Tag: comparison

X-Men ’97 S2: the speedrun continues

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As part of my holiday weekend, I had the luxury of being able to do something I hadn’t really done in a long time, which was to sit down and simply shotgun a show.  I had X-Men ’97 season 2 on my list of things to watch, and I admittedly drug my feet a little starting it, mostly because I had such questionable feelings about the first season of the reboot.

Primarily the fact that the pace of the show moved at a breakneck speed, rushing through a number of arcs that in the comics would’ve been 5-9 months worth of storylines, somehow condensed and absolutely blown through in a single episode, and sometimes two, when they’re rushing right into the next one without any sort of pallet cleansing.

So after sitting down and watching all of S2 of X97, I can say that nothing changed, and the show picked right up going 280 mph, and covering at least five notable arcs and touching on at least two others, within the span of nine 30-minute episodes, which seeing that in writing is absolutely bonkers.  To my recollection, they dealt with Days of Future Past, X-Cutioner’s Song, X-Tinction Agenda, Fatal Attractions, that one arc surrounding the Brood, and a couple of other arcs that I don’t remember the names to and can’t really reference the plot without giving things away.

The series moves so fast between everything that it’s difficult to breathe, and I admittedly like to glance at my phone sometimes when I’m lazily imbibing in television, but I can’t really do that with X97 because they’re cramming so much context into every second of the episodes, that I found myself having to constantly rewind 10-20 seconds to figure out what’s going on before punting on multitasking.

It actually becomes comical just how fast they’re moving, because there are events that happened in the last episode of season 1, and they come full circle in 4-5 episodes in season 2, which was funny to me, because it took nearly three years in the comic books from event A and event B occurring, with a tremendous amount of fleshing out and making some interesting storylines in between.

The Brood are basically reduced to a single episode, and Apocalypse’s Horseman of Death is limited to the final 2.5 episodes of the season, and the crazy thing is that by this point, I became very casual with my following of X-Men comics, and even still I think that these were rushed to the moon and I can’t believe just how rapid-fire the series executes.

That being said, I’m not sure I’m going to continue watching future seasons should there be more coming.  It’s absolutely nothing like the FOX Kids cartoon from the actual 90s, that gave episodes time to breathe, and for viewers to develop rapport and attachment to characters.  I know all the players, but the show doesn’t really ever stop to let viewers care about anyone that the show isn’t intending on you to focus on.  It’s clear the show has a real big hard-on for Rogue, and Gambit by proxy, and they spent a lot of time on Professor X, and feeding into the current narrative of his general slow burn character assassination of today, seeing as how Charles’ go-to attack tactic is to make his opponents re-live traumatic moments in their lives.

It’s ADHD pace makes me less inclined to want to continue watching it, and seeing as how the show is close to having caught up to as far as in the general X-Men comic arcs that I actually followed, it might not be a bad place for me to bail on the show, seeing as how I’d be missing things that I hadn’t even known existed, so out of sight, out of mind.

I wish I could be a police officer for one working day, vol. 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I had this thought whilst driving into the office, but then I couldn’t help but wonder if I had written about it before.  It definitely sounded like a topic or a title that I would’ve used before, and lo and behold, it turns out that my instincts were correct, and nearly thirteen years to the day, I did in fact write about how I wished that I could be a cop, for just a single day.

Well, that clearly hasn’t changed, except the impetus for this iteration of wanting to be a cop for a day isn’t so much about HOV violators and turn lane-cutters, as much as it was spurned on by the fact that I drive past multiple schools on my commute to the office now and I’m amazed at how many people completely disregard school zone speed limits, as well as how often I see people whipping U-turns in clearly marked No U-turn intersections with impunity, and I would like to see such circumstances be rectified, even if I had to fantasize about doing it myself.

So there’s not really much else to elaborate on.  I pass multiple schools on my way to and from the office, and depending on the time in which I walk out the door, I might hit one of them, or I might hit both of them, but the only times in which I hit neither of them is when I’m late.

