Tag: cashmoney

Free is a four-letter word

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And is about as inflammatory and prone to resulting in aggravation, disappointment and general negativity as some of the more notorious four-letter words out there in the common lexicon.

I’ve spent the better part of a week this month at my dad’s old place in Virginia, my old home, cleaning it out, because as he’s no longer living there, the only logical thing to do would be to empty it out and get rid of it.  Of course, that isn’t going to happen on its own, and nobody in my family really seems as eager to not let a valuable asset potential degrade due to neglect as I am, so that has almost entirely fallen on my shoulders to do, despite the fact that I would rather have been doing a hundred other things than driving all the way up there just to clean and struggle to do my job remotely since that home hadn’t had internet access in the last two years.

I had the brilliant analogy that my dad was basically like Wall-E, in the sense that he seemed to collect an inordinate amount of useless and worthless trash and tchotchkes, but he was pretty good at organizing it and making it look fairly orderly within his own home.  However, when it comes to sorting and determining what could be salvaged and what needed to be tossed, it became very, very quickly apparent that the load didn’t jive with the time available, and that pretty much everything needed to be trashed.

It was like an episode of Storage Wars where Dave Hester would always brag about the potential profitability about every single storage unit he won, but that’s because he had a consignment shop where all the bullshit he collected could sit on shelves and make a nickel five months later, as opposed to being moved immediately.  My dad had a lot of stuff that honestly could’ve made a few bucks here and there if time were on our side, but in the span of a week, I wasn’t about to try and organize a last second single home flea market for the legions of crap that my dad had hoarded over the last decade and a half.

Box full of optical mice?  Trash.  Bag full of brand-new commercial painting supplies?  Trash.  Boxes full of partially used duct and electrical tape?  Trash.  Box of tool grade rope?  Crate full of commercial paper towels?  Industrial tubs full of liquid soap?  Trash, trash, trash.

Amidst all the crap were all sorts of personal and family mementos too, stuff that my sister, my mom or myself didn’t take with us when we all inevitably moved out.  And as much as I tend to hesitate when it comes to disposing of anything of such nature, I walked into my week of work with a credo, to harden the heart and let shit go, because otherwise I would accomplish nothing.  If nobody cared about this stuff to take with them when they left, nobody is going to care about it when it’s tossed.

High school yearbooks, shop class projects, little pieces of crap that I may have saved at random points in my life, all part of the trash pile.  I had a moment of quiet shock, when my mom took her wedding photo album and tossed it into a box marked for disposal, but seeing as how they are divorced, it’s understandable, but still no less slightly mortifying as a child of said union.

When my work was done, the house was still in pretty much chaos, but at least it was fairly organized chaos.  Originally, I had planned on just being a repeated shuttle back and forth to the dump to dispose of everything that needed to go, but my aunt and my mom meddled and convinced me to pay for professional disposal.  Having a little experience with it, I knew to expect a bill north of a grand if we were going to go that route, but the thought of saving myself and my car the labor didn’t hurt, so that’s the choice I made, and I made some calls and reached out to a few companies, and landed with one who would come at a later date to come pick up all the trash.

Among all the crap, I had pulled aside some items that even I thought, would go quickly, if offered for free to the community, like some extension ladders, a television, and a weed-wacker.  Long story short, the ladders moved, but with resistance, and I ended up donating the television and the trimmer to Goodwill when neither generated a lick of interest.

Additionally, there were also a lot of furniture that I felt had some value in it, and I figured it shouldn’t be hard to leverage the Salvation Army to come pick up some free furniture that they could then flip at their consignment shops; yes, I’m aware of the general negative reputation the internet has over the SA, but I just wanted to get this house cleared in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible, and in the past I’ve used them to help clear out my old house, and they seemed like a logical option.

After I had left, and the scheduled day of the SA pickup had passed, I called my mom whom I entrusted to be on site to let the SA guys in, and she told me that they took nothing.  They came into the home, examined all the marked items, deemed them not suitable quality, and refused to move anything that required traveling a flight of stairs.  I knew right away that it wasn’t so much that everything I offered was inadequate, as much as it was around 3:30 pm when they showed up to my place, their truck was probably full, the workers were tired, and they simply did not want to go through the labor of hauling off all the stuff I had asked them to.

So I basically got exactly what I had paid for – zero.

There’s the popular adage that people should never stop learning, and it was at this moment that I decided that I have fully learned an important lesson that I will try to implement into my remaining life, and that free, is bullshit, and to look at anything in life that claims to be free, with the skepticism that I would look at anyone proclaiming to be a Nigerian prince.

