Tag: mythical

Feeling despair, vol. #1,256

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, my kids have both decided that they really like the lullaby tune playing on their Hatches while they go to sleep.  It’s the sweetest tune that everyone knows, but when I listen to it playing on the monitor coming from both their rooms, it takes me back to the days when they were but little nuggets of babies, and it absolutely melts my heart, reminiscing of those days.  I do not deny the feeling of tears welling up from time to time when I think about it.

I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately, and I’m having a hard time getting out of it.  Times like this, there’s really little else but for me to try to put it down in writing to see if it helps me process and figure things out which sometimes happens when I put it all into actual words.

Also, it’s because I don’t really feel like there’s anyone I can speak with much these days, because everyone is understandably busy with their own lives and matters and everyone’s time is important to them, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I feel so utterly alone these days, but at the same time I’m so absolutely over feeling like I have to be the initiator of every single human interaction, be it with my own parents, my wife, colleagues or anyone else, that lately I just want to be left the fuck alone after all and not have to do absolutely anything.

But I guess that’s really what depression kind of is at the very root of things, feeling down about anything and everything, hoping someone will notice and offer to help out, but subsequently not wanting to deal with other people and their own personalized bullshit, so it’s just this kind of negative swirl in the brain where you think you know what you want until you realize it comes with some variables attached to them, things that you don’t want, so it’s maybe for the best that I’m just left alone, and then it just regurgitates over and over again until it’s time to go to bed and hope that you wake up not feeling so shitty about things.

What it all amounts to is a version of me that’s kind of going through the motions, where the mundane is the easiest part of the day in the sense that I don’t have to think about things too much, because my job is monotonous and obnoxiously busy, but I get to go to the gym there and I don’t know what things would be like for me if I didn’t exercise as much as I do.

I come home and try to make the absolute best of time I have with my kids, reading books, playing with Legos and other building toys, occasionally watching some television together, and both girls are currently in the midst of reading Harry Potter books, and they both seem to really like them, so it’s been a pleasure reading some long-form stories to them on a nightly basis.

They go to bed, begrudgingly, and not without tremendous resistance, and then dad-mode disengages, but then my house is a fucking disaster zone because everyone treats my home like a storage facility where nobody knows how to throw anything away and shit continues to accumulate within my walls, and bringing it up to anyone results in snappy rebuttals and nothing gets done, but I try to do my best at being really the only one who puts forth any fucking effort at straightening the place up, because I no longer have an office or any dedicated space to call my own where I can hide in and decompress, so I’m constantly trying to make the public areas of my home more to my liking, but that eats into the time I have available to me to not be dad.

I feel underappreciated and taken for granted by just about everyone in my life these days, and my kids are the only ones who really get a pass because they’re still just kids and don’t really understand such complexities of human behavior yet.  But whether I’m at home, or at work, I just feel very underappreciated and taken for granted, and it feeds into the perpetual cycle of being down on a daily basis, probably getting worse.

My medium at work is oft-overlooked and not at all taken into consideration by the decision makers of the company who are all so easily distracted by all things shiny and digital, but when the day is over, our retail locations would sure look like shit if they didn’t have people like me who put forth the work to give them any sort of visual identity.  Just this week, I’ve heard colleagues absent-mindedly proclaim their general ignorance for the work that my team and I do, and I’m just like, great, good to know that you’re not as qualified for the job you have despite probably saying you were, good times.

At home, I feel like a glorified housekeeper, seeing as how I’m the one who does the vast majority of any sort of house work, but the difference is that I’m not getting paid to do it, and in fact, my credit card debt is actually only getting worse after an expensive trip to Asia where I’m shouldering the brunt of the financial lift, and any sort of recompense is going to be slow, small, and generally inconsequential to the fact that I’m the one eating the interest on any balances carried over month to month.

Nobody respects my time, which makes me feel like nobody respects me, and with as limited time I have in order to do anything remotely close to being for myself, dwindles with every 5-10 minutes chunk that is burned by my kids not listening, or anyone else just not respecting me or my time.  Almost nothing in the world is a bigger pet peeve than my time getting wasted, I state it as clear as day, and people either ignore it, or consciously choose to not give a fuck, with neither being a particularly respectful decision.

