking Bad ended with generic Jack the White Supremacist when Gus Fring was so good, Pamela Milton and the Commonwealth seems like such a weak antagonist to end with, especially after Negan.

Alright, enough with the eggshells.  Continue reading “Thoughts on The Walking Dead “Finale”” →

I don’t think Kenny Omega’s heart will ever be with AEW

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was perusing through my YouTube recommendations, and I came across this clip of Kenny Omega challenging Will Osperay, and what caught my attention was the fact that it was dated just a day ago.  Perplexed, I bit, and I watched this not just impressive for Kenny Omega, but a very impressive promo in general, where yep, Kenny Omega was challenging Will Osperay, at WrestleKingdom, New Japan’s version of Wrestlemania.

It was a very thoughtful, impassioned, and good promo, that doesn’t just flex Omega’s fluency in Japanese, but just the whole package of delivery, context and dialogue were fantastic.  It was without question one of the best promos he’s cut in ages, and without any doubt, better than any promo in English he’s ever cut for AEW; that company he helped found, and is an EVP for, regardless of what kayfabe stripping of titles Tony Khan might have declared.

What I’m really getting to is exactly what the title of the post is; no matter what he accomplishes in AEW or the role he plays in AEW, I just can’t believe that at any point, his heart will ever truly be in AEW, because Kenny Omega is such a monumental weeb that has already given his heart to Japan, and by proxy, NJPW.

Forbidden doors and all those buzzwords that love to be thrown around in the current era of the business, but it’s just silly to me that AEW’s (arguably) biggest star is loaning himself to NJPW, and if I’m a betting man, will probably put on the greatest match he’ll have had over the last 3-4 years.  Dave Meltzer will jizz out 7+ stars to describe the match, and international buy rates of the show will probably benefit from this match being announced. 

And it will all be under the umbrella of another promotion.

NJPW will own all the footage of the match, and AEW won’t be able to show any clips of it.  Omega will go from having a mega Broadway of a match against Will Osperay in the Tokyo Dome, and then two weeks later be selling for Orange Cassidy and the Best Friends in Nassau Coliseum with the Young Bucks, whom I also don’t think they really care nearly as much about AEW as much as they do their YouTube channel.

The Oracle (me) says that Omega does the job, because he’s still kind of on the mend, on the later stages of his career, while Osperay is still very much rising to his prime, and logic dictates that another promotion’s guy shouldn’t beat the house talent, but when it comes to AEW and their relationships with other promotions, it always seems like they usually win out, even if it means Omega absconds with the IWGP United States championship.  It’s not like they haven’t done it before.

But I also think that there’s the possibility that this booking was reactionary to the WWE loaning out Shinsuke Nakamura to Pro Wrestling NOAH to have a match against the Great Muta who is kind of a (endless) retirement tour, since both events are on New Year’s, and if that’s the case then Osperay wins, with probably there being a fuckton of interference in order to keep heat strong for the future.

I could expound on a variety of opinions, but ultimately, it all boils down to this hunch, this feeling, that I just don’t think Kenny Omega’s heart will ever really be with AEW, no matter what Tony Khan pays or does for him to try and win it. 

I’d love to see the outtakes of the promo, because it probably took 28 takes at the part where he said he was surprised to have gotten the call from NJPW, because in reality he probably reacted like Stewie Griffin finding out he was going to Disney World at the opportunity to perform for NJPW again.  Frankly it’s like the best of both worlds for him, because he gets to keep his AEW paycheck going, but he gets to go to Mecca and perform at the Tokyo Dome against an incredible talent like Osperay.

I will never not enjoy seeing Tennessee lose

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ICYMI: South Carolina defeats #5 Tennessee, 63-38

Man, this game is proof of the power of sports.  I had a pretty rough day, having to be on double duty all morning with the kids, and while they were down for their afternoon nap, I took my wife to the airport, and got obliterated on the way home in traffic, enraging me to thinking Thanos had a good idea, and how lucky the 2% of people who vanished in The Leftovers must’ve been to have been on a version of Earth without 98% of the population.