Free, always sounds awesome, but free comes with a whole slew of conditionals that are mitigated when there’s some form of transactional currency.  And the drawback to free always seems to be at the extreme risk of something often times more valuable than any form of currency, which is time, because with the case of the Salvation Army, their refusal to do their job because their service was free, still cost me a great deal of time, as I did not have a fallback plan, because they did me right in my own previous experience, which was a fallacy in its own right that I need to be mindful of in the future as well.

But I think about all the times in my life where something has been free, whether it’s been me trying to get something, or me trying to give shit away, and almost all of the instances, have involved aggravation, regret, and questioning why I did in the first place.

It’s like the IHOP fallacy, whenever they do like their free pancake day or whatever, you see on the news people who wait hours for a free short stack of pancakes, when that same short stack would’ve cost like $7 and get it immediately if you paid for it, making those who think about it realize that paying > free.

I’ve gone through great lengths in the past to get free bobbleheads at ballparks, and looking back at all those instances, I can count on one hand where it’s actually been worth it, and I actually applaud myself in any instance where I may have self-policed my time versus free scale and altered my choices in the past.

I also think about the sheer aggravation of trying to give stuff away on stuff like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, because it seems like something that should be layups, but the flake rate for free shit is so astronomically high, so often times I just end up throwing perfectly good shit away, because I simply grew exasperated with trying to not be wasteful and giving away perfectly good goods, because I’m just tired of people.

The point of all this is that I have, I truly have, learned, that the word free is not necessarily a good word anymore, and is instead a loaded word, full of conditionals and rules and invisible clauses, that one really needs to understand the risks when they inevitably grow tempted by it, solely because of the potential end result of a transaction with nothing exchanged.

So many times in life, it’s simply better to just grow up, pay up, and get shit done, without any of the bullshit that free entails.

I hope Dodger Stadium will get a big weeb gong soon

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

KTLA: Dodger Stadium sells the naming rights to the venue for the first time in history, to Japanese clothing company, Uniqlo

By now, there’s no shortage of jokes about how the Los Angeles Dodgers have gone long since gone full-retard when it comes to their relationship with the entire fucking country of Japan.  The acquisition of Shohei Ohtani brought forth the current wave that has left Hideo Nomo-mania in the dust, and then with the rapid acquisitions of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, the organization has fully embraced their buy-in to the old Japan = Superior meme from old weeb culture.

However, as much as I, like many out there, like to take our shots at the organization for leaning into being weeaboos, there’s no denying that it has been absolutely nothing short of lucrative.  As much money the team has dumped into player commitments spanning the next two decades, the team has purportedly already made that money back, multi-fold, from all the deals, sponsorships and rights solely from Japanese companies.

On top of the fact that winning is about the most lucrative thing any sports organization can do, the Dodgers have become a veritable money printer over the last decade, with the last 2-3 years being a massive peak, so when the day is over, myself and all other critics are merely haters and jealous fatties when it comes to voicing our criticisms and dislikes about the team, but they’re still churning money out like they invented the printing press for currency, and a lot of already-rich white guys are getting richer, and fans of the team are enjoying a squad that’s been playing near .600 ball over the last few seasons with a contention window that’s seemingly never closing.

But the news of Dodger Stadium selling the naming rights to the ballpark, that piques my interest just beyond being a not-fan of the Dodgers, but rather to my appeal as a ballpark enthusiast, as well as someone who’s one of those traditionalist olds who is reluctant to accept certain changes.

Even if I weren’t a fan of the team, there was still something inherently cool about the fact that Dodger Stadium had long remained one of the few MLB parks that didn’t sell naming rights.  Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Camden Yards, Angel Stadium, come to mind off the top of my head; I’m reluctant to include Wrigley, since it’s the technically the name of a the gum company too, the Royals are reportedly soon to be leaving the K soon, and Nationals Park is simply biding their time waiting for the right company to sell the naming rights to.

But for the OG’s, there was always something cool about how they didn’t sell their naming rights, it’s like the entities that owned them didn’t care, or wanted to have their name on them, even at the expense of the millions that could come with selling out.  A control thing, or a power play, perhaps, but the fact that they remained unbranded, regardless of how I might have felt for the teams that played in them, just seemed cooler than boring ass bullshit like Truist, LoanDepot, AT&T, Citizens Bank, Citi or other soulless white guy corporations slapping their names onto venues.

And even though Dodger Stadium isn’t even close to my upper quartile of MLB parks, with their horribly uncomfortable seats, shitty sound system and overpriced concessions, at least they had the dignity to remain, just Dodger Stadium, and not be some lame corporate sellout in order to get a cheap pay day… until now.

