Tag: tryharding

lol the Knicks­­

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I’m sure I’ve probably said before in my brog, when I was a kid, I used to love the New York Knicks.  Starter jacket, baseball cap, Ewing jersey, always played the Knicks in NBA Live and NBA Jam, etc.  The worst moments in my sports fan life back then were when the Knicks lost to the Houston Rockets in the 1994 NBA Finals, and then when they lost to the Indiana Pacers in the 1995 playoffs when Patrick Ewing missed a fucking finger roll.

Needless to say, I eventually learned what just about everyone who ever follows the NBA eventually learns: there’s no team that symbolizes failure more than the New York Knicks.  Back in the day, it was the torture of having a competent team make the playoffs every single year, but then losing via the existence of Michael Jordan, or because simply they’re the Knicks.

Despite the fact that I only follow the NBA as much as ESPN and the news covers it occasionally, it doesn’t take a blind person to not see that the Knicks are still pretty much the living embodiment of failure in the NBA, except now they’re a shitty team that doesn’t even make the playoffs, and no matter what moves they make or whom they acquire in free agency, they can still never get over the hump and even sniff what a playoff chase even smells like.

To my understanding, the Knicks have tried tanking 350 times over the last two decades and at a quick glance, have finished under .500 like 18 out of the last 20 years.  Twice, they finished with 17 wins, which is futility that has to have effort put into it, because practically three-quarters of the league gets into the playoffs, it takes a conceited amount of effort to actively not make it.  Yet in spite of all these shitty seasons, the team can still never cash in on the draft, and they just continue to suck year after year.

The whole lottery system is something that I actually do love about the NBA, because it does actively attempt to deter teams from tanking, because unlike in MLB and the NFL, the worst record does not automatically guarantee the first pick in the draft.  Subsequently, the lottery has pretty much existed to troll the Knicks into having one additional layer for them to fail through, and it’s never been more prevalent than just this past lottery.

The big story in basketball over the span of the last two calendar years has been the saga of basketball phenom prodigy, Zion Williamson, from his rise in a South Carolina prep school, to his mandatory year in college, which ended up being the reviled Duke Blue Devils, the controversy of the sports century when his foot exploded out of his Nikes, injuring him, to his inevitable position as the very obvious first pick in the upcoming NBA Draft.

As Zion posted highlights after highlights for Duke, the NBA gave a college try for the first month of their own season, before the pretenders then immediately began a tanking spree, with the hopes of having the best odds in the lottery, which would increase their chances of getting the first pick, which was obviously going to be Zion Williamson.

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Let’s talk about Game of Thrones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I haven’t really posted much about Game of Thrones.  It’s one of those properties that I really love, and I often times don’t really write about the things that I really love until they’re over, be it being between books, seasons, or a definitive end of some sort.

But with the show winding down, and that we’re getting to the point where the remaining episodes presumably are all going to be epics in their own right if episode 3: The Long Night was any indication, I’m finding it difficult to contain all the things swirling around in my head about GoT, and by the time the next episode rolls around, I’ll probably lose my shit if I don’t take the time to do any writing about it.

Plus, speaking of writing, it’s pretty clear to me that George R.R. Martin isn’t actually ever going to finish the actual book series,* so as far as I’m concerned, the tv show is pretty much shaping the end of the series, definitively.

*Even if Martin finishes, I have little faith that the evolution of the show will mutate all of the thought processes that went into the original five books, to where he’ll deliberately alter and swing the story (and not in good ways) to keep book followers on their toes, and there’s no way he’s not going to be picturing Kit Harrington, Sophie Turner, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey or any other actor in his head when he’s writing key characters.  The books will DJ Tanner Wrestle tragically as a result, and it’s at this point where I’ll bust out the phrase “Dextering” again, named after the shitty way Jeff Lindsay steered the Dexter book series long after the television show started and ended.

SO, the Long Night – needless to say, this is where I write my disclaimer about how there will be spoilers, but also the fact that I’m still offline, and there’s no definitive timeline to when I’ll ever be back online, because I never have any time, and even if I did, by this point, I’ll have nearly four years’ worth of posts to back fill into the brog, which is a Sisyphus’ boulder in its own right.

