Tag: cashmoney

I guess OnlyFans wasn’t as lucrative as she had hoped

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lot of turnover in the professional wrestling industry.  Budget cuts on account of oversaturation, poor television ratings, general societal changes where the industry just isn’t as hot as it once was, etcetera, etcetera.  However, I have this belief in wrestling that even if a talent is released, they are always one idea and a phone call away from being brought back into the business.  Over the years, we the fans have witnessed such revivals countless times, and as long as a released talent doesn’t go out of their way to scorch earth and set fire to any bridges they used, there’s always the possibility that they will be back, and hopefully to more success in the future.

Well, when the WWE released Cora Jade, she didn’t take it particularly well.  From the moment she was released, she was up on social media taking shots at the company, vaguebooking over some of the colleagues and personnel she wasn’t a fan of, and after the initial shock and resentment period that most people whom might have been fired from their jobs might harbor, Cora Jade didn’t really stop.  Seemingly at times, she would go out of her way, or inject herself into debates and discussions about the business in order to keep taking digs at the WWE, and how she didn’t need them, and how her future endeavors would definitely be more lucrative or make her more famous and in demand than if she had remained a WWE superstar.

Needless to say, it’s apparent that nobody in her personal life had ever told her the importance of not burning bridges, and that there is definitely a time and place for popping off, but it’s really generally not wise most of the time.

Regardless, with her bridge particularly singed, she embarked on an endeavor that would mostly ensure her being able to generate income utilizing one of her more prominent wrestling attributes: her body, and starting up an OnlyFans account.

Of course, she went way out of her way to put over OnlyFans while still taking digs at the WWE, as if she were trying to convince herself on top of all of her social followers that OnlyFans wasn’t something to be ashamed about.  Unsurprisingly, she seemed to be shot out of a cannon when she started, because of course she was quick to boast about her earnings by making a post about the luxury car that she was now capable of affording.

I mean, Toni Storm and Jordynne Grace both made gobs of money when they were on the platform, however, neither of them were shitting on the business while they were doing it, they were just capitalizing on a money-making venture while they awaited their next opportunity, which inevitably came, since the two of them were way better wrestlers than Cora Jade was, and they actually had something to offer their respective companies.

So honestly, it was a little surprising to see Cora Jade emerge back in TNA, under her old name, Elayna Black.  She had made such a big deal about how much she was over the professional wrestling industry, that even if she really didn’t want to step away, many in the business might be turned off by her general lack of appreciation for the industry, but here we are anyway.

The funny thing is that over the last few months before the return of Black, I actually hadn’t heard much from her, as far as the algorithm went at feeding me content.  And considering that she came crawling back to the industry that she said she didn’t need anymore, it leads me to believe that perhaps the OnlyFans train wasn’t doing as well as she had thought it was going to do, and that perhaps it might not be a bad idea to remain in the pro-wrestling space.

Either way, it must kind of suck to be Elayna Black/Cora Jade.  She had a great big Gen-Z crashout after she lost her job, and made herself look like an idiot with all of her bridge burning on social media.  Relegated herself to selling risque pictures of herself to creeps, but when that well seemingly began to dry up, she came crawling back to the business she had spent the last year trying to bury.

Owned.

A microcosm of what’s wrong with the airline industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.  I’m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn’t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn’t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and doing his best to live out The Korean Story™.

I don’t often disclose my personal expenses, but in this case, this round trip to and from Washington DC is running me $570.  Way back, when AirTran still existed, I could get this exact RT for $159 if I played my cards right.  Full fare, and not when I had the ability to fly standby on a moment’s notice.  Obviously, inflation is a very real and unfortunate thing, and it’s been nearly 20 years since I used to be able to get those reasonable and cost-efficient fares, but the fact that it’s gone up 350% seems outlandish and reeks of white people greed.

The gate I’m sitting in is relatively deserted.  Flying on a Wednesday night is great in that regard.  The aircraft will more than likely have upwards of 140 seats all in all, but if I had to guess, maybe barely 50% of the aircraft will be full.  If I were still doing the standby thing, I’d be doing a dance at the gate because I would have a 100% chance of getting on this flight.