And of course, it goes to a Japanese company, with Uniqlo being granted the ability to overpay for the naming rights to the biggest weeb team outside of Nippon Professional Baseball.  The name is yet to be revealed, although it is heavily speculated to be “Uniqlo Field at Dodger Stadium,” with the probable hopeful ideology that fans will not embrace the new name and continue to refer to it as “Dodger Stadium” which is obviously what’s going to happen while the team gets to pocket the naming fees all the same.

But it still seems really lame that the Dodgers would allow this to happen, all the same.  It’s like for the last 64 years, they didn’t feel the need to sell out the name of the ballpark, but it’s become evident over the last decade that there has been a shift in management to where the organization is determined to make as much money as ungodly possible, even at the expense of some of their long-standing integrity pillars, like the name of their ballpark.

I can’t hate the pursuit of money too much, because I kind of understand the rich’s obsessions with getting richer, and the success of the Dodgers won’t last forever, so it’s not the worst idea in the world for all the people in charge of the organization trying to amass as much wealth as possible while the getting’s good, and considering the team is on the hook for like $1.3 billion in payroll to cover for the next 20 years, it’s not a bad idea for the team to build as much of a cushion as they can, all while all the stuffy white guys on whatever board of directors or investors can still get their nut too with others to pay.

But with Uniqlo joining companies like Daiso, Nippon Air, Yakult, it just feeds to overwhelming narrative that the Dodgers don’t so much belong to Los Angeles as much as they belong to the entire country of Japan, and I can’t help but wonder what the heavily Chicano population that actually attends Dodgers games on the regular feels about it.  Probably not negative while the team is still on top of the league, but I look forward to seeing how salty people get when the Dodgers will inevitably feel the pressure of a closing contention window, and hopefully one day feels what it’s like to have to go into rebuilding and have to eat some losing seasons.

I imagine the salt that comes from the rapidly abandoning ships of the Dodgers bandwagon will be an especial delicacy, but that probably won’t happen for quite a long time; but it will inevitably happen, because no team stays on top forever.

When it rains, it pours

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This past weekend wasn’t particularly the best, and it’s almost comical at all the nonsense that occurred over it that has put me into this semi-dilapidated mood that I’m actually applauding myself for holding it together and not go into complete crash out mode.

Friday started off bumpy on account of #2 being sick, still recovering from one of those stomach ailments that kids pass around like candy, and it’s still to be determined on if it’s going to hit me at some point soon, seeing as how it’s pretty formulaic in how the bugs incubate for 48-72 hrs. before blowing out, but at least she was on the mend, and obviously kept home from school.

I saw my dad on Friday, where we watched Team Korea get obliterated by the Dominican Republic, or at least the first three innings before it was very obvious things were not going to go the way we wanted, but that wasn’t a bad thing at all, as much as it was something to be expected.  It was good to see my dad and spend some time with him, but seeing him on a Friday was deliberate in the sense that I had no intention of seeing him over the actual weekend days, because I knew I’d be busy.

All the same, regardless of the random lunch time hour in which I drove up to him, I still got annihilated in traffic since Atlanta’s rush hour is 7 am to 3 am, and there’s pretty much no time in the day where there’s not red on the Google map somewhere.  I had also intended to give blood, because I’m altruistic like that and am not the least bit influenced by the $40 gift card incentive + free t-shirt, but the donation center I went to didn’t have a chair available for me, so there was an L there too, so although it was good to get in a visit with my dad, the productive things I wanted to accomplish additionally fell through.

As for the weekend itself, it was pretty much spent almost entirely deep cleaning my house, which left me feeling some things, because I absolutely want to have a clean home, and prior to the cleaning, it was in a state of such disarray, it fed into a lot of my general unhappiness and cluttered state of mind, because I was always in a situation where nobody but me was willing to lift a finger to put any effort into maintaining the home. 

But when the cleanliness of the home was reliant on someone else, everything gets done, but on their terms and not necessarily collaboratively with me, and I do feel a sense of bitterness that I don’t feel like my own household respects me enough to want to give a fuck about the home for my sake, until they need to give a fuck for their own purposes.

I’m talking about mass de-cluttering, filling up the entire bin with shit getting thrown out, shampooing carpets and clearing counters and shelves, and I’m glad that a lot of this shit finally got accomplished, but at the same time, I’m annoyed that this never gets done when I want to have an orderly home, and only gets done when it’s on someone else’s terms.

