Tag: observations

Let’s talk about the new WWE World Heavyweight Championship blet

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I guess I can’t say that I’m really that surprised that the WWE went ahead and introduced a new World Championship into circulation of blets.  Roman Reigns has the WWE and the Universal championship on lockdown and doesn’t look like he’ll be losing them anytime soon, Walter Gunther is bringing generations of prestige back to the Intercontinental championship, the United States championship seems like it’s the youngster’s title, with Austin Theory wielding it, and I have no idea what to predict what they’re going to do with the unified Tag Team championships.

But because Roman has both of the company’s top prizes, and it doesn’t make sense for him to relinquish either, there is a modicum of sense in introducing a new World title equivalent, for a pool of upper-card talents to vie for, without getting inevitably squashed by Reigns.

I also like to think that the WWE made a new blet, just so that they could have another blet to sell, considering they’ve kind of caught up and released just about every single blet in the company’s existence, and I don’t imagine business is great on patsy fake replicas with the Boston Red Sox logo or for whatever reason, every single SEC school.  And at an aggressive $499 price point for a replica, they’re probably grateful for AEW for inflating the cost of replicas to where they could justify upping their costs as well.

Anyway, let’s talk about the blet’s design, seeing as how I am the ultimate blet collector that I know [I know nobody else who collects personally] and my opinion holds the utmost weight on replica blets of a fake sport of mostly sweaty dudes crashing into each other in soap opera storylines.

Knee-jerk reaction: meh.  Leaning not liking it, 48-52.  I get what the WWE is trying to do with this, in that they’re trying to take the classic big gold blet from the NWA and WCW and make it inherently WWE’s without just straight up re-releasing the old big gold blet.  Most likely because they wouldn’t be able to justify the $499 price point, but also because the origins of it will never be native to the WWE.

The sheer amount of flourish and the thickness of the plates, and all the swirly designs with practically no contrast to give it any sort of visual separation just kind of make it look like a massive golden turd, smashed and shaped into the general shape of a gold center plate, and then slapped with a WWE logo in the middle.

Speaking of which, because the globe behind the logo lacks any sort of, you know, land masses on it, it’s not really a globe anymore, and doesn’t really say “world” about it.  But that’s okay I guess, because they have “WORLD CHAMPION” on it in a spiky, LA Angels-type font that is supposed to look intense and menacing or something.

It’s like, the classic World championships of the past, and all championship blets for that matter, the WWE logo was always subtle, but present.  It allowed for the actual title of the championship be the focal point of the blets, from the old World championships, all the way to even like the European championship.  There’s a reason why those older blet designs are all so revered and respected and seen as the benchmark of blet design.

The current WWE and Universal championships held by Roman Reigns work, because that’s the WWE going full heavy handed and making the blet basically nothing but the company’s logo.  It’s gaudy and intense, but because they went so ham and committed to it, it works.

This new World Heavyweight championship is one part trying to be big gold, but at the same time, one part WWEEEEEEE, that it’s like two conflicting forces colliding and we’re left with this weird bastardized golden turd of a blet where it’s stuck in the middle of two alpha objectives.

It’s not the worst blet ever released by the WWE, but it’s also not one where I see it and immediately go mmmmmmm I want it.  But I could be swayed, be it through an intense discount/sale opportunity, or as simple as being happy with whom is holding the blet, and it making me want it.  But considering the introduction of this blet screams, Cody Rhodes will be the first holder of it, I can’t say that holder of the blet is going to sell me on it any time soon.

Fuckin’ Cody.  I hope he beats some transitional schmuck for the blet in Saudi Arabia, just so we can go ahead and get his bullshit contractually-obligated World title reign over with, but it mean relatively nothing in the grand spectrum of things.

And then next Spring, lose it to Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania, to great lol’s for me.

Someone get the Minnesota Timberwolves a trophy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

They avoided getting swept!  They may as well be NBA champions for demonstrating such guile and determination and defeating the mighty and championship pedigree of the Denver Nuggets to stave off elimination.

This, is the very definition of lowered expectations, and precisely the instance why I actually have a tag in my brog entitled “lowered expectations.”

