Tag: owned

How have the Mariners sucked so historically?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was seeing some news about the 2025 baseball hall of fame ballot, and the only sure-fire, slam dunk guarantee on it is Ichiro, and the real question is if he’s going to get a unanimous induction, or if this will be another year where some anonymous BBWAA tryhard deliberately doesn’t vote for him for the sanctity of the Hall of Fame, and then goes into hiding so they don’t have to take any criticism for their, most likely in the case of Ichiro, racism because there’s absolutely no metric or no logical rationale why he isn’t worthy of unanimous induction.

I don’t particularly care for the overly-nationalistic disparaging remarks he’s made about Korean baseball throughout his career, but there’s absolutely no way to deny the fact that he’s was a legendary player, but I digress and will save these bullets for the midseason for when he inevitably gets 99.76% of the vote and one voter who will successfully remain anonymous, goes into hiding afterward.

But Felix Hernandez is also on the ballot for the first time, and I think he’s up for debate on whether he’s Hall-worthy or not; the man has a Cy Young and pitched a perfect game.  He doesn’t have the 3,000+ strikeouts, and he started his decline phase at around 32, but at the same time, his major league career started when he was 19, so he still enjoyed over a decade in the big leagues.

He also didn’t win a World Series, but the thing is, and the impetus of this entire post, neither has anyone else in Mariners history, no matter how talented or legendary of players have played for the team. 

It really got me thinking, how have the Seattle Mariners sucked so much throughout history?  Sure, they’ve only been around since 1977, way younger than teams like the Braves, Phillies, Reds, Yankees and Red Sox, but still, in the team’s entire history, they’ve only made the playoffs five times, and have collectively gone 15-22 in those appearances.  They’ve never made it to the World Series, and there was one year in which they set the modern record for regular season wins, winning an astonishing 116 games, only to get bounced out of the playoffs unceremoniously by the Yankees in the ALCS.

There was a stretch in time where the Mariners had a prime Ken Griffey, Jr., a Cy Young winning Randy Johnson, and even a young and rapidly rising Alex Rodriguez.  All were gone by 2001, but then there was a stretch when Ichiro came to the United States, and by 2005, Felix Hernandez arrived and was routinely one of the best pitchers in the game.  In between these eras was Edgar Martinez, who is a Hall of Famer in his own right, and was beloved in Seattle that the street near their ballpark is named after him.

Like, with all the talent that has been in Seattle for long swaths of time, really begs the question, how have the Mariners actually sucked?

Yes, no single player can carry entire teams, but that logic is nowhere less than it is in baseball, where single players have managed to carry entire teams on their backs for small stretches of time, and usually talented players often inspire other talented players to want to come play with them, making the teams richer in talent when it happens.

It’s just incredible to think that even with such legendary talents such as Griffey and Ichiro, Johnson and Martinez, and even A-Rod and King Felix, the Mariners just could never put things together and see any success.  Like, after the 2001 season where they won 116 games, the franchise went 20 years before they saw the playoffs again, and frankly that’s mostly on account of the fact that they added an extra round which let a non-division winner like the 2022 squad even have chance.

As good as Ichiro was, after his mind-blowing rookie season where he won RoY and MVP, 2001 was the only time he ever saw the playoffs as a Mariner.  Felix Hernandez, as good as he was, never pitched a single post-season game in his entire career.  Griffey and Randy Johnson played in two of the Mariners’ five playoff appearances, Alex Rodriguez played in three, and Edgar Martinez played in four of them, since he played until he was 62 years old.

Things don’t really look like they’re going to get any better any time soon, especially in today’s MLB ecosystem, but I’d have to wager that after all this time, the Seattle Mariners franchise’s perception has become reality – they’re simply a squad that will never win, no matter how talented of players emerge and play for them, they either fizzle their careers out in Seattle, or they go to other places and win championships, like Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson did, Kyle Seager very recently, and even old vets like Jamie Moyer and Freddy Garcia.

Because when some of the greatest players in history couldn’t do it while they were there, sometimes concurrently, then I’m not going to wager that anyone will.  Most know that there’s no crapshoot like there is in baseball, but the Mariners are plagued with something completely else.