Such, were the resentful thoughts swirling through my head, as I worked basically sun up to sun down each Saturday and Sunday.

Except Sunday, I did have a little reprieve and a hard stop, on account of a localcar wrestling show that I was going to hit up with some of my friends.  It was a fun show, and I dropped a little cash to meet Shotzi Blackheart, since I’ve long been a fan of her and her work, and I was thinking to myself, for all the hard work and negative thoughts of the weekend, this was a pleasant way to wind things down.

But then when I’m pulling into my driveway, I’m looking at my car (I had taken the third car), and I can’t help but think it looks off-kilter.  I pull closer, and I see that the rear passenger tire is completely flat, and I’m like wtf.  My knee-jerk reaction is fear that the tire was slashed or something malicious, but cooler heads prevailed, and as I was examining the tire, I could see the silver of a nail that I had picked up, at some point on Friday, as it hadn’t been driven at all on Saturday, and over the span of the last 43 hours, it completely bled out.

Again, I have to applaud myself for keeping somewhat calm in spite of the obnoxiously inconvenient revelation, but we also had company over, and I didn’t want to be in a state of distress in front of a bunch of my wife’s friends.  But fortunately, the tire wasn’t in such a state where it couldn’t inflate, and I quickly deduced a plan to play some car Tetris the following day between mythical wife and au pair, and I could take my car to a local joint and hopefully get a patch, since the location looked like it might still be able to be patched.

However, those plans were derailed in the middle of the night as it became quickly apparent that #1 had caught the dreaded tummy bugs from her sister, and they had incubated and blown up, and at like 2:20 in the morning, I wake up to find my child standing next to my bed in discomfort, and I have to heap praise onto my eldest for keeping it together long enough to prepare for the unfortunate vomit party that began shortly afterward.  #2 just exploded like the kid from The Exorcist, in contrast, but the silver lining is that we did not have a repeat with #1.

Obviously, she was not going to school in the morning, but this did put a wrinkle in my hopes to get my car fixed.  And at 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the morning, it’s hard to have much coherent thought on pivoting, but I was ready to punt on car repairs for a day, because obviously my kid was a higher priority.

Fortunately, mythical wife called in, and with enough coverage between adults and kids, I was able to field the tire issue.  The drive there was tense, seeing as how I had a tire actively leaking air, and I could hear it hissing before I got into the car, but thankfully I made it to the Costco where I got my tires, dreading that they’d tell me that my 2-month old tire needed to be replaced for some bullshit reason.

After dropping off my car, I thought this would be the perfect time to treat myself after all the nonsense that I’d been going through, and get an iced coffee, since Costco food court iced coffee is surprisingly delicious, like maybe two tiers beneath a Tim Horton’s ice capp.  But naturally, for whatever reason, their machine was down or gone, but the point remains that I could not get what I was hoping to get.

Yes, that last one is about the first world of first world problems there could be, but hey, I’d been going through a lot of shit over the last few days, and I just wanted some fucking coffee.  Fortunately, the tire was an easy patch and without incident, and one of the two major red flags that I had to deal with was immediately wrapped up.

Either way, to add insult to injury, the headline of this post wasn’t just a figure of speech, because amidst all this bullshit, the weather decided to go full Georgia fake spring meme, and spontaneously drop into the 30s and 20s as the day progressed, with thunderstorms and freezing rain, so it quite literally was pouring during the worst events of this post.

I may have barfed out 1300 words summarizing how obnoxious the last few days have been, but again I want to pat myself on the back for at least having the gumption to not take it out on others, and not let it affect my blood pressure too much, but I’d be lying if it weren’t mentally, and physically taxing, seeing as how I’ve been getting even less sleep than ordinarily, in order to take care of sick children.

But it was just too much nonsense to not summarize and make brog content out of it, and here we are.

Let’s talk about the 2026 World Baseball Classic

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One thing that sometimes sucks about trying to be a dutiful brogger, is when there’s a topic or something I want to write about that has a little bit of time sensitivity.  Most often times, it happens when the topic is sports, and the case of it right now is the fact that I wanted to talk about the World Baseball Classic, and an upcoming game, but since baseball has the shortest time in between games, sometimes that can get a bit dicey, and when sleep, parenting and work obligations mount, I can’t always be as on top of things as I’d like to be sometimes.

But anyway, I still haven’t really been watching any full games, but I’ve been following the World Baseball Classic, because I’ve been a fan of the global tournament since it started in 2006, and even when MLB gets insufferable sometimes, the WBC still remains somewhat pure and digestible, mostly on account of the fact that there are large swaths of players in the tournament who actually give a shit about the game and isn’t necessarily just concerning themselves about dollar signs.

