Tag: old man

Election Paralysis

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I never wanted to care about politics in my life really.  For the longest time, I remained ambivalent as possible about them, and I didn’t vote in the first three elections I was eligible to have voted in.  Looking back, I have regret for not doing such because I’ve learned just how important they can be, and the symbolic right and privilege we have in being able to do so.

Naturally, and I surmise it’s a natural progression of aging, I’ve become more woke and attuned to politics, and I try to give somewhat of a shit in regards to the systems that run the country we live in.  It would be somewhat accurate to state that I’ve grown to care, somewhat about politics, much to my dismay.

That being said, I’m finding that myself, along with hundreds of thousands of Americans, are dealing with election paralysis – immense struggles at being able to focus on anything or want to do anything, while the election is still unresolved, and awaiting for something to happen, which will put an end to the election and let everyone collectively exhale and move forward, with knowing who will be leading the way.

Like seriously, I’ve spent the last two nights doing little during my free time other than watching various news outlets and trying to keep abreast of election news, as if the declaration of the presidency of the United States is going to directly impact my life, immediately.  Ultimately, this underscores the fact that I, like many, perceive this particular election to be of the utmost importance, and I’m finding myself caring about it more than I would have ever imagined myself caring about an election.

And while the election remains in flux, I’m finding myself incapable of doing anything else, because I seem to care so much about impending news and information that I can’t focus.  I couldn’t find the motivation to write over the last two days because my eyes were glued to the news.  I didn’t watch wrestling despite being available to do so.  I didn’t scour the internet for money making schemes.

I feel like I’m being held captive by my want to know how the election is going to turn out and it’s kind of sad because I used to not give two shits about any election and now I can’t do anything because I’m vested and want to know.  The only reason this post is coming to fruition is mostly based on the fact that just about everyone I work with is in the same boat, nobody’s working, because everyone is so engrossed in what could be happening in the voting chambers of 3-5 key remaining states that have not called yet.

I get it though.  I eagerly want to know what’s going to happen too.  But I do know that big picture, it’s better for the results of the election to take longer if they’re going to be right and true, rather than know that it’s rushed, and ends up rigged or have a billion valid votes thrown out, and then we as a country are stuck for another four years with an agitated baked potato leading the way.

I just want to relax and not feel like I have to care so much about this shit anymore, and get back to watching wrestling, 90 Day Fiancé, and The Mandalorian.

New Father Brogging, #002

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my sporadic writing habits leading up to the birth of my child, I ironically seem to be finding more time to sit down and write now that she’s come into the world.  Mostly on account of the fact that as she was five weeks early, she’s unfortunately not home yet, and is still at the NICU, where her frail little preemie body is playing catchup under the safe and watchful eyes of medical professionals.

Ultimately, mythical wife and I both know that she’s exactly where she needs to be in her current state, and we are eternally grateful to the kind and caring staff of the hospital that has been definitely providing excellent care for our daughter.  However, when the days are over, the reality is that she is still not home with us, and it’s an agonizing struggle at the end of each night when the time comes for us to part ways with our daughter, while she stays in the NICU while we leave her and head back to our house, empty of human children.

She was born 12 days ago, but it doesn’t really quite feel like we’re parents just yet, as when the time comes in which we go to bed, it’s like we’re a married couple with no children, since there’s no kid to put to sleep and marvel over the fact that it’s a life that we created together.

We spend around 6-8 hours a day in the NICU with our kid, but until the day she comes home, there really is something kind of missing from the whole experience of having a child.  We feel like parents when we get to change her diapers, feed her, and rock her to sleep, but the wholesome feelings always end when the realization hits that we need to go home to rest and take care of ourselves, so we have the energy and capacity to do it all over again the following day.

Our daughter’s showing progress on a daily basis, but the fact of the matter is that it’s still an indeterminate amount of time before she’s given the green light to come home.  Her last real hurdle is to continue to demonstrate the ability to eat more and out of a bottle, more consistently, and subsequently gain weight.  Every day where she drains an entire bottle is akin to a playoff win, but behind the scenes we don’t know if we’re in the lightning-quick MLB playoffs, or if we’re in the endless vortex known as the NBA’s playoffs.