Thoughts on the RAW is Netflix debut

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was looking forward to the debut of RAW on Netflix, because I hadn’t seen an episode of RAW in close to almost a decade, since my house had long since cut the cables, and I could usually keep up with the product solely on YouTube highlights or just catching the PPVs PLEs.  Furthermore, being a monumental debut class of episode, I had expectations that the WWE was going to put their best foot forward and have a loaded show.  If the Saturday Night’s Main Event revival they had a month ago was any indication to how they were going to treat special events, I thought the E was ready to pop off, and I was excited to see what was going to happen.

And of course, there was the whole curiosity of what the E was going to do on Netflix, as far as the freedom to push boundaries were going to be, since this isn’t cable television and they aren’t beholden to the television rating standards, I was curious to see what, if any, behavioral changes that were going to take place.  However, they are still a publicly traded company, with collaborative programming still on cable television, so it wasn’t any surprise that they still kept it fairly PG, aside from The Rock saying ‘bullshit’ at one point.

Overall, the show was decent, but I’d be lying if I didn’t have all sorts of opinions and criticisms for it, mostly the fact that the episode was a little bit drowned in the pomp and celebration of the move to Netflix, with all sorts of appearances, cameos and segments that chewed up time, drug on a little bit, and most importantly, got in the way of actual wrestling product.  The three-hour show had a total of four matches, and on paper they sounded good, but I don’t know what it was, but they were all pretty underwhelming in the grand spectrum of things.

The matches were sloppy and got sloppier as the night progressed, and honestly a Seth Rollins vs. CM Punk match could have been on a Wrestlemania card without anyone  questioning it, but as far as I’m concerned it was the worst match of the night for the RAW is Netflix debut.  I don’t know whether their personal beefs interfered with their ability to do business, or if there were any subtle instances of trying to sabotage one another, but the whole match was kind of clunky, and I felt like it was a good example of two talented guys that just didn’t click in the ring.

It’s like the talent caved into the magnitude of the scenario, which is funny considering all of these specific performers have worked multiple Wrestlemanias among other big shows at this point, and those shows are usually two to three times the size of this episode of RAW.

But the biggest thing in my opinion was the fact that the crowd was absolutely dead as fuck.  This was something my bros and I discussed in our group chat during the show, but my consensus was that the crowd was a dead crowd, and I always believe that performers really can feed off of the fans, and hot crowds can really inspire stalwart performances, and since the RAW is Netflix show was held in Los Angeles, primarily full of people who just wanted to there for the hot ticket, but not really because they’re actual wrestling fans, it led to an arena that was full, but full of mostly casuals who don’t know the nuances of a show, intricacies of existing storylines, or have any genuine fandom for any of the workers.  This was an event, and casuals want to be seen at events, and actual wrestling fans that feed a show their energy, weren’t there, be it being priced out or simply incapable of getting in because of the fairweather scenesters were boxing them all out.

Sure, guys like The Rock and John Cena got some big reactions.  Roman Reigns got a decent pop, as did Rhea Ripley, Seth Rollins and CM Punk.  Jey Uso didn’t get the raucous reaction that he normally has been getting, as the most over guy in the company currently.  Dominic Mysterio and the New Day, who have been getting absolutely drowned out by boos and heat in the last few months, I’m convinced had to have boos piped into the arena because of how lukewarm the dead crowd was.

It’s like the people in attendance had it in them to have initial reactions to everything they saw, but by and large were sitting on their hands for the remainder of every segment, reacting to big spots and probably whatever the actual fans dispersed throughout the arena were reacting to and going along with it.  It was almost like watching a New Japan show, by how non-plussed the fans were, except whereas the Japanese chalk it up to cultural meekness and lack of expression, the LA scenesters were dead because they’re not really wrestling fans as much as they wanted to be at a big event so they could boast about it on social media.