So let’s get one thing out of the way here, I’m stoked that Korea has managed to get out of the group stage for the first time since 2009, after numerous embarrassing early exits in 2013, 2017 and 2023.  In true Team Korea fashion, they kind of backed into their advancement, mostly powered by the fact that they hung 16 runs on the lowly Czech national team, but they took consecutive losses against Japan and Taiwan, before getting the job done and clearing the run differential in a win against Australia.

I’ve followed enough KBO and Korean baseball players over the years to know where Korea’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and I can comfortably say that as happy as I am that they’ve advanced into the second round and will get to play ball on American soil, I’m not liking their chances, seeing as how they will have to play either the Dominican Republic or Venezuela next; should they upset them, they might get an easier draw, but DR and Venezuela are basically two MLB All-Star squads.  Korea can hit, but their pitching remains suspect, so it remains a lofty mountain to climb.

All I really hope is that they don’t get blown out, and put up good fights against whomever they go up against, and bring honor to the Motherland.

But to get to the topic that really inspired this post, is Team USA, after their humiliating defeat at the squad of Team Italy.  Of course, there’s a part of me that wants to see the United States win the World Baseball Classic, I mean we invented the fucking sport, and yet have managed to only once win a tournament that Americans invented and massaged most rules to give Americans the most advantage.

However, given the state of ‘Murica, my general agitation with the state of MLB and professional sports in general and just plain jaded outlook on all things ‘Murica, there’s a part of me that wouldn’t necessarily find that much dissatisfaction at Team USA taking another L in the WBC, and be forced to watch either Japan, DR or Venezuela hoist the trophy at the end of the tournament.

For starters, I was pretty excited about Team USA’s chances when the roster started taking shape, and anchored by two Cy Young winners in Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes.  I mean, even the mighty Japan and DR and Venezuela would have to kind of give the OJ Simpson face at the thought of having to go through either of those guys.  But then the Skubal drama began, where he said he was only going to pitch one game, against Great Britain, before leaving the team, and I’m just like why the fuck are you even here then bro?

I did take satisfaction at the first batter he faced taking him yard, because fuck him.

But aside from Skenes and 55 pitches from Skubal, the US pitching staff was pretty lean and full of mostly 3rd and 4th starters from mid-market teams, and it’s obvious that a lot of requests for top-tier talent fell on deaf ears as pitchers across the league were in obvious body (and wallet) protect mode, and didn’t want to risk injury pitching in the WBC, when the money is made in MLB.

Regardless, the perception is often that the rest of the world is still way behind the US in baseball talent, and a pitching staff of an Ace and a bunch of mid-tier guys should still be adequate at taking on the rest of the world, but that’s the kind of mentality that exemplifies why the United States has only won 1/5 World Baseball Classics.

If anything at all, this is the WBC where it’s become very apparent that the talent gaps between everyone and the United States have shrunk exponentially from the last go-around.  A combination of relaxed participation rules, allowing players to represent countries up to their grandparents’ birth countries, as well as just the fact that other countries are picking up baseball and are getting decent at it, and most importantly, the fact that a lot of other countries aren’t just not afraid of the Big Bad USA, they have disdain and a desire to defeat them.

Seeing the highlights of all these games where teams not the United States are playing with their balls hanging out and playing for their flags and not their wallets has been a thing of beauty, and considering the fact that the US isn’t completely dominating makes me feel as if the 2026 WBC is a lot like the 2004 Summer Olympic Men’s Basketball, where not only were no other countries afraid of the United States anymore, they were out for their blood, and were successfully drawing it.

Italy humiliating the United States shouldn’t just be a wake-up call to USA Baseball, but was a glowing example of American arrogance and a fatal lack of accountability.  It didn’t take long for the media to pick up on US manager Mark DeRosa’s remarks before the Italy game, about how he had believed that Team USA had already secured their spot in the second round, because in reality they had not, and although he is deserving of the heat he took for making such a reckless statement, my knee-jerk thought was that yes, he is the manager of the squad, but he’s still just one guy on a team with like nine managers and a 30-man roster; why didn’t any single person among all those guys try and correct him or get him to walk back his stupid comments?

Either way, after the loss to Italy, it opened the door to a very interesting scenario where the United States could realistically be eliminated from the group stage of the tournament, for the first time ever.  Their fate rested in the hands, bats and gloves of the Italy vs. Mexico game, where there were three possible outcomes, with one of them being the United States going home.