As a law-abiding citizen, and a parent, I slow my ass down to the 25 mph limit, sometimes 27 when I’m feeling anxious about the time, like a reckless daredevil, but it chaps my ass when in my rear view mirror, I see a car(s) in the adjacent lane closing the gap between us, sometimes overtaking me, and/or choads who tailgate me as if I’m choosing to adhere to the law to spite them, before they whip around me, in the middle of a school zone.

Whenever these scenarios occur, the first thing my mind is screaming is, where the fuck are the police, to pull over and ticket these cocksuckers and get some easy money out of it?  It’s evident that people speed and ignore the limit because they’ve been able to get away with it for so long, and I know America hates Flock cameras and any sort of unmanned surveillance, but the two schools in my county in which I pass, has neither school zone cameras or any sort of law enforcement actively monitoring the school zones, and it’s aggravating to me that so many people shit on the law and get away with it so frequently.

Next, right at the turn into my office, is a double lane left turn, with a clearly marked no U-turn sign at it.  I always take the inside turn lane, because unlike 75% of the people turning into my office park, I don’t need to make the immediate right that causes occasional road rage incidents, and I’d rather take the scenic route and get to the same destination 20 seconds later, without having to contest and go over some gnarly speed bumps in the process.

However, in spite of the no U-turn sign, pretty much every single morning, at least one car whips the U-ey anyway, and naturally there’s no recourse for it.  An officer would have multiple tickets from this intersection alone, because there’s a convenient parking lot at the corner of this intersection where it would be easy to sit in wait and just start issuing tickets, but again, none are ever around, and often times I almost rear-end some U-turning asshole, because they have to stamp their brakes extra hard in preparation for an illegal U, instead of just cruising into a left turn entry.

So once again, this is where I wish I could be a cop for a day, and seeing as how Zootopia didn’t released until three years after my first volume of this topic, I would 2,000% be just like Judy Hopps, and issue 200 tickets before noon if I were.  I would just take my little meter maid cart doing circuits in the loop I see in my head, where I’d go bust a school zone speeder, go ticket an illegal U-turner, back to the school zone, another ticket, then back to the no U-turn intersection, another ticket, and so on and so on.

I don’t want to deal with any serious business police work.  No detective work, no investigating violent crimes.  Just actual, meter maid work, being the scum-sucking cop accused of generating revenue for the county.  That’s what I want to do, and troll the roads with the law, while creating teachable moments all across the county.

A New Level of disappointment

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

First of all, I’m a big fan of Austin Creed and Kofi, formerly known as Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston and The New Day.  They are incredible workers, seem like amazingly positive personalities, and in the few lucky interactions I’ve had with Creed at past Dragon-cons, he’s always been chill.

When the WWE basically forced them to quit, I was definitely and immediately on the side of Creed and Kofi, because they were clearly being disrespected, insulted, and getting the rawest of deals.  And I use the accusation that they were forced to quit, because that’s precisely what a company is trying to do to an employee(s) when they demand that they take a paycut allegedly between 50-75%, lest they be released from their contracts and it makes me wonder why the fuck contracts exist if they can be treated like at-will employment, and it continues to feed my general resentment of the whole progression of TKO owning the WWE and how in spite of his horrific history, thinking Vince McMahon still had his superior attributes when it came to running a professional wrestling promotion.

Obviously, everyone knew that they were far from finished as far as their careers were concerned, and that it was not an if, but when, they were going to migrate over to AEW.  There was never any question, no hypothetical going to Japan for a shake, even though Austin Creed is a giant nerdy weeb-type who would probably love it out there, no pulling a Karrion Kross or Matt Cardona and going the route of indies, in case the E would ever want to scoop them back up on a moment’s notice.  They were going to end up in AEW, and the only question was, when?

Well when had arrived, and they were unveiled as Swerve Strickland’s (not-so) mystery partners at their All-In show in London, and as is often times the case for most former E talent who make a splashy arrival in AEW, they immediately were given gold, in the form of winning the AEW Trios Championship.