Back home, I’ve actually accomplished a lot of the tasks around the house that mythical wife and I agreed needed to get done before the arrival of our kid, because once she got here, we know they probably won’t be gotten to.  I’ve painted entire sections of our house, I’ve stained the entire fence around the house.  I’ve swapped out old outlets and switches for new, tamper-proof versions of them for future kid safety.  I’ve unboxed strollers and learned how to install car seats into both mine and mythical wife’s cars.  Just about every piece of furniture for our baby’s nursery is assembled and the room just about finished.

I’d wager to guess that most parents who ever have to go through the experience of their children going into the NICU go through the same kind of anxieties and frustration that mythical wife and I are going through.  I know there are many out there who have it way worse than we do in terms of state of the baby upon arrival or how little or long they stay in the NICU, but when the day is over, we’re all in the same state of where we as parents go home, while our children remain behind, which is a shitty feeling no matter how you look at it.

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Chalk this up under whyyyy????

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For some reason, The Karate Kid is being adapted into a Broadway musical.  I have to ask again: whyyyyy????

The obvious answer is probably that Robert Mark Kamen, the original screenwriter, probably needs the money.  The fact that it’s been 36 years since 1984, and it’s hard to imagine anyone living forever on the royalties of just one series; and with the recent successes of the Cobra Kai spin-off, it’s probably been no better time than the present to sell out the rights to go Broadway.

But still, my knee-jerk reaction to the news that one of the most iconic films of the 80s, is just now headed for Broadway, for a musical rendition.  Sure, the story is simple and linear enough to turn into a musical, but it just seems like a hokey sellout to imagine particular scenes in the film being danced and theatrically performed instead of the gritty, Ralph Macchio-has-no-real-talent versus a legitimately-can-fight-William-Zabka, like on the beach, or at the finals of the All-Valley Under-18 Karate Tournament.

The eventual training montage, which are basically musicals in their own right, will be replaced by a more over-the-top dance rendition of whatever schlub they get to play Daniel, dancing around, occasionally flailing his legs in whatever they’re going to consider kicks, and I’m going to cringe at just the thought, because I highly doubt that there’s a chance that I’ll actually see it; I don’t have any objection to Broadway or theatre in general, but I do bristle at the idea of the properties of my childhood all one-by-one being exploited and re-imagined in wildly conflicting mediums.

But more importantly, don’t get me started on whatever inevitably-will-be-racist guy they get to play Mr. Miyagi.  The true heart and soul of the entire series, whether it’s a Japanese guy that’s probably not old enough to portray the character, but is cast anyway because of his ability to dance and move, or whether they whitewash the role and give it to like fucking Henry Golding, it’s a no-win situation waiting to happen when they cast Mr. Miyagi, and it’s going to make me nauseated at the idea of some wildly inappropriate looking motherfucker playing what should be the late great Pat Morita.

Long story short, this doesn’t need to exist.  But because nothing is allowed to stay in the past, or isn’t sold to the nostalgia bastardization machine, here we are.  I question why this even needed to become a thing, but honestly, I can’t say that I’m the least bit surprised that it is, unfortunately.

The reflection post, circa 2019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
photo courtesy Matt Altmix

If I had to make an observation about what it’s like getting older, I think I would have to say something along the lines of increasingly feeling like there isn’t enough time, like ever, for like, anything and everything.  Maybe it’s exclusive to me, or perhaps it affects millions of others, but I feel that I spent an inordinate amount of time feeling anxious about how I don’t feel like there’s time for anything, or at least, there isn’t an adequate amount of time that I’d like in order to do particular things, and therefore I simply don’t do them.

Like video games, or starting a new television series; typically, I prefer to have like a nice, 2-3 hour block of time in which I can dive in and be properly acquainted with something new, learn the controls, characters, look for critical information that might re-emerge later when stories unfold.  I’m not the type of person who’s ever satisfied with a short introductory period or just a singular pilot episode; subsequently, if I don’t get such conditions, there’s a higher chance that I simply don’t even begin, because there’s always something else I could be doing instead that’s probably actually more productive, or at least essential to my general pace of living, and then suddenly it’s the next day, and I’ve got to go to work, where there’s seldom adequate time for my team to get their tasks done because we’re constantly behind schedule, and are reliant on the partnership of other teams in order to get our jobs done, but they’re lazy and constantly coasting their ways to the next weekend, and then the weekend comes and then it’s almost over, and it’s back to work on Monday where we have yet another planning meeting on how we’re going to catch up, but then the people we rely on are already beginning their downhill coasting towards the weekend on Tuesday afternoon, and this cycle of constantly feeling like there’s no time continues to cycle and repeat.

