Tag: observations

College Football presents: Van Wilder

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This shouldn’t be legal: NCAA grants Oklahoma State quarterback, Alan Bowman, waiver to play in his seventh college football season

This is funny to me in so many ways.  In an age of CFB where there are 18-year old true freshmen who bounce after one, softly-mandatory year of college, here we have a 24-year old man-child who is seemingly determined to stay in college, and has been granted a waiver to play for a seventh year.

Traditionally, kids enter college at around age 18, if they do everything by the book, they’re usually out in four years, by age 22, and then they’re unleashed upon the real world with as much earthly idea of what to do after college as they did before it but that’s another story for another day.  But Alan Bowman, will be 24 years old when he suits up for his seventh season of college football, and we basically have a real-life Van Wilder, as in a grown-ass man who seemingly is entirely against leaving college.

I love the explanation of how he was redshirted in his freshman year a decade ago was the justification for allowing him to play a seventh year in college ball, because typically redshirting is a cheap tactic employed by schools who are glorified sports franchises, to immerse a kid in the team culture, practice with the squad, train with the squad, learn with the squad, and occasionally get into a very small number of games.  It does not go against their finite number of eligible years, and it’s basically a way to get a bonus year from a kid before really actually using them.

But typically a redshirt year adds just a single year to a guy’s college career, but in the case of Alan Bowman, it’s being the rationale of why he’s going to get a seventh year.  This isn’t like the case of the 34-year old kicker for UVA, because that dude at least served his country forever ago and held off on college until he basically got the GI Bill to pick it all up for him and then decided to play ball.  It’s just a guy that just flat-out refuses to leave college for whatever reason.

Frankly, aside from it being hilarious, it really shouldn’t be legal in the holistic sense that a grown-ass man will be taking the field against squads that will have literal teenagers still playing against him.  There are probably freshman players who are still learning how to live on their own, while Bowman is probably throwing away AARP applications from his mail.

I mean I have to assume that Bowman is sticking around as long as he can because he’s probably not good enough to play professionally, and he’s trying to milk an NIL train or some sort of under-the-table benefits as long as humanly possible, because when his lengthy college career is over, his playing days probably are too.

Either way, it’s just hilarious that there will be a guy playing in his seventh college season, taking the field for a fairly adequate football program.  He’s literally nearly done with his second tour of college if he’s been taking school by the books, which he probably isn’t in all fairness but still, damn boy; get the fuck out of there, and let actual college players have an actual college career.

A 2023 Year-End Post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In spite of all the changes to my general writing habits, one thing I always feel compelled to write about is the end of the year post, even if I have an inkling of knowing that it’s going to be pretty mundane, if not kind of depressing.  It’s something I’ve done for years, and old habits die hard, and in this case, it’s a habit that’s not necessarily bad, as much as it is just writing with the hopes of being able to reflect and contemplate life in general, and maybe I’ll recognize some patterns or observations to possibly improve my standing in life.

But mundane and kind of depressing are a fairly accurate way to describe how 2023 was for me.  This isn’t to say that I thought it sucked by any stretch of the imagination, there were definitely a lot of positive things that occurred throughout the year.  It’s just that we as people tend to dwell more on the negative things that upset us or make us unhappy and it truly is a case of what have you done for me lately, life, huh?? kind of attitude.

As has been the case since becoming a parent, twice, and living through the pandemic, I’ve made my general world a really, really small place.  Being a dad and parenting comes ahead of absolutely everything else in the world, and considering the immense amount of, capacity, it requires to raise two toddlers, I barely have any time on a daily basis for myself, and so often times I try not to dwell on just how much shit I have to punt on, on a daily basis because there’s just not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on top of being a parent.

My daily routine has mostly maintained the same course over the last three years, and I’m always the first one up in order to make breakfast for the kids and be ready for them in the mornings, and most every minute upon my arrival back from the office or the end of my work day is spent with my children, until they go to bed at around 7-8, and then I do a bunch of daily chores to reset the house and prepare for the next day, and when I’m done with that, then maybe I’ll have an hour, maybe two, depending on if I want to forfeit some sleep, in order to have some personal downtime, which has its own pressure in not wanting to squander it, and a feeling of failure if I do.