As is often times the case, I do think the formula is a little overused, trite and a little eye-roll-ey, but at the same time I know these guys are human beings and their livelihoods are partially tied to their on-screen successes, so I’m still happy that they’re given some shots of Nitro upon arrival.

But in spite of my general love for the performers, I can’t help but feel disappointment in the package that they are presented as in AEW, and I’m very curious to know which party had the lion’s share of responsibility for going in the direction they went, between Creed & Kofi and Tony Khan.

“The New Level,” just makes me kind of cringe and disappointment face meme just reading it.  It seems like really low-hanging fruit to swap out a word in their old name, but otherwise keep the general presentation and the brand exactly as their prior iteration.

See, this is why I want to know who was in the driver’s seat when it came to their AEW branding, because it will help me gauge how much I feel like I can criticize, because if this were all Creed and Kofi’s doing, I just feel not mad just disappointed, but if it were primarily at the behest of Tony Khan, it’s I knew it, that fucking money mark dork.

Regardless though, as much AEW wants to (constantly) proclaim that they’re an alternative to the WWE, they sure lean on WWE property when it comes to often times not really changing much about the presentations of former E talents that make the switch.  I get that there’s a small air of deception at trying to hook the less-educated fans that don’t really know the differences in promotions as much as they know of the existence of specific talents, but in this day and age, pro-wrestling fandom is so dedicated by those who follow it, that such a notion doesn’t seem necessary anymore.

I feel as if any time a worker has the opportunity to jump ship, they also have the opportunity to really repackage and restart themselves as performers, and regardless of if it’s AEW to WWE or WWE to AEW, it always seems like a disappointment when they basically end up being the same character, but just under a different name.

Hey, I can (often) be wrong too and sometimes it just works, but there are plenty of characters out there where some degree of change is necessary, it doesn’t happen, and then the same creative walls that handcuffed them in one promotion, just carries over to their new home.

But getting back to The New Level, the fact that such potential change was limited to a single fucking word seems kind of lazy in my opinion, and I feel like someone could have done better, creatively.  Like, if the name weren’t already taken by an eSports franchise, something like Unicorns of Love is just so campy and extra, that I feel like Creed and Kofi could really have some fun with a name like that or similar.  Plus, it keeps the merchandising vein of unicorn shit open to them, and lord knows just how much useless unicorn shit they moved under the E banner.

At the end of the day, it’s just a name, but AEW really relies hard on the grand entrances of incoming talent, because lord knows they have had a tendency to forget about old toys when shiny new ones become available, and although I don’t imagine a lot of former WWE guys mind occasionally getting forgotten in catering, while they enjoy a lesser workload and get paid, some of them never get back on television, save for the occasional too-many-men tag team match.

But as fans of Austin Creed and Kofi the human beings, I want better for them, because I want them to enjoy all the successes they are deserving of, and I look forward to their inevitable clashes against the Young Bucks and Creed’s inevitable showdown with Kenny Omega.

Justice for Johnny Tran

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whenever there’s any news story about any carjackings or truck heists on social media, often times I always like to drop a photo comment of Johnny Tran accusing Dom Toretto of narc-ing on him from The Fast and the Furious.  Context notwithstanding, it’s always funny (to me) that it’s just a picture of jacked Rick Yune pointing at jacked Vin Diesel captioned with IT WAS YOU.

Anyway, I was sitting in a boring-ass work meeting when I discreetly did this again while dicking around on my phone, but my mind began to wander about Johnny Tran in general.  And the more I thought about his character, in the grand spectrum of the entire Fast Universe, it occurred to me that not only did the series leave a gargantuan boatload of money on the table for not following up with Johnny Tran and his apparent Triad-like syndicate lurking in the shadows behind him, when the day was over Johnny Tran was one of the least-criminal offenders in the series and that he basically died (spoiler alert) for nothing, and there was absolutely no retribution for his murder.

