Tag: comparison

The power of 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[Warning: this post is about pooping.  You have been warned.]

Ever since my birthday, when I was absolutely waylaid by an ear infection, I have struggled with my running.  Prior to my birthday, I was in a very good groove, and I was routinely completing 5K runs under 30 minutes, which is my usual every day goal whenever I lace up my sneakers and go out for a run.

But ever since my birthday that I spent laid up in bed the entire time, and struggling to get over the ear infection and subsequent what I’m guessing was what seemed like rupturing my ear drum, I have not been able to get back to my old running speeds.  Perhaps it’s age actually starting to catch up to me in some way, shape or form, or perhaps the sickness really took a lot more out of me than I had hoped it would.  Maybe it’s a combination of both, but the fact of the matter is that since then I don’t think I’ve been able to log a sub-30 5K time since April, and I try to not get too down about it, because Father Time outlasts everyone, and from what other runners try and encourage to me is that my split times for my age are still above average.

I’ve lightly dieted and been experimenting with stride and pacing, but nothing seems to get me back to where I’m seeing a leading 2 on my tracker when I hit my stopping point, and even though I’ve been able to occasionally get my pace back to a sub-10 minute mile, my overall 5K times have always crossed the 30 minute threshold.

I don’t know why I typed this all out because it really doesn’t have anything to do with the main subject of this post, but since it’s all related to running I think it just presented itself to me as the best opportunity to get that off my chest without having to make a dedicated post about it.

But anyway, I was on a morning run recently, and probably the #1 biggest concern while running started to emerge near the midway point of my run: the mid-run #2.  All through my running life, I’ve always tried to be cognizant of my body’s status whenever it comes to checking off all of the mental boxes before going on a run, be it casual training or on a formal run or race.  Every runner does, no matter how much they might not want to talk about pooping, it’s just human nature, and everyone poops.

Either way, I actually took care of business prior to this particular run, but perhaps again, symptom of aging, it wasn’t adequate enough or for whatever reason, while I was in the middle of my run, warning alarms started going off in the body that indicated that something inconvenient was about to occur.  And believe me, this is the absolute worst thing any runner wants to have to deal with, because it’s not often where relief is ready at a moment’s notice, be it on the trail, on the course, or casual outdoor running.

Fortunately for me, I had relief available to me, and it was conveniently on my route.  There’s a little park that I pass twice on my usual route, and there happens to be a surprisingly clean little public commode at it, and as long as it wasn’t occupied when I rolled up, I knew it was going to be one of those days where as much as I didn’t want to stop my momentum, it was better than the alternative of risking another 21 minutes to get home and shitting myself along the way.

Thankfully, the facility was available and I was able to take care of business, and as inconvenient as the whole process of stopping, and doing the deed can be, the amount of relief and satisfaction at knowing that you basically saved your own life and completely neutralized the risk of one of the most miserable indignities of the world, offsets the negative.

And in the case of this post, not only does it offset the negative, it outright becomes a positive, because once the physical strain of managing a bowel movement is eliminated from the body, the body is now free to focus all of its energy at the original task at hand – running, in my case.

The thought crossed my mind while I was breezing through the remainder of my run, because I now use a fitness tracker as opposed to all the years in which I did not, I actually have the capability to check out the tangible results of physical performance before and after taking care of business.  I amused myself with this scientific hypothesis, and looking forward to viewing the data after the run helped occupy my mind while I was finishing up my run.

Once again, I did not finish in under 30 minutes, nor was my 5K split under 30 minutes either.  My pace was fortunately still under a 10-minute mile, but I’m still handcuffed from notching that sub-30 5K that I’d like to get back to, and I don’t think I’ll get there unless I simply run more than I do now, but that would come at the expense of lifting weights, which is something I also enjoy doing and harvesting the fruits of such labor.