That said, there’s absolutely little reason why this fare should have been remotely close to $570.  There used to be a time when flight fares would fluctuate somewhat on account of the demand of a particular flight, and a flight like this should probably have been cheaper than what I was forced to pay just so I could help out a family member, because clearly there was not a heavy demand for the flight.  I’d hate to imagine what it might have cost to go Friday through Sunday.

I used to be salty when this route had gone up to like $379 from all carriers, but now I’d be doing cartwheels if I could get a RT for under $400 these days.

A few weeks ago, there was an article where Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian was quoted, saying shit along the lines of blaming low-cost carriers AKA Spirit and Frontier, for the degradation of airline passenger behavior throughout the country.  My knee-jerk reaction at hearing this was, sure, yeah, a lot of unruly people do fly Spirit and Frontier, that’s not entirely wrong, my own criticism has ol’ Ed Bastian in the crosshairs, because man is clearly so out of touch with the people that he probably doesn’t seem to realize that most people are probably unruly because they’ve been given no choice in life but to pay egregious fares in order to travel, and whether they take a low-cost carrier along with all the other unruly poors, or they shell out money they probably can’t afford in order to travel, they’re going to be bitter and pissed off about it in the end all the same.

I know that I’m feeling quite salty and full of piss at having to shell out $570 to make a routine flight to a destination not even two hours of airtime away.  I just happen to have a little more restraint and keep my vitriol and venom encased in harmless text on a brog that nobody on the planet reads except for me, as opposed to feeling entitled to dress like a 2000’s-era NBA player, and act about as much of a shithead as one.

Ed doesn’t seem to grasp that if Delta would ease off the gas on their price gauging and make flying a little more accessible to the people, not only would everyone flock to Delta if they’re the first ones to cut costs, it would then force all the other carriers to follow suit in order to keep up, and if the royal everyone, is just a little bit happier about not going as broke in order to travel, the civility of airline passengers would inevitably improve.

And then Ed’s completely out-of-touch analysis of the masses would begin to improve, traveling would stop feeling like such a colossally insufferable experience, and call me crazy, everyone would probably make more money in the end, because that’s often just what happens when consumers are actually made happy sometimes.  There’s enough empirical evidence to show the sheer profitability of people not being shitheads to the masses, and hopefully the airlines will rediscover this and the skies may become a little friendlier when they come to that revelation.

Akron is probably the only honest school in the nation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ASM Sports: University of Akron ruled the only school ineligible for bowl participation due to poor academics

In unrelated news, the University of Akron is probably the only honest school in the nation.  Reporting completely honestly in regards to the academics of their student athletes, whom, unsurprisingly are probably as collectively intelligent as a nursery school, instead of boasting falsely inflated graduation rates, and the flagrantly high GPAs of all the guys they have playing sports who are there are probably majoring in African-American studies, sports management, physical education, or any other patsy program that is a red flag for a student ringer.

Seriously though, anyone who’s ever heard a college student athlete ringer speak can tell right away that they’re not attending their schools in order to get an education.  There have been numerous published stories and documentaries about how flagrant this whole issue is, it’s just that as long as college sports keeps raking in the money as it does, there is no end to the amount of cheeks that will be turned to ignore the truth.

Not sure who’s the captain of the ship at the University of Akron, but they seriously haven’t been paying attention at the NCAA money making game, and should probably feel pretty embarrassed being the only school in FBS that has this distinction.  Lord only knows how many other schools, from low-tier FCS programs all the way to the royals in the Power-4 are actually as equally academically inept as Akron was, but are being run by smart enough people to be able to work around that and lie through their teeth in order to remain bowl eligible, but mostly important eligible to keep making that bonus money that comes from participating in bowl games.

This is entirely one of those situations where Akron shouldn’t be ashamed of being the dumbest school in the nation because of their poor academics, they should be ashamed of being the dumbest school in the nation because they’re the only ones who got caught being dumb, since every single other FBS school is probably lying their faces blue in regards to their academics.  If every school reported their academics honestly, the entire NCAA would probably be like, Stanford, Army and Navy vying for every single championship, because every single other school in the country has more athletic ringers that are illiterate than they have people that can pass econ 101.

Either way, kind of good on Akron for just trying to be honest, but in a field as crooked as the NCAA, they’re only shooting themselves in the feet at hamstringing their earning potential by doing such.  I get wanting to have integrity and honor and all that jazz, but at some point it’s just fucking embarrassing being the only ones in the entire division that didn’t get the memo, especially in a state that has six other FBS schools that they could have copied their homework off of.

