Tag: observations

How did the Ford Bronco become such the white peoples’ car?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I had a pretty white span of existence.  Sure, this doesn’t help detract from the narrative that I’m a Americanized banana of a twinkie kind of Asian person, but as the circumstances have it, my family and I spent a few days on the road, stopping in Savannah and for the first time in my life, visiting Hilton Head Island, which is about one of the whitest places in the country.

Seriously, thinking back to the time spent in HHI, I genuinely can’t recall seeing more than one other person of color, and that person was also Asian which is to say that I don’t remember seeing a single black person while out there.

We stayed at a bougie resort for a few days, and lounged in the pool, went to the beach and even went to the Salty Dog Café, which I’m only aware of its existence because of an old neighbor of mine growing up always seemed to have a lot of Salty Dog Café apparel.  For the record, the dining experience was pleasant on the water of a relaxed beach community, but the food and the prices were not quite as satisfactory and I could be content with the rest of my life if I never experienced them again.

But overall, it was a pleasant trip spent with my family and I got to watch my children have a lot of fun in the pool, in our suite, on the beach and chowing down on all sorts of junk food we typically don’t always make available to them at home, and in spite of the shade I spout about HHI being a really white place, it’s also a really nice place, and I’d definitely be open to going there again in the future, and hopefully for longer.

However, to get to the point of this post, as the subject goes, I’m very curious to how the new Ford Bronco seems to have become the official car of white people across the country now.  When Ford announced that they were reviving the name and creating a new vehicle to resurrect the car, I couldn’t possibly have been more indifferent.  In fact, I was more perplexed and wincing over such news, because to me, the Ford Bronco has forever been tainted and etched with death and scandal since OJ Simpson led the LAPD on the most televised chase in history after he “didn’t” murder his wife.

Apparently such reaction and recollection didn’t resonate with the white people of America, because since they started rolling off the line, Ford Broncos have been snapped up and are being driven like crazy by white people all over the place.  Seriously, I haven’t seen a single Bronco driver on the road that isn’t white, and they’re often times being driven with the arrogant mentality of “I have one and you don’t,” because of the sheer demand for these murderer cars.

And I can’t help but be curious to why the Ford Bronco has caught on with white people with such enthusiasm, when I can’t shake the association of the car’s reputation of being what a tried-but-not-found-guilty murderer drove notoriously.  And then be further curious to what kind of message it sends that not only is the Ford Bronco more popular than it’s ever been in history, it’s apparently solely within the white community itself.

All shade aside, it really is fascinating that it’s so rabidly popular.  Aside from the whole, being OJ Simpson’s car, the Bronco is still a Ford product, and I will probably never not think of all Ford products being cheap, plastic turds with questionable build quality and reliability.  Even when I was on the market for a new car a while back, and told myself to wipe the slate clean with all makes and models, Ford was the first maker to get slapped back onto the blacklist after test-driving the option I had earmarked as a potential car, because it felt cheap, performed like shit, and was blown out of the water by every other option.

Continue reading “How did the Ford Bronco become such the white peoples’ car?” →

Never thought I’d ever see NBA Champion Denver Nuggets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally, when I thought about writing about the Denver Nuggets, it was contingent that they actually won the NBA Championship before anything would be written about them.  I was going to write about being a millennial and seeing the strange sensation of seeing certain teams in major sports break through the wall of success and win a championship. 

But the more I did some cursory research on the history books, at least as far as being a millennial goes, MLB and the NFL doesn’t have nearly the parity as the NBA has had throughout, at least my lifetime.  Which is really strange to say about the NBA having parity, considering the seeming dynasties that have run rampant throughout my own lifetime, with the Bulls, Lakers, Spurs and Warriors all winning a ton of championships, but at the same time, the NBA has had more teams squirt through the cracks of history and win a championship, and break streaks of franchises to never be champions before.

Growing up, the NBA really was my first love as far as sports fandom went.  I was a big Knicks fan, but also a supporter of the Washington Bullets, and whenever the Knicks were bounced by the Chicago Bulls, I’d typically prefer to see them win over whoever emerged from the West.

