Tag: fail

WTF is AEW doing #412

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: AEW unveils the Unified Championship to be awarded to the winner of Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada, thus “unifying” the AEW All-Atlantic International championship and the AEW Continental Championship

Man, there’s a lot to unpack for me upon this topic coming up.  I know that I have a fairly unhealthy collection of replica wrestling blets, but I’m fairly certain that Tony Khan is worse than I am.  Almost to the point where I begin to have doubts on whether or not I want to continue my collection, because TK is running so many blets out there that it risks them all becoming meaningless, and ultimately uncool.

I mean, AEW has Mercedes Mone running around carrying five blets currently, with only two of them being remotely meaningful with the TBS championship and the RevPro Women’s championship.  But she’s carting around the Queen of Southside title which frankly nobody outside of England has ever heard of, recently went to Austria to win some backyard federation’s championship, but my favorite is that she’s carting around the Women’s Owen Hart tournament blet, which really was meant to be a blet to be shown like three weeks of the year, for the winner and maybe 1-2 weeks afterward.

Hangman Adam Page basically held the men’s title up once, and then immediately gave it back, while Mercedes is still slinging the honorary degree around like it actually means something, and it’s a shame that she’s inevitably going to overthrow Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s championship, and as much as I like Blet Collector gimmicks, Mercedes’ is just really kind of off-putting, given her station within the industry.

But this post isn’t meant to be about Mercedes Mone, but I was able to barf out these thoughts without having to dedicate an entire post to it in the process, but rather the fact that AEW has unveiled yet another new blet on television, and all I can really do is laugh and shake my head about it, even if it’s ultimately meant to kind of alleviate the excessive number of titles within the TK-verse.

The AEW Unified Championship is a hilarious name for a title, considering the titles in which they are unifying are for lack of a better term, mid-card titles.  In all other combat sports, boxing, MMA, and even the WWE, the term of unifying titles is typically reserved for unifying top prizes.  Boxing especially has had all sorts of unified world champions throughout its history, due to federations and promotions merging and separating and merging and requiring consolidation.  Even the WWE has had unified champions in its history, but always reserved for World championships, most notably Roman Reigns unifying the World and the Universal titles and then holding it for 1,000+ days.

But AEW is basically unifying two mid-tier titles, into a single one, but then best of all, calling it the Unified Championship.  It will have an A-tier name, but still have stemmed from B-tier titles, and inevitably, if they don’t swap the name of it at some point like they did All-Atlantic to International, the Unified champion will run into the AEW World champion, and what are they going to do, unify the Unified championship into the World?  Call it World Unified championship?

Honestly, I don’t really know what TK thinks, beyond when he’s going to get his next bump, but I dunno, you have the International championship, and you have the Continental championship, seems natural if it were to become the… Inter-Continental championship or something.

I mean, it’s no secret that AEW has absolutely refused to adopt that name, seeing as how the WWE Intercontinental championship is one of the most coveted prizes among those in the industry, but it’s not like they own the word or anything.  NJPW for the longest time had their own Intercontinental championship, and they built that title into something equally as coveted within the company, thanks to guys like Shinsuke Nakamura and Tetsuya Naito.

And perhaps NJPW has been spending too much time with TK, because they dropped the name when they unified it with their World title, and in an attempt to re-create a mid-card title, have only produced the woefully uninspiring IWGP Global Championship, but designed it to look precariously similar to the old, white-strapped IWGP Intercontinental blet.

Back to AEW though, it’s funny that the Unified Championship is just a merger of two mid-card titles, because within the company and all adjacent companies, there are still a whole litany of other B-tier prizes, and C-tier prizes within the TK ecosystem.  The TNT Championship, the ROH World and Television championships, and the revolving door of straps from other promotions that their talents drag onto AEW television, like the NEVER Openweight, the IWGP Strong championship and the RevPro World championship.

Would the Unified champion be like a Borg and just go after other champions to unify their championships into the Unified?  Or what if a Unified champion takes an L to another champion, does that keep the titles separate, or does the winner take the Unified and unify their titles? 

So many question marks!

