Tag: movies

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.

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.

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.

Hilarious and sad at the same time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I prefer to not waste writing on ‘Murican politics, but the whole thing about Mitch McConnell’s state of mortality is legit one of the funniest subplots in ‘Murica right now.  I mean, I feel like it should be pretty obvious that the old white cocksucker is deader than Spirit Airlines, but he’s getting the same treatment as Hulk Hogan was getting right before it came out that he had in fact, passed away.

In one hand you have, for lack of a better term, reputable sources stating that the man is braindead, which to me is the same thing as being dead at this point, because regardless of the state of one’s heartbeat, being a vegetable ain’t really living either.  But in the other hand, you have all sorts of pathetic bureaucrats all over the place claiming that they’ve spoken to ‘ol Mitch, and fabricating all sorts of agenda-driven talking points that they claimed to have discussed.  Seriously, combine the time of all the supposed 20-30 minute conversations that these shitheads are claiming to have spoken with McConnell, and it’s basically a 27-hour day.

Naturally, my knee-jerk reaction that is that is a very big difference between speaking to and speaking with, and I guess it wouldn’t be lying if all these assholes are calling him up and speaking to dead air, and then claiming to have spoken to, a vegetable, which in itself is pretty funny, but like the subject of this post says, it’s also sad, because this is just continued trope of ‘Murican misinformation, lying to the people, and making shit up for no other reason than to preserve the fake-ass power dynamic that unfortunately runs the country.

Because his carcass still has a heartbeat, he still apparently holds a measure of power, and it’s the least surprising thing of all that it’s a very different scenario of dead Mitch versus when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, and the clusterfuck that took place in order to replace her seat with a hand-picked stooge.

I like to imagine that the GOP has a machine that’s exactly just like the Bat Syllable Device from the old Adam West Batman show, where Alfred could electronically fabricate Bruce Wayne’s voice to speak with Commissioner Gordon in the presence of actual Batman, and it came out all robotic and obviously fake, but Gordon still bit, because everyone in the show was a fucking idiot.

And even though the technology and AI exists to where it’s probably extremely easy to have an AI Mitch McConnell speak in his actual voice and tone, the GOP is so full of antequated old white fucks, that the Bat Syllable Device is still what they would have instead; and because 50.75% of ‘Murica are fucking idiots, they would believe it all the same.

Either way, sad as it is that there are still very real-life decisions, impacts and outcomes hinging on the fake-ass mortality of McConnell, it is still entertaining to see the GOP basically performing real-life Weekend at Bernies with his corpse.

Sigh.  This really is ‘Murica.

Thoughts on Singapore, Hong Kong, and cruising out of Asia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although Korea was priority 1A on this vacation, 1B was very much the Disney Cruise that mythical wife booked, leaving out of Singapore.  Frankly, the way I looked at things, seeing as how both mythical wife and I had a lot of plans, ideas and goals we wanted to do in Seoul, the real vacation wouldn’t be until we were sequestered onto Mickey’s boat, and had no other choice but to relax.

Seeing as how I logged the steps probably for about 125 miles while in Seoul, a vacation while on vacation seemed like a good idea and sufficient reason to tear ourselves away from the Motherland.

But not to go overlooked, were brief stops in Singapore before the cruise, and a whirlwind night in Hong Kong, both of which added value to the trip, and seeing as how neither of us had been to either before, were good toes dipped into the water to realize that both are worth seeing again in the future.

So Singapore, we actually spent two nights before cruising out, although the first was pretty much an arrival day at night.  But with one full day and a morning, I felt like I got a good taste of the place, from a lot of walking around, as well as eating pretty much nothing but hawker stall food.

One of the observations I made about Singapore is that food is cheap, but booze not so much.  I’m pretty sure all the food I ate for breakfast and lunch on our first day didn’t cost as much as one of the Singapore Sling cocktails we had at the Line Bar.  And maybe it’s because it was at a touristy location, but Tiger beers costing the equivalent of $8-9 USD seemed kind of steep for what’s basically the Budweiser of Singapore.