I get it, it was important for the E to put their best foot forward, have it in LA and pack it with as many execs, celebrities and people who might actually gain more exposure, but in the process, they priced and pushed out actual fans from attending and it led to a dead crowd that didn’t help the general uninspired performing from the workers on the card.  Wrestlemanias and big shows get away with celeb-stacking and posturing, because they’re held at giant venues where the majority of the audience can still be actual fans, but the dinky Intuit Dome with their capacity of like 16,000, had the majority of the attendance being casuals and/or scenesters, and it was painfully obvious.

However, if there was one segment where the crowd woke up and came to life that truly stood out, was when Hulk Hogan made his appearance and was absolutely booed the fuck out of the building.  It was like the fans were told that they had a finite amount of booing that they were allowed to do, and they passed on using any of it on Dom Mysterio or The New Day and absolutely unloaded on Hulk Hogan.  Unsurprisingly, this was my most notable and entertaining moment of the evening where the most emotion was elicited from me, in the form of laughter.

The funniest part about it all was that how out of touch Hulk Hogan is with the world and the current state of the industry, is that he stood there, somehow surprised that a California crowd was booing him into oblivion when just less than three months ago, he was ripping his shirt and cutting a cringeworthy promo in support of the orange turd prior to the election.  Poor Jimmy Hart standing there with his longtime friend, waving Old Glory, complicit by association, taking tons of shrapnel.  And then Hogan just goes straight into his babyface promo, putting over Netflix, putting over his beer company, and putting over the company, while everyone is still just booing the fuck out of him.

The power of a crowd when they get hot!

Take all the pomp and circumstance, and the whole Netflix narrative out of the night, and this was an extremely mediocre show.  The matches were average at best, the crowd was dead as fuck, and not even all the special appearances did much for me.  A tremendous amount of time was spent on showing off celebrities and speaking segments, and in true first-world wrestling smark problems, the lack of formal commercial breaks really cramped my style of multitasking while watching wrestling like I used to.

The good news is that whether it was intentional or not, the RAW on Netflix bar has been set at not a tremendously high level, and the brand can only go upward from here, and the sky’s the limit.  I’m sure once the novelty of being on Netflix wears out, and regular fans are allowed to start going back to the shows, business will get back to normal, and as far as the E is concerned, that’s probably exactly where they want to be.

Revisiting a massive biff of an old post: Chris Sale to the Braves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As daily as I can, I like to look at the posts I’ve blathered over the years, utilizing the On This Day WordPress extensions.  It feeds into what narcissism I do have, I like to see if there have been any noteworthy changes in my opinions over the years, and in cases like this, it’s interesting to see when I’ve made some clairvoyant predictions or in this case, colossal biffs.

A year ago, I was none too pleased to see that the Braves’ solution for their lack of pitching depth was trading for Chris Sale, when there were many acceptable pitchers available, such as Sonny Gray, Tyler Glasnow, Dylan Cease, and as pipe dream as it would’ve been, Shohei Ohtani.  Some were more preferable than others, but any one of them would have been an obvious upgrade to what was a typical Braves-ey pitching rotation.

All of the ships sailed, and then the Braves traded away noteworthy infield prospect Vaughn Grissom to the Boston Red Sox for Chris Sale, which had me scratching my head and immediately pondering just how bad of a deal this was sounding like; even more so when the Braves immediately extended Chris Sale for two more years at actual money, something that the Braves are basically allergic to doing, locking themselves in for two more years at $38M.

Sale used to be one of the best pitchers in the game, but he was two years removed from Tommy John Surgery, a maligned season where his numbers fell off a cliff, and looked like he was busted goods at this point.  At the time, it seemed like the Braves were trading away a valuable chip for a broken pitcher, and I thought that this was going to be a colossal L for the Braves, punishment for being the usual Braves-ey cheap, bargain basement hunters.

Fast forward back to present time, and Chris Sale is the National League Cy Young winner, after pitching the triple crown of leading the NL in Wins, Strikeouts and ERA.  I’m not entirely sure how he didn’t get a unanimous vote, but the BBWAA is a bunch of spiteful blowhards who don’t really vote with any objectivity in the first place, so I guess it’s no surprise, but the point is, I doubted the effectiveness of acquiring Chris Sale, and was completely wrong, and I’m big enough to admit it.