But no matter, when I got home and checked the data of my run on my phone, I was tickled to see the heat mapping of my pace; I had assumed that my general speed was going to be better after the bathroom break versus before it, but the fact that a lot more green and blue (slower) pace before stopping, and almost entirely yellow-to-red pretty much the entire way back was absolutely hilarious.

The power of 2 is something truly stupendous, and I likened the bathroom break to my bros to being like Sonic the Hedgehog when he hits a springboard on a wall and it sends him shooting off at immediate high speed.

Thoughts about Street Fighter the 2026 film

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I titled the post as such because these days, nobody has any qualms with regurgitating titles of films of the past with any ambiguation and I want to make clear that I’m talking about the brand new Street Fighter film circa 2026, and not possibly the 1974 film of the same name starring the late great legend Sonny Chiba, or the 1994 turd with Jean Claude Van Damme that had the unfortunate distinction of being Raul Julia’s last film, or the 1994 animated classic that as far as I’m concerned is still the pinnacle of the core Street Fighter II canonical story.

Because the 2026 film was absolutely everything I thought it would be, and I left the theater with absolutely no surprises or disappointment of expectations.  Unfortunately, my thoughts on what this film was going to be were nothing short of a colossal steaming goat turd, and it did a pretty good job of staying close to that bar pretty much the entire film.

When I heard that this film was coming out, I vaguely remember saying either to myself or to mythical wife, that there would be no way in hell I would go to see this in a theater, unless I were going with the boys, because there’s no way this had any chance in hell of being remotely decent.

And as much as I’m a wrestling fan, finding out that both Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns were going to be in it, as Guile and Akuma respectively didn’t help alter my preconceived notions about the film, and in fact probably hurt them, because wrestlers are generally campy over-the-top performers often times to begin with, and the thought of Cody dropping lines as US Colonel Guile made me just know he was going to be bringing the cheese, and frankly I wasn’t a single iota wrong about that.

But, the boys did come knocking, and when one of them pinged the group chat to see who was interested, and that he had a deal from work on the table, I couldn’t say no, because I love the boys and their company, and as shitty of a movie I figured this was going to be, it could be fun with their company, and so I went to the theaters for the first time in like forever, to watch Street Fighter (2026 film).

If I had paid money and expected to see something satisfying and fulfilling on top of being entertained, I’d have been sorely disappointed.  If I went by myself, or had to pay for mythical wife or anyone else to come watch with me, I’d have left the theater feeling disappointed.  Thankfully, the boys are also actual SF gamers, and had the capability to understand a lot of the niche and inside references throughout the film.

But overall, the film is campy, riddled with plot holes, wonky character direction, and I feel like they went too off-balance at trying to be true to the source material versus executing a plot that is actually humanly possible to portray with live human beings.  They shoe-horned the original eight from SF2 and oddly cherry picked Cammy and Juli from later games, seemingly on account to fill out female cast numbers.  And their determination to make game-references seemed to overwhelm the need for an actual plot.

Casting was weird, and the way I describe it is imbalanced, because they went to great lengths to try to carve out all this plot and depth for Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li, but then went very hard and literal to have all the other character portrayals.  Like Cody Rhodes as Guile, the big French MF from Reacher to be Zangief, and the guy they got to play Dhalsim were about as perfect live-interpretations as there could be.  Fiddy as Balrog seemed like a weird choice considering his lean stature versus Balrog’s hulking portrayal, and my friends and I were discussing how difficult it is to portray a decent Vega in all the attempts that have been made in SF film history.

I didn’t even know that Ma Dong-Seok was what I’m guessing was supposed to be Sheng Long but for whatever reason re-named Gouken, because of all the facial prosthetics and trying to make him like some weird Korean-Japanese Pai Mei, but I was tickled to see that he was a part of this.

Like many, I found it puzzling that they cast an Asian girl to portray Cammy, despite the fact that she’s very much a white British girl, so that was some weird reverse appropriation going on there.