I don’t have the capacity to dick around on the internet as much as I used to, and look up news and stories from around the world, the state, or even my own city, to have inspiration to write about, and even if I do have the inspiration, I don’t have the time to write about it.  If I earmark it for later, it stands a good chance to not happen, because the knee-jerk reactions that fuel lots of writing don’t exist after too much time passes.

Among the numerous self-imposed writing exercises I put onto myself, I keep a living document that tries to summarize every single day of the year.  In the past, I would jot down some interesting news that might have happened on X day, or a sports occurrence that happened on Y day, or tragic news of a shooting that occurred on Z day, but I generally had this belief that something, somewhere, was interesting stuff happening, on every single day, and it was my way of trying to capture all some of it.

But then COVID hit at the same time I had a kid, and my world became extremely small.  Even though the worst of the pandemic has passed and my kids are getting older, my world hasn’t expanded back out that much, and my general daily summaries are usually along the lines of me being agitated about something, usually parenting related, things my kids did, occasional sports or wrestling observations, but for the most part, a very sparse well of topics that I’ve had the capacity to summarize on a daily basis.

If it sounds depressing, it’s because I’ve come to the admission that I probably am depressed, possibly on a clinical level.  As in the chemicals in my brain are wacked out, causing me to feel apathetic, disinterested in everything, unmotivated to do the things that I generally enjoy and other activities.  The thing is, I feel like I know what’s causing the depression, and it isn’t just solely a chemical imbalance, so I don’t necessarily feel like medical intervention is necessary. 

Throughout my life, there’s been a direct correlation with my emotional state and my financial wellbeing, and the fact of the matter is that I haven’t felt financially comfortable in like three years, and I don’t know how to fix any of it, so it leaves me feeling despair often, and I’m pretty sure that’s the root of my depression.

Like if I were to go on some sort of anti-depressants, sure that might make me feel like I’m not so stressed or sad anymore, but no medication is going to magically make my financial woes go away, so I’ve never felt like I should see anyone to try and see what’s up.  Also, my medical insurance at my job throughout 2023 has been absolute hot garbage, but I’m going on mythical wife’s medical for 2024 which is way better, so perhaps I should swallow my pride and look into getting checked out, because living the way I have been living throughout the last few years probably hasn’t been the best for all parties involved.

But like I said, there was also a lot of good stuff that occurred throughout the year, even if I’m a headcase for more days of it than not.  My family went on a bunch of Disney trips that were brutally expensive for sure, but rewarding in their own rights.  Cruising out of New Orleans was great, visiting Hilton Head was pleasant, and trying a bunch of new restaurants at Disney properties were all good, and my kids seemed to enjoy a lot of it, and that’s what really matters.

One of my closest friends got married in Vegas, and I didn’t hesitate to go out there and bear witness, and my company sent me out to Los Angeles for the Adobe MAX conference, which was the coolest work trip I’ve ever been to in my career.

Most importantly, as much as they sometimes drive me crazy with their roller coaster of toddler emotions, watching my kids grow throughout the year is always a wondrous sight of seeing them develop, physically and intellectually.  Both my girls have demonstrated a ton of intelligence, and sometimes I just stop and watch them while they eat, play, read or just simply exist, and three years into the journey, I remind myself of how unbelievable it still feels that I’m a dad.

So, much like my emotional state throughout the year, this year’s end post goes up and goes down, like a roller coaster.  There may be plenty of days in which I’m burnt out, worried as fuck about finances, or in need of a good anxiety outlet, but there are no days where I don’t have love for my family and children and friends, no matter what is believed to be on my exterior.

Overall, I do not feel that 2023 was a poor year, and at the same time, I hope that 2024 and beyond is better.  Because why shouldn’t anyone not hope that the next day is better than the one before it? 

It’s like Detroit always has to have a tragically bad sports team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t follow a tremendous amount of NBA these days, but there have been some interesting storylines that have played out over the course of this season that has had me attuned to the league a little bit more than usual.  The weird In-Season Tournament, the collapse of the Warriors, Draymond Green going ballistic twice and out indefinitely, the seemingly endless beef between Luka and Booker, etc, etc.  But behind all of these microbeefs, has been one thing that has grown into one of the more notable storylines that won’t just be for this season, but NBA history.