Chris Sale was the epitome of the ace pitcher he used to be for the White Sox and the Red Sox, and he truly turned the clock back and pitched lights out baseball all year long.  Especially when Spencer Strider went down, it was Sale who was the bastion of stability and acted like the stopper, when Max Fried buckled under the weight of the walk year, Charlie Morton really started to show is age, and whenever the squad kept trotting Bryce Elder out there and expected fans to accept him as a viable starting pitcher.

And to further reflect on the trade itself, Vaughn Grissom put up a clunker season for Boston, hitting mediocrely for their Triple-A squad and even worse when he was called up.  He’s still pretty young and playing ahead of his age expectations, but if the last three years have been any indication of what kind of path he’s headed, then it looks like the Braves are going to continue to win this trade, as long as Sale continues to pitch well and Grisson continues to slide.

Although I admit the biff I had had with my opinion of this trade, the worst part of it all is that this does buy the Braves front office a little equity with the opinion that they might know what they’re doing.  It brings some validation to their decisions to shop the bargain bins and for a little while, it gives them a little grace whenever they pull this act again in the near future, that their next (few) low-risk/high-reward decisions could always end up being the next Chris Sale.

As pleased I was with Chris Sale in 2024, Chris Sale was most definitely the exception and not the rule, and I’ll be ready to pounce on scathing the Braves for being the Barves when they make their next shitty Braves-ey cheapskate move, without much concern that I’d have to revisit it in the future if I’m wrong.

Of course white people need their own version of Squid Game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker: US remake of Squid Game by David Fincher confirmed

Here’s the thing, I actually really like David Fincher.  Man did Fight Club and Mindhunter, two titles I hold in extremely high regard.  But I do harbor some sour grapes for him for being the cocksucker who will apparently be spearheading an American-localization of Squid Game, which seems about as essential as little silicone pot attachments to prop open your lids or hold your ladles.

Obviously, I am hardly a fan of any time Hollywood gets their greedy grubby claws into an idea that is not inherently theirs, but then whitewashes the fuck out of them because white people in America are too xenophobic and/or illiterate to consume anything that isn’t produced in America or has subtitles and requires reading to comprehend.

Squid Game is already an amazing series with fantastic visuals, storytelling, writing, music and overall production, and requires absolutely no remaking.  But Americans are too fucking lazy and unintelligent that one is apparently in the works to be made, which we all know is going to have nothing but bullshit American actors and performers, and out of respect to the Orientals, they’ll probably cast one Asian guy to be the American equivalent of Abdul Ali, who was the token foreigner in Korea, except that’ll probably end up being Henry Golding.

Benedict Cumberbatch will undoubtedly be Gi-Hyun, and the Red Light/Green Light doll will be remade to look like Sabrina Carpenter.  And because they’ll want to have some diversity, and we all know “diversity” in American means “black people,” they’ll have Tiffany Haddish be the Front Man, except that it’s now the Front Woman, where they can kill two birds with one stone by having a black woman in a prevalent role.

Like I said, David Fincher is a good director whom I do like his works, but it definitely is a bitter pill to swallow that he’s taking point on a flagrant example of white washing.  Squid Gmae doesn’t need recreation.  American audiences need better education and reinforced understanding that the world does not cater to them.  Accept that outstanding media can come from other countries and learn how to fucking read subtitles.

As Ho Bong-Joon said,

Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.

It’s astounding the arrogance of America to take something wildly successful and not requiring of any recreation, and doing it anyway, and wasting inevitably an ungodly amount of money and resources to do so, when instead better stories and content could have been created instead.

I want to say that I’ll refuse to watch an inevitable Squid Game remake, but I’m not going to kid myself, curiosity and the inevitable want to make a scathing comparison might make me do so, regardless of my vitriol for the idea in the first place.  The want for brog content is endless, and if it inspires writing, I’m usually game for just about anything.

**I actually gave this some more thought after I had initially written this, and I think I’ve figured out why there is a perceived need for a white people version of Squid Game.  I’ve seen a lot of memes and reels about Squid Game as of late, and I’ve noticed that almost all of them are referring to characters solely by their player numbers.