And this is where the time sensitivity comes into play, and I’m sad to say that I already know the outcome of this scenario, because I didn’t get a chance to write about all this until way later than I had hoped, but work and life got in the way.

But I thought it would’ve been really, really, really interesting if Team Italy and Team Mexico colluded to rig their game to where they landed on the outcome where the United States were sent packing; me writing this out like this indicates that such did not happen, and the Italy/Mexico game doesn’t even have to finish for the fate to already be sealed.

Basically, had Mexico beaten Italy with four runs or less, the United States would have been eliminated with both Mexico and Italy advancing.  An Italy win or a Mexico win with five runs+ would have the United States advancing, but like I said, it would’ve been really something to see if Italy and Mexico colluded, and we saw some real shenanigans on national television, like Mexico nursing a 4-1 lead, and suddenly all players just sitting there striking out on three straight pitches over and over again until the game ended.

In a way, it would be just desserts for Team USA to go out in such a fashion, where their arrogance, ignorance, and just the fact that they’re representing a flag that isn’t particularly favored by many outside of the country and frankly many within it.

But last I checked the score, Italy was up on Mexico 9-1, so they’re going to win the group, and the United States is going to squeak on through to the second round.  Ironically, I think this does Team USA a favor, because if I’m reading correctly, Italy will have to play Puerto Rico next, and the US gets Canada; there are lots of talented Canadians, but I think Puerto Rico is the more dangerous squad.  Nationalistic pride, might backfire for the Italians, but they are playing pretty great, and frankly, this WBC doesn’t seem like it has as overwhelming of a favorite as past ones have, and honestly, that’s a good thing.

This has been a great World Baseball Classic, and I’m glad to see that more of the world is catching up to me in recognizing the beauty that exists when players are playing for their flags and not just money.

There are probably way better analogies for Tarik Skubal’s WBC participation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

But the first one that comes to mind is when Amazon announced the first-ever Prime Day, they were boasting that it was going to basically be the Brack Friday of the summer, that there were going to be all sorts of incredible deals, massive savings, and that it was going to be the greatest shopping event of the year outside of the holidays.  But when Prime Day began, it became quickly apparent that it really was Amazon’s cleverly-named attempt to clean out their warehouses, because for every one marquee item they had that sold out in two seconds, there were at least a million listings for dumb bullshit like USB cables, electrical outlet covers, dish towels, and all sorts of small, inane crap that nobody really needed.

Anyway, that’s kind of what it feels like to find out that reigning AL Cy Young winner and vocal proponent of USA Baseball, Tarik Skubal revealed that he was only planning on making one start in the World Baseball Classic, and then returning to Spring Training.

Skubal was one of the first players announced for Team USA, and an easy guy to hitch the wagon to, as someone whose incredible arm could easily carry the squad deep into the tournament, and most importantly, potentially neutralize the potent lineups of Japan, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.

Considering the United States has only won the tournament they basically invented in order to pad their global athletic standing once out of five times, it’s got to be like a sour grape for USA Baseball, and something they always want to wash the taste out of their mouths, by winning again, and closing that lead held by Japan, who has won 3 of 5, and a guy like Skubal committing is a giant boon, especially since he was shortly followed by NL Cy Young winner, Paul Skenes, creating an incredibly unfair-sounding 1-2 pitching duo in a short tournament format.

But now Skubal reveals that he’s only planning to make a single start, against Great Britain of all teams in the tournament; unsurprising, once such intel was absorbed by baseball fans, it quickly turned into snarky vitriol towards the talented lefty, with people accusing him of unpatriotically going into body protect mode, since it’s clear that he’s going to be seeking out a gabillion dollar contract after the 2026 season, as he’s set to become an unrestricted free agent for the first time.

Like, in one hand, I get the importance of protecting one’s self, especially considering the last WBC saw closer Edwin Diaz blow out his knee in 2022 and miss an entire season, and injury is always on the backs of the minds of nearly every participating major leaguer.

But in the other hand, if Skubal knew that he wasn’t going to commit more than a single fucking start for Team USA, I feel like it probably would’ve been best had he just not committed to the team in the first place.  Free up the spot to someone who really wanted to put their balls on the line for the country, and is willing to make three starts if needed, which should encapsulate a group, knockout and potential final in a best-case scenario.

In a way, joining the squad but then only committing to a single appearance, against possibly the worst team in the entire tournament is tantamount to being a part of a group project in school, doing the very first assignment, but then not doing anything at all for the remainder of the project.