Wouldn’t be surprised if next year, Akron is miraculously bowl eligible again, and academics across the board somehow are suddenly genius level.

Must suck for all the career photographers out there

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I saw some content on the scroll of famed gymnast, Simone Biles, taking photographs on the sidelines of a Sunday Night Football game.  I didn’t really care to dig deeper beyond the surface of the post that I saw, but apparently she was quoted saying something along the lines of how it was a fun little side-gig for her.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen stories about how other retired professional athletes have gotten into photography as well; Ken Griffey, Jr. and Randy Johnson come to mind immediately.  And presumably because of who they are, they’ve been typically easily able to get onto the sidelines of countless major sporting events, and there have been quite a number of cheeky coincidences and posts about them doing photography at these things.

Like how Ken Griffey, Jr. doing photography at a home run derby, and how many participants and spectators have no idea that one of the greatest derby performers was on the field the whole time.  Randy Johnson has parlayed one of his most infamous moments in history into his personal logo, eliciting some chuckles among those, whom IYKYK.

In all fairness, the photography of all of these former athletes aren’t necessarily always bad, but at the same time, when retired professional athletes with basically unlimited money are capable of acquiring the best gear possible, with money not being an obstacle, they absolutely should be capable of producing high-quality photography, since their equipment would be capable of overcoming any of the numerous shortcomings they’d have as relatively novice photographers.

However, the thing is, going back to the title of this post, it must really suck for all the lifetime career photographers out there that don’t get the major gigs out there whenever a retired professional athlete with a side hobby, top-tier gear and connections solely because of their name gets them instead.  It’s really not fair when the Super Bowl rolls around, and photographers with decades of experience, who have been hustling their whole careers, and have been kicking and scratching for every connection and networking opportunity, gets pushed aside because Simone Biles or Randy Johnson are available, and it would be a fun story for their own social feeds to have these legends doing the photography for their event instead of people whom might really need the gig, its paycheck, and its potential to boost their own portfolios and perpetuate the cycle in a positive direction.

It’s classic rich getting richer, and those in control being too shortsighted to realize that their desperation for relevance and validation is really fucking people who really need the work and wages more than a bunch of bored rich retired professional athletes who think it’s a fun hobby to take pictures.  I smirk and take a modicum of enjoyment of seeing legends having fun in retirement, but it doesn’t take long for me to also realize that their retirement hobbies are also putting the screws to career working professionals out there, that need the work way more than they do, and that, really isn’t that cool.

Not sure what OP was expecting from Ric Flair

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

People: woman who purchased personalized Cameo video message from Ric Flair for her brother’s wedding disappointed when Flair cuts scathing promo about the perils of marriage

If the circumstances were any ordinary business doing wrong to a customer, I’d say probably 70% of the time I tend to side with customers.  Fuck businesses, most of the time.

But in the context of this story, you have Cameo, in which customers are consensually agreeing to give celebrities an open mic to say whatever they want, regardless of any direction or talking points they’re given, and then you also add fucking Ric Flair into the equation, and as history and culture have shown, nobody tells Ric Flair what to do or say.

I know OP turned to the internet to try and farm sympathy and gain support for her belief that Ric Flair did her and her newlywed brother dirty by cutting a vintage Ric Flair promo, completely against the concept of marriage, contrary to her intentions.  As stated, nobody tells Ric Flair what to say; man has been unscripted for the better part of his entire, legendary wrestling career, and Cameo wasn’t going to be any different than reporting to Vince McMahon, Ted Turner or Jim Crockett.

Her first mistake was not knowing enough about Ric Flair before agreeing to a Cameo arrangement; because in addition to the fact that nobody can tell him what to say, the man is 76 years old and lives in bars these days, daytime drinking and existing in a state of constant inebriation.

Furthermore, to anyone who might want to do some cursory research about Ric Flair before dropping a grand to have him film a video for them, they’d quickly see shit like “16-time world champion” and “Hall of Famer,” but also the fact that the guy has been married like 5-6 times with as many divorces.

Man is doing shit like Cameo and getting drunk off his ass 25-8, because he clearly is over  marriage and probably owes a boatload of money to a number of ex-wives, and if there were any worse of a person to have film a Cameo for you to put marriage over, it’s Ric Flair.

