Tag: observations

It’s all going to be Cody’s fault

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In professional sports, occasionally there are scenarios where a first-place team somehow manages to pull off a trade or pick up a free agent of a very talented player.  In most of these cases, the overarching management of these teams hardly ever take into consideration stuff like team chemistry, because most organizations believe in acquiring talent when it’s available, and let the chips fall where they may afterward.

Typically, it’s kind of a jump ball of happens afterward; sometimes the new player adds value immediately, and a good team becomes even better, but in some cases, the new player disrupts the team chemistry that made the team a first-place team, and then there is some stumbling and new struggles, as the squad tries to adjust to find its new groove.  Sometimes, they get their shit together and make magic happen, but at least in my personal viewing experiences, they still fall short.

This is what I’m feeling is kind of happening with the WWE and the fact that they’ve handcuffed themselves to the acquisition of Cody Rhodes.

For about a year, if there was anything at all that was going not just smoothly, but on a legendary pace, it was definitely the Bloodline storyline.  Roman Reigns was clearly ascending to the top of the mountain that he was always expected to reach, and he was firing on all cylinders; in the ring, cutting promos, and elevating everyone that entered his gravity.  Roman and the Bloodline were proving the power of a well-planned, executed storyline that was more importantly given all the time in the world to breathe and organically proceed.

But then Cody Rhodes’ contract with AEW expired, and suddenly the internet rumor mill basically exploded as it became apparent that he was not only not going to re-sign with the company he helped found, he was on his way back to the WWE; he was basically the surprisingly available talent that the WWE picked up solely because they could, but not necessarily because they needed him.

And much like how it happens in professional sport, every organization in the country always falls for the sunk cost fallacy, and because they paid a mint for new acquisition, they become determined to use them in a capacity relative to their salary, and not necessarily their talent or ability to fit into the puzzle.

Because Cody Rhodes cost the WWE a significant amount, he was immediately thrust into the upper echelon of the card, (re)debuting at Wrestlemania and fast tracked to a path to the World championship; regardless of the fact that there were all sorts of internal talents that were getting shafted by his return.  If not for the fact that he tore his pectoral and had to be put on the bench for almost an entire year, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to make this post because he probably would have already entangled with Roman Reigns at Summer Slam or Survivor Series and possibly have ended his legendary run and taken a championship off him.

And while he was down with injury, the Bloodline resumed their masterful storytelling, and amidst this, became planted the seed of Sami Zayn that grew into the phenomenon that’s captured the attention of wrestling fans all over with how it has played out so far.  Seriously, I didn’t think much of the whole idea of Sami Zayn wanting to be a part of the Bloodline, but it’s literally been the best storyline since the rise of Daniel Bryan or Kofi-Mania, and in fact better than those in terms of storytelling and how many people have risen their stock from just being a part of it.

But then Cody Rhodes had to go on and recover, and when it was announced that he was coming back at the Royal Rumble, it was basically a forgone conclusion that he was going to win the whole fucking thing, and obviously be fast tracked to Wrestlemania where he would fulfill his destiny (or his rumored contractual obligation to get a World championship run) and finally face Roman Reigns.

This is where I have this feeling like Cody Rhodes is going to ruin a beautiful storyline that’s been in the making over the last three years, solely because the WWE is insisting on utilizing him as World championship material based on the size of the contract he was given.

I’m not saying that Cody Rhodes won’t and can’t have a good match with Roman Reigns and possibly put up an instant classic, but it’s going to feel more forced than it is going to feel organic.  Which is a shame, because the beauty of the Bloodline saga has always been just how organic everything has felt because everything has been given time to sow seeds let things grow naturally over the last three years.

I feel like the smart play would be to have Cody lose to Roman Reigns, so that he could kind of start over and organically rise to his contention to the World championship(s), but if I’m a betting man, I don’t think that’s going to happen.  In reality, Roman and the Usos probably need some time off after carrying the company for the last three years, and even if the fans might not be sick of the Bloodline, the guys comprising of the Bloodline might be sick of the workload they’ve had and probably wouldn’t mind a little time off television to recharge.

All the same, I like to imagine a world where a lot of the WWE guys have a group text or something, where they bitch and complain about how Cody Rhodes’ return is fucking things up.  Obviously, such is likely not the case as Rhodes is often regarded as being well respected and liked by everyone in the business, but it doesn’t change the fact that his return to the WWE is causing some hierarchical restructuring to where someone is getting pushed down a rung.

