Tag: wtf

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.

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.

Happy Trails, Jonathan Joss

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AP: Actor Jonathan Joss, shot and killed at the age of 59

Although falling through the ceiling of my attic really sucked, in retrospect it was nothing compared to finding out that Jonathan Joss was tragically shot and murdered.

And it’s not just because of the freshness of the incident that I say this, but the man was legitimately part of two shows that I hold in the highest esteem, in Parks and Recreation as well as King of the Hill, with the latter being where I knew him from the best, but then being super stoked when I got into Parks and Rec, and finding out that the guy behind Ken Hotate was John Redcorn.

Needless to say, my sadness is legitimate sadness, and not just sad that someone in showbusiness I liked is gone kind of way.  I didn’t need a refresher on the roles he played when I saw his name in the news as being a murder victim, and it’s all just really sad and tragic and fucked up in a variety of ways, and it boils down to the fact that guns in America are long past out of control, and shit like this happens way too frequently.

Frankly, I didn’t even know that Joss was gay, not that it matters at all to me, but seeing as how it’s Pride Month, and learning that the shooter was using homophobic slurs just adds to the infuriating tragedy of the whole scenario.  He was clearly a proud representative of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the oft-overlooked indigenous community, both of which take a sad hit in the loss of Jonathan Joss.

At this point, I don’t really have anything much else to say.  It’s just he was a guy whose work I loved so much, making me a fan of his by proxy, and I felt like I had to at least put some words down to express my grief at this senseless and tragic passing.

The whole John Redcorn joke was pretty much my favorite subplot on King of the Hill, and it was always a treat to see whenever he appeared on Parks and Rec, playing white people like a fiddle.  It’s all just a fucking shame that the world will never get to see him pop up anything else anymore, because aside from being such a strong advocate, man was just such an iconic talent.

When it comes to college application time, my kids are now ‘white’

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Chinese-American kid with near-perfect credentials and worthiness rejected by 16 out of 18 schools; family pursuing legal action

Firstly, I’m astounded how this story managed slip by me considering it appears to have originated back in March.  I suppose my Google notification queries weren’t adequate enough to have found about this kid sooner.  Secondly, regardless of the fact that I closed the book on #TRYHARDSZN2025, when I found out about the general context of this story, it couldn’t help but fire up the powder keg of my brain into wanting to write about this, because it really is a pretty astounding story.

We have a student who scored a 1590 on the SAT* and has a 4.42 GPA; typically those things alone are enough to get kids accepted into a whole slew of high-tier colleges.  On top of it, it’s a computer science whiz, was offered a job at Google when he was 13 because his code was so clean, he was assumed to have been an adult, and he founded his own e-signature startup, which really should have had most schools with strong computer science and/or engineering programs salivating to bring in a talent like this into their folds.

*I can’t help but wonder what question he possibly could have gotten wrong on the SAT to dock those ten points, and also wonder if his dad beat the ever-living fuck out of him for failing to miss a perfecto by one question

The problem is that he happened to be Chinese-American, and suddenly he went from diamond in the rough to being a gold flake in the sluice, and was turned down from nearly every school he applied to.  There are so many Asian whiz kids out there every single college application season, that it’s probably more exceptional to be mediocre and full of character like me, instead of being a monster in the books.  Even doing shit like creating startups, developing apps or other exceptional-sounding achievements have begun to sound cookie cutter amongst Asians and guys like this are left to pay the price for everyone being so fucking over-the-top #TRYHARD.

As Syndrome said in The Incredibles, when everyone is super, nobody will be.

And the thing is, it’s not like he was one of those #TRYHARDs that applied to every Ivy League school, in fact the only one he did apply to was Cornell.  With the exceptions of MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, the meat of his applications made it clear that he was favoring staying out on the west coast, with most of his applications staying in California primarily; they’re all good, noteworthy schools, but they’re not Ivies, and they still turned this poor kid down.

So despite my knee-jerk reaction being fuck this kid and his seemingly overzealous dad for going straight to threatening lawsuits, because frankly this happens every year, where a few wunderkind Asian kids get the shaft during college application time, because frankly Asians always get the shaft when it comes to succeeding in America, I’m actually rooting for them to hopefully make some noise and either get the college system in the country to change their racist acceptance policies, or flat out admit that they do discriminate against Asians for being too good at school.

It’s the Asian Curve at its best-worst, where Asian kids basically start the SAT with a score of -200, because without it, they’re completely annihilating the competition, but on a college-application level where Asians are getting rejected by schools because they’re unofficially trying to fill diversity quotas, as opposed to having their student bodies look like the Beijing Olympics.

The funny thing is though, in spite of the bullshit of getting completely owned by the college acceptance system, the kid in question is going to be just fine.  He’s already been hired by Google, and his story, as well as his previous rub with the company, you know he’s already pulling in serious coin, and the ironic best part is that he’ll be getting to do so without having a modicum of student debt to pay towards.

Granted, his parents will forever be denied the Asian honor dream of having a son that went to Harvard or Yale, much less any college at this point, but in a few years once he’s made some money, and has bought them some high-end cars and paid off their mortgage, I’m sure their songs will sound a lot less flat.

All the same, it was an interesting story that really puts the spotlight on how much bullshit #TRYHARDSZN is capable of being, especially for those of kids who are stalwart Asians, because they have to know that their plight to get into top schools is going to be thirty-times harder than those students of different colors of skin, regardless of if anyone will admit to it or not.

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.