Subsequently, my temper has been short, probably more than usual, because it just feels like nothing is easy, and nothing is really good right now.  The littlest tasks end up going tits up real fast, because wanting to do A, requires B, C and D to happen, but not before you move E, F and G out of the way so that H could be gotten.  I usually snap and curse the sheer amount of unnecessary crap that exists in my house, and my wife just assumes I have anger issues when she, or anyone else doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck enough about my state of being to try and find out what the problems are to see if they could possibly help.

No amount of break, trip or escape would be close to helping me out when I’m in this state of mind, because I know that if I were to be away from my house for even the smallest amount of time means coming home to a disaster zone, which is usually what happens whenever I do go away for like a weekend.  And then it’s usually worse than before I started because now I have to retroactively clean other peoples’ shit, which just ends up being a lose-all scenario.

My wife suggested I come down to a day of Dragon-con this weekend, and I don’t think I could have possibly shot that idea down any faster.  I have no ill-will towards the convention, or any of my friends or acquaintances that are looking forward to going.  But it is not something that I am at all interested in anymore at this juncture in my life, and I definitely am not remotely close to being in a mental state to where I could even fake it for a few hours, even if it means not seeing a lot of people that I think fondly of.

The con is just so different than it used to be, and I understand that that’s a me problem and not the con’s problem, but it’s no longer an event I can go to without an agenda, and wing it.  I used to say about conventions in the past, let the con come to you, but that’s a dated mentality that isn’t valid at conventions today, because everyone comes in with plans, agendas, and schedules, and old fucks like me without are usually left to just aimlessly wander, and hang out and hope to run into people they know, who usually can’t stop for more than a minute because they’ve got shit to do.

I’ve never felt lonelier at an event boasting 50,000+ people than I had at the last two Dragon-cons I’d been to.  I don’t really want to feel that way again any time soon, or spend the $2,000 that usually comes along with room, food, parking and booze.

Mythical wife has a purpose this year, and actual tasks to do, and perhaps that’s something I could consider in the future if I ever felt the itch to ever go back to any convention ever again, but for this year, hard pass on Dragon-con.

Well, I can’t really say that feel that much better putting all of these thoughts down into text.  I don’t think I really have any true takeaways from all this swill that can help me process the depression I’m dealing with right now.  I’m trying to eat better and working in a two-a-day workout, usually some sort of 30-35 minute in the evenings that I’m sacrificing out of my scarce free time, in the sake of improving my health.

But I can appreciate myself in doing it at all, instead of intending on doing it, not doing it, and then getting anxious and upset about not doing it, to which it then becomes an Inception-like layer of angst in which to fuel a future rant.  And I guess that in itself is somewhat of a pyrrhic W, and these days I have to take any wins that I can get.

Let’s talk about House of the Dragon

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[boilerplate warning for potential spoilers as if I had any actual human readers]

Originally, I had wanted to write about S3 of House of the Dragon sooner, but other topics and a lack of time kept pushing it and pushing it and I never really got to it, but seeing as how the season finale has come and gone, it seems topical enough again to warrant writing about.

But I would have to say that this has probably been the most stressful season of House of the Dragon, or maybe even any season of any other Game of Thrones or sub-brand season before this one.  Not because of all the fighting, bloodshed, death or political cunning, but mostly because of how relatable to real life this season was, in the sense that there was a whole lot of talking, not a lot of action, constant planning and setting up, wheels spinning, character incompetence, and by the time anything really happened in the season finale, it was more a combination of “it’s about fucking time,” and “let’s just get it over with.”

In other words, S3 of House of the Dragon was a lot like a corporate job, and that, was the most stressful thing in the world for me to have to watch, and completely stifled much of the potential enjoyment there could have been.

Despite ascending to the crown, Rhaenyra Targaryen basically turned into middle management, and that was the initial impetus for wanting to write about the season.  It didn’t matter that she had risen to Protector of the Realm, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, poor Rhaenyra basically spent the lion’s share of the season embroiled in managerial squabbles of overhead consolidation upon a merger, rapid-fire personnel changes, disgruntled customers, as well as the sheer custodial woes of moving to a new office.  She became an overwhelmed and overstimulated corporate manager who thought she was fit for the role but quickly discovered that all was not what she thought it was going to be, and she and her kingdom suffered tremendously as a result.