That being said, during my own upbringing as an NBA fan, there were always certain teams that were always the doormats and/or the laughing stocks of the NBA.  The teams we never, ever wanted to play in a video game, the teams we always went ballistic whenever our favorite teams ever lost to them, if it ever happened, and the teams that were always forgotten about whenever talking about the league in general.

During this time, some of those teams were the Warriors, the Bucks, the Mavs, Cavs and of course, the Denver Nuggets.  Sure, at various points, some of those teams had some fairly successful seasons as far as win percentages go, but they were still never serious threats to win championships, usually being fodder for the Bulls, Lakers, Pistons and the Rockets.

I remember how weird it seemed when the Spurs broke through the glass ceiling and won their first championship.  I was resentful because I was a Knicks fan, and I chalked up the Spurs’ win to being a lockout shortened year, and how it shouldn’t really count.  But then they’d go on to win several more championships over the next decade, and truly cementing themselves as one of the all-time great teams.

The same could be said of when the Miami Heat broke into the upper echelon, even before LeBron James took his talents to South Beach and won two more championships, and the same was said when the Golden State Warriors not only reached the top of the mountain, they built a house on top of it, winning four championships and basically living in the NBA Finals for the better part of a decade.

However, aside from the teams that grew into dynasties, regardless of my casual, and only during the playoffs interest in the NBA, I’m always fascinated by the teams that sneak out a championship, seemingly, to me, out of nowhere.  Especially when they’re one of the teams that I grew up thinking would never, ever, in a million years, see a championship ascension, regardless that on a long enough timeline, everyone eventually has to win one of these days.

Continue reading “Never thought I’d ever see NBA Champion Denver Nuggets” →

Let’s see if Philadelphia gets the same shit Atlanta did

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: a portion of I-95 in Philadelphia collapses from a tanker fire

Back in 2017, a portion of I-85 in Atlanta collapsed when a homeless guy set a couch on fire, the fire spread and ignited a bunch of flammable shit underneath a bridge, and then the bridge collapsed.  I-85 had a gaping interruption that caused a tremendous amount of logistical issues for everyone who needed the major vein, and was only fixed as quickly as it was because of more or less, a reward bounty being put on the completion of time of the repair. 

It was still months slower than the Japanese repairing a sinkhole the size of a lake, but in the time in which it occurred, Atlanta became the butt of bad jokes, memes and all sorts of opportunity for people to dunk on us, because for some reason, Atlanta is an easy punching bag for all the unfunny comedians on the internet.

Welp, the shoe is on the other foot now, and what we have here is an extremely similar situation, happened in another major city.  I-95 is obviously one of the most essential veins not just in Philadelphia, but across the entire eastern seaboard, so the impact of it being collapsed in Philly is about similar if not worse than Atlanta’s highway collapse.

I can’t say that I care enough to check, but I would be curious to see if Philly gets the same types of criticism, ridicule and memes poking fun at their situation as Atlanta did, or if, by virtue of not being Atlanta, Philly gets off easier than things were here.

Frankly, all government doesn’t do shit jokes aside, at this point, I’m curious how this could have even happened after the debacle in Atlanta.  I don’t work in a DOT or anything, but I would’ve thought that routine checking of structural integrity and examination of bridge construction probably should’ve leveled up at least a hair after Atlanta.  Sure, highways are meant to be resilient structures meant to support millions of cars and pounds of weight crossing over them endlessly, but come on now, fire shouldn’t be disintegrating bridges.

Someone somewhere in the PA DOT wasn’t doing their job, and for their troubles, they alleviate Atlanta from their own embarrassing bridge collapse, and I hope they pay the internet price of criticism and ridicule the same way we did here.

Fare thee well, NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

We hardly knew thee.

It’s evident that a change of eras is occurring in the WWE currently, because when blets start changing across the board, it’s a sure sign that we’re about to embark on a new era, that won’t officially be named, because they tend to happen organically based on the trend of whatever is going on.

At this point, there’s been a new big gold blet introduced, Roman Reigns’ two world championship blets have been merged into a singular gold variant of the same blet and called Undisputed, and just this past week on Smackdown, Asuka was awarded a brand new women’s championship, which was basically the women’s variant of Roman Reigns’ gold variant, but with a white strap, because as the E has established over the last era, black strap = men, white strap = women.

