Tag: television

Imagine dropping $120 for some Jerry Seinfelds

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: New Balance releases the 950s, featuring Cooper Flagg as their figurehead; retailing at $120

Initially, I wanted to write about how such a retail price is contrary to the supposed quote by reigning NBA Rookie of the Year, Cooper Flagg, where he stated that he wanted his first signature shoes to be priced at $35, so that all kids could afford them, but there’s a lot of claim that such quote was bogus, and so I don’t want to risk looking like an incorrect asshole, so I’ll disclaim the ambiguity of the quote.

However, if he did say something along those effects, and New Balance still said naaaahhhh, here’s your shoe, and we’re going to sell it for $120, then egg on Cooper Flagg for allowing it to stand, but let’s be real here, high integrity isn’t necessarily something basketball fans expect from those dudes who went to Duke.

I mean in all fairness, $120 isn’t a horrible price, considering the fact that just about any signature released by Nike or the Jordan sub-brand usually starts at like $200 and goes only up, and often time results in a couple of fatalities throughout the nation as overzealous sneakerheads resort to violence over some fucking sneakers.  But $120 is still a price point where the purported youngsters that Cooper Flagg had in mind probably still can’t afford, which then kind of defeats the purpose for that price point in the first place.

Especially when, when the day is over, the 950s are basically New Balance-branded knockoffs of Nike Air Force Ones, in that they’re all-white sneakers that look like Jerry Seinfeld would wear on the set of Seinfeld.  And then the question becomes, why the fuck would anyone pay $120 for bootleg AF1s when, if you play your cards right, you can get the OG AF1s for less than that.

Either way, I know that they dropped almost a month ago, but I’m just finding out about them now, and just about everything about this whole release seems like kind of a flop.  They’re overpriced clones, look like dorky Forrest Gump shoes, and if Flagg actually had claimed he wanted his shoes to be cheaper, then they failed there too.

But really, what really made this post into reality was the want to photoshop together imagery of Flagg with Jerry Seinfeld, united in their dorky all-whites joints.

World Cup 2026: in the end, futbol prevails

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I tongue-in-cheek declared the World Cup over after Mexico and the United States were bounced from the tournament nearly two weeks ago, I obviously still watched the remainder of the matches, and the tournament did a little roller coaster in that span and in the end, everything seemed to work out, kind of beautifully, and I find myself wanting to write just one more post about the World Cup, and how it’s truly sad to see that this magnificent journey, has come to an end – officially.

It’s interesting, because I don’t think I was really wrong about how the general fun and the feelings of elation and celebration of futbol were kind of sucked out of the tournament once Mexico and the US were eliminated, because fans of sport and story alike all love a good Cinderella story, and both were in the midst of impressive runs, before they hit the walls of Eurpoean opposition.  And once the pretenders were bounced, the World Cup kind of devolved back to its typical state of serious business, where the real contenders of the Cup were the last ones standing, and all of the remaining matches were these super serious affairs, between super serious futbol countries.

One by one, I found myself rooting for the lower seeds of all these matches, like Norway against England, Belgium against Spain in spite of their terse domination over the US, and true to the whole anyone but Argentina mentality, the Swiss as well.  And in each case, they all lost, reinforcing the notion that the World Cup always ends up being a race between the same pool of countries, narrowing down to a final four of countries that have all won a Cup at some point.

By default, I found myself pulling for France over Spain, because I had put France down as my champion in my work bracket that only three people participated in and I’m pretty sure the other two have already forgotten about it, and England over Argentina because they were the team opposing Argentina, plus it was hard to root against a guy like Jude Bellingham who seemed so talented on the pitch while being so charming off of it.

So naturally it ended up being the surgical dismantling of the French by Spain, who I didn’t even notice had only allowed a single goal the whole tournament to this point, and Argentina beating England after several days of artificial build up, swirling around all of the ugly and nasty factors of why people outside of their fans were all seemingly souring on Argentina, in a hard-fought contest, that naturally ended in controversy, with the generally classy Jude Bellingham almost coming to blows with an Argentinian bench scrub after FT.

Going into the final weekend, it basically boiled down to France vs. England in the notoriously seemingly unnecessary third-place match that neither team was going to care about, and a match between the Colonizers versus the Racists, where it was surprisingly easy to be pulling for the Colonizers, solely based on the fact that they were not Argentina.