Sometimes, the NBA is just so hilarious at how soft and silly it’s become over the decades.  There’s so much noise surrounding the entire league, that the actual act of playing hoops seems so almost tertiary.  It is entirely possible to get sucked up in the drama and storylines of an entire NBA season and not actually watch a single game.

But back to this hilarious screen grab, it’s perfect on so many levels:

  • First, it’s not even remotely accurate that the Timberwolves avoided getting swept for the first time in franchise history; back when the playoffs were still best-of-five, the Wolves were swept in both 1997 and 2002, but the NBA for some reason likes to disregard the BO5 era unless it’s in support of whatever narrative they’re phishing for.
  • They act like the Wolves getting swept would be some sort of monumental history or something; Minnesota isn’t an OG NBA franchise, having come into the league in the 1990 expansion, but in 30+ years, they’ve only made the playoffs 11 times. That’s literally 33% of the franchise’s existence they’ve gotten into the playoffs, and of those 11 times, only once have they gotten out of the first round, and that was Kevin Garnett’s MVP season.  Otherwise, the Minnesota Timberwolves are definition of a middling pretender that may never actually win an NBA championship ever.
  • Rudy Gobert being in the frame is like the cherry on top, because I can’t say that I follow the NBA much, but whenever I do hear about the NBA, Rudy Gobert’s name has come up a surprising amount, and it’s almost never in a good context. This is the guy that was the league’s Patient Zero when COVID started, but not only did he deny coronavirus, the guy dared the world to give it to him, and he made a spectacle of rubbing microphones and tried his best to get it, and by golly did he succeed.  As soon as he tested positive, the NBA shut down shortly thereafter.  Oh, and just a few weeks ago, the Wolves ended their season with Gobert getting into a fight… with a teammate.  Real smart guy, that Rudy Gobert is

Whatever though, let’s hear it for the Minnesota Timberwolves for winning the NBA Championship after 33 long years of operation staving off getting swept because they’re totally going to be the first franchise in NBA history to ever come back from an 0-3 series deficit, and that statistic, is very much factual with no asterisks or caveats.  Maybe the Wolves can build on this grandiose achievement, and perhaps in 22 more years, get knocked out of the first round in game six instead.  Progress!

So the A’s are finally moving, it seems

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

😔 : The Oakland Athletics reach a land deal in Las Vegas; all signs pointing towards officially moving the franchise after years of failing to secure any sort of stadium deal to remain in Oakland

It’s funny, the speculation that the Oakland A’s were moving has been going on for so long, it got to a point where people just stopped believing it was going to happen.  But much like the Washington Redskins finally changing their name after eons of dodging it, it appears that the Oakland A’s are officially going to be departing Oakland, and heading into the desert.

The sports fan in me reacts because it’s change and a lot of sports fans don’t like change.  But it also elicits a little bit of sadness for me as a baseball fan, because I’m a low-key fan of the A’s, in the sense that I love Moneyball, underdogs, and teams that operate like they’re small-market and have to rely on brains and guile to survive in a league where the Mets are literally spending $300 million more than they are.

Plus, in spite of all the flack and criticism the Oakland Coliseum or whatever corporate-sponsor-of-the-month-Stadium gets for being on the wrong side of the tracks, adorned with barbed wire, and dated like an original mid-century modern home, I actually really liked my experience visiting the place, and have fond memories of the ballpark as a whole.

So I’m sad to hear that the A’s are finally getting the nails lined up on their coffin, with the hammering supposedly to be finished by the start of the 2027 season.  There’s still time for those out in Oakland to soak up a few more years of Athletics baseball, but it’ll be with the underlining sadness that there are still a finite number of games left before the team packs their shit and heads to Las Vegas.

It’s actually rich that of all the parties to come out and express sadness and condolences for the eventual demise of baseball in Oakland, the fucking San Francisco Giants emerged to make their comments.  Because on at least one instance, it was the Giants themselves that pitched a fit and effectively blocked the A’s from getting a new ballpark in San Jose, because they felt it encroached on their geographic territory, despite the fact that the city is kind of equidistant from both cities.  I’ve said it once, and I’ll say again, fuck the Giants.

