Tag: fast & furious

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.

Better Drivers. Doesn’t Matter. Papa Atlanta Roads.

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Papa Johns semi truck crashes, overturns on I-75, causes massive traffic jams

Not a whole lot to add to this.  It’s been a while since I wrote about a good old fashioned truck crash on the highways, but I’m disappointed to see that it wasn’t one of those catastrophes that ended with pizzas all over the place, scattered all over the highways, and all over the medians and shoulders.

Considering the fact that this happened right at the doorstep of Kennesaw State University, a budding commuter college in the Metro Atlanta area that has slowly been creeping upward over the last few years, probably buoyed by the gradual improvements and successes of their athletic program, there would’ve been an easy joke about how it was probably some broke boy college kids going all Fast & Furious on a pizza truck, hoping to score some free pizza, as if nobody would suspect the nearby college on whom could have done it.

No, I’m actually pretty familiar the location of this particular one, because I’ve had to drive north on I-75 for work related purposes a bunch of times, and there’s a specialist I’ve had to go to a few times in like Acworth, so I know the exact spot where this happened.

Although the lanes do merge up around here from a prior exit as well as being an access point for the toller-coaster Express lanes, everything is pretty straight, which makes it puzzling to how a semi can get into such a catastrophe where they end up overturned and halfway buried into the wall.  Then again, never underestimate the incompetence of the vast majority of people on the roads, because there’s no conditions where someone can’t somehow end up gravely injured or dead, in even the most seemingly safe road conditions.

But really, what spurred this post to fruition is that whenever I hear the name Papa Johns, I think about the photo and ensuing memes that basically murdered his career with the company that was named after him, where he was spotted blitzed drunk out of his mind at a basketball game, and hanging off of two college bros like he were Weekend at Bernie’s.  Even though this happened like an eon ago at this point, some people never forget, and it’s what always comes to mind whenever I think of the brand.

That said, as mentioned before, not a whole lot to add, not a whole lot else to write about this.  Wish there was some more of a catastrophic wreck where cargo was strewn about, but such was unfortunately not the case.

If not to tease with, then why??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Autopian: there exists a single Honda Odyssey Type-R minivan, and it has 550 horsepower, turbo charged, and a six-speed manual transmission

I’ve said it before, I have no qualms with minivans.  They’re spacious, versatile, provide tremendous utility and purpose, and I couldn’t give two shits less about the reputation that comes with being a parent driving around in one.  The only reasons why I don’t have one today is that the industry clearly knows the value of their utility, and when I was car shopping, none of them seemed remotely available south of $60,000, and the fact that mythical wife absolutely abhors them, and feels tremendously stronger about reputation than I could.

Needless to say, when I saw the words “Honda Odyssey Type-R,” it did elicit a jaw drop of the smallest sense, because it was the amalgamation of two things that pique my interest; the adult parent appeal of minivans, clashing with my boyhood fandom to Honda’s Type-R performance division, to create this wholly unnecessary, nobody-asked-for-this soccer rocket of a ride, that has garnered enough intrigue to where it’s becoming a brog post.

Everything about it is just so laughable, from the aggressive Type-R styling hints, from the grill, red H emblem, accents, to the more obvious things, like the quad pipe exhaust, aggressive as hell rims, and the hood air intake.  As much as I want to lament about how unnecessary this is, the fact of the matter is that this is the only one in existence, a one-of-one, the chic IT phrase of today to denote its exclusivity and rarity, and I think most everyone can agree that in spite of its existence, the chances of this, or anything closer to this seeing the light of day commercial remains pretty slim.

The go-parts of it are especially entertaining, considering most of minivans are hauling so much weight, there’s almost little logic to running anything other than a V6 motor of some sort, but in true Honda and true Type-R logic, they’ve smashed in a turbo-charged inline-four, from the Civic Type-R into this minivan, and are alleging a horsepower of 550 hp.  And paired to it, is a six-speed manual transmission, and the best part is that it’s coming out of the dash like the random Civic Si from the mid-2000s that most car heads agreed was kind of a flop; but it kind of makes sense in the context of a minivan.

