Tag: PF

Dad Brog (#171): Someone made me breakfast for a change

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Toof fairy goin’ broke these days lately

For the first time in forever.  I guess years of passive remarks about how nobody ever makes me breakfast has sunk in to at least one member of my household, and my six-year old daughter took it upon herself to demand that she make me breakfast one morning.

And in spite of her grand aspirations, wanting to make something straight out of a Disney feast, I reminded her that often times the best food are the ones that are simple, use fewer components and are just made with love, and she took that to heart, when bringing all the things she wanted to use to a cutting board, separated from me since she wanted it to be a surprise.

It was Nutella spread on two end pieces of a loaf of bread, with blueberries in between.  The blueberries were not rinsed, giving me a moment of pause of concern, given the current news of listeria bacteria prevalent in today’s vegetables, and my child seems to have noticed that I’m the only one who ever really eats the heels of the bread, mostly on account of my staunch refusal to waste food. 

My breakfast sandwich was served with a few cubes of watermelon on the side, and a literal cherry on top.

It was the most delicious breakfast that I’ve ever had. :*)

Dad Brog (#169): the future brogger

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My youngest’s birthday is coming up very soon, and we let her open a gift early, because boredom is the greatest opponent for all parents and the girls were driving us bananas over a lazy Sunday.  To the credit of my children, they love Legos as much as I did when I was a kid, and I really enjoy putting together kits with my own kids; except when they squabble and fight over who gets to do what, things start to get out of order, and ultimately one will start spite-stealing pieces and sabotaging the progress of the other.

I had to tell #1 to stop sandbagging her sister’s build, because this was a birthday gift for her, and that she did get to have priority over its build.  In response to this, #1 began moping that today is a bad day and that I am sad. 

Then she began stating that she was going to write in her diary that today was a bad day and that she was sad, and mythical wife and I were a little perplexed at where she learned the concept of diary keeping from in the first place.

Moments later, she wandered into the kitchen, and I could hear her get a sheet of paper, the pop of a lid coming off of a marker, and the sound of scribbling as if she were writing something down.  As much as her choice of words were being overly dramatic, I was proud to hear that she was sounding out words and clearly writing something instead of just scribbling the the doodles that manifest in her head, as much as I love every piece of art she draws.

A few minutes later, she brings the “diary” entry shown above to us, and it says:

Dear diary I had a bad day my sister did not share I am sad about that

Needless to say, mythical wife and I were quite amused at the excessive melodrama generated by our six-year old.  I mean she is half-Korean, and if there’s one thing Koreans are good at doing is, is being dramatic.

But naturally, my mind immediately went in the direction that this was basically the formative seed of what would eventually turn out to be future brogging.  It starts with marker on letter paper, eventually it will manifest into keyboard and monitor, and given the rapid advancement of technology, the tech of the future will probably just be able to read her thoughts and manifest words directly onto her future brog where hopefully she’ll have more than zero readers.

But it all starts somewhere. 

Even if it’s from a bad day that she is sad about.

Dad Brog (#167): Father’s Day 2026

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Year five of forever

Full disclosure, this photograph was taken about a full month before Father’s Day.  This post is being written in advance, by nearly a full month before Father’s Day.  Seeing as how would be abroad on actual Father’s Day, I decided to knock this out a little early, so that it would not be looming over my head as a critical must-do, as my departure date drew nearer, so it was in my best interests to take it early, so I wouldn’t have to rush the photo taking, editing, printing, and writing out the corresponding post.

Plus it’s one of the few things I look forward to more than anything in the world, so why not treat myself for a change, especially with the cesspool of S+ difficulty I deal with in my everyday life generally.

Honestly, I still sometimes look at my kids and I can’t believe that I’m a dad.  My girls are six and four, so I’ve been a dad for a little while now, but sometimes it still feels surreal that I have contributed towards the creation of lives, and my offspring are already both going to be in elementary school together, start of the next school year.

Even when they were tiny little nuggets of babies, it was hard to fathom what the future would look like, and how these kids would eventually be walking and talking, going to school and having their brains metaphorically exploding with all the knowledge and experience they’d be coming into over the passage of time.

Now, we have conversations regularly, they’re always asking questions, and they can walk, talk, run, jump, and they love to play games and do puzzles and draw pictures and build with Legos.  As the current school year came to a close, both brought home little booklets that showed a glimpse of time lapse of their handwriting and their drawing acumen throughout the course of the school year, and it’s amazing to see just how much both of them had progressed.

They’ll always be my babies, but make no mistake, they’re two grown kids that have intelligence, personalities, capabilities and talents already.  And I still can’t believe that I had a hand in making them.

One thing I’ve noticed more recently is the fact that my girls have slowly been phasing out “dada” and been more frequently referring to me as just “dad.”  It hasn’t been a full-on swap just yet, and dada still comes out from them both, although more from #2 than #1, but it has not gone unnoticed by me that I’ve been hearing a lot more dad instead of dada.