Of course, the true motivation behind all this hullaballoo most likely stems from the fact that the two titles being unified in question are currently held by Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, two of the biggest stars within the company.  And TK seems to have this belief that the importance of them coming together for a match actually needs the incentive of both guys carting championship straps around, and decided that two guys with blets need to be fighting over a new blet, despite the fact that they have had some of the greatest matches within the last decade, whilst in NJPW.

If I had to put money on it, I’m guessing Okada is going to be winning, and becoming the FIRST-EVER AEW Unified championship, because Omega is banged up and doesn’t need to be taking on a champion’s workload and frankly, Okada needs the professional rub more than Omega does.

But I would also wager that, even though it won’t be for long afterward, despite the fact that the Unified championship was introduced to remove two blets from play, I would bet that Okada will show up at least once, carrying all three blets on television, like when Eddie Kingston was carting around a ton of blets at one point, because Tony Khan appears to have a bigger hard-on for championship blets than I do.

Hate to see it, but it’s not like it isn’t deserved

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC: Fewer international tourists are visiting the United States; economic losses estimated to be ‘staggering’

Like the subject says, this is one of those things that most Americans probably wouldn’t like to see or know of, but at the same time, it’s not like it isn’t deserved, and I can only hope that there are more businesses whose owners and managers that voted for the dumbass orange turd in Washington are being affected by this over those who didn’t.

Like, America was no saint of a destination before dumbass orange turd took office again, but now that he is, I can’t imagine why anyone outside of the United States would have any real inkling of desire to visit it, save for experiences like, Disney World or Las Vegas.  But frankly, even those probably have better alternate options, like the numerous other Disney properties in Europe or Japan, and casinos in Macau or Italy.

I always go back to this particular story of how I came back from an international trip, and had a layover in JFK, and had to clear customs there before catching my next flight back to Atlanta.  I remember seeing these foreign tourists struggling immensely to get through customs because they spoke little-to-no English, and the customs agents were all salty New Yorkers who spoke nothing other than English and basically the faces of these tourists were miserable and scared, and I felt bad that this was basically how their trip was starting in the United States.

Meanwhile, mythical then-gf and I had gotten back from Germany or Korea or wherever we were, and the customs agents in all these places spoke English, weren’t miserable New Yorkers, and were by and not entirely unpleasant experiences getting past them to our destinations.  I remember when we got out of the airport in Munich, and there were already holiday booths and vendors and it was airy and pleasant, and compare that to walking out the door of JFK or any American airport, which is usually just a lot of unhinged drivers trying to pick people up, power-tripping security blowing whistles and screaming at people, and just a whole lot of ugliness, and I always wonder why anyone with a brain would actually want to visit the United States.

Furthermore, like the above photo shows, there’s a meme out there of all sorts of countries around the world, where people say they’re going to visit, when they’re really referring to small sections of each respective country; like all the weebs who say they’re going to Japan are really referring to Tokyo or Osaka, all Koreebs are really visiting Seoul when they say Korea, Paris to France, London to England, and frankly most Americans aren’t aware that Amsterdam is but a city in Holland and not the country itself.  The same applies to the United States, where most anyone from outside of it, when they say they’re coming to visit America, really is saying they’re visiting places like New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Washington DC, or Disney World (obviously not Orlando).  Everywhere else is pretty much not America as far as the eyes of the average tourist goes.

All the same, as much as I hope nobody I know is affected by the financial windfall of dwindling tourism, it’s one of those scenarios where it’s smirk-worthy with that I told you so kind of vibe, that this was inevitable to happen with the current political regime that basically has told everyone else outside the country to fuck off, and them being surprised that nobody wants to come visit anymore.

It’s like if people are getting hurt by this development on account of shitty leadership, a lot of people have nobody to blame but themselves for voting for a leader who’s so racist and xenophobic and is the chief reason why tourism dollars are evaporating and that nobody wants to come visit America.  But at the same time, it’s not like this should be anything of a surprise, once our glorious leader kept flapping his gums about America’s so-called superiority, so I guess all I can really say at this point is, owned.