All I wanted was for the kids to go to sleep without too much warfare, and perhaps have a quiet evening where I could veg out and watch more television from my listed queue.  Instead, I caught wind that unranked South Carolina had hung 21 points on overrated #5 Tennessee, and I was like hmmmmmm and decided to watch, and hope for the upset; seeing as how my interest in South Carolina is merely in-law, but an opportunity to see Tennessee lose made it feel like it was kind of a no-lose situation for me.

Three hours later, my mood is uplifted, and the aggravations of the day earlier are melted away as ESPN cameras begin monitoring the crowding of the students section of Williams-Brice Stadium, after the inevitable upset is complete.

Seeing Tennessee get obliterated, and effectively dashing any remaining hope for playoff contention is the real win here.  Hendon Hooker demonstrated that his mediocre tenure at Virginia Tech was not the fluke, but his performance for Tennessee was, playing way over his head for an equally overrated and ballyhooed program as the Volunteers are in the SEC as Tech often had been in the ACC.  Instead of blowing out the unranked Gamecocks and making a case to leapfrog the Horned Frogs who needed a last-second field goal to beat Baylor, Tennessee will undoubtedly drop out of the top-10 outright and might not even get a New Years Six bowl.

South Carolina winning, and it pleasing my in-laws is merely the cherry on top. 

Spencer Rattler, oft-being labeled a bust after his much-hyped transfer from Oklahoma exploded on Tennessee like Soldier Boy from The Boys, throwing a double hat-trick of touchdowns that even Al Bundy would have to scrunch his eyes and tilt his head over.  If he performs similarly next week and the Gamecocks can upset Clemson, it’ll have to be one of the more legendary finishes to an otherwise adequate season.

But what a game though, really.  Who doesn’t love a good upset, regardless of the loose skin I might’ve had in the game?  Sure, I don’t like Tennessee and I am not a fan of turncoat Hendon Hooker.  But my in-laws are all South Carolina fans, and I like Shane Beamer being the son of Frank Beamer, and it was a treat to see that ol’ Frank was there to revel in this win. 

Speaking of Frank, it was also nice to see that Virginia Tech didn’t lose eight in a row.  Hard to believe a win against Liberty would be considered such a massive upset, but it also equalizes when they upset the Hokies in Blacksburg just a few years ago.

It was touching to see that both teams, and as I realized, all across the CFB landscape were wearing UVA stickers on their helmets to show solidarity and honor the victims of the senseless deaths and gun violence from earlier in the week.  Regardless of my personal team allegiances, nobody ever likes to hear of anything like that, and it seems pretty unprecedented that it hit multiple, active, student-athletes, whom people literally saw on television just days prior.

All in all though, this was a good example of just how effective sports can be, at being able to make a difference in the lives of people.  For me, it was a great catalyst to improve my day, for some, it’s a reminder of strength, solidarity and mourning, and for many in South Carolina, this is probably one of the better days of peoples’ lives.  Yeaahhhh sportsball

And as the subject says, I will never not enjoy seeing Tennessee lose.  Even when they’re back to being the middle-of-the-pack SEC East program they are, or when they’re having shitty years, but it’s even better when they’re completely overrated, and brought back crashing to reality.

Sports have too much fucking money vol. 1,232 feat. Jason Heyward

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: the Chicago Cubs release Jason Heyward after seven years of his eight-year contract

Between 2008 and 2009, Jason Heyward was one of the most hyped prospects in baseball.  After the 2009 season, he was the de facto #1 prospect in baseball.  In the Spring Training of 2010, Heyward emerged onto the radar of the national spotlight when he clubbed a home run so far, it left the ballpark and shattered the windshield of a car in the parking lot.

He was so good, he forced the Atlanta Braves to put him on the Opening Day roster instead of taking part in the traditional practice of stashing him in the minors for two months in order to ensure that they can keep him for an additional year of indentured servitude known as team control, instead of getting to free agency.