But the core players, casting was, well cast.  None of them are people I’d really ever heard of except for Andrew Schulz and the guy that played M. Bison, but all of their characters were really weakly written, the story was not at all decent, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a degree of intentionality with how just overall bad everything was, as if a group of bros got high and started bullshitting about how if they make a movie that’s just bad enough, it’ll get people to want to see it, so they can partake in the shit show that the film actually turned out to be.

Like the dude who was M. Bison, I just couldn’t get over the actor choice.  The dude who was the Polka Dot guy in Suicide Squad, and Mr. 3 in One Piece.  Always the quirky weird character, suddenly having to be the very rigid and very stoic M. Bison.  Plus his stature is kind of wimpy to be the last boss of the game, and honestly he probably would’ve been better to be Vega, given his stature and how a mask would hide his deadpan face.

I felt like this whole film was some brainchild of maybe Andrew Schulz, Eric Andre and David Dastmalchian, among others, and like I said, they probably got high and started kicking around an idea of a Street Fighter film, and since many of them probably have the clout and connection to Netflix and/or their investors, the ball got rolling, and then this turd emerged.  But at the same time, I feel like even they had to know this was turning out to be a stinker, but were somehow okay with it, because if you’re going to be bad, be legendarily bad so that it can still draw interest.  Like some weird meta cat-and-mouse game of trying to be bad on purpose, because it’s easier than trying to win an Oscar, and when the day is over, entertaining and earning are still the key objectives to why they’re doing it in the first place.

In the end, this movie was pretty turrible, the only enjoyment I got from it was from the company I went to go see it with, and the fact that they left it open for a future sequel(s) is hilarious because it’s awfully presumptuous to think that they should get one, but Hollywhite loves to burn money, and we’ve all seen shittier things get additions to them.

It wasn’t all pure shit though; the animated segments they used to portray flashbacks, that shit was straight fire.  If the whole film were done animated like it was done in these segments, probably would have improved the film at least twenty-fold.  I’d definitely be interested in future content from whatever studio did that animation, because that stuff was definitely quality.

Can’t even think of a good post title to express how satisfying it is that the Dodgers got swept out of the playoffs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ESPN: Milwaukee Brewers sweep Dodgers in the NLCS, advance to the World Series

First things first, congratulations to the Milwaukee Brewers for breaking through the glass ceiling and advancing to the World Series.  I would be totally fine with a Brewers championship, and at this point I don’t even care who wins the World Series between them, the Rays and the Indians Guardians who are still duking it out in the ALCS.  Because when the day is over, if I couldn’t have the Braves, then it really didn’t matter who won—as long as it wasn’t the Dodgers.

And no disrespect to the Brewers or the Rays or the Guardians, but this post really isn’t about them, it’s about the Dodgers, and the sheer power of satisfaction that is derived from hate, namely like most people who don’t reside in Southern California, the general dislike for the Dodgers; and the gargantuan horde of their fairweather soft-ass worst in baseball, fans with air quotes.

I’ve thought about it a lot over the last few weeks of playoff baseball, and yeah I don’t really care much for the Dodgers, and I don’t want to see them win and succeed and secure the vaunted three-peat that has eluded even the most dominant teams in baseball history.  But the thing is, I don’t really dislike a lot of their players, like should be the case whenever anyone says they don’t like a particular team.  Obviously it starts with Freddie Freeman, a guy I’m incapable of disliking, and then there’s Mookie Betts, who always comes off as charming, chill and an all-around cool guy.

Despite the fact that hater culture is supposed to dislike guys making insane amounts of money, I don’t harbor any genuine ill-will to Shohei Ohtani; yes he has changed the deferred money game with his $700 million deal, and he might have a poorly-hidden gambling problem, but he does play the game with an air of integrity and brings Japanese courtesy into the spotlight, that he remains a pretty likeable guy.  Even Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whom I was very skeptical of for receiving a ridiculous $300M deal before even throwing an MLB pitch has turned into one of the most talented pitchers in the game, and a complete Iceman once the playoffs come around.  In hindsight, he’s not only been absolutely worth every penny he’s been paid, he’s erring on the side of underpaid, considering just how good, how reliable and how many results he’s delivered.