Love Death + Robots Vol. 4: Maybe it’s time to hang it up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I had an evening where I was surprisingly free to sit down and watch television with no specific show in mind.  I had recently finished several shows that was on my never ending list of things that I want to consider watching, and I didn’t want to delve into any of the series that I’d know would be gigantic commitments, so I sat down with an objective to comb through different platforms and do somewhat of an audit of things that things that I would watch eventually.

When I got to Netflix, Love Death + Robots had the little red label on it indicating new episodes, and my plan to merely refresh the list went out the window and I was diving into the first episode.  I’ve been a fan of the series as a whole in general, even though I think the initial momentum had slowed down in ensuing seasons, but considering the one-off nature of all the episodes, redemption is always the next story away.

Unfortunately, after I finished, quickly, all ten of the episodes of season Vol. 4, I was just left with this unsatisfied feeling of ehhhh that’s it?  To me, there weren’t any particular standout episodes like there had been in prior volumes, and my general vibe was that the collection as a whole seemed to be pretty devoid of love, way low on the robots, but still had plenty of death.  I felt as if, kind of like Black Mirror, the series had gained some notoriety, and it became a property that niche celebrities wanted to associate with, and the series was more than willing to accommodate, even if it came at the expense of the quality that put it on the map in earlier collections.

David Fincher, Tim Miller and even fucking MrBeast were notable contributors to this collection, with Netflix making the conceited effort to let people know about the latter’s appearance in Screaming of the Tyrannosaur.  But it seemed to me that this collection banked on people recognizing some of the more notable contributors and watching just for that, but in the end, none of the episodes were really that standout great.

I mean, the final episode that was presented to me, Can’t Stop was literally just a glorified music video; I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but this was literally just a fucking puppet show on top of Can’t Stop.  The song is good, and the video was chill and fun, but in the grand spectrum of things, I watch shit to be told stories and be entertained, not be fed regurgitated content with puppets replacing the actual people.

There’s really not much else to add.  The volume as a whole was a holistic letdown in my opinion, but thankfully it wasn’t a tremendous time commitment, so it’s not a situation where I’m upset about the sunk cost of time wasted.  If this is the direction that the franchise is headed, I’m under the impression that perhaps they should consider stop where they finished.  I know the order of the series isn’t anything concrete, but if they ended with Can’t Stop, they can at least say they closed the book on the series with David Fincher.

Anyway, here’s how I’d rank the episodes; not that it’s really indicative of actual quality, it’s more like ranking the turds in the bowl that are the least to most stinky:

  1. How Zeke Got Religion (Ep. 8)
  2. For He Can Creep (Ep. 10)
  3. The Other Large Thing (Ep. 5)
  4. 400 Boys (Ep. 4)
  5. Golgotha (Ep 6)
  6. Spider Rose (Ep. 3)
  7. Can’t Stop (Ep. 1)
  8. Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners (Ep. 9)
  9. The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur (Ep. 7)
  10. Close Encounters of the Mini Kind (Ep. 2)

I feel like this was probably one big misinterpretation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

DFP: Bomb threat on a Spirit Airlines flight in Detroit forces evacuation

I just want to start off with, I understand that bomb threats are no laughing matter, and good on all airline, airport, local and county personnel and authorities for doing the right thing and evacuating everyone and ensuring that all was green.

But I just feel like given the combination of circumstances, location, time, and nature of people who are flying Spirit Airlines, there’s probably some critical context missing from this story that probably leads to everything being one gigantic misunderstanding.

First of all, this happened in Detroit, which is one of the saddest and most depressing places in the country that I’d ever been to.  It’s a blue-collar place with a feeling of defiance of defeat in the actual city itself, and much like airports like Atlanta, Dulles, the airport is located way the fuck far away from the actual city proper and are the only things that stretch the city zone maps to retain the name.

Did you also know that Detroit has the highest concentration of Middle Eastern immigrants in the country?  This was news to me when I first was told this factoid, but then when I was on the prowl for as many Tim Horton’s locations as I could find, I found one inside of a Middle Eastern grocery store, and I realized such factoid was probably right.  Somewhere in this paragraph is the unfortunate stereotypical parallel between painting those of Middle Eastern descent or appearance with bomb threats on airplanes, and my mind assumes that this could’ve been one of those Harold and Kumar moments where someone might have seen a brown-skinned person on the plane and lost their shit, leading to this whole debacle.