It’s just kind of sad to me, because the Bloodline has easily been the best thing in professional wrestling in a long time, but Cody Rhodes of all people is the one who’s kind of fucking things up, solely because he had to become available and baited the WWE into picking him up and clearly had a lot of demands in the process.

If he were really as selfless as he likes to claim he is, he’d have let all existing storylines play themselves out and basically kind of stand aside and call next, and by next Wrestlemania in 2024, be ready to ascend to the top of the mountain then, and maybe all the fans will be on board the story he is destined to complete.

I’ve never been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, we sent the kids to grandma’s house so that we could get some major organization done at home.  Frankly even with the help of our au pair, there would’ve been a lot of going in and out of the girls’ rooms well into the evenings that made it optimal to just have them not be present in order to maximize productivity.  That being said, it also afforded all of us in the house, to be adults for two days, and on the second evening, we collectively decided to get out of the house.

At one point, we went into a 2nd and Charles to kill a little bit of time; at one point in my life, this place would’ve been my heaven, since I like comic books, video games, books and all sorts of the nerdy crap that they sell and buy there, but at this point in my life, I just want to look and don’t want to actually bring any more shit into my house that I feel is already full of a lot of unneeded crap.

While we were there though, I was looking through comic trade hardcovers, and not far to my left, I could hear some guy doing some serious mansplaining about the differences between the Infinity War in comics versus the MCU.  A smirk emerged on my face at hearing him blather on, because he was perpetuating all sorts of stereotypes of comic book geeks inside the bookstore.

As I passed by him, I couldn’t help but notice that beneath his vest that I have to imagine was put on completely non-ironically, was a holster equipped with what I’m pretty sure was a Glock of minimal size, I’m no expert on the granular details, especially when I could only see the handle.  The point is, the guy was carrying openly, which is completely legal in the state of Georgia.

But as the title of this post states, I don’t think I’ve ever been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life until I saw this guy.  Think about it, the guy is carrying a firearm, presumably loaded, completely in public, at a place of business that probably had upwards of 80-100 people inside of it at the time I saw him.  We live in the age where mass shootings happen at almost a weekly basis in similar conditions, and not only did I feel zero concern for my life, all I could feel were jokes formulating in my brain instead.

Like, this guy got dressed with the express intention of leaving the house, and going to 2nd and Charles of all the places in the Metro Atlanta area, and as he’s mentally inventorying all the things he needs prior to walking out the door, and oh yeah my gun is one of the things on his checklist.

“Honey, we have to get to 2nd and Charles before they close at 8, have you seen my gun?”
“Yeah baby, it’s right next to my Loungefly”

On action television and in film, there are occasionally montages of heroes getting ready to go into battle, and they’re equipping themselves with a gun before they go into the fights of their lives.  And then we have Firearm Fred over here consciously strapping on his holster to go into the nerd store, as if he might have to flex it on someone trying to get the last pack of Yu-Gi-Oh booster packs ahead of him.

Seriously, I was giggling to myself for the rest of the night at the thought of Sidepiece Samuel actually feeling like he had to be carrying a firearm inside of a fucking 2nd and Charles.  I’ve never felt so opposite of concerned or intimidated by another human being’s presence in my entire life.  I felt like even if he were a mass shooter ready to pounce, I could probably take him without there being any loss of life; I know it’s not really a laughing matter, but that’s how seriously felt looking at this guy.

Regardless, my au pair got a kick out of seeing such a sight with her own eyes.  And after we took her to a Hooters for dinner, I told her that she basically had the most American night of her life, having seen an armed individual out in public, followed by the aforementioned Hooters for dinner.  Welcome to America!

It’s all about perspective

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I had a thought today, that I realized that since 2023 has started, my job has kind of sucked.  This isn’t to say that I need to update my LinkedIn profile and start fervently looking for an exit strategy, but that coincidentally since the start of the new year, everyone coming back to work after the holidays and lots of people who feel they need an arbitrary date of a calendar before they start tryharding, it’s been a bit of a lengthy rough patch.

I still work with good people, and I like a lot of the people I work with, but it’s just been frequently busy, the nature of the work I’m doing often feels somewhat pointless, and not particularly gratifying.  I feel that due to employee turnover on the project management side, there’s some communicative chasms that are forming that’s creating a lot of job tickets that are full of incomplete/inadequate information, and I’m spending more time on the clock playing detective and trying to track down information versus doing my actual job, and when I am doing my actual job, there’s a backlog of job tickets, because of insufficient project management.