Speaking of rich, of all the dirty laundry to start hitting the waves in light of the news of the team’s eventual departure, one thing I was unaware of is the fact that the owner of the Athletics is basically the richest singular owner in all of MLB, which is extra sad since the A’s have basically been bottom-3 payrolls in the league since pretty much, the existence of time.  MLB as a whole declared jihad on the Marlins’ former owner Jeffrey Loria until he sold the franchise, and even in “being forced out,” he still made a gargantuan profit in the process.  It makes me wonder if anything of the sort has been remotely considered for John Fisher?

All the same, I just wanted to write some words to express my general disappointment over the impending death of baseball in Oakland.  Not because it’s a layup of a topic for me to write about, on the contrary, I drug my feet because I didn’t want to phone in something phony, but because I really did care about the Oakland A’s.  Even though my fandom has wavered throughout the years, I always took enjoyment of seeing whenever the A’s defeated any of the rich blue bloods of baseball, and remained a low-key fan of a team that embodied success almost as an act of defiance.

I’m sure baseball in Las Vegas will be enjoyable, but inevitably when I visit whatever stadium will be there, it’ll be a hard time not comparing it to the dated charm and the place that made the most out of the nothing they had, of the Oakland Mausoleum.

A billion-dollar arena in Forsyth County LOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: Forsyth County, Tennessee Georgia plans to build a mixed-use commercial zone anchored by an arena with low-key hopes of potentially luring an NHL squad back to Georgia in the event of a future expansion

It’s bad enough that Atlanta went through this crazy, stadium-happy building spree throughout the last decade that saw the Braves and Falcons both get new homes, Atlanta United getting a new training facility, and the Hawks’ developmental team getting a new arena, it looks like the bug managed to bite someone with influence way the fuck up north of the city up in Forsyth County, who now wants to build their version of The Battery, up in probably Cumming.

In all fairness, as much as I loathed the way the Braves swindled the state into getting The Battery, I do admit that The Battery is really a fine place.  It’s the polar opposite of what Turner Field and surrounding area was, with a bustling mini-town right outside the ballpark, full of bars, restaurants, shopping, hotels, social venues and a movie theater.  I’ve still never paid a dime of my own money to park there or go to a Braves game yet, but the Braves do make up a notable chunk of the taxes I pay on the regular.

The Battery works, because beyond all of its positive attributes, the location is primo, being easily accessible from all cardinal directions on the highways via I-75 or I-285.  Obviously pending traffic conditions, but the point is, The Battery is accessible.

Such cannot be said about a potential Battery clone up in Forsyth County, because Forsyth County is practically Tennessee, and is about as relatable to the Metro Atlanta area as people in Fredericksburg claiming to be in Northern Virginia, or people who live in New Jersey claiming to live in New York.  Even if this Battery clone were actually the Battery, plucked up out of the ground and plopped into Cumming like it were Sim City, it would still fail colossally, because Forsyth County just isn’t accessible.

Forsyth County is almost literally solely accessible from one direction – from the south.  Drivers, because fuck if there’s going to be any sort of rail access, literally have to drive on GA-400 until it officially ends, and is just US-19, and ride up some country-ass roads until they get to Cumming.  Which is kind of smack dab in between I-575 and I-985, and not really easily accessible from either from lateral directions.

The idea that a Battery in Forsyth would actually succeed on its own, much less actually attract a professional sports franchise is absolutely hilarious.  The county is as red as the planet Mars, and the Klan still operates all throughout the hills and mountains shortly in north of the county.  Yeah, I’m sure hockey fans, much less more sane people from Alpharetta, Gainesville, Flowery Branch or Canton are going to trek into Forsyth County to spend their money when there are way more logical and closer options available to them.

But hey, if Forsyth County wants to bilk a billion dollars from their taxpayers, more power to them.  For once, it would be nice to know that some other county will be seen as the schmucks to get taken advantage for a really, really bad idea for a change.  I’d say I’d feel bad if and when there’s an NHL expansion in the future, and Forsyth County is turned down, because Georgia’s already had their shot at the NHL, and those of us who lived here when the Thrashers were here, saw just how well that debacle turned out.

Why do the AEW Team Blets have an atomic dick grab driver of doom on it?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Of all of AEW’s championship blets, my favorite has always been their tag team championship.  It’s not overly large and gaudy like their World championship, nor is it as ridiculous as a blet named after a television network that their flagship program has already been booted from, or as un-credible as their not-Intercontinental championship that’s already been renamed into the International championship.