I couldn’t have cared less about what Aegon and the creepy crippled foot fetish guy were doing on their merry adventures, or what the Hightowers were trying to accomplish in the shadows, but every time I saw Rhaenyra sitting on the Iron Throne listening to the small folk squabble and complain and beg for resources, I’d feel my blood pressure rising, and then she tries to go hide to compose herself, and there are fucking rats all over the castle, and it’s like every person in corporate who gets overwhelmed by their jobs, tries to go home for any bit of reprieve, only to find the bullshit of homeownership waiting for them there.

The season was like Westerosi Office Space and I don’t think George R.R. Martin realizes that he could have a pretty fun project on his hands if he could stop eating lobster and counting his HBO money long enough to add one more thing to his to-do list, a hundred bullet points underneath not-finishing Winds of Winter.

Needless to say, in my personal opinion, S3 of Houes of the Dragon was pretty booty.  Mythical wife and our au pair, whom we all watched the show together, they both were ahead of the curve with turning on the season than I was, and by the time we got to the finale, it was like dragging them into the media room to get this shit over with, while I didn’t really think it was that bad until I really started to think about it.

The biggest takeaway for me from this season, as well as the series as a whole frankly, is the fact that it hasn’t done a very good job of making any characters that I really liked, much less cared about.  I haven’t read Fire and Blood like I did the entire five books of A Song of Ice and Fire so I don’t really know if there will be any characters that I’d like, but as far as the show goes, House of the Dragon does a shitty job of making relatable or interesting characters worthy of liking or caring about.

I loved all sorts of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire, mostly side characters like Bronn, the Hound, and Podrick Payne.  Many other characters commanded respect like Brienne, and Davos, and when the day is over, I clearly am declared to House Stark, because they’re a bunch of honor-bound squares like me that always wants to believe we’re making the right choice.

House of the Dragon has no such characters that I feel any sort of care, relation or really any shits to give about towards, and that was its biggest handicap for me, personally.  Nobody was really likeable, or respectable, and I found that to be key in deciding that the show as a whole is clearly weaker than its predecessor, and nowhere near as good as Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Otto is no Littlefinger.  Ormond, whom I was not sold on within five minutes, as the big bad of the season, was clearly no Ramsey or High Sparrow as a boss character.  All the kids except for maybe Baela are all dumb shitheads who pretty much all get or are going to get what they all deserve.  Corlys, in spite of his station and title pretty much does nothing, like ever, and let’s not talk about Grand Maester Orwyle who epitomizes the guy in the office that has an important title but goes to extraordinary lengths to hide and do absolutely jack shit.

I kind of did like Gwayne Hightower, since he was this constant voice of reason, who had a knack for surviving, and I had to respect the hustle.  He was probably the closest thing to a character that I had any affinity towards, despite the fact that I wanted to see the rest of his family get slaughtered.  But everyone else could drop dead at any point and I wouldn’t have cared.  Even the main cast, were all obnoxious and neutered and nerfed the whole season, save for maybe Daemon, but by and large, my point remains, there were really no likeable characters in House of the Dragon, and to me, that is pretty much the chief reason why I think the show as a whole suffered, and will probably continue to suffer in future, insufferable seasons.

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” →

Beef S2: Everybody sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was a big fan of the first season of Netflix’s Beef which starred Stephen Yeun and Ali Wong.  The writing was strong, the acting superb, but above all else, it was a show by Asians, starring Asians, but not explicitly being “an Asian show.”  It was a fantastic piece of representation, while still having the storyline and relatable appeal to those that weren’t Asian.

But the thing is, the way the show concluded, I was thinking that there probably wasn’t going to be a second season.  That is, unless they conclude the original storyline, create a new one that’s similar in some aspects but is different, with a new cast.  And when I heard that Beef was getting a second season, I figured that such was going to be the case, and I looked forward to it.

Not going to lie, upon seeing that the core cast of S2 was Oscar Issac, the cute girl from The Great Gatsby, some other white girl, and a guy that looked like he might possibly have a drop of Asian DNA in his 23andMe, it was a little bit of a turnoff from the fact that S1 was this speeding Humvee of representation, and now we’ve got another clear instance of white folks latching onto a success story and sequel-izing it, but with far less representation, and far more white people.

The show dropped, and it went from something I was interested in, to something to catch when I get a chance.

Thankfully, it’s as if Netflix really is mainlined into my feelings, and when I turned on Netflix to watch WWE RAW is Commercials, I saw that the thumbnail for Beef S2 had Youn Yuh-jung (from Minari fame) front and center, looking like a powerful queen and not just some meek Asian background character, and it renewed a little bit of interest to the point where I would eventually start watching it.