Second, most everyone knows the jokes, memes and stereotypes that go along with Spirit Airlines.  I’ve flown with them more than I care to admit, because it’s hard to ignore a $97 RT versus a $397 RT on Southwest or Delta for a 90 minute flight, so I’m quite well aware of them myself on a first-hand experience.  Unruly, loud, hostile, and other pejoratives to describe the people who fly on Spirit Airlines, it wouldn’t be a far stretch to imagine the word “bomb” being muttered by any of these folks, regardless of the context, but as the FAA and TSA and whatever government agencies have conditioned us, bomb is bomb, and when the tragic word is whispered, shouted, muttered, uttered or screamed, all systems come to a halt, and the authorities are sent in.

Third, check the time of when the incident was reported – 7 am.  Which means that this flight was boarding at like 6:15 am, which means people have been at the airport since like 5 am or earlier, and I don’t care who you are, when you’re on that crack ass of dawn flight, there’s a way higher chance than normal that you’re not going to be in a good mood.  Now multiply that being in Detroit, and flying with Spirit Airlines, and you’ve got an entire aircraft full of extra ornery motherfuckers who are well past beyond edge, and somewhere along all these circumstances the word bomb popped out, and then all shit hit the fan.

Again, kudos to all those involved in security and operations for following protocol and ensuring the safety of everyone on the flight and in the airport.  But given all the moving parts and variables in this situation, I can’t help but feel like there probably is a whole lot of things that were taken out of context and lead to a wholly excessively unnecessary scenario.

Matthew Stafford’s wife put him into a no-win situation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

US Weekly: LA Rams QB Matthew Stafford judged by the internet for sitting in first class while his wife and four daughters sat in coach; unbeknownst to the many, it was arranged by his wife

Talk about a true no-win situation to be put in here, and the wonder if his wife set him up or not.  NFL quarterback sits in first class, while his wife and four daughters sit in coach; at first blush, it sounds like a chauvinistic asshole flexing his status as a man, a breadwinner, and a professional athlete against his wife and kids, plopping himself into the comfort and luxury of first class, while they all get to sit in the pleeb class.

Naturally, as the internet goes, first blushes and knee-jerk reactions are all any targets get, and Matthew Stafford is now branded an asshole, a douche, a selfish pig who has no respect for his wife, his kids, all women, etc, but then we come to find out that this whole thing was set up entirely by his own wife, who seems to like to tout that they have a no-nonsense travel policy:

I told Matthew, ‘Listen, point A to point B. There’s a flight. Let’s just get on it. It’s fine,’”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about marriage, a wife, or women in general, when a woman says to you “It’s fine,” the shit is already Chernobyl and there’s nothing you can do about it, except begin damage control.  The more I re-read this story, the more I feel like Kelly Stafford probably had some existing beef or receipt to give poor Matthew, and found this flight as an excellent opportunity to exorcise it.  And the most diabolical part about it was the fact that she didn’t tell him about it at all, until it was boarding time.

Poor Matthew even knew what was going to happen when once the jig was up and he learned that he’d be separated from his family in first class versus everyone else:

He was like, ‘I’m gonna look like the biggest a**hole,’”

Of course, the wife had to have known this as well, but at this point they were already past no-return, and she instead tried to play it off like it would be the fault of those who would choose, and undoubtedly would choose, to judge:

Listen, if people have time to consider you to be an a**hole because your 6’3” self is not gonna sit in the back with everyone in your family who is 5’3” and under, then they’ve got bigger issues.”

In the end, predictably, regardless of the facts and context behind the whole thing, Matthew Stafford looks like an asshole for sitting in first class, and Kelly Stafford and their four Stepford Children of the Corn daughters all look like martyrs, farming up pity and sympathy, sitting in pleeb class.  Probably not saying much to defend her husband to those throwing shade in person, as much as she’s getting to be quoted for a written piece.

Whew, piece of work that Kelly Stafford is.  Ain’t nobody going to convince me that this wasn’t wholly orchestrated as a result of some marital beef or microaggression that she felt that required retribution in a manner that was a no-win for Matthew, and a complete win for her.