I do have not nice feelings about guys like Blake Balakey Snell because I think he’s a money-grubbing spinster who only wants to play when it’s most critical, and I get this really negative vibe from Tarik Skubal and I hope he bounces in free agency although the Dodgers are always in play due to their penchant for creative contract structures.  And Max Muncy, I can’t stand, because as decent of a player he objectively is, on a team like the Dodgers, he’s still a fourth-tier contributor, but runs his mouth and acts bigger than he actually is and I like to see him fail, almost as satisfying as it was to see Snell take the L in the critical game 3 that was their true do-or-die night.

But the absolute most satisfying thing about the Dodgers not just losing to the Brewers, but getting swept, eliminated and sent packing to Cancun, is the sheer fact that all of their insufferable, shitty, fairweather fans, no longer have any reason to be happy anymore, and much like the team they act like they follow, their season is over.

Seriously, I’ve encountered fanbases in all variety of sports, and none of them are as bad as Dodgers fans.  I’m talking about Philadelphia sports fans, Yankee fans, Red Sox fans, Alabama fans, Miami Heat fans, San Francisco sports fans.  Awful, insufferable and terrible in their own ways, but none of them are bad as Dodgers fans. 

First, since most of them haven’t even been fans long enough to even remember who Clayton Kershaw is, much less Sandy Koufax or Fernando Valenzuela, they don’t actually know what it’s like to suffer the bad times of sports fandom and have no modicum of grit or toughness that comes from the passage of time of playing annual games of emotional attachment to our respective teams.  That said, they’re all soft, and have absolutely no ability to tolerate being in the crosshairs of all other sports fans, and resort to uncreative and weak retorts, often just going straight to personal attacking, which in the arena of talking shit on the internet is basically tantamount to waving a white flag.

They’re sore losers, and even more sore winners, and have a tendency to gloat and circle jerk at any of their successes, as if exploiting payroll policies as if they were playing baseball team management with a Game Genie attached to it.  They can’t handle any sort of criticism from fans of other bases, but their only real strength are their numbers that have the capability to overwhelm and flood out any shit talk that they can’t handle.

And much like the general vibe of Southern California living, they’re mostly comprised of flakey, douchey, attention-seeking, vapid, and under-sports-educated douche flakes.  The Algorithm feeding me clips of Dodgers fans reels and content felt like AI trolling, and I found myself getting so inundated by so much of their bullshit that I had to eventually start manually thumbs downing them so I could hopefully not see them any further.

Needless to say, this whole diatribe reinforces the notion that the vast majority of my general dislikes for certain sports teams, almost always stems from their fans, and the unfortunate fact that in this connected world with social media outlets, it’s nigh impossible to not be exposed to them in some fashion.  And over the last few years, with the rise of the Dodgers, their fans have absolutely launched themselves to the top of the mountain as being the absolute shittiest fans out there.

And seeing them all suffer, and knowing that their season with all their hopes and aspirations for the three-peat have all come to a brutal halt, is among the chief reasons why it’s so satisfying that the Dodgers lost.

I love that it came at a sweep, because few things in sport are more humiliating than getting swept.  Losing game 1 probably made all their shitty fans cry luck, fluke, we can still even things up tomorrow.  Losing game 2 brought more anxiety and concern, but there have been many examples in history where a team dropped 0-2 and still come back to win a best of seven.  But game 3 was the best, because it was started by Balakey Snell, he who played hardball with the league and got a fat 5/$182M deal with the Dodgers with their usual deferred payment plan bullshit, rode the train to a World Series last year, and pulled his usual loaf-in-first-half, start-trying-in-second-half this season, and still got knocked around in both of his starts in this year’s playoffs, when he was presumably in try-mode.