SO, the Long Night – fucking incredible.  Kind of everything I had imagined the inevitable, eight-year build up to the battle between man and dead would be.  I can’t really think of anything that I was legitimately disappointed in, and despite the fact that a lot of my GoT death pool predictions did not come true, I still felt a sense of great satisfaction when it was all over.

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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

But apparently, Love Death & Robots probably requires a trigger warning; despite the fact that it’s an 18 episode anthology of entirely self-contained individual stories, snowflakes on the internet declare that the entire series has a problem and that it is not okay.  I almost don’t want to link to it out of disgusted spite, but I don’t really hide the things that make me tick.

Long story short, the triggered link basically ignores every one of the 18 episodes except for Sonnie’s Edge and The Witness, and considering the fact that prior to Netflix’s alleged decision to adjust the order of the episodes, implies that this “author” watched the first three episodes and then went off on a tangent about how the show solely glamorizes violence against women; otherwise, it goes without saying that Good Hunting would have made this post as well.

Obviously, I agree with their point that glamorized violence against women is definitely a bad thing, but I’m not the least bit convinced that the so-called author actually watched the rest of the series, and decided to anoint the series as a whole as an enemy to women, and that people should watch it with such preconceived notions.  Sure, Netflix could’ve presented the order of the episodes to not start with such jarring violence, but the fact of the matter is that in today’s bingeing viewing society, viewers would still end up watching the suspect episodes eventually.

I did a really stupid thing today, which was I commented about this link on social media, when an online acquaintance of mine posted this link in the first place.  I will admit that my defenses were up seeing criticism of something that I’d so recently declared my love and enjoyment for, and even after a few hours of thinking about all of this, I still feel similarly about my opinions.  I think the article was cherry picked, and ignores the 14-15 out of 18 other episodes of the show that have literally nothing to do about sexual violence towards women.

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Some Black Mirror shit coming to life here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago, my gym brought in these three new stationary bikes.  Expresso bikes.  They do that every now and then; bring in some new cardio equipment, presumably to try and get people to actually work on their cardio instead of doing the age-old practice of bogarting elliptical machines for 30 minutes and calling it an adequate workout.

At first glance, they don’t look like anything special, they look like some fairly standard, nondescript exercise bicycles – except that they have a screen affixed to the front of them.  Obviously, with the constantly advancing rise of the digital world we live in, it’s no shocker to see screens ending up on bicycles, when there are already screens attached to various other bicycles, treadmills and elliptical machines; distraction is the key to long cardio sessions, and if screens can provide some distractions, then maybe some fat sweaty Atlantic City sweat hogs might actually lose some weight.

But it’s not television that these screens broadcast; users have the option on what they want to have broadcast between different settings of paths, some interactive studio training, or interactive games that can be played while bicycling, utilizing your own cycling as the controller.

Honestly, I’m intrigued by these Expresso bikes, and if I weren’t always in the mindset that running is really the only acceptable form of cardio, I’d be willing to give these a try.  Frankly, I’m under the belief that gamification is an effective way of teaching and training, and if making an exercise bike more fun by adding games or creating competition is going to be what it takes for some people to get up and exercise, I think it’s pretty cool.

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Baseball’s Hall of Fame finally gets it right

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: Mariano Rivera headlines the 2019 Hall of Fame class, being the first player ever inducted unanimously

Let me first start off by saying that I am ecstatic for Mariano Rivera, in being the first player ever inducted unanimously with 100% of submitted ballots all voting for him.  There is zero debate in history that he is the most clutch pitcher of all time, having something of like a ridiculous 0.70 ERA throughout over nearly 100 postseason games, becoming more and more unhittable as the Yankees advanced in the playoffs every time.

I still remember in 2009, which was the last time that the Yankees won the World Series; against the ridiculously explosive offense of the Phillies, the Yankees time and time again throughout the six-game series went to the bullpen and brought Rivera out for the save.  And in each of the Yankee wins en route to the championship, it was Rivera who slammed the door, allowing no runs and just three hits over 5.1 innings of clutch relief. 