Seldom do I have as much downtime as I used to have, and I’m often going from ticket to ticket, and in this frustrating game of stop-and-go with trying to work versus knowing what I’m supposed to work on, and all the conversations with my superiors and skip-level meetings haven’t really gotten any traction at improving any of the frustrations of the job.

Here’s the thing though: no matter how unsatisfying and occasionally frustrating my job has been over the last six weeks, I still realize that I had to think and analyze and come to the conclusion that things aren’t particularly great on the job front right now.  And compared to where I was at prior to 2022 and changing jobs, it’s still a relative cake walk, and just how abysmally terrible things were prior to switching.

Like, my old boss at my old place of work made my life a living hell every single day I was on the clock.  From her endless pursuits of hyper-analyzing everything I did, looking for any and every angle possible to criticize me about, to initiating a timeline in which I could have potentially ended up fired, because I didn’t CC her on an email once, the word “toxic” doesn’t even come close to being adequate at describing my work life at my old job.

I was driven to such misery that I’ve become partially numb to when work is actually sucking, because my current situation isn’t that great right now, but I’m able to compare it to where I was before, and it’s really not that bad in comparison.

Ultimately, I’m just glad to be employed.  I’ve had moments of concern for my job, because I’ve seen more people let go by this company in 13 months than I had seen in six years at my previous place, and when my workload becomes too trite and full of projects that don’t seem worthy for someone at my paygrade to be doing, not that I personally feel that I am above anything, perception is reality to the working world, and it’s not about what I think so much as it could be seen by those above me, that I’m getting paid too well for the scope of work that I’m being assigned.

But as long as I stay busy and am helping keeping shit assignments off of people who don’t want to do them, I suppose I can feel some modicum of job security.  And as long as I don’t have to deal with the c-word of the old boss I used to have, pretty much any job in the world is perfectly fine.

Re: the Super Bowl LVII ending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although I agree that the ending of Super Bowl LVII was less than thrilling, make no mistake, it was still one of the best Super Bowls there’ve been in recent years.  Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts put on one of the most exciting Super Bowl quarterback battles since like Peyton Manning versus Drew Brees in XLIV, with both of them putting up monster numbers and neither of them blinking until the ending of the game.

And as much as I loathe the Philadelphia Eagles and revel in the fact that they’re the third Philadelphia major sports team to lose a championship in the 2022 season, I personally like Jalen Hurts.  He’s an honorable, mature man in a sport full of overgrown man-babies, and even throughout college, he demonstrated honor, class, integrity and has always been respectable in my opinion.  And despite being on the losing end of the Super Bowl, he put up the superior numbers against Patrick Mahomes, soon to be forgotten solely because he didn’t win the game.

But getting back to the point of this post, it’s been really interesting to me to see in the aftermath of the Super Bowl, all of the butt-hurt filthy casuals and not-actually sports fans who are bitching and moaning about the anti-climactic ending to the game.  Yes, the Chiefs downing the ball at the 1-yard line and milking the clock and kicking a go-ahead field goal with just eight seconds left sucked all of the excitement of the Mahomes/Hurts duel, but it was one billion percent the absolutely correct strategy to employ for the objective of winning the goddamn game.

The Kansas City Chiefs give absolutely zero fucks about what anyone thinks about the finish, because they accomplished the only thing that mattered: winning the goddamn game.  If the Eagles had the ball and they were in the same scenario, there is a two billion percent chance that they employ the exact same strategy.  Milk the clock, take the lead, and give the opposition as little time as possible to have any chance at countering.

And to the filthy casuals and not-fans who ask why?  Because throughout history, the NFL sees this scenario happen on a fairly regular basis, it’s just not often that it occurs in the Super Bowl.  Sure, everyone loves touchdowns, but when a field goal is all that is necessary to win, it’s always the right call to chew up as much clock as possible and kicking the field goal, and in fact, it’s actually more detrimental to score the touchdown if it means salvaging some time for the other team in order to make a counter attack.

One prime example of the touchdown blowing up in a team’s face actually involved the Atlanta Flacons who obviously haven’t ever recovered from the fuckup of Super Bowl Lee, and there was a game a few years ago where the Flacons were playing the Detroit Lions, and they were down with a minute left, 14-16.  When it was evident that the Flacons were going to score, the Lions basically conceded the end zone, hoping to salvage some time and get the ball back as quick as possible.  Despite the fact that a field goal was all that was necessary for the Flacons to win, running back Todd Gurley had a brain fart when rushing into the end zone, and despite his best efforts to drop at the 1-yard line, he crossed the plane and accidentally scored a touchdown.  The Flacons took the lead, but they left a minute on the clock, to which any NFL fan knows is the equivalent of like 15 when considering timeouts, commercials and clock stoppage.  Naturally, the Lions would score their own touchdown as time expired to defeat the Flacons, validating the importance of the strategy that the Chiefs employed.