But as most baseball/sports fans know, falling 0-3 is basically the kiss of death, seeing as how outside of hockey, only one team in sports history has ever overcome 0-3, being the 2004 Boston Red Sox that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts also happened to play a pivotal role in.  Although probably nothing in sports history would be worse than the Dodgers overcoming an 0-3 deficit, math was most definitely not on their side.

I predicted that either the Brewers would win in a blowout, or the Dodgers would win game 4 by a slim margin, because they had to have been in full blown panic mode, all hands would be on deck, and survival was all that mattered, and in cases like that, either their gambles pay off, or they blow up in their faces, with no middle ground.

When Ohtani finally broke out of his annual playoff slump, with a grandiose three-run home run, I thought to myself, oh boy, here’s the catalyst for the improbably and inevitably insufferable comeback for the ages, but the Milwaukee Brewers of all teams in history, this 2026 edition, seemed to shrug it off, and began chipping away at the deficit, and by the time the 9th inning rolled around, had hung six unanswered runs, and were on the precipice of advancing to the World Series, but more importantly, sweeping the disliked Dodgers out of the playoffs and effectively saving the game of baseball, at least before it will more than likely go on strike after this season.

And the best part about the whole thing, is that this all happened at Dodger Stadium, and all their shitty fairweather fans who were mostly there because it’s just the cool thing to do in LA and don’t actually know shit about baseball, got to see this epic meltdown of expensive proportions, and got to take part in being on the wrong side of the decision that every sports fans that isn’t impressed by the Dodgers, was rooting for to happen.

Honestly, I think I can comfortably say that the Dodgers losing and getting bounced from the playoffs brings me more joy than if the Braves had won the NLCS and gone to the World Series.  That’s the power of sports hate.

At this point, I don’t even care who wins the World Series.  I think it would be a gasser, if the Brewers who swept and have to wait, lose all their momentum and go ice cold, while the ALCS maybe goes all seven games, and the 85-win Guardians emerge, and riding momentum, topples the Brew Crew, and we have another season of a shitty weak squad getting hot at the right moment, Cleveland’s sports curse is snapped, and then baseball goes on strike.  But as long as it’s not going to be the Dodgers hoisting the Commissioner’s trophy at the end, it’s all going to be good.

Dad Brog (#177): The martyr complex

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, #1 has been in this insufferable stage where everything in the world is inadequate, she doesn’t want to do anything that is asked of her, and just about asking her to do anything resorts in complaining, screaming and fighting.

Whereas for a while, #1 was the chill kid who was amenable and open minded, I wouldn’t say the roles have necessarily reversed and #2 is the zen chill child now, but it’s like I’ve got two strong-willed little girls apt to put up the Great Wall of China-level resistance at a moment’s notice if they simply feel like it.

The good thing is that the kids seem content to keep the crazy for when they’re at home, and after parent-teacher conference week, I’m at least happy to learn that both of them are rather good students, with #2 turning in the equivalent of a straight-A report card in her first try.  They’re good to their peers and good to their teachers, but it’s when they come home does the insufferable whining really begin.

Complaining to me, complaining to mom, complaining to the au pair, it’s really quite endless at times, and unless she’s doing precisely what she wants to be doing, there’s usually some whining going on.  Unfortunately, what a lot of what she wants to be doing usually involves being lazy slugs in front of televisions or iPads or Switches and vegging out to some screen, and yeah no, that’s not going to fly with me at this juncture of their lives.

However, whenever I sit down with #1 and try to actually speak with her and try to get the bottom of where all this angst is coming from, more often than not, I’ve been getting a lot of:

I feel like you like/love/want to do X with/care more with sissy than me

And no matter of explanation of how incorrect such an opinion is doesn’t seem to matter, because once she gets this idea in her head that she is less favored than her little sister, it’s effectively over and absolutely nothing is going to bring her out of the funk except a little time and maybe going to bed for the night.