With their 27th consecutive loss within a single season, the Detroit Pistons have entered rarified air of being able to say that they’ve embarked on the worst losing streak in NBA history.  So often times in sports, we see hallowed and/or embarrassing records be reached and either they’re tickled, or in lots of cases, tied.  It’s truly not often that many records really break, if they’re of any substance, and even in today’s NBA where at any given point there are numerous teams trying to tank and deliberately take losses for draft positioning the following year, so the fact that the Pistons have managed to eat 27 losses in a row really is something that probably did involve some luck and determination to allow happen.

Of course, there is still one more record to chase, and I feel like I’m jinxing it because I am the lord king of sports fate and if I address it, I am doomed to be defied but it’s too late because I’ve started writing it and history be damned, this will stand.  But apparently in 2014 and 2015, there was a stretch between two separate seasons where the Philadelphia 76ers managed to eat 28 straight losses, but considering the Pistons are currently playing to a .067 clip, it’s a safe bet that they’ll at the very least catch the record and should for all intents and purposes break it, but like I said, I am tempting fate by writing about it right now.

It’s funny because three games into the season, the Pistons were 2-1.  Fans at home were probably thinking, it’s early, but we’re looking good!  With 10 playoff seeds now, maybe we’ll be able to get in this year!  But then that win against the Bulls back in October was the last W they’d ever see, as they’d then proceed to go through all of November without a single win, spawning all sorts of memes about how the Pistons succeeded in No-Win November, but then proceed to keep on chugging through December without any wins and are in prime position to finish All-Defeat December.

I had to look up some of the official numbers since my knowledge of bad basketball records has apparently grown outdated, but the worst record in history seems to be declared to be the 2012 Charlotte Bobcats, who went 7-59, a winning percentage of just .110.  But in a full 82-game season, the 1973 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, a winning percentage of just .101.  As unlikely as it would be in today’s NBA climate, but if the Pistons’ current winning rate were to stay steady, they would finish the season at 5-77, shattering both records with room to spare.

And then the ultimate failure would be that in spite of having the most balls in the draft lottery, anyone else gets picked before they do.  All the hotshot prospects in college right now are probably talking with their representation about their eligibility and NIL money comparisons to hard consider sticking around another year versus risk getting drafted by the Pistons.

It’s just funny though, because it just seems like the city of Detroit is destined to at any given time, have some tragically bad sports franchise.  Like there’s a shared pool of sports talent in the city, and when one franchise is taking the lion’s share, another is starving to death.  Like in the early 2000s, the Detroit Tigers were losing 100 games and threatening the all-time losses record, but then the Pistons won an NBA championship.  Then the Tigers were becoming playoff regulars, while the Detroit Lions had a season where they literally went 0-16 and I think tacked on a few more L’s the following season before upending the Redskins to end their torment.  And now the Lions have secured the NFC North and are playoff bound, while the Pistons are embarking on a journey to become the worst NBA team in history.

Anyway, I know I’m tempting fate by having exerted effort to write about it, but I for one love seeing sports history, especially when it’s a team that I have no real care for, at the risk of making the wrong side of it.  I can’t say that any point in my life I’ve ever really been a Pistons fan, or a fan of any team from Detroit for that matter, so here’s to hoping we’ll see some fresh history coming up in a few days.

Whew. Let’s talk about Shohei Ohtani

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The whew in the title has nothing to do with any sort of relief I may be feeling that I do not have to shave my balls, because anyone with a brain knew that there was no chance in hell that Shohei Ohtani was going to sign with the Atlanta Braves.  I would’ve felt comfortable betting my house that Ohtani wasn’t going to sign with the Braves, frankly.  The whew in the title really is just in regards to how much there is to unpack, now that the free agent of the millennium has finally been signed and taken off the table and the rest of MLB can move on with its tumultuous life.

It actually happened a few days ago, and I just didn’t have the opportunity to sit down and put all my knee-jerk reactions down to text, but for those who missed it, uber-star Shohei Ohtani ended his not-so silent quest for a free agent contract, and has chosen to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers, up the I-5 from Anaheim, at an earth-shattering $700 million dollars over the next ten years.

This wasn’t just the most expensive contract in Major League Baseball history, this is supposedly the biggest professional athlete contract in all sports’ histories, surpassing even guys like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo much less Aaron Judge, Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer.  Do the math, and it’s a guy who’s going to be getting paid $70 million dollars a year to play a children’s game.