That Opening Day, Jason Heyward took the first step to immortality by launching a three-run home run in his very first at-bat.

To this day, I still consider that day and that moment, one of the most magical sports memories I’ve ever had.

He performed so well through the first few years of his career, it became very apparent that he was going to become problematic in the sense that as he grew closer and closer to free agency, he was going to command a tremendous amount of money, and as any Braves fan can explain, the Braves absolutely do not like to spend money.

The inevitable became fulfilled when the Braves shipped him off to St. Louis for his contract year in exchange for a pitcher who still had team control available to him, and Heyward unsurprisingly put up a monster year for the Cardinals.  He went into free agency in as optimal position as a player really could be in.

And the Chicago Cubs came knocking, as they signed him to an 8-year, $184 million contract.  Jason Heyward had accomplished what just about every professional athlete strives to do; make it to the big leagues and perform well enough to where you can make it to free agency and cash in on a monster megadeal.

But then something interesting happened: Jason Heyward basically forgot how to play baseball.  From the moment he suited up for the Cubs, he was mostly an offensive liability, hitting .245 and OPSing .700 between 2016 and 2022.  Almost all of his value came from the fact that he was still a reliable glove in the outfield, winning two Gold Glove awards.  That, and the fact that as a person, Jason Heyward has always been a pretty outstanding human being, personable, polite, philanthropic, and just a great teammate, as many of his peers have attested.

Continue reading “Sports have too much fucking money vol. 1,232 feat. Jason Heyward” →

If life were wrestling, Stacey Abrams turns heel now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I never wanted to be a person whose gave much concern over politics, but maybe it’s a symptom of getting older, or the world is just getting so progressively fucked up that people like me are organically becoming more aware of them, but I’ve found myself caring enough to the point where when the political season starts heating up, I feel the need to ignore everything, because I care, and I’m treating the whole thing like how I treat sports game that I’m vested in.

That being said, I can’t say that I’m the least bit surprised at the results of Georgia’s political battleground, namely the two key races that most people have been paying attention to.  Despite all of the available facts out there, Georgia unsurprisingly embarrassed themselves on a national stage, by having a legally brain-dead Hershel Walker garner so much voter support, that his deadlocked race against Raphael Warnock is now headed to a dreadful run-off race next month.

To my recollection, Democrats haven’t won a single run-off since I’ve lived here or paid any attention to, so instead of losing in November, Warnock seems destined to lose a bigger and more scrutinized race in December, because from what I can observe, the Democratic party can’t seem to put together a single winning strategy against the formulaic low-fruit smashing tactics of the GOP.

But the main point of this post is about Stacey Abrams, who lost for the second time to Yosemite Sam for governorship of Georgia.  I can’t say that I’m at all surprised by this outcome, but I was hoping that Sam’s bickering with the orange guy in 2020 would have done enough damage to him to where it might have shifted some voters to not vote for him, but when it really comes down to it, and the exit polls kind of confer, Stacey Abrams being both black and a female just makes it way too hard to overcome both racist and sexist reflexes of the Georgia voters that actually decided to vote.

According to census numbers, Georgia has about 7 million people who are of voting eligibility, but only about 4 million people actually voted.  Obviously, this isn’t to say that both Abrams and Warnock’s chances of victory would have been improved by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still frustrating to learn that nearly 3 million people just didn’t vote at all.  If I’m a Hershel Walker supporter, I’m just as frustrated by this, seeing as how the margin of voters between Warnock is what’s sending this to a run-off in the first place.

Either way, to no surprise, Abrams is taking her loss with dignity and class, as was the case the first time around.  She vows to continue to fight for Georgians, and is saying all of the right things that those in the political career should be saying.  But honestly, if I’m Stacey Abrams, and life were actually professional wrestling, at this point I’m fucking sick of Georgians, tired of trying to win Georgia, and I’m turning heel on the state and vowing to move onto bigger and better things.

3 million motherfuckers not voting at all?  What’s the point of Fair Fight when there are a bunch of people who just don’t want to fight at all?  Twice now, Georgians have left Stacey down by not turning up to the polls, and she’s basically had to eat a shit sandwich twice over now.