Obviously, I’m stoked that Asuka is the first one to hold the new women’s gold logo blet because I’m a fan of hers, and it seems inevitable that Rhea Ripley will be getting a new championship blet to replace the blue Smackdown variant, which if I had to guess will probably be the same thing as Seth Rollins’ new big gold blet, but with a white strap.

The United States and Intercontinental blets were re-designed in the middle of the last era, so they will probably stand pat for a little while longer, and I suspect that the Unified tag team blets that are currently held by Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens will probably be consolidated sometime soon.  But apparently the women’s tag team blets are on the docket next, because we’re getting this seemingly random and out of nowhere program pitting the WWE Women’s Tag champions against the NXT Women’s Tag champions who were drafted to the main roster without any resolution to what was going to happen with their NXT titles.

It’s not often where an outcome seems so overwhelmingly foregone, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s about the layup of the century that Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler are going to defeat Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn, and merge the NXT Women’s tag blets into their own, with a new design possibly to come soon, or maybe not, if scuttlebutt is accurate and Vince McMahon has more influence than is believed because he clearly doesn’t give a flying fuck about women’s wrestling and probably won’t bother redesigning their blets.

And a part of me hopes that doesn’t happen, because it’d be nice for the blets that I have replicas of for my daughters actually lasts a substantial amount of time, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, the NXT Women’s Tag Team championship barely lasted two years, so it really is genuine to say, we hardly knew thee.  Created because of a potential feud that went nowhere involving main roster talent versus NXT talent, the reality is that it was probably more for the WWEShop to have another replica to peddle, which reminds me that if they ever reduce the cost of these I might have to pick up a pair for my daughters, but what could’ve been a great championship to the brand, was kind of bungled around over the last two years, primarily due to the re-branding, management changes, personnel changes, injuries and just a lack of good booking.

In a way, I understand why the WWE is pulling the plug on the NXT Women’s Tag Team championship, but as someone who has always kept a close eye on the women’s division and the growth of women’s wrestling throughout the years, it doesn’t come without a feeling of good riddance from the company, which makes me a little melancholy about it.

All the same, going back a step, I wish there could’ve been a little bit more buildup for the match between the two teams, to at least give the ol’ college try to sell Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn as threats to Rousey and Baszler.  Most fans are aware of Kay Lee Ray, before becoming Alba Fyre, and how she’s a phenomenal worker in her own right, way stronger than anyone else in this match and if I could get more granular, it also goes without saying that Isla Dawn is the one who’s going to eat the L in this match, with the only question being whom she taps out to between Rousey or Baszler. Continue reading “Fare thee well, NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship” →

Identity crisis

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just the other night mythical wife said that our household should be What We Do in the Shadows characters for Halloween.  And without any hesitation, she said that I should be Guillermo.

To the credit of that opinion, my face immediately made the same face Guillermo does whenever he looks at the camera after the vampires do something stupid.  But I wasn’t at all impressed at the knee-jerk association.

The lack of excitement of that was obviously noticed, and the back pedaling and explaining begins; he’s a badass vampire slayer, he’s the glue that holds the house together, he’s the guy that’s perpetually on the edge and verge of snapping being sick of everyone else’s shit, and I’m just thinking about the guy that’s fat, gets walked on by everyone around him, and is basically there for comedic relief but usually at his own expense.

Now I love the show, and it’s a fair comp, but the fact of the matter is that Guillermo is kind of the show loser, and it depressed me to be so immediately comped up to him.  He is an awesome character with a lot more depth than all the others, but when you take a step back and look at Guillermo as a whole, he’s a guy with no discernable identity, and spends the vast majority of his existence cleaning up after others and not at all doing anything for himself, much less forming an identity.  He’s the joke, he’s the doormat, he’s the comic relief.