No wonder Matthew Stafford was able to keep such a cool head for all those years he played for the Lions, because going home some days was probably way worse than playing in Detroit.

Duct tape is useless and overrated

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So, I fell through the ceiling of my attic and created an abomination of a mess in my bedroom walk-in closet.  The good news is that I fell in a manner where there was a truss between my legs that broke me from falling all the way into the floor below, and it was like an extreme version of a top-rope crotching spot in wrestling, and I was fortunate to have taken the impact on my inner thigh and not full on in the nuggets.

The bad news, aside from the giant fucking hole in my ceiling, is the disaster of insulation, attic dust and drywall debris that rained in, in my closet.  Again, I should feel fortunate that I fell through my closet and not one of my children’s bedrooms, so that I couldn’t have be beholden to the hours in which they are awake in order for me to address the damage.  Also, the vast majority of shit impacted by the debris was my shit and not mythical wife’s shit, because I’d feel awful if my own malady dirtied up anyone’s belongings other than my own.

All things considered, given the circumstances, I did manage to close up the hole and begin repairs in a fairly expedient and timely manner.  Initially, I was worried that I’d have to rush out to buy some new drywall and hang it in the awkward upside down manner that it had to go up, but I was able to salvage the pieces that snapped and nail them back into place, and I was fortunate to have had the materials from a previous drywall patch job to make a first pass at taping and filling cracks and for all intents and purposes, closing up the hole in the ceiling.

What I found to be frighteningly alarming was the fact that in the area in which I fell through, when I was assessing the damages, it was apparent that drywall throughout my home is held primarily in place with primarily glue.  I’m no builder, so I don’t know if that’s acceptable and is the norm, but I only counted two reinforcing nails in the large area in which I fell through.

Needless to say, I put about 15 nails, into the studs when rehanging the drywall pieces.  It probably won’t stop me from punching  through again should such fate befall me, but the goal is to ensure that this shit stays up.

This will be a multi-day project that I frankly do not need on top of my ordinarily chaotic, packed and excessively stressful life, but I’m trying to find the silver linings in that nobody was hurt, I had tools necessary to begin repairs, and the hole is closed.  I’ll be hunky-dory when it’s painted and looks somewhat passably finished.

But back to the subject of this post, this whole unfortunate tale, stems from the fact that duct tape is fucking useless, and among the many things that I’ve learned throughout my life about how much homeownership sucks, duct tape sucking, has shot up very high in the rankings, to where I genuinely question, what the fuck the point of the product is in the first place.

My house is over 30 years old, and despite the fact that the last time I had an HVAC unit installed, the fuckhead company said the attic ducts were in perfectly fine shape.  Twice now, I’ve had duct pipes disconnect, most likely due to age and previously poor installation, leading to rooms in my home getting denied air flow.  In both cases, I’ve been able to temporarily alleviate the issues by taping the ever-living fuck out of the pipes to get them to reconnect.

However, the key word in that statement is temporarily because despite the fact that I was using a whole lot of duct tape to address duct problems, the shit never lasts at all, and the pipes disconnect, and we’re back to square one of having a disconnected pipe and air conditioned air blowing out uselessly into the attic.

And this is where I’m scratching my head at the sheer ineffectiveness of duct tape as a whole.  I just don’t get it, the shit is called duct tape, designed to aid in the repairs of ducts, and the shit just doesn’t work.  I understand that my attic can get warm and heat has the ability to ruin anything on a long enough timeline, but I’d like to think a product meant to help out things that primarily live in places like attics and crawlspaces where the temperatures will fluctuate to the extremes, should be able to fucking handle it.

I thought it might’ve been a brand thing, because at one point, I probably used some private label duct tape from Harbor Freight, but there’ve been times where I’ve used Duck Tape-branded duct tape, and the result is the same.  I’ve used 3M, which tries to brand themselves as the Rolls Royce of the industry, but same thing, if not maybe lasting a little bit longer.

