Tag: comparison

Dexter took a hiatus about as long as the Ultimate Warrior did

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mostly perplexed: Dexter television series set to return in a limited series capacity

My knee-jerk reaction to this was, whyyyyy???  But then I stop for a few minutes and think about how much I enjoyed the television series, in spite of its ups and downs throughout the season, the staunch survival through the writers’ strike(s), the awkward behind-the-scenes relationship between Deb and Dexter and their season six storyline, and of course, the head-scratching ending that spoiler alert it’s only been six years, resulted in a bearded lumberjack Dexter, in exile in the Pacific Northwest, and wonder… maybe?  Maybe this isn’t going to be one of those cringe-worthy reboots, like just about every old ABC network TGIF sitcom?

I mean, there’s a lot of terminology to define television shows these days.  Reboots, spin-offs, revivals, etc.  Even the linked article uses the term “revival” to define what the return of Dexter would be, and I guess among most available definitions, it’s the closest thing that might apply, but considering it’s more or less seemingly going to be a continuation of the series, it might as well just be a very late and overdue, ninth season.

Michael C. Hall will be reprising the role of Dexter Morgan, and frankly that’s all that there really needs to be.  I imagine there will be a bunch of flashback sequences to re-acquaint those who might have forgotten a lot of the past which might result in some paydays for the actors who played Debs, Angel, Masuoka, LaGuerta and hopefully Doakes.  And honestly, depending on how well the series performs, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see an appearance by Yvonne Strahovski, which would probably kick the label of “limited” off of the series, and next thing we know, there are two additional seasons ordered by Showtime.

The thing is, the series didn’t really end in a manner in which it would be difficult to pick back up where it left off.  Considering the nature of the general concept, it doesn’t matter if it’s in Miami, Florida or Tukwila, Washington, there are murderers and psychopaths everywhere, and Dexter would never be at a loss for murderers for him to murder, righteously.

Continue reading “Dexter took a hiatus about as long as the Ultimate Warrior did” →

The corporate workplace injury risk

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In the world of internet sports fandom analysis, every sport’s offseason is often pocked with discussions on the player(s) that everyone’s favorite teams should want to acquire, whether it’s through a trade or free agency.  It’s a thankless and pointless black hole of exercises, because in the grand spectrum of things, the chances of a professional sporting franchise actually utilizing the opinions of a bunch of internet armchair general manager tough guys is probably pretty slim, and what it really amounts to is a bunch of dudes on the internet vying to see who might actually be right about theories or predictions.

Among one of the more predominant tropes of internet sports arguing is the dreaded injury risk player.  As the name insinuates, these are professional athletes who have a reputation of getting injured frequently, and therefore not capable of playing the kids games in which they’re contracted for large sums of money to perform.  These are often times players capable of above average talent when they’re healthy, but the constant fear of them getting hurt and providing zero ROI is significant of a deterrent to actually jeopardize their employment chances.

A good example of an injury risk player is linebacker Jadeveon Clowney.  This guy is an absolute monster defenseman who is capable of altering an opponent’s entire offensive scheme just to mitigate his impact; that is, when he’s actually playing, and not on injured reserve, nursing a laundry list of injuries throughout his seven year career that’s enabled him to play a full 16-game season only once.

Pitcher Stephen Strasburg is also another good example, as sure, he’s helped the Nationals win a World Series sure, but from a business standpoint, the guy isn’t glass fragile as he once was, but can be assured to miss at least a month every single season with some sort of really questionable (pussy) injuries.  He’s made 30 starts in a season just three times in his eleven year career, and someone I’d definitely classify as an injury risk player.

Continue reading “The corporate workplace injury risk” →

Appreciation for what LeBron James has accomplished

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whether you like LeBron James or you don’t, what can’t be disputed is the success he’s had throughout his career.  After winning his fourth NBA championship, with his third different franchise, I think it’s safe to say that he’s on a platform that not even guys like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant can measure up to him.

Obviously most everyone in the sports world is generally under the belief that MJ is the true Greatest Of All Time, and if there was ever a person in history that would have come close to the crown, MJ himself basically said it was Kobe.  I don’t disagree with Jordan being the GOAT and that Kobe was the closest thing to the Heir to Air, but at the same time, I really began to think that there was a lot of deliberate disrespect sent to LeBron while these claims were made.

I kind of get it too, I thought LeBron was pretty shitty when he jumped to the Heat, and had the whole The Decision spectacle, but as time as passed, and his body of work has expanded and grown, and we’ve seen the kid grow into the man he is today, and all I really want to say these days is, fuck the comparisons to MJ or Kobe, LeBron is just out there being the greatest LeBron there could possibly be.  The GLBOAT.