But like I said, it’s not a completely unfair comparison.  I am the guy that keeps my house together; I’m the guy that maintains or manages the landscaping, the (attempted) cleanliness, tries to keep the house in working order and somewhat organized, with little or no help.  I take the vast majority of parenting duties, and any minute where I’m not working my job, I’m spending time with my kids while they’re awake, and it’s not until they are in bed that I have any semblance of downtime, that is when I’m not back to managing the home.

And I am, perpetually on the verge of losing my shit, because my life is not at all easy, I’m overworked, under-helped, taken for granted, and I’ve just been reminded of my general lack of identity in the world other than a dad or a housekeeper.  Both titles are undoubtedly important and I take them seriously, but when I try to picture anyone else thinking about me, I struggle to wonder what in the world words formulate in their minds when they think about me, other than those two things.

Because I don’t know what words formulate in my own mind when it comes to trying to describe myself.  I think I used to be a sports guy, specifically a baseball guy, when I was super into baseball and talking about sports all the time.  I used to be a League guy when I spent so much of my life buried in the League of Legends community.  I used to be the wrestling guy, which might be the closest thing I’m still identifiable to these days, and I most definitely was the belt guy, but the thing is that I’ve gotten pretty much every blet I want and until I have an office again, there’s not much point in getting any others.  Ironically, the one thing that I have staunchly refused to ever give up, being my desire to write, is probably the one thing so few people actually know I do, because I have zero readers and I’m neurotic and don’t want to advertise that I do it, so being a writing guy or a brogger isn’t exactly something anyone would know me for.

But the thing is, other than the latter I don’t think I’m really any of these things anymore.  As my kids came into existence, and my personal time diminished into negligible amounts, all my hobbies and interests fell to the wayside as any time I had to myself was either staring at a wall or trying to motivate myself to write something, usually about how burned out and over my life in general I was feeling at the time, kind of like I’m doing right now.

And so, I don’t really have an identity anymore, I don’t think.  As often as I think I would benefit from a day or two completely by myself to actually rest and recharge, I really don’t know what I’d even do.  I’m so money conscious that I wouldn’t want to spend the money to go hide out at a hotel or something, and I’d feel guilty eating out and spending money that I know I shouldn’t be spending, but I also can’t really expect to get any recharge time when I’m around my kids, because I want to spend time with them, so I’m left in this spiraling swirl of indecisiveness and end up doing nothing but watching television and treading the waters of depression.

Really, I just need this funky emotional wave to pass so I can go about my life without the baggage.  Hopefully I won’t be reminded of how much of a Guillermo I am again any time soon.

5 associate degrees? Why no bachelor??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: 12-year old California tryhard kid graduates from community college with five associates degrees

It seems like every single year, people get more and more competitive about academic achievements, but to a degree where it’s not actually cool anymore, and just kind of attention seeking and insufferable.  And the internet doesn’t help, as there are countless platforms for these tryhards to flex and humblebrag about the things they’re accomplishing; don’t get me wrong, it’s great that people are flexing something useful like educations, but if they’re only doing it for the sake of getting people to sing their praises then it’s really no different than inventing an obnoxious viral dance or something.

Here in Atlanta, every year, my old neighborhood’s Nextdoor feed has become this escalating pissing contest of parents sharing stories or flexing their kids’ accomplishments of how many acceptances and how much scholarship dollars the local high school graduates are.  It has literally escalated every year, and for every person who loves to proclaim their kid got into every single Ivy League school and has amassed over $1M in scholarship offers, there’s two other kids who have been accepted into 20+ schools and has totaled over $2M in scholarship offers.  And the ships sail endlessly as people resort to internet passivity to vent before someone inevitably says can’t we all just get along???

Obviously, this behavior is not exclusive to Atlanta, and throughout the years, we’ve seen all sorts of tryhards who have turned educational achievements into sport itself, and all across the country there are people who are always trying to out-do and one-up everyone else with college acceptances, scholarship values, how many degrees, youngest to do something, oldest to accomplish X, etc, etc.

But shoutout to this 12-year out in California who managed to notch his fifth associates degree from Fullerton College, which sounds and is kind of impressive in its own right, seeing as how he’s only 12.  But then the low hanging fruit of jokes channels my inevitable becoming a high-expectations Asian dad, and wondering why his Asian parents seem to be okay with him taking a victory lap on the internet when all he’s accomplished were a handful of associates degrees.