And it’s my belief that this spurred the want for a variant of Squid Game where the characters can have good ol’ American names like Dave or Harold, so that white people can avoid the indignity of being exposed for not being able to, or having to suffer the potential embarrassment of having to pronounce ching-chongey foreign names like Gi-Hun, Sae-Byeok, Geum-Ja or Abdul Ali, when they want to inevitably talk about Squid Game with other people.

Because if there’s one thing white people really dislike, it’s feeling self-conscious about potentially sounding racially insensitive about other cultures, so it seems like classic white people logic to instead of learning how to properly pronounce Korean names to just instead drop millions on millions of dollars to just remake Squid Game altogether, where Gi-Hun can go by Timothee, Dae-Ho can be Kaiden, Nam-Gyu can be Trent and In-Ho can be Hunter.

Now it makes perfect sense to why a white people version of Squid Game even needs to come to fruition.

Dad Brog (#144) – Watch what you say, lest the sponges absorb

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the numerous gifts that the girls had received over Christmas, was this little toy nail salon by Melissa & Doug™, propagating stereotypes of Asian business owners in America.  I’m not the type of dad that’s too manly and too masculine to play with whaterver my kids want to play, so I joined them at the kitchen table to demonstrate what I know about the nail salon business, not to mentioned the set does actually give a pretty detailed ordered list of what is perceived as the typical, getting nails done routine.

Naturally, I couldn’t just play with my kids without injecting a little bit of my customary humor into the scenario, so I would jokingly mention that during various parts of the getting nails done journey, this is where we (the one doing the nails) speak in a different language, not mentioning that the speaking being done, is talking shit about the customer right to their face, among their peers, because everyone knows all these Vietnamese and Korean yentas pull this shit and have been doing so since the dawn of the business model.

I nearly lost it when I switched roles with #1, and she was the one doing my nails, and how she would girl-splain to her little sister the order of tasks during getting nails done, and when she got to the part of primpting the cuticles and drying nails, she said “this is where we speak a different language now” and I actually did lose it, thinking back to the moment.

And then I sighed and had to remind myself that I really have to be careful of the things I say around my kids, because they are sponges and absorb everything they hear from their surroundings, and it really doesn’t take more than hearing something once or twice before they do so, and begin formulating how they can use it themselves.

For years, I’ve always referred to the second Christmas tree that we put in the upstairs landing of my home as “the jihad tree,” because it’s the tree where mythical wife has a jihad against any ornaments that aren’t Disney related for the bigger, fancier primary Christmas tree that resides downstairs, are allowed to be hung and displayed on, and I’ve made it my own personal tradition to deliberately amass the gaudiest and silliest and most unwanted ornaments from the discount bins from the year before to be hung on it.

Considering my kids go to school at a Jewish establishment, I figure it’s for the best that they don’t pick up on the terminology of jihads, and worse off explain it to their peers and teachers that we have a jihad tree at home, so it’s been referred to simply as “dada’s tree” instead.

Unfortunately, the worst was when my kids picked up on the slip up of profanity, and I remember hearing on the monitor during their quiet time, my oldest saying the word “fuck” and my eyes bugging out of my head at realizing what she had said.  Or when the kids picked up on “damn it” and blurted it out themselves.

There was a period of time when I, wouldn’t necessarily let it fly, but I would let it slide, banking on the then-notion that they were too young to pick up on it, or its context, but those days are long behind us.  Now it’s onto “oh poop” or other innocuous remarks, where I still don’t really want them to pick up on the context of them, but at least they’re not going to get us as parents a stern nasty eyeballing if they were to repeat them out in public.

Either way, it’s a good thing that they can’t read, much less know that dada has a brog that’s been up and running for 23+ years.  I can’t imagine the day they eventually realize and learn about it, and if they care to read about the journey of my life through my brog, realizing that their dad sure wrote a ton of shit and profanity, even if he tried his best to suppress it in speech while they were growing up.  But one of these days, that bridge will be built and eventually crossed, but I’ll deal with it when that time arrives; probably with a brog post.