Because when the day is over, LeBron is never going to get the respect that MJ or Kobe ever got.  So, and I’m guessing he’s already figured it out himself already, he’s fine with that, and he’s simply carving out his own legacy that doesn’t measure up to them, and raising his own bar, that will be the measuring stick for all sorts of future players to try to aspire to be the GOAT or the GLBOAT.

Continue reading “Appreciation for what LeBron James has accomplished” →

Let’s replace “Krogan” with “Americans”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know what spawned the line of thinking, but I recently had a thought in my head about comparing the mythical one-day vaccine to coronavirus to the cure to the Krogan genophage in the Mass Effect series.  Frankly, I don’t know how this post is going to pan out, but I figured I may as well just start writing, and see where it ends up.

For those who don’t know Mass Effect lore, the Krogan are a race of these almost dinosaur-ish, triceratops-ish, reptilian species.  They’re ultra-tough, aggressive, burly and violent, and as the story goes, they reproduced at a speed that gave concern to the galactic alliance, and for lack of a better term, a virus or genetic ailment of some sort, known as the genophage, was unleashed onto the entire race, in order to help suppress their population growth.  Yes, it’s a fucked up concept, but as all stories go, there’s really no bigger villains in the galaxy than man (and their intergalactic allies).

In Mass Effect 3, there’s a mission (Priority: Tuchanka) where the cure for the genophage is developed, and it’s up to you the player to travel to the Krogan planet, to determine the fate of the entire species.  If successful, the cure to the genophage is airborne released into the skies of Tuchanka, where it presumably cures every Krogan who breathes.  Given the way ME3 ends, who’s to say if it actually amounts to anything, but it’s a nice gesture to try and give them some sort of semblance of life back to the Krogan before the Reapers emerged from dark space.

In my perfect world, when the vaccine for coronavirus is developed, it will basically be Priority: Tuchanka, except that it’s more like Priority: America.  Unfortunately, as much as the idea of Commander Shepard going up against, and inevitably killing hundreds of right-wing, over-armed anti-vaxxing Karens and muh-rights Karls is a sadistic fantasy to behold, the mass killing wouldn’t quite go over so well in the real world as it does in a video game.

But the end result where an airborne vaccine is just mass-released into the atmosphere, and takes the choice out of the hands of everyone, seems like a pretty ideal outcome to me.  Granted, given the fact that the world is currently rushing the shit out of this, and who knows if we won’t accidentally sterilize the whole planet in the process, but it’s a risk that many would probably be willing to take in order to get back to some sort of normalcy in the world.

Ironically, the amount of resistance it would take to get a vaccine distributed throughout America much less the rest of the world, would probably be equivalent to the massive resistance we the players get in trying to save the Krogan in a video game.  And unlike in a video game, we can’t just annihilate everyone who is resistant, as gratifying as it might seem.  But the idea of the vaccine simply being dispersed in the atmosphere and taking the choice out of everyone’s hands seems very appealing to me, because it’s not about freedoms, it’s not about rights, it’s entirely about the long-term survival of the human race, and when too many people are being stupid, intelligent ones need to step in and make the smart choices for them.

Well, that didn’t turn out entirely as I had thought it might, but it’s sad/funny that we’re even in a position where the American future can plausibly be potentially compared to the genocidal plot of a video game.

New Father Brogging, #020

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As many parents of babies go through, I change a tremendous amount of diapers.  It is nothing that has ever worried me the least bit about impending parenthood, and I don’t really see what the big deal is all about honestly.  I’m thinking it has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve been a pet owner for the better part of the last 20+ years, and cleaning the pee and poop of animals has conditioned me to where baby human excrement seems like nothing at all, especially since it’s mostly encapsulated inside of diapers.

Anyway, what I wanted to new dad brog about today was the fact that over the span of the last six months, I’ve gotten to give some pretty good sampling to several baby wipes varieties out on the market, and I think I’ve become somewhat qualified to be able to rate and impart my opinions on my zero readers, in case the day comes in which they are in the market for baby wipes and decide to use my ratings as a baseline to sway their opinions.

I judge based on performance criteria, and not necessarily cost; mythical wife had gone through months of cerebral couponing and deal-hunting to stock up on baby supplies prior to the arrival of our child, so the factor of cost was somewhat irrelevant by the time we got to starting to use all the supplies that we’d hoarded, plus it’s safe to say that at no point have we ever paid full price on any baby wipes.