In fact, off the top of my head, the same tactic was almost employed in Super Bowl XLVI, where the Giants tried to kill the clock, but Ahmad Bradshaw too, fell into the end zone despite his efforts to stop short.  It just so happens that the Giants defense managed to neutralize Tom Brady, but New York fans were sweating those last 82 seconds of the game, knowing Brady’s reputation for late-game heroics.

The point is, the Chiefs made the right call, and everyone bitching about it is just some filthy casual scenester tourist into the world of sports fandom, and your opinions hold zero weight and do not matter.  It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t fun, but it got the fucking job done, and anyone who knows the game of football knows that in every single similar situation, the outcome would be the same 100% of the time.

Dad Brog (#104) – The impending threenager

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t want to give off the impression that these dad brogs are only reserved for when there are aspects of parenting that are only stressful and infuriating, because contrary to such logic, there are tons of times in which there’s nothing I love more in existence than being the dad to my children.

The last time I wrote a dad brog was when burnt-out dad went on his blow-off trip to visit his brother in Texas, and frankly it was a tremendous help and I felt that a lot of good came out of it.  It’s amazing what just two days of getting to sleep in without any semblance of an alarm can do for one’s mind and mental well-being.  Since returning from that trip, I think things have been pretty well overall, and in the world of parenting, no news should be considered good news, and it’s on me that good news goes quiet when it really shouldn’t.

In fact, the image above was something I made that I wanted to write a blurb about, how my oldest loves her maple syrup, and has this amusing ritual on waffle mornings, where she’s conservative about how much syrup she uses while dipping in her waffle strips, with the seeming express intent so that she can drink the rest off her plate at the end instead.  Immediately, I’m reminded of Super Troopers whenever she pulls that off, and such photoshop work is the ensuing result.

But such is the nature of parenting, is having the time to actually embark on hobbies of mine, such as writing.  Not to mention I’m such a neurotic kook about my writing habits that if one thing is off, regardless of if I have the time, and writing just doesn’t happen.  Instead, it’s kind of put on the shelf until parenting gets difficult again, and it just so happens to be convenient that the impulse to write again happens only when I’m getting annoyed by a parenting trope.

A few weeks ago, my entire household got sick.  It wasn’t coronavirus, it wasn’t the flu, it wasn’t strep throat; it was just some nasty bug that started with #1, passed on to #2, and then slowly picked off everyone else in my household, including our au pair.  It was during this time that #1 had some truly miserable times while she was dealing with the worst of the sickness.  Massive emotional meltdowns, crying and snot screaming over anything and everything, and mood swings that changed at the drop of a hat at times.

During the peak of the plague, she kind of got a pass on the exasperating behavior, because there was the possibility that it was onset by just feeling like crap.  But I remember having this dreadful thought in my mind, and asking mythical wife on what if this wasn’t just sickness, and this was the new norm of her development?

Welp, the household is just about entirely on the mend at this point, nobody’s nearly as sick as they were last weekend, and sure enough, the emotional instability of #1 remains as it did when she was sick.  #1 is less than a month from becoming three years old, which means we’re embarking on the journey of having a threenager in the house.

Heaven have mercy on our souls, it’s been trying at times.  Every event throughout every day has the potential to turn into a nuclear meltdown, and it’s a Christmas miracle whenever I can have a morning that doesn’t turn into a disaster zone for breakfast. 

Fortunately, #2 is at the stage in life where most everything is fairly predictable and she’s the chill kid of my two, because if she were still Civilization nuclear Gandhi at the same time as #1 being her own rage demon, I’d probably want to jump off a cliff.  Unfortunately, whenever #1 goes into one of her tantrums, she occasionally takes it out on her little sister, which requires some Pat Riley defense to anticipate and prevent sometimes.

Either way, this is where life is at in the journey of parenthood currently.  Taking a break a month ago was a critical success, and is something I and we, as in mythical wife and I, need to embark on from time to time in order to not lose our heads, and it better prepares us mentally for when shit like raising a threenager starts to heat up.

I kind of respect the brutal honesty

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not personal, Brooklyn. I just hate this city, the fans, and everyone in this organization and want to watch them burn out of spite.

The best part of the whole quote is where he says “It’s not personal.”