Where this defeatist, martyr complex came from, I have no idea, but there’s a lot of things that she’s seemingly picked up in short order this school year that has me no real other choice to believe than things she’s picking up from other students, because I try my absolute best to be fair and equal to both my kids, and I try to be cognizant over the attention I give each my kids because I know this is always inevitably bound to happen.  And frankly if I’m being honest, I probably spend more time with #1 than I do my younger child, mostly because she’s the elder, and there are some things that we do together that her little sister isn’t capable of doing just yet, like reading more complex books, practicing reading and math together, and other things that separate a six-year old from a five-year old.

Doesn’t matter though, for whatever reason, #1 has gotten into this martyr complex phase where woe is me, nobody likes her, she lives in a home completely devoid of love and care, and as a result is just blowing up at everyone all the time if she hears one thing that doesn’t jive with her at that very moment.

Fun times in dad land.

I wish I could be a police officer for one working day, vol. 3

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Considering it was about thirteen years between my first and second posting about wanting to be a cop for a day so I could ticket the shit out of everyone doing illegal things that chap my ass but the police don’t actually do anything about because they’re deemed not high enough priority and that they’re using the excuse of being perpetually understaffed, I didn’t think I’d be up to a volume 3 just yet, but here we are, barely a month later.

Bicycles.  I have a fairly contentious opinion about them, mainly that the vast majority of those who ride them are hipsters, tryhards, trolls, or all of the above, for a myriad of reasons, be it guilting motorists of harming the environment, take it too seriously and making others hate them, or clogging up the Silver Comet Trail by thinking the whole stretch exists solely for them and not the hundreds of people that actually want to run or walk on it alternatively.  Sometimes it’s multiple reasons, or all of the above.

But at the same time, I do recognize bicycling as a very good form of exercise, I acknowledge the environmental benefits to it.  I’m not above doing it myself, and whenever I go visit my brother and he takes me in bicycle rides, admittedly it’s extremely satisfying going into a jam-packed parking lot on the beach for cars who also have to pay to park, whereas bicycle parking is free and abundantly available.

And frankly, there are people out there who rely solely on bicycles as their primary mode of transportation, and if it’s the difference between being a lazy drain on society versus getting out into the world and being a contributing member, pedal away, friends.

However, I suppose I take for granted that all people know the general rule of bicycles in the open world, mainly the one that says stay the fuck off sidewalks.  Because as the weather here in Georgia has gone from fake fall to something mildly not quite summer but definitely not fall anymore, people have been outside more often lately, which kind of cramps my style since I walk and/or run outside regularly regardless of the temperature outside, and over the last weeks, while I’m out and about getting my general wellness in, I’ve had assholes flying past me on bicycles on the sidewalk, often coming too close for comfort of hitting me.

It’s happened frequently to the point where I’ve no choice but to use it as subject matter for a brog post, which is to say that it’s happened way too fucking often lately and I wish I were a cop for a day, so that I could grab a lot of these cocksuckers and yank them off their moving bicycles, pin them to the ground and give them tickets for illegally riding their bicycles on footpaths.

They’re called sidewalks for a reason, not sidebikes or sidebicycles.  Yes, you’d be pissing off motorists and/or putting yourselves at risk of danger by riding in the street, but bicycles are for lack of a better term, still classified as vehicles, and belong in the streets, and not the sidewalks.  It’s selfish to prioritize your own safety from automobiles by doing something illegal like getting on the sidewalks and instead jeopardizing the safety of walkers and runners.

Also, because society is getting lazier and softer with each passing day, I can comfortably say that 90% of personal incidents of bicyclists whizzing past me on sidewalks, are e-bikes, and not just regular, pedal-powered bicycles, and they’re going relatively fast as shit, definitely with enough velocity to do some harm to a human body.

So my general walking/running route is primarily residential, but there are two specific stretches that runs along thoroughfares that do have posted speed limits of 35mph, but usually drive anywhere from 45-55mph with regularity.  One of these stretches has a curve that often causes some obnoxious blind spots, so I kind of get why any bicyclist wants to avoid the risk in those areas, but again, avoid their risk, at the expense of others, and there’s no scenario where one party isn’t at risk by the driving talent of another.