So the things that I judge baby wipes are on:

  1. Thickness – too thin and you’re wearing excrement; too thick and you might as well be trying to wedge a beach towel into the sensitive areas of your baby
  2. Softness – the softer the better as babies’ skin is delicate and gentle, especially down there
  3. Moisture – too little and you might as well be using sandpaper, too much and you’re leaving too much moisture which could lead to irritation
  4. And most importantly, when your baby has exploded, and you’ve only got one hand free because the other hand is holding their legs up so they don’t dip their heels into feces, how well the packaging dispenses, because I’m convinced that they’re all perfectly engineered to sense urgency and make it impossible to pull out anything other than the entire fucking package when all you need is one at a time

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #020” →

The entertaining absurdity of baseball rules

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When mythical wife showed me a picture of the score of this game, my jaw kind of dropped.  It turns out that 29 runs is some sort of National League record, that I don’t really have the motivation to look up the finer details of.  All I know it’s not better than the 30-3 thrashing that the Texas Rangers dropped on the Baltimore Orioles some time ago, and doesn’t quite erase the stink of the 20-2 drubbing the Yankees dropped on the Braves in Turner Field’s final season.

But anyway, of course I’m entertained generally pleased by any Braves win, but it’s not the 29 runs scored that amused me the most, or the seven home runs they clubbed en route to their scoring barrage.  No, a nerd like me finds amusement in other parts of the box score, like the fact that the starting pitcher for the Braves, Tommy Milone, didn’t get the win for a game in which his offense dropped 29 runs on the opposition.

In fact, as satisfied as I am any time I see a W for the Braves, it’s actually very much a bad and concerning thing that Tommy Milone allowed eight runs to the Marlins.  It’s not every day that the Braves are going to score 29 runs, much less ten runs, much less five.  But lost in the pandemonium of the Braves blowing up on the Marlins is the fact that their own starter was pretty abysmal in his own right, and he absolutely did not deserve to get the win in this game, and I think the Braves did the usual Barves thing during the trade deadline, and went after a jobber like Milone to fill in their pitching rotation, instead of going after a starting pitcher that could really fortify their chances to capitalize on the short season.

Instead, the win goes to Grant Dayton, a reliever that I’ve never heard of which isn’t difficult considering how far off the baseball radar I’ve dropped off, but anyway, he gets the win, solely based on the rules of Major League Baseball which states that the pitcher on the mound while the team has the lead and finishes out the 5th inning, is the guy eligible for the win.

Basically, this is the equivalent of going into arcade, walking up to the six-player X-Men arcade game, where five other players are at Magneto, he’s already blinking red and close to death, and jumping in as Dazzler because nobody ever played Dazzler, hitting him once with your mutant power blast, and taking credit for beating Magneto.

That’s basically what Grant Dayton did.  By no fault of his own, of course though.  Tommy Milone sunk $7 worth of quarters into X-Men and stunk up the joint getting past the Blob, Juggernaut, Wendigo and White Queen, and needed a bunch of people to come carry him through the rest of the game, with Dayton getting the credit for beating the game.

Continue reading “The entertaining absurdity of baseball rules” →

Nike’s Seinfeld Shoes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve struggled a little bit trying to get back in to the groove of regular writing.  Between the balancing act of trying do things whenever my child is napping, and the fact that I haven’t really found a good rhythm or inspiration to write about things, I’ve often times found myself sitting at my laptop with nothing much going on, other than scrolling through news sites and feeds to look for something to inspire me before ultimately killing time on YouTube watching chiropractor popping clips or scenes from Marvel movies.

But then I saw an ad, of all things, for Nike’s Alphafly shoes.  Supposedly, they’re causing somewhat of a stir in the running community, and I guess there are some tryhard enthusiasts out there who think they’re illegal or performance enhancing or something along those lines, but I can’t really care enough to delve deeper because I can’t really get over the fact of how fucking hideous they look.  With their gigantic, bulbous and protruding soles, all I can think of is that they’re basically the modern-day equivalent of the jump shoes from that one episode of Seinfeld.

Seriously, my mouth curled into a wtf face after I saw these things.  I gave a cursory google search to see what they were even capable of, but there’s so much noise and chatter about the legality of these things in organized marathons, that I can’t actually find any credible information on what the whole point of these shoes actually are, nor do I feel like expending the effort to dig any deeper.

Regardless, they’re basically Seinfeld shoes, visually.  And much like Kramer was pegged as looking like a special needs person when going out in public in them, I imagine anyone wearing these that isn’t actively in a competitive run would probably look similarly having these thick-ass shoes on while wearing jeans or ordinary pants.  But given the fact that they’re like 3” off the ground, I imagine a lot of height-conscious people might do it anyways, to make themselves look taller.  That’s the tradeoff however, for wanting to look taller than less mentally capable, I suppose.