All this being said, if I had to look back at 2019 as a whole, I would have to say that I think it went by pretty quickly.  Often times, I’ve given thought to how fast things have flown by, and amazed at the idea that when I was a kid, I’d often thought that time couldn’t move slow enough, and how I had all the time in the world to beat and master every single Nintendo game that came across my path.  About how when I was a teenager, I was able to balance time between numerous friend groups, family and responsibilities; like this one time back in 2001 where I somehow remember balancing my newspaper job, going to Baltimore to meet up with some friends who were arriving from out of town for Otakon, driving back to Virginia to meet up with some other friends that night so we could grill out, going to work the next morning, stopping on Columbia on my way back up to Baltimore to visit a cousin, then going to Baltimore for Otakon, taking 200 pictures, coming back home, whipping up a photo gallery and recap of the con for my website, while going back to work. 

Like, I couldn’t even fathom doing that many activities in the span of a week at the age of 37 now.

However, in spite of the perpetual feeling that the clock is spinning faster, this doesn’t mean that my quality of life is necessarily worsening.  In fact, I can say with tremendous clarity that 2019 was a pretty incredible year.  Without question, some of the most grandiose and life-changing events occurred within 2019 and have laid down the foundation for the rest of said life.  Most notably highlighted by the event of having gotten married to my beautiful wife, and having an incredible wedding celebration surrounded by friends and family who all poured into Georgia to celebrate with us.  But then the honeymoon didn’t last that long, or maybe I could say the magic of a Disney cruise was a little too OP in our case, because shortly afterwards did we discover that mythical wife was pregnant, putting us on the fast track to parenthood, and the jarring realization that I was going to become a dad.

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A car manufacturer’s reputation is only as good as their product’s owners

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After nearly ten full years, I’ve said goodbye to my Kia Forte.  It’s still a little bittersweet at the time I’m writing this, in spite of the excitement of having a new car after nearly ten years.  But with a sliver under 150,000 miles, degrading brakes, a baby on the way, and just the fact that I simply wanted a new, larger vehicle, I felt that the time was right for me to make a switch.

I wanted to capitalize on being in a position to where I had the luxury of time to do research, test drive multiple cars, and play a little bit of negotiation, as well as have the ability to sit on the bench and wait things out if things weren’t looking promising.  I wasn’t as fortunate the last time I was in the market for a car, but things still worked out well for me, seeing as how it was then in which I drove off in my Forte, and it served me extremely well over the last 9+ years.

But the point of this entire post was that I wanted to give an appropriate swan song for my former car, because throughout their entire existence, Kia has often been perceived as a below-average car manufacturer, but seeing as how I just traded in one that had nearly 150,000 miles on it, never had any mechanical problems, and where I did pretty much no maintenance other than oil changes and new tires whenever they were needed, I can confidently vouch for the quality of Kia cars, and can proudly say that I owned one for the better part of a decade.

When I was in the market last, I was in a pretty bad situation.  I had a lemon of a Mazda that I still owed money on, but I was fed up to hell repairing it and willing to punt on the rest of the financing just to be free of it and have a car that was just plain reliable.  I wasn’t working full-time and was still in my life of freelance, so I couldn’t afford to get something that I’d risk being unable to pay the financing on it, so I had to accept the fact that I probably wouldn’t be getting a dream car or anything of the such this time around, and that I just needed something that could be relied upon.

The Ford Fiesta was actually my top pick going into my search back then, but I told myself to drive anything and everything that was in my limited budget, and put aside all previous stereotypes and perceptions, and think of the greater good of getting a reliable car.  I took a weekend day to go to a part of town that had a large number of dealerships, and I went on a spree test driving cars.  Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, Chevy Cobalt, whatever was a compact car that I could make the numbers work.