I mean throughout the rest of the series, wars have been started over lesser beefs and conflicts, but somehow in the Fast Universe the story of Johnny Tran is immediately swept under the rug and upon realizing this, I cannot stand for it.

Yes, Johnny Tran wasn’t a squeaky clean boy scout by any means necessary; he liked to roll around with his cousin Lance and his posse in his Honda 2000 or on superbikes, and often seemed to be packing automatic weapons, trying to intimidate opps, but come on, the man was living in Southern California GTA turf war zones, man sometimes has to do what he has to in order to protect himself.

But as the backstory goes, his and Dom’s beef started over “a business deal gone bad” not to mention the fact that Dom had slept with his sister – AKA disrespecting his Family.  Sure, he shot up Brian’s Eclipse and blew it up, but that’s because Dom had neglectfully allowed him and Brian to wander into Tran’s hood, and rules are rules and consequences for breaking them are justifiable.

And then Brian sic’d the feds on Tran and his crew, because the irony was that he was in fact, clouded by Mia and Dom and didn’t want to believe that they were the Civic crew hijacking trucks, and saw them as the best patsies to take the fall.  At this point, Tran had done other than blowing up the Eclipse and some intense coercion to Ted at Harry’s for some SR20 motors a week before Race Wars that should fetch a pretty penny. 

The DVD players that Brian saw in his garage were legit, and the reality was that the only dirt on Tran and his crew were petty weapons charges and some speeding tickets, yet the response to Brian’s bullshit intel were humiliating raids on Little Saigon to bust Lance while he’s just trying to enjoy some pho with his homies, and the feds breaking and entering Johnny Tran’s home to falsely arrest him, culminating with the ultimate indignity for any self-respecting Asian child, getting the taste slapped out of him by their own father.

I mean, watch the clip; Asian dads rarely show urgency or rush any form of punishing, knowing that the anticipation and the wait for punishment is almost as bad as the physical act.  But Johnny Tran’s dad fucking ran to the front door in order to get in that denigrating slap, all while Johnny Tran is being fucking held by the cops. 

I don’t care what anyone else says, Johnny Tran getting shot and murdered is the second worst thing to happen to him, behind getting slapped by his own dad.  The fact that it was completely unwarranted and under false pretenses is irrelevant; had Johnny Tran actually lived, this is irreversible lifetime trauma that wouldn’t ever have gone away, and in fact it’s probably for the best that he died, because this moment right here is the impetus for Johnny Tran to become the villain the franchise wanted to him to become, and he would have overpowered every fucking sheik, corrupt Brazilian, Charlize Theron, Jason Momoa and God’s Eye with the fury of all of communist China* behind him.

*yes I know the character was Vietnamese, but the actor is Korean, driving a Japanese car, may as well muck up the entire Asian pool at this point, not like it hasn’t already been done to this point

Make no mistake, none of this happens if Brian doesn’t narc on Johnny Tran, because he’s too clouded by Mia’s hoo-hah, and it’s actually incredible that retribution doesn’t come more immediately, and that JT doesn’t boil over until everyone’s at Race Wars.

Of course, speaking of Race Wars, this is really the catalyst for the culmination of Johnny Tran’s demise; after Johnny Tran easily defeats Jesse and his shitty Jetta, Jesse should have manned up, handed over the pink slip and everything is finished.  Instead, Jesse reneges on a gentleman’s agreement, flees the desert, forcing Johnny Tran to get up in his master’s face, which led to the accusations that Dom was a narc, triggering him into a violent rage, and looking back at the film, it’s hilarious that of all the different ways that Domonic Toretto is antagonized by other characters throughout the series, it’s accusing him of being a narc that gets him to flip out in such a maniacal manner.