The funny thing is that, and I’m too lazy and not caring enough to follow up, if I’m the brother who received this Ric Flair promo, I’d still probably think it was the greatest thing in the world, even in spite of ol’ Ric telling me I’m making the greatest mistake of my life.  And if the new missus were someone worth keeping around, she probably would too.

If anything at all, Ric Flair, deliberate or most likely not, made this whole thing one of the most memorable and legendary wedding gift stories her brother would ever have.  If Ric cut a white meat babyface promo about how he’s so lucky and marriage is beautiful and wonderful, and how gives his blessings, ain’t nobody going to remember it in a month, a year, or at their 10th or 20th anniversaries. 

But Ric cutting a scathing heel promo, that’s something everyone would remember until the end of time.  It’s what the bride and groom will talk about for years.  OP, in spite of her current disapproval and dissatisfaction with it, will remember it all the same.  Any friends, family, guests or anyone who’s ever seen it, they’ll remember it and make references to it.

In fact, it’s a scenario where all parties win in the end, because it’s also probably going to do wonders for Ric’s Cameo demand, with people with loose pockets and too much money will be more inclined to take a chance on Space Mountain and hire Ric to do some personalized messages for them.

But even if takes some time before OP realizes that she will get a W out of this whole scenario, as far as tryna farm sympathy and support because she regretted acquiring the services of Ric Flair, ain’t going to happen.  This is her turd, and until she starts to understand the resounding success of her efforts, she’s got to accept that it’s an L until she does.

Owned. WOOOOOOOO

So, like maybe 350 lobsters stolen?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

FOX local: an estimated $400k worth of live lobsters headed for Costco locations in the Midwest hijacked

A few years ago, I made a joke when there was a story about how a truck full of ramen noodles was heisted, how all in all, maybe $4.79 wholesale cost worth of product was actually lost.  That the physical truck must have been the size of the Venezuelan land train that was transporting gasoline in the fourth Fast & Furious installment in order for it to amount to the reported cost of theft.  That the thieves could probably make way more money on the scrap cost of the truck as opposed to black marketing ramen noodles.

Well, this is kind of the polar opposite of that joke, with a reported $400k worth of live lobsters getting stolen on the way to Costco stores.  Where given the cost of inflation and white man greed, there were maybe like 350 live lobsters actually stolen, even factoring in the fact that they were headed to bulk bargain land Costco.  I also like how they say locations, as in plural, in Illinois and Minnesota as if they’re trying to convince people that $400k worth of lobsters is more than perhaps two whole stores’ worth of inventory.

I also like how the article uses the word hijacked, because when I hear the term, I think of the scenes from Fast & Furious where a team of Vin Diesel’s street racers in slammed Honda Civics corner semis and use grappling hooks and daredevil jumps to subdue, incapacitate and eject truck drivers before making off with their cargo.

Because instead of a land train getting hijacked, the more likely reality is it was probably like a singular Ford F-350 that was just boosted from a roadside motel’s parking lot, where the thieves had no idea that they booty they were plundering were even lobsters.  The driver was probably safely sleeping in a shitty bed with cigarette burns in the comforter.  And in this case, the inventory is definitely more expensive than the vessel, and I can’t make the remark about how the truck would yield more in scrap than the cargo.

I don’t imagine live crustaceans having a very high black market value, considering the pain in the ass it is to prepare them, well, but in the grand spectrum of things, it’ll suck for those two stores in the Midwest for those rich assholes who want Costco-priced lobsters and won’t be able to get any for a month until the next shipment can arrive, and even then, the cost will inevitably go up for all stores, since Costco is the type of company that probably wouldn’t want a single region to shoulder the brunt of the increase when all can instead.

Even with the FBI purportedly being on the case, I would wager that this is one of those news stories where nothing is going to be resolved, nobody is going to get caught and it’s just going to be forgotten except in the annals of a personal brog that nobody knows exists.  I doubt that this is really so much a high-stakes organization arranging these kinds of heists as much as it’s some petty crooks with some theft skills playing burglary roulette and just hitting a mini jackpot in hitting up a ride with 350 lobsters in it.