Look, I know my analogy game is terribly off right now, but the point is, Skubal’s shenanigans is like a shitty rug pull that gave US baseball hope, but then took it all back.  If anything, if Skubal was only going to commit to a single game, it would be best served if it were saved to be against Japan or any of the other expected powerhouses of the tournament, and save appearances against scrubs like Great Britain, Brazil or Italy for guys like the retired Clayton Kershaw or Logan Webb.

Obviously, I’d love to see Team USA win another WBC, because I don’t think Korea is going to make the runs they did like they did in 2006 and 2009 ever again, but it’s times like this where the greed and body-protect logic of professional athletes gets really fucking old.  There’s a reason why Japan has won three of the five WBCs, and there’s very little reason to believe that they’re not going to be knocking on the door of a fourth one in coming weeks.

This has got to be a first, right?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back when mythical wife was pregnant for the first time, she didn’t deal with a lot of the stereotypical things that are associated with pregnant women.  No crazy cravings for shit like pickles and ice cream, no rampant morning sickness that had her running to the bathroom sporadically.  However, if there was one thing that could be construed something of a craving, it was that she wanted to have some ice to chew on occasionally.

However, the refrigerator at my home doesn’t have a water/ice function.  At that time, I was still content with buying and drinking bottled water, so we never really had need for ice, beyond occasional recipes or the want for a mixed drink, in which we did have the old tech ice cube trays in the freezer for such things.

Long story short, mythical wife ended up purchasing a countertop ice machine to be able to make fresh ice in six minutes, and satiate her want for ice cubes.  Our household would eventually get used to having the ice machine, and after enough guilting about the environment, we purchased a water cooler and stopped purchasing bottles, and since my water was now coming in cups and bottles, I started getting used to being able to load up a bunch of ice to keep my drinks colder longer.

The thing is, either they’re not supposed to be left up and running 24/7 like we did, or much like lots of machines of today, they’re designed to eventually fail and die, which is exactly what happened to ours.  After getting used to it, it really sucked to suddenly not be able to have fresh ice whenever we wanted to, which is about as big of a first-world problem there could be, but bear with me here.

Fast forward, over the last few years, my household has gone through three ice machines.  As noted above, either they’re not supposed to be running 24/7, or they really are just kind of shittily made and aren’t meant to last beyond 18 months, which seems to have been the general lifespan for all of them.

Needless to say, when I bought ice maker #4, I actually had the wherewithal to pay the $12 to Target and get the 2-year replacement plan.  By now, I had enough empirical evidence to take the gamble that #4 would not make it 24 months, and that if I played my cards right, should theoretically be able to get a free replacement in the future, for the low-cost of $12.

Otherwise, like the other 98% of electronics I’ve ever purchased in my life, I would’ve declined the protection plan without a second thought.  In all those cases, knock on wood, either nothing has happened within two years, or there’s some funny business that leads to my shit being invalid for coverage, and it resulting in a sunk money cost and feeling of remorse for wasting the cash in the first place.

Either way, ice maker #4 died, as anticipated it would eventually do, but this time, the moment of dread and first-world problem anguish at having to go procure ice machine #5, I had a moment of excited curiosity, at being able to explore the protection plan I had the wise wherewithal to invest in back in May 2024.

Because I’m a digital packrat that saves every single e-receipt and document pertaining to anything I’ve ever purchased online, I was fairly easily able to track down all needed documentation to file a claim, and the process was pretty painless and simple, and within maybe 90 minutes, I had a submission, an approval and a resolution completed.  Target has apparently given up on peddling ice machines, so the insurance company resolved to just reimburse me the cost of ice maker #4, effectively having paid just $12 for it, less the minute aggravation of having to go track down #5.

But as the title of this post said, this has got to be like the first time in history, at least for me, where a protection plan actually worked and paid out, right?  Usually PPs are the consumer’s version of sucker bets, like insurance in blackjack, but after years of evidence of how short-lived ice makers are, I made an educated decision, and it paid off, without any real complications.

It brings me great joy, and softens the first-world gripe of not having fresh ice until I can get #5.  The question is if, the retailer I get it from, if they’ll offer a protection plan on it as well, because it seems to be a wise investment on these little machines.  But if they do, I think I’mma take it again, and hope it works out in 18 months from now

Let’s talk about selling out

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Too many sources to count: many people are big mad about US-born freestyle skier Eileen Gu choosing to represent China instead of the United States during the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, and even more so upon finding out that she was paid around $6.6M from China to do so

There was probably a time in my life in which I would have looked at these circumstances, and immediately went Eileen Gu is a turncoat sellout, fuck her, and I hope she fails epically on everything she does!!!