And we all know what happens next; Dom’s crew biffs a hijacking, Vince nearly dies, Brian blows his cover, they all show back up at the Toretto house, where a terrified Jesse shows back up like the pussy we all know he is.  Johnny Tran and his cousin Lance show up and light everyone up, Jesse dies, Brian chases, Dom commits vehicular manslaughter** when he PITs Lance into a ravine, and Brian murders Johnny Tran when he shoots him in the back while he’s trying to flee on his bike, causing him to crash and expire on the streets, right outside of a homeless camp under a bridge.

**An easy plot twist that Lance didn’t die, since Fast characters have demonstrated the ability to survive way worse physical traumas than wiping out off of a cliff, but that just feeds the Johnny Tran (and his family) are victims narrative

It’s astounding to me that in spite of all of the callbacks throughout the entire Fast series, some stretching even harder than the litany of callbacks in Cobra Kai, there isn’t the slightest attempt to reach back to Johnny Tran, or his apparent syndicate of discreet criminals.  I mean Momoa’s flamboyant character is directly related to the events of Fast Five, and when the series pivoted to this Italian Job like heist genre, it’s been Dom’s Family versus, well the rest of the fucking world at this point, but at no point have they even tried to go back to Johnny Tran.

Considering the huge reach they did for the resurrection of Han, I like to think it would be hilarious if in Fast XV, they pulled the same shit and suddenly Johnny Tran never died after all.  But he, and possibly his cousin Lance, have been laying low in the weeds over the last quarter century, waiting for the best time to strike Dom and the Family.

But considering they haven’t tried at all in 25 years, it’s probably wishful thinking that we’ll ever see Johnny Tran ever again.

In an alternate world, Tran has his own Family, along with Lance and probably a diverse cast of equivalents to Letty, Mia (who Dom fucked), Vince, Jesse and Leon and later on revealed that Ja Rule was the Tej Parker equivalent, DK was his overseas colleague, and maybe like Batista and Clive Owen could have been his Hobbs and Shaw equivalents.

But we’ll never know for sure, because we live in a fucked up unfair world, and Johnny Tran did not get to have his story ever finished much less told. 

Johnny Tran was innocent.  Johnny Tran was murdered.  Johnny Tran was the victim all along.

Justice for Johnny Tran.

Well color me surprised

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Civil rights lawsuit accusing numerous prestigious schools of racist anti-Asian bias in their admissions processes moving forward, after (then) teenager with near perfect credentials is rejected from most of them

This is a story that’s pretty much as old as time, where throughout pockets of ‘Murica, there are some crazy smart Asian whiz kids with insane academic stats and accolades, that don’t get into the schools they want to, simply on account of the fact that all these colleges are so overloaded with other Asian whiz kids that they don’t want to accept any more.

It’s an ugly reality that nobody in their right mind wants to admit to, but the undeniable fact of the matter is that schools have quotas of all sorts, and when it comes to the numbers Asian students, it’s probably the one that is always got the most swirl around every single year.

That being said, when I first heard about this particular Asian whiz kid in question last year, I thought dang, sucks to be him, getting bodied by the system, after it turns out that after near perfect SATs and a 4.42 (adjusted) GPA, he was still turned down by 16 out of 18 schools he applied to, getting into just Maryland and UT-Austin, but not Michigan, Cornell, Washington or any of the California state universities.

Yeah, it sucks that he was just the latest victim to the dreaded Asian Curve™, but he was not an isolated case, and he more than likely wouldn’t be the last one to succumb to the sad American reality that Asians’ care for academics and education often times is diluted by institutions’ innate need to appear culturally diversified.

When his Tiger Dad refused to accept it, and went after it legally, I remember thinking yeah good luck with that, because ain’t no way in ‘Murica will they give a second thought to something that happens countless times throughout every single college admissions season.  Don’t get me wrong, I support Tiger Dad’s plight, but like I said, this is something that has been happening since desegregation, and sorry for being nihilistic and thinking change seems impossible.