The design is tasteful, the plate sizes aren’t humorously large, and I once said that if I could have any replica blet from AEW, it would be a tag team one.

I saw that FTR, after winning the tag team championship for the second time in AEW, decided to dedicate the reign to Jay Briscoe, who had passed away tragically in a car accident just a few months ago.  The name plates on each of the blet has Jay Briscoe’s name instead of Dax Harwood or Cash Wheeler.  The gesture is nice, and it’s kind of like a low-key middle finger to Turner broadcasting, as they absolutely abhorred the existence of Jay Briscoe due to a singular incident where he made some homophobic tweets eons ago but they didn’t want to let it go.

However it was in this post did I actually get good look at the details of the AEW tag team blets, and I noticed that the side plates have artwork of a guy doing a piledriver to another guy.  Not only is he doing a piledriver to an opponent, he’s reaching up and grabbing his junk in the process.

Now obviously, hardcore wrestling fans know this to be what’s known as a Gotch-style piledriver, with in fact the image linked here appears to be the exact inspiration for the side plate’s artwork, but it doesn’t change the fact that in side plate form, it still looks like Minoru Suzuki is grabbing a guy’s gear while pile driving him.

Immediately, my mind goes to accuse the Young Bucks, namely most likely Nick Jackson, who seems to be the brains and the voice of the duo, whom are all about sophomoric humor, and generally mocking the business that they often clash with older heads that accuse them of killing it with their general conduct and in-character behavior.

Like, I feel like I could totally see them participating in the creation of the design of the blets that they want to make so important and valuable, because they’re a tag team and AEW is all about featuring and pushing tag team wrestling, but because they have to also mock and ridicule all the tradition and pomp and circumstance of the business, they think putting artwork of a guy grabbing another guy’s dong is the funniest thing in the world, and if anyone ever tries to accuse them of such, they can just say it’s a Gotch piledriver.

Because it doesn’t really make sense to have a piledriver on a tag team blet; why not have like two guys doing something instead?  I guess they didn’t want to have silhouettes of superkicks, because then it would be too obvious or a flex.  So I guess they’re content to just have a random outline of Minoru Suzuki grabbing some dude’s balls, doing the Japanese Atomic Dong Twisting Driver of Doom instead.  Hashtag AEW.

The birthday post, circa 2023

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I always get kind of bluesy around my birthday.  It’s like in one hand, I don’t make a big deal about advertising it, but at the same time, I want others to know about it and maybe be nice to me for a day, but then again I almost feel more comfortable if people didn’t know and didn’t treat me any differently.  Like nobody at work knows it’s my birthday (at least I think) and I just want to go through my normal day without drawing any attention.

I think what it really comes down to is the fact that I’m not really comfortable being a center of attention, and that’s typically what happens for a lot of people on their birthdays.  It just makes me feel kind of cringey and awkward, and wondering who is coming out of the woodwork on social media to wish my a happy birthday because they mean it, or they feel obligated to do it because, and just how genuine it is.

Growing up, birthdays never really meant much to my family beyond a certain age, and it’s evident that I’ve gotten my general ambivalence and weirdness about them from my parents, who never did anything for their respective birthdays during my upbringing, so it kind of stopped being a big deal to me around then, regardless of the fact that I’ve tried sporadically to breathe some life into my birthday throughout my adult years.

I’ve also met and have people in my life whom I share the birthday or are close to others, and it’s by no fault of anyone else, I just want to avoid the possibility of being envious of others and the things they do, by trying not to make a big deal of mine in the first place.  It’s like I’m happier and more amenable to celebrate the birthdays of others than my own, regardless of the date or proximity to the date.

Maybe it’s the feeling of anticipation of a birthday, and the kind of melancholy disappointment of when it’s passed and in the rear view, and knowing that it’s going to be another year before we can hope for our specific day to come back, and hope that it’s also good.

Or maybe it’s the dreading of growing older, and now that I’m 41, I’m still sometimes wondering what I’m doing with my life, and wondering if what I’m doing is good, successful, and has a promising future ahead of it, or if I’ve put my life kind of on hold while I put all my importance on raising my children, because when it really comes down to it, they’re the most important things in my life, and raising them well still takes precedence over everything else.