The thing is with me lately, is that I feel as if I’ve become even more neurotic and temperamental when it comes to television watching, and that if I’m not in the right mood or mindset, there’s almost no point in watching television, because I just won’t give it adequate attention.  But as far as Beef S2 was, it was like, if I don’t get to this now, I won’t ever get to it, and then it’ll just get backlogged and never seen, and this property doesn’t deserve that.

That being said, I was probably like 75-80% prepared to watch the show, and I admittedly had a harder time getting into it, than I had gotten into the first season.

Frankly, it kind of felt like the show was taking a page out of Aziz Ansari’s Master of None property, where the last season had nothing to do with the original seasons, and was more of a case of latching a name with equity, onto a season of television that has nothing to do with it, solely to help bring eyes to it in the first place.

The black comedy genre seems to be hipster enough to just try and spin that as viable and justifiable tactic, and that’s kind of what S2 of Beef felt like.  Sure, there were conflicts, in fact, many conflicts between characters, but save for the first 20 minutes of the show, few were to the explosive magnitude that was remotely close to S1, much less warrant even being called something like “Beef.”

What I’m trying to say is that S2 didn’t really feel like there was much beef between characters, but other than the fact that it’s the same creator, could probably have easily been called something else, but obviously they want eyes on it and fast, so it’s just slipped into the Beef umbrella as Season 2.

Anyway, semantics aside, the show wasn’t that bad.  It kind of goes without saying that it’s not as good as the first season, but that’s an unfair standard to chase after considering just how good S1 really was.  The writing was sharp, the cinematography was crisp and noticeable to even my novice eyes, and there was a lot of subtle, situational humor throughout.

The show was really heavy handed with their criticisms of Gen-Z and considering creator Lee Sung-jin is close to the same age as me, it’s evident who his target audience is, and was probably cognizant that his digs at the youth of today would be watching, and would probably feel targeted, and that’s probably the point.

Regardless of the contrasting ages of the characters, there was one consistent theme throughout the show: everyone sucks.  Not in like an X-Pac Heat kind of, I hate them and they make me not want to watch the show, sucks, but in the sense that every single character has some serious flaws, baggage and personality traits that amount to them all, sucking.

Whether it’s being a workaholic, dabbling in flirtations over social media, projecting insecurities over inadequate education, persecution complexes, lack of accountability, just about every character in the series had multiple prevalent flaws, and they would all act out and take it out on everyone else, and everyone made their problems everyone’s problems, and such is kind of triggering to me, especially these days.

Also, the Koreans that were in the show, are all corrupt and up to no good, and I’m just kind of like, couldn’t we just swap these alignments to the white folks instead??

As a result, it wasn’t a season that I could actually binge or watch too much of at once, because regardless of the time that I don’t have that much time I want to dedicate to watching television, at the very most, I only watched three consecutive episodes, before I felt like I needed to take a break.  Mythical wife, who caught some of it, only needed to half-watch two middle episodes to come to her own conclusion about just how much all of the characters just sucked, and I wasn’t far off from that assessment myself.

It made it sometimes feel like a chore, and by the time I got to the final episode, I had the attitude of simply wanting to finish what I started, versus bating my breath for the season finale on pins and needles.

Don’t get me wrong, such reactions aren’t indicative of the quality of the show, so much as I feel like such was how it was designed to make viewers feel, and it was working on me.  it was still a good show that I’ve clearly given a tremendous amount of thought and reflection towards, but it’s also definitely the type of show that needs a palette cleanser, or at least some Ted Lasso or Batman the Animated Series for me to kind of let me get the stink of all the Beef S2 characters out of my head.

Either way, characters sucking by design not-withstanding, S2 of Beef wasn’t bad.  Not nearly as good as the first season, but I’ve definitely seen worse things that commit the biggest sin for my preferences: making me feel like I’ve wasted my time.  Beef did no such thing, but like I said, it definitely has a droll outlook of the world that tends to affect my mood adversely, and it’s just one of those stories that requires a pick-me-up afterward.

Dad Brog (#159): PSA to parents of students

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is probably a little bit of a stretch as far as classifying this as a dad brog, but my kids are students and have teachers, and obviously mythical wife is a teacher and deals with kids and whatever, this is a dad brog, fucking deal with it

But back to the subject of this post, this is a PSA to all parents of students, specifically those who wish to get holiday gifts for their children’s teachers:

Stop buying mugs and candles.