So like the subject of this post states, color me surprised that it actually is proceeding forward.  This means little in the grand spectrum of things because it does not immediately mean that thousands of Asians have been found officially discriminated against, but I am celebrating the fact that this seems to have taken one more step forward than most  attempts have in the past.  It’s been a year since I found about it, so the legal system is moving at about the expected pace, and hopefully it will emerge again next year with an update, but I imagine at this point, Washington and California will be collating metric tons of bullshit, inaccurate data, and all sorts of subjective intel, all with hopes of overwhelming the legal system with busy work and ultimately getting shit to be thrown out.

But good on Tiger Dad for fighting the good fight.  Change doesn’t happen without people continuing to challenge the system and putting up fights, as fruitless and hopeless as they might seem.  He’s a better dad than I would probably be in a similar situation, but that’s mostly on account of my beliefs that college isn’t a necessary rite of passage for succeeding in life to begin with but that’s besides the point.

The funniest thing is that when the day is over, it really is kind of an emblematic battle, that almost feels like the impetus for the legal action has long been expired, but because it’s picking up steam again, Tiger Dad has decided to make it about all Asians and not just his boy.  Because after the 16 rejections from college, Google knew talent when it saw it, and immediately picked him up as an undrafted free agent and made him a software engineer, where he’s probably already making fuck you money without having student loans, so effectively the Asian whiz kid has already kind of won, and won tremendously in that regard.

It’s clear that Tiger Dad is this guy who legendarily believed:

It’s not enough that I should succeed – others should fail

And despite the fact that his son has effectively already achieved success from a job and earning standpoint, he still demands that others should fail, which is in this case, the college admissions system, spear-headed by Michigan, Cornell, Washington and the State of California.

It’s still a lofty uphill battle, that I don’t really think will amount to much in the end, but it certainly would be amazing to see someone persevere so diligently and unrelentingly to where it got schools to finally throw up their hands and simply admit to the Asian Curve, and make it official.  I wonder how many schools would rather pay to not have to do that, versus those who wouldn’t?

I don’t know why the term ‘human kibble’ triggers me so much

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: Man of mass efficiency meal preps in large quantity, Vice opines whether ‘human kibble’ is viable or is just another internet trend

I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts and trying to articulate my words, but the bottom line is that I’m triggered by the phrase ‘human kibble’ and it bothers me enough to where it is manifesting in this brog post.

So what we have here is a guy who clearly values efficiency, not wasting a lot of time thinking about what to eat, and understanding the benefits to prepping food en masse.  What he basically makes is a gargantuan amount of fried rice, loaded with tons of veggies, tofu, chicken, rice and beans, and presumably, this is all he ever eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and has done so for several years now.

From the looks of the guy, whom based on his names is more than likely Korean, he’s in great shape, doesn’t look at all overweight, and is more than likely tremendously healthier than the troglodytes of the internet judging his culinary decision making who are mostly eating takeout sludge and closer to My 600 Lb. Life The 6,000 Lb. Diaries participants than they are to him. 

As mortifying as the thought of eating the same thing over and over again might seem to many people, it clearly works as far as this guy is concerned.  You’re not dieting for the taste… 

Frankly, I feel a bit of a kindred spirit in this guy, because I too also have the innate ability to eat the same thing over and over again without really getting tired of it.  A long time ago, I used to eat Willy’s pretty much 4-5 times a week for lunch.  Currently, I basically eat the same lunch every day.  Honestly, if I were still single and without kids and didn’t have to ever worry about anyone else, I’d probably have gone the same route as this guy, and been as happy as a clam in doing it.  

Add another idea to embark on if I were ever to discover a time machine and could go back in time to get ahead of the curve.

But where my ire begins is towards the people who have coined it as ‘human kibble,’ because I know that it’s typical dorks on the internet trying to get themselves over as inventors of clever quips, but at least to me, it comes off as demeaning, and even if it’s not its intent, slightly kind of racist.

Kibble is what was designed to the default food for all sorts of animals, and by denigrating this dude’s fried rice by calling it kibble is indirectly equating him to as being an animal.  Especially since the contents of his mass produced stir fry is all clean, fresh food, and again, probably way healthier than the people cracking jokes are eating, there’s something ironic about equating what he’s making and eating to something that is so default, for aniamls.