Honestly, I don’t really know what the point of this post is, or if there’s even one at all.  It’s my birthday, and I just felt like writing about it, even if it’s not particularly the most exciting, promising, or positive-feeling post I could possibly make.

There’s not much in the world that I have a want for, physically.  Not even any more wrestling blets, because I pretty much have everything at this point.  I guess I just want a general sense and feeling of comfort and happiness, and if I can just have a day where I can not get too stressed out, have a good workout, have some Willy’s, and spend some happy time with my kids and wife, then I don’t think I can really ask for much else.

So here’s 41 years old, hardly feels that much different than the last few years, but I suppose that’s what life is going to be like until I can look forward to a better retirement portfolio or registering for AARP.

Beef: Great show, hits a little too hard for me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I saw a trailer for Netflix’s Beef, I didn’t know much else about the plot other than the fact that the general introduction to the plot was two people having a chance road rage encounter, and it supposedly escalating to comedic hijinks.  But now that I’m finished with the show, yes, the general boiled down plot of it does remain similar to the early perception of what the show could’ve been, but it was also way more complex, way more substantial, way more important for Asian representation on camera, and most notably, way more relatable to Asians, to admittedly uncomfortable levels at times.

Don’t get me wrong, as a whole, I loved Beef.  It was a fantastic show.  But at the same time, it dove into some topics and had dialogue and situations where it kind of mind-fucked me at just how targeted this felt, beyond the fact that the male lead’s name is Danny and he’s Korean, but obviously I know I’m far from the only person much less Asian person who probably deals with a lot of these thoughts, emotions and struggles to where a plot like this can probably impact a lot of people out there.

Aside from the praise for the strong writing and the strong performing of all actors in the show, one thing that I appreciated the most about the show is just how casually but impactfully demolishes the door of Asian stereotypes in film and television, on a global basis.  Koreans in media in both Korea and America are often set to a lot of unwritten rules and guidelines, like when it comes to physical intimacy, sex and dialogue.  When I was growing up and seeing Korean shows or dramas that my mom or grandma would watch, and seeing any sort of meaningful relationships much less physical intimacy just didn’t happen.

As countless American articles have called out, Asian representation in American media is even worse, and Asian men get it the worst, being emasculated left and right, causing generations of Americans to see Asian men as a bunch of auto-cuckold wimps by default.

Beef just goes on like none of the old rules or bars ever existed, and it’s a breath of fresh air to see people, regardless of race, acting like the people of today would conduct themselves.  Danny is allowed to be emotional, introspective and have flaws.  Amy is allowed to be a breadwinner, the alpha in her marriage and stand up to men fearlessly.  Paul is allowed to be sexy and naïve, and I’m glad to see him fight the good fight to hopefully paint Korean men as anything other than either overweight comic sidekick, or a plastic-molded K-pop boy band member.

AND THERE’S FUCKING SEX in the show, involving Asian people, and it’s not like a sensual love making scene to IU singing in the background.  It’s emotional and raw and actual fucking like you’d see in real American media between non-Asian people.  I’m not writing this fact to try and be funny and make this post memorable or anything, it’s that such occurrences really are so rare, that I feel the need to really hammer it out and make sure it’s known.

And in spite of all the heavy swings the show does to break a lot of molds of Asian representation, the show still takes plenty of time to really tell the stories of the Asian sides of all the characters.  The importance of church to Korean-Americans.  The fetishization of Japanese culture when it comes to affluent white people.  And the sheer lack of communication between generations of Asian children with their own parents, which is an unfortunate trope that just about every second-generation Asian child deals with, with their respective parents.

I really enjoyed Beef as a whole.  But I’d be remiss to ignore the fact that on multiple occasions, I found the show really kind of difficult watch and digest at times, just because of the sheer relatability I felt with it.  It was like getting emotionally mind-fucked a few times, and I really wonder if any of my non-Asian friends and extended family that might watch it, will feel the same way I did when watching it.

I’m amazed I managed to write a post about this without resorting to any spoilers, but for what it’s worth to the zero people that read my swill, Beef is something that I highly recommend if you’re in the mood for a dark comedy that relies heavily on dialogue, but is full of substance, humor, and thought-provoking situations.