Unless your children’s teacher is celebrating their very first holiday season as a teacher, it’s safe to assume that they already have no less than four holiday mugs and three scented candles, most likely from Yankee Candle or Bath & Body Works.  Otherwise, multiply these numbers by the number of years in which said teacher has been teaching, and that’s how many fucking mugs and candles exist in their homes.

And if the teachers are anything like mythical wife, they have no earthly idea on how to remove them from their domiciles, so they end up accumulating and taking up space, and I, as a teacher’s spouse, end up creeping closer and closer to a breakdown from our house slowly descending into becoming an episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive, covered in so much cliché crap that is pawned off onto my wife under the guise of being in the spirit of the holidays.

This goes quadruple for my wife, who has the olfactory abilities of Wolverine, so she’s extremely sensitive to scents and therefore doesn’t like 80% of the candles given to her because they’re wonky and smell weird or bad, and they never get used, and currently just exist in a giant stack behind our Keurig.  And she doesn’t drink or even like coffee, so any mugs that comes with a coffee mix or a Starbucks gift card is pretty much lost on her, even though I like it when she bequeaths any Starbucks gift cards to me, the accumulation of yet another mug makes it not worth it.

Yes, I understand that any form of gifts to teachers are voluntary and are given with the best of intentions, and I’m not trying to put a kibosh on my wife from getting free shit with thoughtful intentions.  It’s just I’m challenging all other parents to be better and be aware that the teachers of their kids more than likely have a ton of fucking mugs and candles, and they are probably long past no longer welcome, even if they’re not allowed to say it.

Gift cards are always welcome, even if weirdos like mythical wife don’t drink coffee, thus making Starbucks ones pretty useless, but places like Target, whatever grocery chains are nearby, or even the American Express ones that nobody likes to buy because they’re usually an activation fee included on those.  Chick Fil-A, or whatever chain joints are around the area are welcome, and of course, Amazon.

Baked goods, be it completely homemade, or shit purchased from the local grocer or commercial bakeries are always welcome.  Snacks or treats in general are pretty welcome, but always a risk, not knowing what dietary restrictions the teacher may or may not have.

Failing all else, holiday cards, with just nice messages or greetings are welcome and superior to moar mugs or candles.

The point is, please please please stop buying teachers mugs and candles for Christmas.  It makes me think that these are cruel re-gifts, or were add-ons from larger purchases, that these parents are cleverly disguising as unique gifts for the educators of their children, with passive hopes that getting in their favor will prove beneficial to their children in the future.  Obviously I’m not the teacher in my house, but if I were, and I sniffed out a potential re-gift, yeah, it might influence my attitude towards their kid; but not in the way that they had hoped for.

Just like my attitude towards gift giving over the recent years, if you can’t give a thoughtful gift with genuine intention, don’t feel obligated to get one.  It’s better to give no gift, than a shitty thoughtless one, and I’d personally rather receive nothing, than receive something that contributes to the existing clutter in my home.

Welp, I guess it’s time to really become an AEW fan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The night before Thanksgiving, mythical wife and I were talking about how it might be nice for the girls to wake up and watch some of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; they might be entertaining by the giant floats, maybe they’ll see some characters they recognize like Bluey or Pikachu, and the real motive from mythical wife was that HUNTR/X from K-Pop Demon Hunters was performing but the reality is that my kids love the film as well.  A cursory search showed that we could watch it on Peacock, which was good because we did have a Peacock login.

That is, until the following morning when I booted up the projector and opened up Peacock, there was the lock icon on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Seriously?  A paywall for this?

But then I noticed that pretty much everything else had the lock icon on it.  Feeling a sense of dread, I clicked on the WWE tab, and sure enough, all of the wrestling content that I pretty much use Peacock exclusively for, all locked.  I double-checked the login to make sure that I was still logged in, and we were.  I logged out and logged back in, and couldn’t even make it to the menus I was in previously, because I was met with the plan options, and it’s apparent that Peacock had kiboshed the free tier that I was on previously, and it quickly dawned on me that short of RAW on Netflix which has been more mediocre than Kentucky Fried Chicken, I was now incapable of watching any WWE programming.