Abrams is no stranger outside of Georgia too, as she was one of the names that was on the short list of potential Vice President candidates.  Who’s to say that after jobbing twice to Dutch Mantell that she just stops giving a fuck about Georgia and doesn’t move on to bigger and better opportunities in Washington? 

Frankly, I think it would tickle me delirious if Stacey Abrams were to go have a press conference on WSB to announce what she’s going to do next, and unleashing a scathing promo on the state of Georgia, that she’s sick and tired of trying to prop this sexist and racist backwater state up to civilized standards, and that she’s peaceing the fuck out of here, before dropping the mic.

As she gets down from the podium, a bunch of white rednecks in UGA sweatshirts are seen throwing Bud Light bottles and toilet paper rolls onto the stage, like a 1998 episode of WCW Monday Nitro.

At this point, I can’t say I’d blame her.

WTF is AEW doing #192

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There are a lot of times I find out of what’s going on in wrestling solely based on one of my close friends sending me a random text message commentating on something that he’s watching live and I’m not.  Just the other day, he sends me a message saying:

We’re going to see if we’re right about Jeff Jarrett being a company killer

I laughed because of the time of day it was and that it was on a Wednesday, I knew that Jeff Jarrett had finally decided to become hashtagALLELITE and that he had shown up on AEW.  The real question was who he bashed his balsa wood fake guitar on, because Jeff Jarrett literally does nothing other than that spot.

A quick Google search confirmed that Jeff Jarrett was definitely ALLELITE and had done so by bashing his balsa wood fake guitar over Darby Allin, which I probably could’ve guessed in maybe three or four tries, because for some reason, Darby Allin seems to be completely okay with being a gatekeeper for the company in which all incoming talent seems to gravitate towards, and usually beats the unholy shit out of him at some point.

Regardless, let’s get back to Jeff Jarrett, and the claim that he’s a company killer.  After all, the Jarrett family is somewhat low country wrestling royalty in the regard that they’ve been running promotions for generations now, but Jeff himself has been varying degrees of involved with primarily TNA which is now Impact! Wrestling, but also the NWA, Global Force, GCW and even with some appearances with New Japan.  At no point in his involvement with any of these promotions did they ever really light the world on fire, and only in his time with TNA was Jeff himself remotely close to being anything of a superstar in the industry.

The reputation comes from the fact that none of these promotions ever really benefit from the addition of Jeff Jarrett, feeding the narratives that the WWE put onto him that he was never really more than a mid-card ceiling kind of guy.  Furthermore, Jeff Jarrett has been around long enough, to where he’s gotten to be involved with various factions and trends throughout the years, but again, not in a particularly good way.

I ilke to describe Jeff Jarrett as kind of wrestling’s version of the Family Guy joke killer meme, where once Family Guy makes a reference to something popular, that thing is immediately uncool and dead in the water right then and there.  Jeff Jarrett had the misfortune of being added to the nWo 2000 stable during his time in WCW which lasted all of like a month; it’s easy to say it’s because WCW couldn’t book a fish into water, or that Bret Hart’s career was already over, but let’s be real, it was because it was Jeff Jarrett was a member.

Nearly 15 years later, after Jarrett had lost TNA and was spinning his wheels with Global Force, during a show in partnership with New Japan, Jeff Jarrett shocks (read: surprises nobody) when he brandishes a balsa wood fake guitar with the Bullet Club logo on it and bashes it over Hiroshi Tanahashi, effectively joining the evil gaijin stable.  Needless to say, all the coolness of Bullet Club flew out the window faster than the hopes and dreams of everyone trying to win Powerball, and the stable hasn’t recovered since.

