Tag: movies

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.

Nothing surprises me anymore at how far this country is willing to sink

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NPR: Pentagon reports intention to livestream the military execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009

A few years ago, a report like this would elicit an are you kidding me? response, because it really does seem ludicrous the idea of televising the killing of another human being regardless of how much they deserved it.  But nowadays, the reactions not just from me are pretty nonplussed, unsurprised, and just the continuous sense of disappointment in the country we live in, at constantly crashing through floor after floor at how low it’s willing to sink.

When I was in high school, I don’t know why my friends and I went to go to see it, but we saw 8mm in theaters.  I don’t remember who’s idea it was to go see it in the first place, but back then the company was more important than the activity, and I think it had more to do with the fact that we were little edgelord teens who loved the idea of being able to get into R-rated films, regardless of what the film actually was.

Instead, we walked into a trauma-fest trainwreck, where the takeaway walking out of the theater was now knowing what a snuff film was.  And that films like this really don’t come into existence if there weren’t shreds of truth scattered throughout the origin story of this script, and understanding that there truly are some fucked up people in existence.

Livestreaming the execution of another human being is basically tantamount to a snuff film, except that this is being sanctioned by the highest forms of the American government, which is going to convince a lot of uneducated people out there that this is okay.

I think the worst part about it for me is knowing that without any question, this is somehow going to end up being monetized and someone(s) will be making a substantial amount of money on this horrific endeavor.  Perhaps the livestream will be hosted by YouTube, or HBOmax, if not one of the batshit right-wing media conglomerates out there these days; that being said, FOX seems logical to throw their name in the hat to host a live feed of someone getting shot to death.

And undoubtedly, the execution itself on-site, is going to be an event.  Similar to like the UFC on the White House lawn, this is going to be some live event spectacle where tickets will command a hefty dollar, and there will probably be shit like merchandise and souvenirs to commemorate the occasion, even if it is the extinguishing of another human being’s life.

I doubt many, if any, earned dollars will go to any of the victims of Hasan’s kill spree, either.

I find it ironic that barely a week ago, I learned about Christa Pike from her botched execution, where the mutant somehow withstood two lethal injections and ended up surviving and waking up a week later.  I remember thinking about how a different form of death penalty clearly was needed, and my mind immediately went to firing squad, because as barbaric as it might seem for many to open fire on a defenseless perp, it does seem like a fairly humane and quick end for a crook to receive such a mercy.

And here we are week later that a firing squad is in the news, as being on the table for a different criminal, but now we’re also talking about how his execution should be broadcast to the world, because sure everyone wants to see a human life come to an end from the comfort of their couches.  And that’s seemingly okay to even suggest, because that’s the world we live in now.

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.

Sounds like a way to lose $500 and feed the squatting epidemic

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: City of Atlanta announces new no-fee microloan program for renters to help avoid evictions during times of duress

Upon reading this, I feel like Mayor Andre Dickens must’ve recently seen Jim Carrey’s Yes Man and was inspired by the scene where JC’s loan officer character, under hypnotic suggestion, said yes to just about every single loan request that came across his desk, with his bank’s branch giving out tremendously more loans than the rest of the company.

When confronted about it by a higher-up who came in to investigate the generosity, the twist was that all the people he was giving loans out to were just so grateful to be having their needs met, that the repayment rate of all his loans was 98%, and the bank was actually turning a profit on the repayments.  Good job, Carl.

Seemingly inspired by a fictional film, Andre Dickens launches the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative, where he believes that loaning out $500 at a time to people who might be a little short when the rent is due, will help keep good families secure in their homes, and not be at risk of eviction.

The alleged rationale behind the initiative is altruistic, and I don’t mean to shit on a program that has such altruistic objectives, but there’s zero part of me that believes this has any chance of being like Yes Man, and 98% of these $500 loans will be repaid, much less used in any sort of responsible manner.

First of all, the $500 microloans are no-interest, no-fee, require no collateral.  They will then have 25 weeks to pony up a Jackson at a time, and although I feel fortunate to say that I could probably pay $20 a week, I know a lot of the people this is intended for probably aren’t.  I get that this is all in the name of helping people, but programs require funding to survive, and if they’re not going to make any sort of payment, especially to off-set the extremely high chance that most of these loans aren’t going to get repaid fully, if at all, then may as well not even bother launching it in the first place.

Second, has anyone stopped to look at the eviction rates in Metro Atlanta?  For 2026, one in four renters defaults, and although they may face eviction, the corresponding squatting rates are also so astronomical that this program is basically setting itself up to be a means to give future squatters $500 bones to supplement themselves with before they inevitably start living illegally.

$500 is not an inconsequential amount, but given what the cost of renting is in Metro Atlanta and all around the US these days, it’s barely a drop in the bucket as far as actually being able to help someone out goes.  I have a feeling the people who are struggling with making rent aren’t short by $500 or less each month, and require that difference to be made up somewhere, every single month, and not just have one bad period.

Hypothetically, a responsible borrower gets their $500 loan, staves off defaulting for one month, but then the 30th rolls around four weeks later, they’re short again, but now they are ineligible for another $500 because they received one a month prior, what then?

I can tell you that with my general expenses and costs of supporting my household, $500 vanishes in the blink of an eye, often in a single transaction somewhere, and $500 wouldn’t really help that much in the grand spectrum of the debts that I could incur, and in fact, be worse in the sense that I now owe one more something back.

The idea of this is nice, and if it isn’t just a smoke screen meant for Dickens to operate as his predecessors did (read: stealing taxpayer funds), I would hope that this truly does help a lot of people having a bad month, stay afloat, and pay back responsibly, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I look forward to revisiting this topic in a year when I see this post show up on On This Day, and I’ll be curious to Google it to see just what came of the whole thing, but probably find nothing about it because everyone loves to hide their L’s and Dickens was probably using this whole thing to steal money to begin with.

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.