Eventually, I found a Ford dealership that had a Fiesta that was also a stick shift, and I looked forward to getting in and taking it for a whirl.  But from the moment I sat down, my expectations were immediately souring.  The seats felt small and cheap, and the interior was cheap-looking, plasticky, and everything I touched from the console to the door handle felt shoddy and sub-par.  When I took the car off the lot, I shift from feel and sound, and I realized that I was revving to like 5,500 rpm before shifting, because the car just had no power and needed that much juice in order to get moving.  There was a lot of body roll, and the brakes felt soft and uninspired, and frankly I was ready to get the fuck off the lot when I was done with this.

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The Twenty-Year Club

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Going into the wedding, there were two pictures that I had pictured in my head that I was determined to make happen during the reception.  I didn’t tell anyone about them, I didn’t try to organize and plan a specific point during the reception when they were going to occur, but I kept the idea in my head, and planned on making them reality when it was time for the reception.

Despite how harmonious everything ultimately ended up during the wedding weekend, the reality is that I had three pretty defined groups, representing for lack of a better term, my side of the guest list.  Family, my friends, and then my groomsmen.  This isn’t to say that my groomsmen are not my friends, frankly as far as I’m concerned, they’re just a little bit more, and more like additional family than they are just friends.  However, that being said, it was with my two groups of friends in which I had two particular photos that I wanted to take during the reception.

I’m fortunate that I was able to make them occur, and they were among the photographs that I was looking forward to seeing the most after the wedding.  The significance of these particularly desired shots was simply the fact that among all the players involved in these shots, I had reached the point where I had known all of them for (nearly) twenty years; two-zero.

I’m doubtful that I am I going to ever really be the guy on social media with thousands of followers and a number next to “friends” that is anything over like 200.  I’m far too guarded, paranoid and too much of a shut-in to just willy-nilly friend every single person in site, not to say that those who do are any lesser than I am; it’s just not me.

But the people in my life that I do call friends, these are typically the people that I will do so, for a span of time that’s more accurately compared to severe jail sentences than quick and meaningless short relationships.  Friendships with me are always more likely to be long-haul endeavors than just relationships out of conveniences, which isn’t to say that I’ve had my fair share of those, not that there’s anything wrong with those either.

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I wonder if there’s any coming back this time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MomoCon was this past weekend, and I didn’t go at all, even despite future wife and I having free badges, courtesy of a friend who worked for the con.  We had a lot of wedding decorations to do over the weekend, which consumed pretty much the entire three-day weekend, but the thing is that even if we had no plans, I can’t say that I really would’ve gone anyway. 

I didn’t really know of that many people who were going that I’d have wanted to hope to run into.  And frankly, I had little desire to fight the traffic to go into Downtown Atlanta on a holiday weekend, and I didn’t really feel much desire or inspiration to get my camera out and take pictures of costumers.

The thing is, this time last year, I was in a position where I had wanted to go to MomoCon, but couldn’t, because I had to entertain guests in from out of town.  I had undeniable FOMO as the weekend trucked along and I wasn’t there and I was disappointed that I didn’t get to go when the weekend had passed.

However this year, I felt no FOMO at all, and I simply didn’t care that didn’t go.  I thought maybe it’s because my weekend was so booked up was why I felt that way, but as I said, there’s no guarantee that I would’ve gone in the first place even if I had the free time.

What I’m getting to is that I think I’m over conventions again.  I say again, because for those who’ve known me for a long time, might remember a stretch of time where I was kind of burned out on conventions, and I really stopped going and actively sought out alternative things to do during them so I could deliberately distance myself from them.  There was part of me that was just being a hipster about things growing in popularity, and there was another part of me that was growing jaded by the increasing notion that conventions were turning into vehicles for attention-starved narcissists to be fake, and some really unsavory clique culture forming.

I eventually got excited about them again, because I had a lot of friends who started becoming the people that ran them, and gave me a little bit of preferential treatment if I showed up to them, and that I also had other friends who were very inclusive of adding me to their costume groups and gave me real drive and objective to wanting to participate and attend.  For a couple of years, cons were fun again, and I was enjoying them again.

Continue reading “I wonder if there’s any coming back this time” →