And the thing is, most people haven’t bothered to care or learn, but Ohtani’s ability to pitch is completely off the table until like 2025, as he will be recovering from major elbow surgery over the span of now until most of 2024.  The Dodgers knew this, and they still were comfortable with giving him the biggest contract in history; he’s a remarkable hitter no doubt, but I can think of 2-3 guys I’d have pursued alternatively instead of dropping $700M on someone whom I’ll only be getting half their skillset for the start of the contract.

Whatever though, the goose chase is over, and Ohtani is going to be a Dodger for the next decade, and the rest of MLB fanbases can bemoan the rich getting richer, as the Dodgers pick up yet another marquee free agent, and their payroll looks to balloon way past what the Mets just set the bar to the year prior.  Frankly I’m not surprised that he went to the Dodgers, because as much as I knew he wasn’t going to land on the Braves, I figured he was probably either going to stay with the Angels, or go to the Dodgers or the Phillies, because those seem to be the only two teams that players actively want to end up going to these days.  And in spite of some gallant efforts by the Toronto Blue Jays, I’m sure Ohtani’s camp reminded him of the colossal pain in the ass that playing in Canada is like with all the constant customs hangups as well as Canada’s high taxes for services that he’d probably never use.

The thing is, after the breaking news of Ohtani’s signing occurred, what I really was the most curious about was the minute details of the contract, namely opt-out clauses as well as my favorite footnote in sport contracts, deferred monies.  At first, it was really hush-hush, leading people to believe that he was just going to get $70M a year, plain and simple, but baseball contracts are never plain and simple, and are astounding when they are.

When the news first came out, none of these details were made available, but ironically in the time between breaking news to when I could actually have some time to write about it, the things I cared about emerged, and hoo boy, are they some really interesting and unprecedented things.

Continue reading “Whew. Let’s talk about Shohei Ohtani” →

This is my new dream ride

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Florida hoons with too much time and money on their hands rig the body of a Honda Odyssey onto the chassis of a Tesla Model S Plaid

Throughout my life of being interested in cars, I’ve always been fascinated by sleeper cars.  Cars that look unsuspecting and basically invisible, but really are high-performance monsters underneath the hood.  There have been a few noteworthy sleepers out of the box, like the 90’s Ford Taurus SHO, but in most cases all it really takes is slapping a turbo or swapping a motor onto a nondescript automobile, and you’ve got a reliable sleeper.

However, over the last few years, I’ve become enthusiastic about having become a Tesla owner, and having an EV, that doesn’t rely on the gas that always demoralizes me when I have to fill up my gas-powered vehicles.  And given the price points and the general unwillingness to fuck around with and tinker with mine or any EV, the reality of having a sleeper car in the immediate future doesn’t seem very likely.

So this particular story about a bunch of car dudes out in Florida who clearly have too much time and money on their hands, who Frankenstein together the body of a Honda Odyssey minivan, onto the body of a Tesla Model S Plaid, one of the fastest cars in the world off the line, gets my attention because it is quite literally smashing together two things that I’m interested in, Teslas and sleepers, and making something that I didn’t think really was possible, a sleeper Tesla.

It’s just hilarious to see the dumpy turd on wheels that is the Honda Odyssey, and I wish that these bros went a little longer before making a video to actually refine and try to meld the two cars together, because as it is, it felt very raw and rushed, where they leave off.  But at least they have a relatively driveable ride, and I found it hilarious whenever they punched it, and the sheer torque of the Tesla’s electric motor would wrench and yank so hard that all you could hear was the metal-on-metal smashing of a jerry-rigged chassis trying to keep two pieces together.

But overall, this is a potential dream car: Tesla power and no reliance on gasoline, but the invisible obscurity of the penultimate soccer mom van of the 2000’s.  I for one, would definitely be all about riding around in one of these as my primary ride if it were remotely cleaned up, functional, and didn’t sound like the body would rip off when I pushed the accelerator.