But these days, that’s not even the first thought that comes to my mind when hearing about the saga of Eileen Gu.  I’ve had numerous conversations with friends over the years on the topic of ‘selling out,’ which is something that people love to frivolously fling around whenever they hear of anyone who decides to make money at the expense of exchanging some sort of commodity, be it talent, goods or some other thing that they have that others are willing to pay real money for.

Music bands, professional athletes, content creators of various forms; whenever anyone exchanges their commodities for large sums of money, people all over the internet tend to immediately go hostile and brand them as sellouts, and basically declare them pieces of shit that they immediately want to see fail and immediately not succeed for no other reason than that they’re getting a lot of money and those who react are not.

I should know, because I’ve definitely declared many groups and individuals sellouts in my lifetime because their success turned me into a jealous fatty who didn’t like that they were becoming rich and I remained an schmuck with a brog that nobody reads.

But my mindset has kind of changed throughout the years, and yeah, I can’t say that I’m really at all that keen when an entity might sell out, especially if it means the cease or possibility of reduction of the creation of content that I like, but at the same time I’ve developed a more pragmatic understanding that people are trying their best in order to survive in the world, and for lots of us, that requires money, a great deal of it, and the more that some people can amass, the greater quality of life that can be had, if utilized properly.

More importantly, I’ve been open about the notion that if I were ever to have some sort of talent, creation, service or some sort of commodity that people were willing to pay me egregious amounts of money for, I would probably do it in two fucking seconds.  I’d sell the absolute fuck out, if it meant that I could secure wealth and financial freedom for my family, even quicker if said wealth were generational, and I could ensure that my girls’ future families would be wealthy and comfortable.

I’d be more than willing to endure being called a sellout and have people rooting against my success, if it meant the aforementioned lifestyle could be attained, and frankly I don’t have to like it when those I favor sell out, because I’m sure that when the day is over, they probably feel similarly too.

So getting back to Eileen Gu, yeah, it doesn’t make me feel particularly positive that she’s repping China ahead of the United States, but in all fairness, her mom is Chinese; Eileen has every right to rep China, and it’s very much allowed in the rules of most international competition, that people are allowed to represent their parents’ and in some cases, grandparents’ heritages, and for some lower-tier class athletes, it’s the only way they can get into the Olympics in the first place.

Furthermore, she’s already won medals for the United States, two golds and a silver back in 2022, which by the way was in fucking Beijing, so the people of China had to see an American with a Chinese last name, dunking on them in their own homeland.  She owes America nothing, as far as I’m concerned, and aside from the $6M simoleons, she’s getting to rep her mother’s heritage, which nobody is at all entitled to criticize.

I get that China isn’t popular with Americans these days, and a lot of news that I’m reading these days love to cite the human rights violations and atrocities that are going on in that country, but all these American finger pointers also need to look at our own fucking country.  America isn’t much better, and we got ICE murdering civilians on the streets, and the Epstein Files are unearthing all sorts of major figures, including the guy voted to the highest office in the country and everyone who has the power to do something about it are are turning blind eyes left and right, so it’s not like America has any moral high ground over fucking China to where Eileen Gu should be getting any criticism in regards to representing the more righteous nation.

Of course, the money is a flag that many are proclaiming to be the devil in this arrangement, but the way I see it, whether or not it was the driving factor in Gu’s choice to go with China, girl knows her worth, and has found a way to monetize her talents in order to make actual, life-changing money.  Not all Olympians have to be in the trades and Home Depot employees in their day jobs, and if someone is willing to pay them big money, they have every right to accept it as long as it’s not illegal.

Honest question here, what kind of career does a skier even have, past the Olympics?  Coaching?  It’s not like there’s an MLB/NBA/NHL/NFL of skiing, and I don’t even know if participating in the X-Games even makes money.  Skiers might get some endorsements here and there, but by and large, I have to assume that once the Olympics are off the table, there’s not a whole lot of earning capabilities for a world-class skier, no disrespect to the sport.

That being said, I don’t blame or fault Eileen Gu at all for taking a massive payday and repping her mother’s birth country instead of her own.  She’s already done it for America before, and now she gets to do it for her mom’s country, and get paid handsomely for it.

And the best part is that people have shorter attention spans than ever before these days.  Once the Olympics are over, people will more likely than not, forget about the existence of Eileen Gu, and she can get back to enjoying out the rest of her life, six million dollars richer.

No judgment for taking the bag, even if it means a bunch of shithead Americans are salty over it.  They’ll get over it, if they even remember that this even happened, in two weeks.