Terry Bogard in SF is basically Sonic in Smash

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to pretend like I follow or even care about the state of the video game industry, beyond if there’s anyone I know within it that relies on it to stay afloat for the health of their wellbeing.  But a while back, I heard that Terry Bogard from the Fatal Fury series was going to be made available as a playable character – in Street Fighter 6; and my eyebrow scrunched and I tilted my head like a dog when hearing something confusing.

Why.. is a Fatal Fury character being released in Street Fighter?

Clearly, somewhere along the timelines of SNK, my guess is that business had to go so tits up at some point to where they began to have to sell off or lease off intellectual property, and stronger entities like Capcom are more than willing to invest in established IPs if they’re made available.  And so, despite being one of the Street Fighter franchise’s most prominent competitors, Fatal Fury has basically relegated themselves to being the uncomfortable victim company in a metaphorical merger.

So Terry Bogard, the de facto main character and protagonist of the Fatal Fury franchise, is now novelty DLC character in the Street Fighter franchise.  Supposedly, Mai Shiranui is on the way as well if she’s not already out, and that seems appropriate too, considering she was the pin-up for basically all of SNK, and was their answer to Chun Li as far as having a strong female character with sex appeal.

But it all seems kind of weird and awkward to see the fate that seems to have befallen SNK to where their strongest characters are basically being loaned to the Street Fighter franchise, despite the fact that at one point, they held their own, and existed as a viable and competitive alternate to them.

It reminds me of when I saw Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character in one of the Super Smash Bros. games.  The main character of the franchise that was spearheading Sega’s determination to overthrow Nintendo’s position in the video game industry, now just a playable character in one of their massive library of titles.  And I’ve read plenty about the history of Sega and their proud and defiant history of trying to compete and defeat Nintendo, which adds to the feeling of sadness and defeat that they’ve gotten to the point where their IPs were absorbed by Nintendo, and at the mercy of their discretion at what would see the light of day in the future.

That’s kind of what it feels like to me, seeing Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui and any future Fatal Fury or other SNK characters showing up in Street Fighter or any future Capcom title for that matter.  There’s an air of defeat and quite literal ownage, if it is true that Capcom has purchased the rights to their competitors IPs. 

But let’s not chalk this up as a complete win for Capcom here; no, getting ahold of other existing characters just means Capcom can remain on cruise control as far as creating new and interesting characters goes.  The company hasn’t really had an original idea in seemingly over a decade now, leaning consistently on remakes, remasters, re-releases in all of their signature franchises, like Street Fighter and Resident Evil.  Packaging all their old arcade beat-em-ups into these overpriced collections and hitting them with a high pass filter and claiming they’re remastered.

Instead of attempting to create and innovate, Capcom would rather get throw money and purchase other properties, even of their competitors, and just merge them into their existing machines and hope that people continue to spend their cash on their shit.  And that’s how we end up with Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui in Street Fighter.  It’ll be fun to see whom they trot out next, surely guys like Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi need to make their way in, but beyond them it’s anyone’s guess at who and how they’ll manage to shoehorn any other Fatal Fury names into a Street Fighter roster without bloating it up to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 proportions.

Thanksgiving musings and perspectives

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the Thanksgiving holiday this year, my house trekked north back up to Virginia to spend some time with my side of the family.  Such was always something I was pretty ambivalent about in the past, but ever since I had kids, I do feel that there is some importance in having them have connection with my side of the family, not to mention try to build relationships with the litany of cousins they have, as I did growing up.

Overall, it was a very good trip, and I’m happy to have spent a good bit of time with my sister, cousins and parents, but most of all, I was happiest that my kids got to spend time with their cousins and my family members and be able to build relationships and connections with family that they don’t get to see too often.  My happiest memories looking back on the trip were seeing my kids playing exuberantly with their cousins, and I’m thankful for my niece, nephew and the kids of my cousins all being so good to my children, and I’m optimistic that they can have a similar upbringing to my own, where the cousins all were pretty tightly knit growing up.

However, an introduction like this doesn’t happen if there weren’t some things that weren’t positive, and unfortunately for this holiday there were some bad things that definitely put a damper on things.