Earlier this year, Jeff Jarrett has been clawing at relevancy in any way shape or form, derailing promotions left and right.  For all the exposure and life Matt Cardona had injected into GCW, all it took was Jeff Jarrett appearing on their THE WRLD ppv, where he buried Effy, and GCW hasn’t recovered since.  Jeff Jarrett was Ric Flair’s LAST MATCH EVERRRR, and it’s almost like the marks who put the show together were trying to hedge their bets by preemptively calling their Jim Crockett Promotions show a one-time deal, but it’s really like they’re restauranteurs who already saw the writing on the wall when working with Double-J and didn’t bother promoting anything beyond the single show, if it meant being associated with him.

Even the WWE wasn’t safe from the stink of Jeff Jarrett, as he was brought in for some reason to be a special referee for the feud between the Usos and Street Profits, and not long afterward, the Vince McMahon scandal blew up, and of all the people and shots that have been fired at him throughout the decades, really all it took was having to work with Jeff Jarrett that seems to have effectively killed such an unkillable career.

So, hopefully Tony Khan knows what he’s doing in getting into bed with Jeff Jarrett, because as history has proven throughout the millennium, doing business with Jeff Jarrett has often come with some seriously bad consequences.

Dad Brog (#100): One Hundred Dad Brogs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because I’m a neurotic baseball nerd who has a hard-on for nice round numbers, I was always keenly aware of the fact that I was creeping closer to a nice round milestone number of 100 dad brogs, most of which are bitchy, ragey, or coming from a place of frustration.  In my head, I’ve written this post several different times now, but as is the norm for the life of a parent of kids as young as mine, there was never the opportunity to write this until a lot of the feelings in which I’m mentally writing, have already long passed.

This isn’t to say that I don’t love my children, quite the contrary, I love my children and my famiry and would do anything in the world for them, but it’s more of the unyielding truth of just how difficult raising kids is, especially in the circumstances I’ve been under, with two born during a pandemic and being on a path that has never really been explored except by those in similar boats currently charting them as we go.

There’s no sugar-coating it: parenting is hard.  Parenting two that are just 16 months apart is even harder.  I’ve completely lost the ability to feel any shred of empathy for anyone who proclaims their lives are difficult and they have no kids, because I frankly can’t imagine anyone’s life being as hard without kids as someone with them.  In fact, I’ve even turned my nose up at those with just one child, because at this point, I think one kid is a walk in the park, and that I could raise a single child with my eyes closed with the experience I’ve accumulated.

At no point during my journey as a dad, have things ever been easy.  When it was just #1, we had several months of having to deal with an apnea monitor, on top of not knowing what we were doing as new parents.  But once we began to feel that we were getting into a groove and that her sleep schedule was affording us time to begin feeling like human beings again, our world was rocked by the discovery that mythical wife was pregnant and #2 was on the way.

And then #2 arrived, and in spite of all the preparation and thinking we got this, based on all the experience we accumulated from our first go-around, #2 was all sorts of different than her sister, in terms of temperament, sleeping habits, and the presence of colic.  And with their being two kids now, the inevitability of double duty came into play, and let me tell you that there have been fewer points in my life that I have felt so helplessly inadequate as a father, parent, human being, than when I’m constantly falling on my face as a single person watching two kids.

Since then, my daughters have been living up to the tag team dynamic that I’ve given them championship blets for, because since the staffing up of my famiry, they’ve been systematically taking turns, tagging in and out, at which one of them is the difficult kid at any given time; naturally not ignoring any opportunities to get some double-team, tandem offense of both of them being difficult at the same time.  #2’s colic was a devastating time where nothing I did felt like it was right.  #1’s increasing curiosity and the development of defiance and the ability to say the word NO bubbled up as #2’s newborn vices began cooling down.  They’d take turn at being picky eaters, and seldom would eat well at the same time.  #1 started getting sick every single month since the start of 2022 due to our shitty nannies or sending her to daycare, and without missing a beat, when she gets sick, #2 gets sick 3-4 days later and it’s even worse on her because she’s younger and has a lesser developed immune system.  Everyone loves to say that it’s just them growing their immune systems, but I’d rather other parents just stop being selfish fucks and sending sick kids to school all the god damn time.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#100): One Hundred Dad Brogs” →