The thing is, I never coached or deterred them from use of one name or the other, it has been happening completely organically to my knowledge.  But seeing as how both kids, their first words were dada, it unsurprisingly makes me feel a little melancholy to know that they’re gradually phasing it out of their go-to vernacular.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#167): Father’s Day 2026” →

The Knicks winning is my 12-year old self’s dream come true

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I knew that I was vested in the Knicks when I stopped watching or following the games, because that’s what I do when I want a team to win.  I don’t watch, because my presence will obviously cause whatever team I want to win, to lose.

I was on an airplane, en route to Seattle for a night before getting on a longer flight to Seoul, when mythical wife turned on game 5 on the in-flight live television. We had just watched two World Cup matches of wildly different skill levels, and we still had an hour before we landed, and despite her being aware of my superstitious beliefs, turned it on anyway, because I like to believe that as a former New Yorker, she felt some modicum of support to the Knicks and wanted them to win as I did.

There was 1:26 left and then Knicks held a slim lead, and I’ve been in this position enough times to know that me tuning in would be akin to the kiss of death, that the Spurs, probably Victor Wembanyama was going to hit some crazy impossible three-pointer to take the lead, survive game 5, and propel them to overcoming the 3-1 series lead and win the NBA Finals.

But such did not happen.  As has been the case since really, the last two years or so, this Jalen Brunson-led squad bent a little bit, but did not break.  Defenses did their job, rebounds were corralled, and they’d get to the free throw line, and convert just enough to keep them mathematically out of the realm of a game-losing shot.

The last 29 seconds of the game predictably lasted about 29 minutes as both teams leveraged their remaining time outs, and strategized their foul usage to attempt to manipulate the win probability charts as best as they could.

But the New York Knicks held, they did not yield and break, and for the first time in 53 years, won the NBA championship.  Bringing ultimate basketball glory to a franchise and city that has been starving for one for a literal lifetime.

This championship is for the city of New York, which I normally don’t hold a tremendous amount of regard for, but can understand decades and generations of basketball fans who have been hoping to see a Knicks championship, same as I did for a period of my time.

True story and not just because it’s convenient to rehash this narrative because they just won the ship: when I was a kid, I was a gigantic New York Knicks fan. I’m not entirely sure how it even started, perhaps it was the contrarian in me that really wanted to see Michael Jordan lose in the 93 playoffs, and was ignited by John Starks’ The Dunk on Horace Grant and MJ, but for better or worse, I can earnestly say that my first favorite basketball team was the Knicks.

Tough choice of when to declare my fandom, seeing as how the Knicks would squander their 2-0 lead against the Bulls, but such would kind of set the tone for my journey with them.

Continue reading “The Knicks winning is my 12-year old self’s dream come true” →

El Grande Americano: how can you not be romantic about lucha libre?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I never really wrote about it because I just never really had the time or the opportunity or the perfect timing to put my thoughts to brog about it, but I’ve been a fan of El Grande Americano since Chad Gable first put the mask on and began parading around as an obvious goof on lucha libre as well as Mexican culture.  Not because it was a goof on Mexican culture, but the sheer hilarity of the notion that Chad Gable put a silly mask on and worked with the expectation that nobody would know that he and El Grande Americano were one and the same, despite the fact that the ring attire was almost entirely the same save for the tassle-ey boots.

It was a little bit of a throwback in a time where fans and followers of the industry are smarter and more connected than ever, and for the most part, the WWE had figured out that fans actually appreciated it more when their intelligences weren’t being tested, but El Grande Americano instead did go back in time, and for weeks and months, Chad Gable would often be performing double duty on television, as regular all-American Chad Gable, and then acting as if El Grande Americano were a completely different human being outright.

And under the El Grande Americano mask, he would clown and he would cheat, but the fact of the matter was that he was starting to win more matches, and I’d never been more entertained than when he started putting the metal “plate” into his mask and using loaded headbutts to win matches underhandedly.

But then Chad Gable got hurt, with some sort of shoulder injury, and my immediate reaction was, what’s going to happen to El Grande Americano???  Fewer things are more deflating in the world of professional wrestling than when a talent finally begins to start to gain some traction and momentum with a gimmick that appears to be working, only to be derailed by injury.  As a fan, I felt crushed for Gable, whom I’ve often been high on as a worker, as well as the fact that he really was beginning to blossom into an entertaining personality as well, only for an injury to completely derail all the hard work that was starting to pay off.

I figured the El Grande Americano storyline was going to die right there without its rightful mask wearer.  Even when the also-underutilized Marcel Barthel AKA Ludwig Kaiser took over the mantle in a second-tier goof of Who Is El Grande Americano, I figured this was an instance of Ludwig basically taking over the mantle just so that they could tie up loose ends with the persona and eventually kill it off, so that El Grande Americano didn’t just abruptly vanish and make it obvious for the two fans out there that didn’t actually know the identities that El Grande Americano was Chad Gable.