It should be worth noting that this was when Rivera was 39-years old, and people had long already been proclaiming that age was catching up to him, and that he was going to be limping to the finish line.  Instead, he ate the Phillies’ lunch and carried the Yankees back to the top of the mountain, which was again, the last time that the Yankees have been World Series champions.

And it wasn’t even the saves and the innings that Rivera really brought, whenever he took the mound, it was more the fact that he inspired calm and confidence, among fans and his teammates.  And among the opposition, the legend of Rivera’s cut fastball literally rendered generations of hitters with a feeling of defeat and dread of getting to be one of the guys giving up critical outs at the end of a baseball game.  The saying of “he can tell you it’s coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it” rings entirely true with Rivera, because he basically threw nothing but the cutter his whole career, but the numbers speak for themselves; nobody could do anything about it.

I’m not even a Yankees fan, but even I had this feeling of calm and no real fear that the Phillies were going to make a comeback.  And even when the Yankees asked of him to pitch more than an inning at a time, he just continuously delivered, methodically putting Phillies hitters away again and again, until there were no more outs to get.

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I fucking hate bicyclists now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the last few months, mythical gf has been training for a half marathon.  Being the long-time runner that I am, I’ve decided to join along for lots of her runs, as it’s never going to hurt me to get out there and run and burn some extra calories here and there.  As part of the training, we’ve been going out to trails and extending her distance little by little, in preparation for the eventual 13.1 mile course.

We’ve found a trail that we’ve decided is the ideal place to train and stretch out distances, and over the last few months, we’ve been routinely spending a day every weekend out there to log some miles, burn some calories and in my case, sweat out buckets.  With the weather finally changing from summer into fall and cooling off, the runs have been rather pleasant lately.

Except, for the existence of all these fucking bicycles.  Look, it’s a multi-use trail, and I understand that bicycles have just as much right as the two of us and every other walker/jogger in Georgia does.  But given the fact that the vast majority of bicyclists on the trail are all these mega-douchebag-tryhard bike riders, by the time our runs end, I always make some sort of proclamation about how much I’ve grown to hate bicyclists now.

I’m talking about these shitheads who roll into the parking lot in Audis, Lexuses and Porsches, are wearing these onesies that would raise the eyebrows of even the most dedicated Queer Eye viewer, and from what little I do know about bicycles, are unleashing these bicycles with blade wheels, carbon fiber bodies, and other ludicrously priced hardware meant to make them as fast as possible. 

And naturally, they capitalize on the expensive toys’ capabilities, and scream down the path as humanly possible, despite the fact that the trail’s width is maybe 10 feet wide, very well-populated, with a variety of runners, walkers, people with baby strollers, or dog walkers.

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Life goals, battle mode

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I came into a little bit of fuck-you-play-money recently, so I did what any responsible adult would do – I went on a mad witch hunt for a toy from my childhood that I still wanted to this very day.

It only took nearly 23 years from the day I first decided that I wanted one, but I finally got my hands on a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (legacy) Megazord.  I’m serious, when I first saw the show when I was in the fifth grade, I remember thinking “man, this show is sooooo lame,” but then the next thing I knew, I was watching every episode and it wasn’t long afterward did the want to watch the show force me to learn how to program a VCR so I could tape the show because it came on at 2:30 in the afternoon and I didn’t get out of school until closer to 3:30.

When I first saw commercials for MMPR toys, I wouldn’t have imagined that they’d become the literal hardest things in the world to get a hold of that year, but then again to a fifth grader, there aren’t a whole lot of things to imagine other than more MMPR, video games, and trying not to get bad grades so my mom wouldn’t kick my ass.  But I learned really quickly the concept of supply and demand that year, when it became very apparent that every other boy around my age also wanted MMPR toys, and getting a hold of a Megazord or a DragonZord was going to be the equivalent of trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

Suffice to say, as much as my mom tried to spoil her son and acquire one, it didn’t happen.  I literally remember articles in the Washington Post about how they were the hot item, and how no toy store in the country could ever manage to get more than 1-3 of either in at a time, and people were literally waiting for doors to open on a daily basis to get them when they did.

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