Speaking of food, I wasn’t really a fan of Haianese chicken rice in spite of all the suggestions to try it.  However, the satay from Satay Street was fantastic, but if I had to name a favorite food from the entire country, it was the curry puff pastries, that I housed like four of them in my short stay.  They’re basically samosas, but still so fucking delicious.

I also made a point to go see the Merlion, which I summed up to being kind of like what the Mannekin Pis is to Brussels, some arbitrary statue that somehow has the identity of the city baked into it.

Honestly, Singapore felt kind of like the Chicago of Asia to me, since it’s such a diverse mixing bowl of cultures that all seem to converge in one harmonious city and country.  Natives co-exist with people from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and it all seems to work out.

9/10 for Singapore, would visit again, even if it were ball-sticking hot and humid.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Singapore, Hong Kong, and cruising out of Asia” →

Seoul Searching, circa 2026

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I feel like there’s got to be an industry for creating end-of-vacation travel packages that help mitigate the downward emotional connotation of a conclusion to a trip.  Not sure how it would entirely entail, but stuff like low-stress return travel, not having to do death marches at inconvenient times, and any methods of help reduce the strain of time changes and logistics.

Of course, this is a hypothetical thought that comes to mind while mythical wife and I are en route home after two weeks without kids, as we’ve traversed through Seoul, Singapore, the ambiguous open seas somewhere between Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and wherever else, before a crash course through Hong Kong, and on our way back to ‘Murica, while trying to fight the feelings of dread of returning to normal life although we’re both looking forward to seeing the girls again.

This was, for all intents and purposes, the first true adults-only vacation that we’ve been on, since, our honeymoon, due to the unintentional expediency in which our kids came into the picture, as well as a fucking pandemic.  Not necessarily by design, during the course of our trip, a lot of shit happened, noteworthy to me, like the Knicks winning the NBA championship while we were in the air, missing ALL of the World Cup group stage, while trying to catch some action while hilariously on the other side of the planet, Father’s Day, and our anniversary, where we entered year 8 of marriage dear god where has the time gone

But, in true autist fashion, of course I jotted down notes and blurbs of things and thoughts that came to mind during travels because of course it’s got to become shit for me to write about in the brog that nobody reads except for me.

The last time I was in Korea was nine years ago, when I came with mythical wife on what was her first-ever visit to the Motherland. She has since been back a few times without me because she hates traveling with me, but I was excited to return because it has been quite some time since I’d been.

I didn’t think that much would be different since my last visit, but I suppose it was naive of me to think that, because it was almost culture shock to count all the ways things had changed since my last time out here.  If I had to try to nail the reasons, I would say that it’s probably a combination of boy band BTS going globally mainstream, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and the general mass popularization of Korean culture on a global scale, because for the most part, Seoul was absolutely crawling with foreign tourists.

Naturally, this is me saying that it was at times, uncomfortably and inconveniently crowded at times, and I’d be lying if I didn’t think to myself thoughts about how Thanos Was Right and other nihilistic things that stem from my general aversion to crowds.

Continue reading “Seoul Searching, circa 2026” →

Anytime I read about the environmental effects of AI

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I think about this snippet from the epilogue of The Big Short detailing Michael Burry’s lone investing focus.  Back in 2015 when the film was released, I didn’t really think about what was really implied by Burry’s decision to start betting on water, but I could imagine reasons similar to what happened in Flint, Michigan, or the fact that in spite of the world being like 90% water, I don’t imagine even close to a tenth of that is drinkable water, and clean water is probably going to be a bigger commodity in the future than it really sounds like it should be.

But with all the chatter about the growth of AI, and how a single ChatGPT query results in the consumption of energy that is capable of requiring like a gallon of water to cool down some servers in a data center in the middle of bumfuck flyover America, this is what makes me wonder if Burry knew something was on the horizon or something a decade ago.

Either way, every time something comes out about the environmental ravaging AI is capable of, this is the image that comes directly to mind, and I find myself thinking about this more and more as AI is blabbed about more and moar.