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t pay that much attention to the NBA these days, but I know who Kyrie Irving is, and when I saw this come up in my news feed, I had to scrunch my brow and just go wow.  These are some bombs of words to be flinging out there, and in an age where people are reluctant to burn bridges because the internet has made the world small, everything is basically recorded forever, and people just don’t know when their words can come back to haunt them, Kyrie Irving still gave zero fucks and basically told not just the Brooklyn Nets, the team that he actively plays for and signs his paychecks, but the entire city of Brooklyn, New York, that he hates them and fuck you all.

Personally, I’m not a fan of Kyrie Irving; he’s this enigma of a human being that I feel was blessed with basketball talent, coasted through life, has enjoyed immense success professionally and made a tremendous amount of money, but is still somehow an insufferable asshole who seems to get off on being a contrarian.

However, personal feelings aside, like the title of this post says, I kind of respect the brutal honesty he had no hesitation in letting become a quote.  At some point in most peoples’ lives, who hasn’t been furious with an employer before?  Whether they cared to admit or not, felt the same kind of feelings towards those jobs, as he felt about the Brooklyn Nets?  And on top of the discontent with his employer, in the world of sports, fans are about the most insufferable people on the face of the planet, much less ones from Brooklyn, New York.

I don’t really like Kyrie Irving, but I can only imagine the amount of bullshit he heard from fans on a regular basis.  In spite of my personal feelings, I’m not going to deny for a second that the guy is talented as all hell, and is genuinely a generational-level talent; when he actually feels like putting in the effort.  He can score, he can pass, and he can take over games by himself; I imagine a lot of the shit he hears on the regular is why he hasn’t delivered a championship for as much money as he’s making, as if sports fans were completely convinced that one guy could actually accomplish victory entirely by themselves.

Michael Jordan couldn’t.  Kobe Bryant couldn’t.  LeBron James couldn’t.  They all had good teams surrounding them, and unfortunately for Kyrie Irving, he hasn’t had the right good team surrounding him since 2016, when he had LeBron James piloting the Cleveland Cavaliers team he was on.

So I kind of get and I do enjoy the unfiltered venom Kyrie Irving had to say about the Nets and the city of Brooklyn itself, and I applaud him for raising the bar for any discontented professional athlete that is demanding to be traded.

Continue reading “I kind of respect the brutal honesty” →

This story tickles me in a way that only other parents would get

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of us, one of us: extreme tidy-er Marie Kondo admits to giving up on extreme tidiness and that her house is messy

This is what we would call a pivot, in the working world.  I didn’t realize that Marie Kondo was two years younger than me, and it probably would’ve been a real fucking chore to maintain the air of minimalist perfection for the rest of her life in order to maintain her brand, not like she really needs it anymore considering her book has sold over 40 million copies and her Netflix show had already been a big hit.

Coming out to the public to explain that she’s mostly given up on being tidy, and that her own home was messy, probably the smartest thing to do.  Better to disclose the intel on her own terms instead of having someone find it out, disclose it on the internet, and have the wrath of the internet be all over her calling her a fraud and a hypocrite that tells other people what to do with all their shit but doesn’t know how to handle her own.

But what this really boils down to is the fact that the reason why the Queen of Clean has become the Herald of Hoarding just like that, is the same reason why millions of people like me struggle to maintain our own capabilities of tidiness as much as we’d like to: kids.

Her book went gangbusters in 2011, but then she got married in 2012.  Presumably it wasn’t long before did kids come into the equation, so it’s actually very impressive to me that she had the wherewithal to even entertain producing her Netflix series that dropped in 2019, which either means she was an absent parent or her husband filled in admirably, perhaps both.

But as is often the case, once the number of kids begins to outnumber the adults in a family unit, that is where the shit begins to hit the fan.  And this is coming from someone who’s family is currently at a 1:1 ratio, and I still feel like I’m losing control all the time.  I couldn’t imagine bringing another into the home, and mythical wife and I take measures to make sure that such will become an impossibility.

And in Kondo’s case, third child enters the fray, and suddenly she’s no longer able to keep up with being KonMari, professionally, or in her own personal life.  I think it’s hilarious that she didn’t just go from “no longer being tidy,” to being “my house is messy” because frankly that’s the kind of transition that my household went through when kids started entering the equation.

The point of all this is that kids quite literally, break anyone.  If they can break a wealthy multi-media success like Marie Kondo, they’ll have no problem at all busting up the lives of all the rest of us plebes who decide to reproduce and repopulate, and the more non-parents can comprehend just how difficult it is, the better chance of understanding and empathy can emerge.