Not even bachelor’s degrees!  WTF?

Of course, regardless of the snarky shade, he’s still set up perfectly to transition into actual college eventually, and I’m imagining that a large part of this game is to be able to transfer the evident butt ton of credits that he’s amassed from community college into an actual bachelor’s program, and he’ll still inevitably graduate from a real college well before he’s 18.

But the thing is that his motivation for embarking on such a tryhard path really wasn’t so much the fact that he wanted to learn faster and reach adulthood in a better place than most, as much as he heard that some 13-year old had done it, and he wanted to match or exceed them.  So it’s like, did he really, learn anything, as much as he checked off boxes and requirements for degrees, so he could beat someone else, or was he just basically trying to speed run through community college in order to have bragging rights?

Regardless, it’s all way too tryhard, way too obnoxious, and frankly a disservice to parenthood and raising a child in my opinion.  The boy probably has no friends and no social skills from being either taught at home by Asian parents or being surrounded by much older teens and young adults all through his college journey, and even if he is the wunderkind, when there’s no more school to be had, will probably end up as a sad sack adult with a whole lot of catching up with living amongst human beings, all because he and his family were caught up with trying to better someone else instead of bettering their kid.

When my kids are nine-years old, I’m hoping they’re finishing up the third grade, and have friends and peers their own age.  If they’re smarter than the curve, we’ll assess how to challenge them appropriately, but I’m pretty sure sending either my kids off to community college probably isn’t going to be on the table.  Meanwhile, by then, this tryhard kid will probably be 18 with a college degree, and completely incapable of getting a job, because he will be a social skill invalid, have no ability to interview or interact with other human beings, and end up working at his parents’ business whatever, stereotypical Asian one they’re in.

When you try hard, you die hard.

An $80,000 Volkswagen Golf LOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve always been a fan of the VW Golf, or as the hipster in me still likes to refer to them as Rabbits.  The boy racer that I once pretended like I was loved their versatility, tunability, the hatchback experience, and their general performance for a car that was the slightly more upscale alternative to the Honda fandom.  The only thing that ever prevented me from ever owning my own was simply the fact that I just couldn’t ever afford to get a Volkswagen, because whenever I’d been in the market for a car, they were always at a price point that I didn’t feel comfortable committing to.

And then I read this story about a super-limited edition Golf going to be released, to where only 333 will be produced, a pithy number as if they thought they were Bugatti or Lamborghini or something, will be a sickly-looking greenish yellow and will cost roughly the equivalent of $80,000 USD, and I roll my eyes and come to the conclusion that I will probably never own a Golf in my life, and think about how the car and its branding have seemingly grown a little too big for its britches.

Much like the Honda Civic, the VW Golf has long since strayed from its general position in their respective automotive lineups.  Originally the economical, entry-level compact options for their makers, both of them have grown up substantially with the generations and have turned into ridiculously expensive budget sport cars where honestly, their name is more valuable than the sum of the parts that they’re composed of.

But $80k is absurd.  Asinine.  Completely ridiculous and out of touch.  I wasn’t a fan of Honda finally bringing the Civic Type-R to America, only to turbo charge it and slap a $45k price tag on it, but at least it’s not an $80,000 Golf.

$80K is like Supra territory.  Numerous BMW and Mercedes options.  The price point of importing a R32 Nissan Skyline and taking care of all associated costs and maintenance.  Nearly double of what my car cost for 1/3 of the capacity and utility.  Nearly double the cost of the Audi that I would much rather have.  Hell, it’s nearly double the cost of the R32 Golf which was already the super version of the Golf, and for what?  19 extra horsepower, that most people wouldn’t be able to legally capitalize without breaking the law?

And all for a Volkswagen Golf.  The econobox hatchback that was every person my age’s first car type of car.  No fucking thanks, although I will be interested the kinds of schmucks out there who will inevitably hoover up these 333 krauts.  I can only imagine the wildly varied types of bullshit they’ll tell themselves and others to justify dropping $80k on a gaudy fluffed out Golf.