The funny thing is that duct tape isn’t just useless with dealing with ducts.  In all the years in which I used to make costume props and crafting in general, duct tape is about as ineffective in other logical uses, than it is at leading with actual duct work.  Lots of handsy creative types or enthusiasts of DIY, love to extol duct tape as some sort of miracle connectivity tool.  But whether it’s taping some random craft together, or like when I hit a deer last Thanksgiving and I needed to hold my bumper in place, duct tape is basically nothing more than a short-term, temporary solve, barely good enough to kept something held together until a more effective or permanent fix can be brought into the equation.

The point remains that duct tape is fucking useless for its named purpose, and equally useless in just about any other application.  I need to remember this the next time I’m at a hardware store or in a position where I need to consider options when it comes to having one thing remained attached to another.  If the shit weren’t so useless, I wouldn’t have to constantly be going up into my attic to fix disconnected vents, and the chances of me falling through the ceiling would have been greatly reduced.

Homeownership fucking sucks.

lol, I love to see the Dodgers lose

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In case you missed it because I did too: the Disney Anaheim Angels of Southern Orange County Los Angeles sweep the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend

Unsurprising, this is what happens when a team gets good, succeeds, spends boatloads of money, signs all the notable free agents and becomes the internal darlings of the league they’re in – they mostly become reviled by fanbases that are not supporters of them in the first place.

I mean, I wasn’t really ever a Dodgers fan at any point of my life with the closest thing to support being when Chan Ho Park was there, but for the most part, I just never really cared about them.  They were a fringe team that played in a weak division and never seemed like they were any threat to actually succeed, especially when the Phillies bounced them every time they ran into each other in the playoffs.

But then they eventually got their shit together, started making the playoffs every single year, basically bounced the Braves from them every time they encountered each other except for 2021, and had been enjoying a renaissance of sorts.  I started to dislike them.

Then, they poached Freddie Freeman from the Braves, which wasn’t entirely their fault as much as the Braves being the Braves, meaning the cheapskate fucks that absolutely will not spend money on a free agent that isn’t at their peak, but for all intents and purposes, the Dodgers took the heart out of Atlanta, and I really disliked them.

And then their organization deployed a pelican strike on the league by exploiting deferred money deals to avoid luxury tax penalties while at the same time securing massive money deals on just about every notable free agent on the market, most notably getting Shohei Ohtani for $700 million dollars, en route to committing over a billion dollars on free agents.

By this point, if baseball fans that weren’t Dodger fans already didn’t dislike the Dodgers, this is where they really began to.

It’s not that they’re cheating or doing anything at all that’s not legal, it’s just that they’re really driving home the reality of the importance of spending money, and there’s a lot of misguided frustration and hatred for their own teams, being directed at the Dodgers, but the bottom line is that the Dodgers have basically become the most hated team in the league, even more than the Yankees depending on whom you ask.

So that’s why it’s so satisfying to see when the Dodgers perform like anything other than the team that outspent the rest of the league to construct an uber-roster, and not just get swept at home, but get swept at home to their in-city archnemeses, in the Angels.  And not just the Angels, but the lowly Angels who have 2/3 the payroll of the Dodgers, as well as have a living leech on the squad in Anthony Rendon who is getting paid $38M to not play at all. 

And to top it off, the Angels were without superstar Mike Trout, who is also on the disabled list, and they still took the Dodgers behind the toolshed to shellack them, in their own house no less.

I didn’t catch a single game, much less even know about it after the fact, but I just fucking love it all the same, and it does bring me great joy to see the Dodgers fuck up in such a monumental manner.  It’s just so hilarious because the TL;DR of the whole thing is that the Angels suck and the Dodgers don’t, but the Angels still swept them. 

It’s as big of an upset as the Pistons beating the Lakers in 2003, whenever Tom Brady had a brainfart and lost to the Dolphins, or when the Honda Civic beat the Ferrari in a drag race in that one video clip that was ever only available on fucking RealPlayer.

When the season is over, the Dodgers will still most likely be in World Series contention, while the Angels probably won’t even be close to even the play-in series, but for one weekend in May, the Dodger-hating contingent of baseball fans can all collectively point and laugh at the Dodgers and all their shitty soft-ass fairweather fans.

Nobody feels bad for the Dodgers when they don’t succeed, and it is always joyous to see them lose, but getting swept at home by the rival Angels, is probably going to be the lowest point for the squad this season.  And I love to see it.