So yeah, six-speed manual Honda Odyssey pushing 500hp+.  I’m surprised the Type-R badge on the back of it isn’t bigger, and frankly isn’t just the entire sides of the ride, like a Fast & Furious Team Toretto graphic, because if something is going to remain a 1-of-1, it needs to shout it from the rooftops a little better.

It’s like whomever designed this, they like the idea of being a sleeper car, unsuspecting and inconspicuous, but while they were putting it together, whether Honda superiors or their own arrogance started to intervene, and hints of obvious aggression and performance began to permeate the overall package of it.  It’s white and ordinary looking from the onset, but then there’s the rims, and when you see the back of the ride, window covered with more stickers than a Takahashi brother from Initial D, huge exhaust pipes that look more suited for an insurrectionist’s Dodge pickup, by the time you notice the tiny-ass Type-R emblem on the back, the jig is already up that this is no ordinary children hauler.

And not to go unnoticed was that the driver’s side was on the left, which is to say that this was clearly designed with teasing Americans in mind.  Minivans don’t really have the purpose in the world than they do in America, other than kidnapping in Taken-like films, and this would be too conspicuous for crime.  But it seems obvious that this was meant to tease and tantalize the American market, and I would have to acquiesce that it’s working, because I would probably trade in my car and our third car to get my hands on one of these, without even considering the consequence of being short one car for my household of three drivers.

Which leads me to wonder what the point of this thing coming to fruition even is, because like in the linked article above, minivans now are already costly expenses as they currently are, but then adding the cost of what a Type-R designation does to it, I can’t imagine that there are a lot of families out there willing to drop what I’d guess would be between $80-90k for a fucking minivan, even if that Type-R badge tickles the tits of all sorts of boyhood dreams of once-boys-now-dads out there.

All the same, consider me thoroughly entertained by the creation of a Honda Odyssey Type-R, even if there’s only going to ever be the one in existence.  My 18-year old self can get together with my 40+ year old self in my brain and lament on how great it would be to finally own anything with a Type-R badge on it.

Shitty Toy Alert for Parents #3: ReCreate sets from Lego

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the record, I adore Lego.  Loved them as a kid growing up, loved playing with them with my nephew while he was growing up, and I still love them now.  I have several of the Fast and Furious large sets, and I jumped all over the $375 Goonies pirate ship set that dropped upon hearing about it. 

Few things bring me joy than my kids developing an enjoyment of Lego as well, and it was one of the major themes of this past Christmas with most everyone gifting them numerous Lego sets, but now gradually graduating from Duplos into actual big kid Legos.  Even though they are more and more gravitating towards screen entertainment, good books and Legos still bring them away from them, and I’ve found myself on the carpet with my kids over the last few weeks and months, putting together various Disney Princess™ and Lego Friends™ sets.

As stocking stuffers for my kids, I got them each one of these Lego ReCreate sets, because I liked the premise of them, how they are some random parts, but with some themed idea cards, that is meant to challenge the builder to use their imagination and interpretation to make them come to life.

Little did I realize that these things are basically Lego’s extra parts scrap bin, sealed into plastic bags with vague, interpretive instructions and a fancy schmancy premise, packaged more or less to sell you their scraps.

Yes, I know they say random, but I didn’t realize that it would be random to the point where you’re getting a fuck ton of scrap pieces with none of them being more than a 1×4 brick, and a whole lot of loose parts, that when poured out onto a surface, looks 0% different than the spare parts that are left behind after putting together a 300+ piece set; I would know this very well, because after all the actual sets that my daughters and I had been putting together, I have a Ziploc bag full of all their loose parts, and it looks absolutely nothing different than what was inside the ReCreate boxes that each of my kids got.

In one regard, I have to credit the people at Lego for coming up with such an idea that probably fleeced way more parents than myself with nothing more than abstract suggestions, clean packaging and spare parts.  It would be like bread companies took stale crumbs out of the crumb catchers of toasters all across the world and repackaged them and sold them as artisan bread flakes or some shit like that.

But on the other hand, fuck Lego for this bullshit low-hanging fruit effort of selling people their leftover parts and calling it imagination play.  Shit cost like $10 a box, and contained maybe 69¢ worth of actual Lego pieces. 