However, the law is the law, and the law in most places, including Georgia, dictates that bicycles shouldn’t be on the fucking sidewalks.  And I’m getting tired of nearly getting clipped on sidewalks by people riding bicycles way too fast where they’re legally not allowed to be on, and if I were a cop for a day, I’d ticket every single one of these shitheads for the absolute maximum penalty possible.

Cool Runnings – the Korean Remix

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Korea Herald: South Korea posts third-best time in the Men’s 4×100 meter relay race at the Asian Games, but are ruled disqualified for no clear reason; upon official appeal is Korea correctly awarded the bronze medals

Man, when I came across this story, and I saw the photograph of the Korean relay team in question, I had to throw my head back and laugh heartily at the obviousness of this entire piss-poor optics scenario.  As much as western people love to extol how great certain Asian cultures are, the sad fact of the matter is that a whole lot of Asia is still racist as fuck, especially towards black people.

Perhaps not to the hostile cruelty that of white people and generations of enslavement and torture, but even to this day, there’s a tremendous amount of general ignorance and xenophobia when it comes to those of black skin tones being in Asian countries, regardless of how legally allowed or birthright they might have.

The fact that the organizers of the Asian Games had no clear explanation of why South Korea was disqualified from the 4×100 meter is very obvious and doesn’t need one, because most people with brains can probably figure out the whole story, just by looking at the photograph of the relay team Korea had fielded for the event.

So let’s just get it out of the way, and drop the facts:

Biwesa Daniel Gassama (far left) is born of parents from the Democratic Republic of Congo who came to South Korea as refugees.  He was born in Korea, but that didn’t make him automatically a Korean citizen, he acquired his citizenship when his mother became officially naturalized in 2018.  He went to elementary, middle and high school in Korea and intends on serving out his mandatory two-year stint in the military as all Korean citizens do.

Joel Jin Nwamadi (far right) is Korean by birthright as since he has a Korean mother; dad is Nigerian.  His story is less complicated as one of his parents is Korean, and despite his obvious bi-racial appearance, Asian Games officials only need to see a names like “Nwamadi” and “Biwesa” and it makes them blush.

Obviously, by the rules, Korea had done nothing illegal, or brought in any ringers or expedited expats like France does in the World Cup, but that didn’t stop Asian Games organizers from freaking out at seeing two dudes with dark skin, and just preemptively ringing the bell for a DQ.

Naturally, there’s nothing about this whole scenario that isn’t sad, bothersome and doesn’t cheapen Korea’s success, but at the same time it doesn’t really seem that surprising, given the general propensity of Asian cultures to act embarrassingly when it comes to their inherent xenophobia.  I’m not saying it was in the least bit right or defending their actions, but as an Asian person who is pretty familiar with lots of Asian cultures, I just can’t say that I found this to be at all that surprising.

But hey, at least Korea was actually successful with their appeal and getting the decision corrected, because it would be a real travesty if these sprinters all went home empty handed, in spite of the concrete evidence of their third-place finishing time.  Always proud to hear of Koreans achieving success in anything, especially athletics.

This is basically like a lite-Korean version of Cool Runnings, when the Jamaican bobsled team qualified for advancement into the medal round, but were mysteriously disqualified, with some ambiguous excuse of not having enough competitive experience.  And when John Candy’s character Irv Blitzer confronted the IOC and called them out on their racism, they were reinstated with no real explanation or apology.  This really wasn’t that different of a situation, but it was two black guys instead of four, and instead of bobsleds, they were still track sprinters. 