Firstly, to cut to the chase, I hit a deer while driving, and my car suffered a nasty crack on the bumper as well as the headlight assembly.  I was driving along a road that I’d driven thousands of times in my life while living there, and I’d never seen deer on this stretch of road before.  I was probably going no faster than 25-28 mph while accelerating when the deer popped out of a grassy median and it was so bang-bang fast that I was a good 200 feet past and continuing before it really registered what had happened.

The thing is, while on the drive up, I distinctly remembered having a thought about just how many dead deer I had seen on the shoulders all over I-85 in southern Virginia, and how I really should keep my guard up while driving at night on this trip.  But as I said, this was a stretch of road that was long developed, not very close to any real wooded areas where deer might like to reside in, and where I’d never seen deer before in my life.  So my guard was definitely not up at this moment in time, and it just figures that would be when my premonition came to fruition, and I plastered the poor animal.

I replayed the moment in my head countless times at this point and the thing is, I’m not mad at the deer or the species as a whole, like I might’ve been in the past for putting me in this situation.  Northern Virginia is an endlessly developing area, and it’s a no brainer that the constant sprawl and development in Fairfax county and surrounding areas are displacing the wildlife all over, and next thing I know I’m hitting deer in a place where I’d never seen deer before in my life.

What I am thankful for is the fact that nobody in my car was hurt, and to my knowledge nobody behind me appeared to be hurt, as I was the first car in the line of cars turning onto the road, and it looked like there were plenty of braking going on behind me.  My kids were little zombies watching the iPad, so they didn’t notice anything but the sound of impact and the bump of me running it over, and didn’t seem to care because they were too busy watching Little Einsteins.  This wasn’t a conversation that I would’ve wanted to have had, so I take it as a win, on all accounts.

Additionally, despite looking pretty nasty when I originally did stop, when I got to my cousin’s place, we were able to pop the initial dent back out, which was a big victory, as it was pushing the wheel liner into contact with the tire, and there was initial talk about cutting it off in order to remain drivable.  A little duct tape and a few zip ties, and my car was safe enough to have made the return trip to Georgia, to where its repair is now on the table in coming weeks.

Here’s the thing though-as much as something like this probably would have tanked the entire trip for me in the past, I realized that there were so many other victories to be had given the circumstances, that the main L taken that will cost actual money and likely aggravation of playing car Tetris or a rental didn’t seem so bad.  Plus, when I got back to my cousin’s place, dinner was ready, two beers, a fire pit, reminiscing with my cousins while hearing the sound of my kids having a blast with their cousins really rescued the night and I like to think that this was all one of those, you know you’re maturing, kind of scenarios.

Also, waking up to the worst news possible of hearing of a passing of a loved one to my brother’s family really does knock everything else into a genuinely thankful perspective, on Thanksgiving.  Pretty much nothing can top that as far as bad news is concerned, but again, trying to find the silver lining in bad situations, given the circumstances of the departed’s final days, there’s probably a modicum of relief in knowing that they’re no longer in any pain or having to fight the good fight any longer.

As sad and heartbroken I felt for my brother’s family, it really did help put everything else into perspective about the things that myself and everyone else could genuinely be thankful for.  My kids were safe and unaware of the deer situation, most everyone in my family was in good health.  I got to spend some time with my parents with my kids, and I’m glad that my kids have interactions and memories with them, because I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen a grandfather in my life.

Even the whole car debacle afforded me a bonus good memory, because when I took the car on a shakedown ride to make sure it was safe at highway speeds and cornering, I took the opportunity while I was alone to pop by a close friend’s house to say hi and wish them a happy Thanksgiving.

The drive back was long, and doing Richmond to Atlanta was the longest stretch that my kids had ever had to endure in the car, but equipped with a lot of snacks and an iPad full of downloaded shows, they did great.  My only gripe is the feeling of being a glorified Uber driver, since I have to focus on driving, and none of my adult passengers can get their heads off of their phones to actually converse or be remotely the types of passengers to help a ride not feel so long.

But as a whole, I still look back at Thanksgiving positively.  My kids had a great time with my family, and I was happy to catch up with everyone who came to dinner, and I can only hope that future family gatherings in the future will be as good as this one was, but hopefully with no more deer incidents.