So, like maybe 350 lobsters stolen?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, Atlanta #428

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d – drag racers get stuck on railroad tracks while trying to evade police

For every Fast & Furious installment, there are probably about 75,000 clowns who think they have the driving skill to successfully evade the police and maybe 1% of them that actually can.

What the story does not necessarily make clear is if the cars went off-road and ended up on the physical tracks themselves like survivors in The Walking Dead, or if they got stuck on a railroad crossing, because the CSX lines run all through Atlanta, and it really could be either.  I’m assuming that it was the former, and these clowns got off the streets and ended up in the giant rail yard kind of close to the location, where they got stuck because their Chargers or Mustangs aren’t meant for off-roading much less the impact of driving all over rails, but I like to imagine it was the latter situation, and they simply got stuck at an ordinary railroad crossing.

It’s like whenever we all take driver’s ed at some point, there’s always a small section about railroad crossing safety, and it’s always about if your car gets stuck on the rails, don’t stay in your car, etc, etc, with the very obvious consequence being getting plowed by a train.  Now I may be tempting fate and Murphy’s Law by writing this out, but I’ve always been more curious on how people manage to get so perfectly stuck on a railroad crossing in the first place?

Like, even if you noticed that your car was stalling out or dying as you’re approaching the tracks, surely momentum of a 2,500+ lb. vehicle should roll you over the crossing, or perhaps you might not be so braindead as to apply the brakes and come to a stop before even approaching them?

But assuming such would be giving too much credit to the clowns that actively partake in the Atlanta street racing scene in the first place.  Firstly, they decided to do their bullshit drag racing and burnouts on a dead-end road, so when the cops did show up, they were probably boxed in, and they had no choice but to flee off-road.  But to anyone who’s ever been on this street, perhaps to go to an Atlanta Brewing Company happy hour or booze cruise maybe, might have noticed the massive amounts of tire marks on it in the first place, from countless bozo predecessors.  Clearly APD eventually realized the layup it would be to simply stake out the street and eventually some clowns would show up to be clowns, and sure enough they did.

But I still like to think that all the events happened kind of in slow motion, and that the perps in question were able to evade the cops for a short period and get around their road block.  But then they go to the simple railroad crossing on Collier an inexplicably went from 65 mph to 0 and stuck right on the middle of the tracks, to where the fuzz caught up to them and immediately apprehended them.

Now that’s the kind of shit I’d like to see on the TikToks and Instagram handles all these attention-starved hoons plaster all over their rides.  Got to work in that social commentary shade without having to dedicate an entire post to it, bonus!

Except it very much is

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The other day, I was passing this gas station, and I saw this bigfoot truck waiting to pull out.  It looked like a classic orange guy supporter truck, except for the fact that it was a Toyota, but import vehicles haven’t really stopped idiots from being racists all the same.  In my rear view mirror I saw it make its turn, and naturally they were headed in the same direction I was.  The upcoming light had two left turn lanes, and I took the right, and I looked forward to when they’d pass me on the left, so I could anticipate just how ironically hilarious of an array of stickers they were going to have on their back window.

Much to my surprise, there weren’t any really inflammatory stickers on their vehicle, but they did have this one (not the actual vehicle): Street racing is not illegal

And then I immediately was amused, because just the very phrase “street racing” has implications of at least like 2-3 illegal actions.  Public endangerment, reckless driving, aggressive driving, speeding come to mind immediately, and I’m sure those more versed in the law could probably rattle off some more.

Unless this person’s definition of street racing is racing another person to see who can get to the posted speed limit the fastest, while being of no risk to anyone else around them, I’m confident that every other form of street racing is probably illegal as shit.

The funny thing is that when I was looking for a reference photo to use with this post there are no less than seven other “creators” who have made similar stickers, but with taglines at the end that are all like “okay it is but we don’t give a fuck” or something along those lines.  But this one, without the acknowledgment of law breaking seems to stand alone, which leads to believe that the people who actually run around with this sticker, might actually believe that doing impressions of The Fast and The Furious in their Hyundai Sonatas and Chrysler 300s is totally legal.

Hard to tell who would be dumber between these clowns and orange guy supporters . . . unless they just so happen to be overlapping, to which the query answers itself.