But we got lobsters, highway hijinks, and the opportunity to make repeated Fast & Furious references, so it’s the perfect story for me to brog about. 

I sure hope Murakami likes the taste of defeat

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: latest Japanese sensation, Munetaka Murakami, signs with the Chicago White Sox on a 2-year, $34M deal

When Murakami’s name, and his intention to pursue a move into MLB made it to American media, I was one of many who had the same thought – go to the Dodgers.  Failing that, he’d go to the Yankees, or Red Sox or Mariners; teams who have had a good relationship with Japanese players and media.  Or maybe even the Phillies or Blue Jays, teams with big wallets and feeling the pressure to win now.

So when news broke that he had signed with the Chicago White Sox, all I could do was throw my head back and laugh heartily, because I don’t really think the man could have picked a worse place to land than the Southside of Chicago.

Like, did Murakami do any research before making his choice, or did he just leave everything to his agent/representation to do all of it for him and make the decision on his behalf?  I feel like it has to be the latter, because I can’t imagine any ballplayer would voluntarily go to the Chicago White Sox, unless they were like a hometown kid out to try and prove a point or something, and even that’s a stretch of a hypothesis.

The White Sox are coming off of their third straight season of losing 100 games, and two years removed from literally setting the all-time record in losses with their historic 121-loss season.  If I’m a free agent hot shot wanting to make a mark and set a team on fire, the White Sox are absolutely the worst team to try and accomplish such.  Even if his hitting prowess does translate well to the Majors, it won’t change the fact that the rest of the team sucks, and the only rookie* record that he’ll be chasing will how many walks he’ll be issued when the rest of the league starts pitching around him.

*term used loosely  on account of the fact that he has 7 seasons of NPB experience, but MLB is a slave to appearances

Plus, just about everything else about the organization sucks, from their management who has clearly no motivation to win much less put a competitive team on the field and seem to be going through the motions of pretending like they’re rebuilding while more than likely just churning and trying to just make a paycheck, to their shitty ballpark which is basically the living embodiment of the stigma of shit being on the south side of cities being, shit.  Obviously, he is under no obligation to live on the Southside of Chicago once he relocates to the United States, but traffic in the region is pretty turrible, and he’s going to be playing an interesting game of either living near the park and being remotely close to the Southside, or living somewhere nice but run the risk of being victimized by the shitty traffic of the city.

What’s even funnier to me is that above all else, from a holistic perspective, everything about this deal already seems like a big-ass L from the onset.  Not that a $17M annual salary is anything to scoff at, even for professional athletes, but for a guy with the name, pedigree and aura as Murakami, not to mention MLB’s gigantic raging boner for Japanese players, I feel like he’s taking a really big settling deal, especially considering the fact that he landed on the White Sox.  There is no team in baseball that wouldn’t benefit from a guy that, even if his aggregate production were slashed to account for the league and culture shift, and he became “just” a 20HR/80RBI guy, there are definitely teams who pay more for that, and it’s hard to believe that it was just the White Sox that came knocking.

I get that his general MO of high-power, low-contact is concerning for many, but Kyle Schwarber literally just signed for $30M per year over the next five years.  Sure, teams are taking a gamble when it comes to his character, ability to gel with a clubhouse and they have no idea what his presence will do to a team’s chemistry, but I still feel like that Murakami probably left at least $3-5M per year and another year on the table with the deal that he took.  I mean, good for the White Sox and when the day is over I’m not going to lose any sleep over any dude getting the short end of the stick, but I just feel like Murakami’s camp really dropped the ball at getting their man paid, and signed with a team that doesn’t absolutely suck.

Either way, I sure hope he really doesn’t mind losing, because he is going to be doing a whole lot of it over the next two years.  Maybe it’s all part of the plan to take such a short-term deal, because by the time his two years of Southside prison are up, the Dodgers or Yankees will be in dire need of a new DH, and then if he’s been playing his cards right, would be the most ideal candidate to swoop in and then sign his big fuck-you I’m Japanese bitch contract then.  He is after all, just going to be 27 around that time, still very much reaching his physical peak.

But until then, we’ll see how much he can tolerate being on a squad that’s all but assured to lose at least 85 games a year for the life of this deal, and if he’s still got the willpower and cojones to try and be a baller, or if he’ll be just another White Sox player whose had the life sucked out of them.