It doesn’t help that the man in question is Asian, seemingly Korean that doesn’t deter the racist narrative, because obviously there’s a low-hanging fruit of Koreans who have been known to eat dogs historically, and comparing what an Asian man eats to what dogs eat, dregs up this sour negative connotation that feels like it’s stemming from racism, regardless of how innocuous the origins of human kibble may have originated from.

Maybe this says more about me than it does about the masses, but the whole idea of people labeling mass-produced meal prep as ‘kibble’ rubs me the wrong way, and like I said, I’m having a hard time articulating everything the way I want to.  I don’t recall when there was a dude way back who invented a meal replacement shake and called it ‘Soylent,’ people at all denigrating it in any way, and instead applauding the idea and the massive savings in time they could enjoy by replacing all their meals with Soylent.

Mass-batch making fried rice is basically the same concept, except the end result is a hearty bowl of fried rice and not a viscous liquid.  The only differences are the skin color and nationalities of the creators.  It is nowhere near being the equivalent of kibble for humans, and the people who tried to get this to become the thing it already is, can all go fuck themselves.

Y’all thought it was just a joke

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox5ATL: man found stabbed at 725 Ponce de Leon Avenue, later died from injuries; suspect in custody

For those unaware, 725 Ponce de Leon Avenue in Midtown Atlanta is a Kroger grocery store located right off of the famed Atlanta Beltline, which I like to call the Jesus Sidewalk because it’s basically a gigantic fucking sidewalk that runs a big ass circle within the city limits of Metro Atlanta, unintentionally creating another hoop of segregation for snobs to flex just how Atlanta they are based on where they live in proximity or within it.

However, it’s not just any Kroger grocery store, but it’s the address of what was once infamously known as Murder Kroger, whereas the name sake implies, several deaths had occurred.  As the Beltline project grew, everyone knew that the OG Murder Kroger was going to get torn down and redeveloped, but the popular joke was that the building could be torn down and massive image rehabilitation could be undertaken, but the general fact that this address would forever be known as Murder Kroger was never going to change.

Longtime Atlantans would always know 725 Ponce as Murder Kroger, and no amount of Jesus sidewalk adjacency or fancy mixed-use buildings being erected on that spot was ever going to change that.

A few months ago, I made a tongue-in-cheek observation after multiple incidents tied to Kroger stores in the Metro Atlanta area where death has unfortunately occurred, that the spirit of Murder Kroger was a lot like the concept of The Grudge, where even leaving the accursed house in Japan didn’t save victims from being cursed by it, and that it was capable of traveling.  725 Ponce might have been rechristened and redeveloped, but the grudge of Murder Kroger was never going to go anywhere, and it had apparently traveled to other Kroger locations in the area, spreading its curse of death towards Decatur and east.

But lest the Grim Reaper of Atlanta forget where their base of operations lie, it didn’t take long before yet another auspicious incident happened at 725 Ponce, where a serial criminal with allegedly over 30 arrests, stabbed a guy on the Jesus Sidwalk, close enough to Murder Kroger to where the infamous 725 Ponce address was what was reported as the scene of the crime.

How a man with as many arrests on his record was somehow allowed to be on the streets in the first place is beyond me, but from what I could tell, he was white and I guess that says everything we already need to know.  But he still took it upon himself to play Judge Judy and executioner and took a life, and the question really is, did the location of the incident make this happen, or was the haunts of past visit to Murder Kroger compelling him to drop another human being?

And seeing as how the victim unfortunately succumbed to their wounds, all joking aside, it’s safe to say that Murder Kroger has claimed yet another life.  Like I said, you can tear the building down, build it back up as something fancy and modern, slather some shiny new paint on it, and attach it to the Jesus Sidewalk.  But Murder Kroger is never going to go away, and nothing short of a Shinto exorcism is probably going to have a snowflake’s chance in hell at getting rid of this curse.