I don’t know how much the creation of the El Grande Americano character coincided with the E purchasing Mexico’s AAA promotion, but when the E really started to take over operations of AAA, it was very apparent that there was no better place for the El Grande Americano persona to apply their trade than there, since he was basically the anti-luchador, pretending to be a luchador, going up against real, authentic luchadores.

And at first, El Grande Americano did his job as was to be expected; being booed the fuck out of Mexican venues, by Mexican people who were supposed to be incensed and offended by a guy who was obviously not even Mexican, pretending to be a luchador, cheating and defeating actual luchadores.  And it didn’t help that he was aligning himself with Dominik Mysterio, who was supposed to be the rudo (read: heel), invading AAA and setting his sights on the AAA Mega Campeonato, and even went as far as helping him upend El Hijo del Vikingo for their top championship.

But the thing is, Mexican fans really loved and really popped for all of the WWE talents that were crossing the border to make appearances for AAA, and in spite of their expected alignments, Dom was getting pops that were almost Stone Cold Steve Austin in the 90s-level in Mexico, and everyone in his gravitational pull, including El Grande Americano was benefitting from the proximity.

Continue reading “El Grande Americano: how can you not be romantic about lucha libre?” →

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2025 MLB All-Deferred Money Team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again, where Bobby Bonilla collects two big* paychecks from the New York Mets and Baltimore Orioles for playing baseball despite the fact that he’s 62 years old today and hasn’t played baseball since 2001; and I trot out this annual post to put on blast just how stupid and egregious that baseball salaries continuously escalate.

*$1,193,248 from the Mets and $500,000 from the O’s; paltry in the grand spectrum of MLB salaries, but still tremendously more than what successful doctors, teachers and actual essential personnel in the real working world make

It’s funny this year, because of the Dodgers’ absolute bonkers spending spree, and spamming of salary deferral, the whole concept of deferring salaries has come under a massively public microscope.  Most old nerdy fans like me know it’s all well within the rules and that any team in the league can employ it, and as I’ve documented, many have throughout the years, but nobody has really done it to the effect of the Dodgers have over the last offseason, promising out over a billion dollars to several players that will be paid out mostly between the years of 2030 through like, the end of the human race, at the rate we’re going.

But even in spite of the Dodgers’ deferral spree they went on this year, in the grand spectrum of the 2025 season, the Dodgers are but just a mere blip on the radar in the master list of deferrals, as well as dead money throughout the league.  Granted, this will change dramatically in the 2030’s, when Bobby Bonilla’s contract finally ends, and the Dodgers’ deferrals start to kick in and I’ll probably have to change the name of these posts from “Bobby Bonilla Day” to “the Dodgers present,” but until then, there’s still a lot of life in this little exercise continuing to be named after Bobby Bo.

Anyway, on with the show.

In the 2025 season, there are 24 players making deferred monies, according to Spotrac, spread between 14 teams.  Compared to last year, this is one less player and one less team, primarily on account of Ken Griffey Jr. finally coming off the Cincinnati Reds’ books despite not having played since 2010.  I made a joke last year that it was perfect that it was 25 players, since rosters (used to be) are 25-man rosters (with a 26th injured reserve spot).

However, in spite of the one fewer player and one fewer team, these 24 players are making an estimated $83.156M, which is a higher payroll than three teams’ total payrolls: the Chicago White Sox, Miami Marlins of course, the Oakland the Sacramento The A’s.  Barely avoiding the embarrassment of being outspent by a roster of deferred salaries are the Tampa Bay Rays and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Continue reading “Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2025 MLB All-Deferred Money Team” →

Dad Brog (#151): Father’s Day 2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#4 of forever

True to my neurotic nature, this is the date in which I will forever post the annual Father’s Day blet picture day photograph, so that I can be tickled in future years when I look at the On This Day section of my brog and see a veritable montage of the years and passage of time as my kids go from tiny little baby nuggets into the vibrant and sassy little shits that I love more than anything in existence.

I should also like to point out that this is the first, and probably only year in which all blets in the photograph are actually still actively on television.  Literally every other blet in my collection is retired or redesigned, and it’s only a matter of time before NXT rebrands the North American blet, and it’s seemingly always rumored that the WWE will scrap the women’s tag team titles.

Full disclosure, I actually took these photos almost a month in advance and have been sitting on them until this time, and I’m glad that I did.  I had just gotten my hair cut, and my lawn was cut a day earlier, and I’ve been having some issues with my landscapers and was forced to softly fire them, leading to me having to cut my own grass after taking the last four years off from the chore.

Also with the summer in full effect now with daily 90F+ temperatures, all of us would’ve been miserably hot and cranky doing our photos now, compared to the conditions of when I had taken these.  So no regrets whatsoever on shooting well before Father’s Day and well before my arbitrary posting dates, especially with how they turned out in the end.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#151): Father’s Day 2025” →