It’s been a while, how about building another sports property??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the span of the last decade or so, Georgia and primarily the Metro Atlanta area has seen a lot of sports-related projects be dropped onto us.  Spouting bullshit like economic impact, (minimum-wage) job creation and moar reasons for people to come visit _____ to feebly mask the reality that a bunch of old men are going to be getting rich on their investments while the taxpayers of each locale eat the brunt of the cost, we in Atlanta have witnessed such projects emerge or be proposed:

  • ScumTrust now Truist Park, the brand new home of the Atlanta Braves so that Braves fans could get away from all the scary black people in Downtown Atlanta
  • Mercedes-Benz Arena, the home of Atlanta United and the Atlanta Falcons because there was nothing wrong with the Georgia Dome other than the fact that it wasn’t designed to look like Megatron’s butthole and didn’t have an endorsement built into it
  • Atlanta United’s Training Grounds, because practicing and training at their brand new stadium is probably difficult because of all the traffic in Downtown
  • Gateway Center Arena, in Jurassic Ghetto College Park so that the Atlanta Hawks could have their developmental G-League squad have their very own stadium too
  • It was once proposed to build a Cricket Stadium out in Smyrna, coincidentally there is an extremely high concentration of Indians in the area, whom could probably actually justify its existence, but thankfully nothing really came from this
  • Out in Dawsonville, some developers want to build a Battery-like multi-purpose park, centered around a massive arena that would hope to lure an NHL team back to Atlanta in the event there are any more expansions in the future

So short of an NHL team that the city had already squandered, Atlanta’s pretty well represented in most major spectator sports, with the Braves, Hawks, Falcons and United, as well as minor league baseball and hockey smattered around the outskirts.  And they’ve all got their expensive little homes to mostly themselves; you’d think at this point, the city was actually full of sport venues/facilities, and couldn’t actually find any more means to build sport-related shit to bilk taxpayers, right?

LOL this post wouldn’t have come to fruition if the answer were actually yes.

So let’s congratulate Fayetteville, Georgia, for becoming the new and future home of the US Soccer National Training Center and the US Soccer Federation, and the latest victim member of Georgia’s club of regions to get more than likely fleeced by the building of something that the state had no need for in the first place.

Continue reading “It’s been a while, how about building another sports property??” →

This is oddly validating

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

We’re #1!  Or #50:  Georgia ranks first (or last) in happiness of employees, according to rando website, then reported by WSB

Considering the fact that I have very specific brog tags for “ohatlanta” and “ohgeorgia” I’ve been critical of my home state since basically, I moved here.  It did not take too long for me to recognize bullshit when I saw it, combined with the age in which I moved here, really growing up into bullshit recognition and as my generation is often liked to be labeled, as woke, there is an odd sense of ironic satisfaction at seeing Georgia win, or tank at employee happiness. 

It validates a lot of criticisms I’ve had and witnessed throughout my life living here, and there’s a part of me that likes to pawn off my own struggles with depression as having reason on account of working.

But back to the data aggregation itself, the rankings were based on criteria such as quit rates, commute times, working hours, injuries, paid time off and state positivity levels.  Considering the fact that Georgia has turned into a battleground state politically, it obviously has a very high rate of contention in general state happiness, as at any given point, nearly half the state is pissed about the color of it.  But if I had to guess what is really anchoring down the state’s general workforce happiness, has got to be the commute times, in which is further anchored down probably by Atlanta itself.

According to GPS, I’m barely six miles from my office, but I still need to give myself an entire half hour in order to traverse home to work, and I don’t actually have to touch a highway either.  I’m usually below the median commute time of 28.7 minutes according to this study, but barely, and any little divot such as a fender bender or some rando school bus being late easily pushes me past it.

And to think there were varying times in my life where I had commutes of 70+ minutes and 55 miles each way, and I was living my life then, I couldn’t imagine going back to such hellacious commuting conditions ever again.

But again, I’m just going to assume most of Georgia’s ranking is weighted heavily by Atlanta since lets face it, outside of pockets of civilization in Augusta, Macon and Savannah, there ain’t shit else in Georgia that could muddy up the picture of the state, and even those pockets are merely blips of population compared to the five million-plus that live in the Metro Atlanta area.  And most are innately aware of the escalating cost of living in the Metro Atlanta area, with obviously the wages not rising commensurate to meet them, which would of course lead to a lot of unhappiness.  I’m sure this is nothing different than lots of other major cities across the nation, but based on this study, it’s very apparent in Georgia, more so than everywhere else. 

Honestly though, when I came across this article, I thought I’d have way more to say about it than I apparently do, but continuing this post any further would just be parroting things already said.  Georgia is apparently full of a bunch of unhappy people in the workforce, and although I don’t necessarily think I’m one of them, I’m definitely not really in the happy camp on a daily basis, but I don’t think a lot of these correlating conditions really help either.  I know my general sense of happiness wouldn’t mind some extra wage to help alleviate a lot of my anxieties and issues.