And in the age of where what’s old can become new again, this would make for a pretty interesting re-make of Cool Runnings.  However, the reality still remains that for whatever reason, Disney doesn’t seem to acknowledge the existence of Korea or its culture, based on how out of the way they remain at avoiding creating anything at all inspired by Korean culture, so there’s probably a fat chance that this happens.  Probably better suited for one of Korea’s film bigwigs like CJ Entertainment to pickup instead, and it would probably end up a better production in their hands anyway.

White people learning Asian languages to create content is omega-level white privilege

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I try to not be envious of too much in my life, but I’m also human, and sometimes we just can’t help those types of feelings when we come across them.  That being said, I often lament when I see talented musicians, artists, or even video gamers, and ponder if I could have become as talented as they are, had I not been such an unambitious shit and strayed away from them.

But if there’s one talent that I often feel what could possibly be construed as envy, it would be polyglots.  Obviously English is my native tongue, but I can speak enough Korean to survive easily in Korea, despite my reading being about as good as a grade schooler, with my writing being even weaker.  I know enough Japanese to probably not be completely dominated in Japan, and I’m almost to a two-year streak in Duolingo, practicing Español at least 30 minutes every single day.

However, I’m nowhere near as capable of those people who would be considered actual polyglots, where they can switch languages as easy as a manual transmission driver changing gears, and I’m usually awestruck at how these linguistic masters can hang with just about anyone when they need to.

Lately, I don’t know why The Algorithm is showing me these things, but occasionally I’ve seen videos of white guys who film videos of themselves surprising Chinese people in public places, usually restaurants, when they pretend to be meek shy tourists at their establishments, and after letting a Chinese server struggle to communicate with them in English, they bust out flawless Mandarin or Cantonese, much to their surprise as well as any bystanders in the background.

It was interesting the first time I saw one of these, and dare I say entertaining.  But when it becomes apparent that this is pretty much the only trick that these content creators have, regardless of how many other languages they speak, it becomes obnoxious to me, and I would go as far as to say that it’s also exploitative of, usually Chinese people, because I have yet to see any of these clowns try this schtick with Koreans, Japanese, or any other Asian culture other than Chinese.  I’m not saying they haven’t, and videos don’t exist, but god help me if I ever came across one, especially if it were with Koreans.  It’s bad enough that these polyglots probably speak better Korean than I do, but I’d be incensed to see them pull their schtick on my people.

As the subject of this post says, white guys picking up Asian languages, and then using their talents to farm content on the internet is a level of white privilege that I would say is definitely omega-level.  Because frankly not many other demographics in the world could really get away with this like white guys can, and frankly I’m not entirely sure that any demographic is as attention-starved as white content creators are to even come up with this kind of gimmick.

Just like a black American couldn’t go into Africa and flex some Swahili and expect to surprise some locals, I can’t go into Korea, identify myself as America, and even remotely come close to impress any locals.  Mexicans weren’t at all impressed with my Español on my last time in Mexico, and whenever I’ve been into France, Italy, or Germany, I feel like I’m met more with disdain that I don’t speak their languages.  I highly doubt such would be that different even if I did speak their languages.  It’s like I, or any other Asian person is expected to have learned their languages, based on the educational stereotypes of us.

The thing with all these white polyglots is that they all feel at home and that their bread and butter content is that of tricking and surprising Chinese people.  I don’t seek, but The Algorithm doesn’t bother to feed me any examples of them doing this to any other demographics, and it’s always Chinese people that they film their shitty content with.

And I’m obviously not Chinese, but I am a fellow Asian, and I do take some objection to their exploitation of my Asian brethren in order for them to film content.  What I really want to see is for all these Chinese restauranteurs to start adopting the mindset that everyone who walks into their establishments should be expected to know some Mandarin or Cantonese, and if they do, great, but if they don’t, start unloading the exasperation and passive aggression of disgust, and basically make it so that these white clowns don’t have any ammo to make any further shitty videos.  No-sell the shit out of their reveals and respond with dismissive remarks with rebuttals like “oh good, you do speak Chinese” or better yet, respond in English, like natives tend to do whenever tourists bungle their way them in their native tongues.