Thankfully for the morning of Thanksgiving, I could find some free livestreams of the parade on YouTube, so the kids could still see floats and characters, but it definitely left a sour taste in my mouth and started churning some gears in writing out this post in my head.

When the WWE sold and TKO came into existence, yeah, they made a whole lot of shitty business decisions that really fucked over a lot of wrestling fans.  But most of all that shit seemed to pertain to the live experience and I’ve long since cared about live events, and said that as long as they don’t fuck with my viewing experience, I’d be okay.

But then the E sold all their premium live events to ESPN, which held them hostage behind a tier-2 paywall that I didn’t have access to, so now I couldn’t see any of the big shows anymore, which definitely sucks.  But Peacock still would get all of the NXT shows which I always thought were usually better in the first place, plus they still had an extensive library of original content, so I would make do with just using RAW to keep abreast on the product.

And now Peacock has turned full heel and restructured their tiers to ensure that people like me no longer had a means to access WWE and NXT content, so again, my only remaining means of watching WWE product is now solely Netflix, and RAW hasn’t really been particularly good since it debuted and Hulk Hogan was still alive and got booed the fuck out of Los Angeles.

So, like the subject of this post says, I guess it’s time to go full tryhard fan mode into AEW, seeing as how I can still access their product reliably between HBO Max, where they run both their television and PPV products.  Or perhaps I can log in through a tv provider and get the AMC app and see if they’ll allow me to watch TNA.  Shit, I have a Roku, I could feasibly get NWA Powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr for free there too.

But fuck if I’m going to pay even more money for 2-3 different streaming platforms just to watch WWE.

As I’ve said multiple times, the streaming wars have gotten so out of hand, that we’re rapidly approaching the precipice where the ensuing result is going to be a company to emerge from the ashes, where they’ll consolidate ALL networks through a singular service, for a single price, but all programming will be supported by advertising. 

And it will be called . . . cable2.

Thoughts on Cruising with Virgin for the first time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I recently went on an adults-only vacation, probably the first one since well, we had children.  Sure, we’ve had a quick jaunt away here or there, but nothing like a four-night cruise on an adults-only line, where we had no real objective other than the pursuit of relaxation and feeling not just like parents.

So let’s get it out of the way now, yes, which meant that we were Virgin virgins, as we had never cruised with Virgin Cruises before.  We’d both heard lots of good things about them, and it seemed as good of an endeavor to embark on before mythical wife has to start preparing for the next school year.

It was kind of weird preparing and embarking on this trip, seeing as how like I’d said, we’d never really had such time away from the kids under these circumstances.  We got to fly somewhere instead of driving because the cost of two adults is way more feasible than flying five humans, where none of them are lap-rider eligible (read: free) anymore, and we had nothing but carry-ons instead of the maximum baggage allowance allowed to travel with.

I got to enjoy a legit Cuban sandwich and coffee in downtown Miami before we departed which is definitely worth mentioning considering how neither seems to be capable of existing outside of Miami and presumably, Cuba itself, but from the very start, Virgin Cruise Line seemed to be a breath of fresh air compared to other experiences we’ve had cruising in the past.

As all sorts of identification, passports, and documentation are logged in advance of travel, we basically show up to port at a general assigned time, and then we’re through in a jiffy with minimal waiting.  There was little feeling like cattle, slowly moving through the pen before we’re on the ship, and we go straight to our stateroom, where a nifty tablet is waiting that controls everything, and fresh canisters of water, as if they know the process of embarkation can be a pain in the ass and it’s important to replenish the hydration of being in South Florida.

Admittedly, I had some concerns and thought that it would temper my enthusiasm when doing some recon prior to the trip, because there were some things about the branding, the presentation and general vibe I was getting, that Virgin Cruises might be a little on the douchey side; I mean, the ice cream joint on ship is literally called “Lick Me til Ice Cream” which is about as cringey to type out as much as it is to see it on a fucking wall (but it didn’t stop us from going there a few times and enjoying some decent quality gelato), and the cruise line’s general importance placed on drinking and partying.

But a lot of those preconceived notions were put to rest pretty early on, and other than like, the temperature of our stateroom, and the occasional clunkiness of the app, I really don’t have anything bad to say about the entire experience, and I can say without hesitation that we had a fantastic experience, and we would without hesitation do it again in the future, which is all but guaranteed, seeing as how we’ve capitalized on their future voyage bait of a large amount of on-board credit for putting a deposit down for a future cruise.

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