Usually the third-place match is a pointless match that doesn’t mean anything to most participants, especially if it’s a clash between powerhouses like France and England.  It’s my belief that such is usually the case, except when it involves a host nation and/or a Cinderella surprise team, like when Korea found themselves in the third-place match against also-upstart Turkey in 2002, where both teams let it all hang out trying to end their journeys with a W, which naturally Korea would lose, but the fact of the matter is that they actually cared.  But the last few third-place matches have been apathetic and unwatched, and there was little reason to believe this one would be any different, seeing as both had high aspirations to win it all, and anything short of that was just failure.

But I happened to catch the third-place match, and at first it wasn’t really anything out of expectation, with both France and England emptying out their benches and letting everyone who had been wearing the pinnies throughout the tournament start, save for Kylian Mbappe for France whom most had suspected was going to be playing in order to take and possibly ice the Golden Boot award from Messi.

And England raced to a quick lead, scoring two in pretty quick succession, and going into half with an absurd 4-0 lead.  It was clear that neither team was really trying too hard, with the goals being all the younger players getting some international experience, as well as everyone just trying to avoid getting hurt.

The second half starts, and someone reminded Mbappe to go get his Golden Boot, and he scores two in the next 20 minutes, France closes the gap to 4-3, England stretches it out to 5-3, France closes it back to 5-4, and at some point around the 80th minute, Jude Bellingham, who had started on the bench, checks into the game, and goes on this ridiculous run and scores England’s sixth goal right before FT.

It was an absurd exhibition, but the primary thing about it all is that it genuinely looked like both teams were having a blast, and just having fun.  It was a true international friendly between two teams who had been facing extreme pressure over the last week, and I felt as if it was probably really cathartic for all the players, especially guys like Mbappe and Bellingham who had probably been facing the most pressure, being the scoring aces for their countries, and it was really refreshing to seeing everyone being smiles and laughing, and after FT, all hugs and respect from all participants.

A surprising A+ third-place tilt, from what everyone had written off as a pointless exercise.

And then we get to the main event, where there’s not much to really say that hasn’t already been said at this point – Spain defeats Argentina, ending their insufferable onslaught, bringing relief and joy to futbol fans, old and new, almost entirely based on the fact that Lionel Messi and Argentina were denied the World Cup trophy, as well as FIFA who did very little to combat the narrative that they were trying to manufacture their victory.

It was an interesting affair from start to finish, with entertaining tidbits throughout the whole event.  The orange shithead getting booed the fuck out of New Jersey (no ‘and New York’ bullshit here, the match was in New Jersey and only New Jersey), Argentina playing dirty as ever, drawing five yellow cards, including two satisfying ones by the especially dirty-playing Enzo Fernandez, resulting in his ejection, and FIFA officiating doing absolutely everything they could in order to favor Argentina, with countless non-calls for Spain and a parade of bonus free-kicks and stoppage time that benefitted Argentina.

But the thing with futbol, as well as any sport or competitive contest, a competitor must attempt to score points in order to have any chance to win a contest.  I was apoplectic in 2018 when Korea took zero shots on goal against Sweden, so I can imagine the collective rage and anxiety and frustration from Argentinian fans, when their team took a big fat zero shots on goal, and it was very evident that their entire game plan was to get the game to penalties, if the refs couldn’t help them manufacture a scoring chance, to help negate Spain’s legendary tournament-wide defense, and this was magnified when Enzo was booted, and they had to play a man down for the remainder of the match.

However, Spain persevered the stacked deck against them, and 30 seconds into 2OT, scored their goal, which would be enough to overcome a dirty opponent with tournament-wide favor from FIFA.

Argentinian players and most importantly, their front-running fans were sad.  Unsurprising, the amount of post-match respect and congratulations were minimal.  The Argentinian fans were sad.  The orange shithead made (yet another) an embarrassment of himself, photobombing the Spain celebratory trophy hoist.  Argentinian fans were sad, and got the fuck out.

Futbol prevailed.

What a wonderful World Cup this was.  I’m sad that the whole thing is over now.  2030 has an insanely high bar to live up to, after how fantastic this one was.  But looking forward to it already.

Watching the WWE has kind of become a job

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was on vacation, I didn’t really think much of wrestling beyond the show in Korea that I was going to go/had gone to, and thinking of an upcoming local show that I mentally reminded myself to reach out to my boys about when I got back.  But as far as what was going on in the big pro-wrestling industry, I knew that I was missing out on things, but at the same time I didn’t really care.

Through social media, I saw that Sami Zayn had won the WWE championship at Night of Champions, which in one hand made me happy because I’ve grown to really appreciate the man and his career, and it always brings me satisfaction when a hard worker gets rewarded. 

However, in the other hand, was the skepticism that his win came entirely on account of the fact that this was one of the WWE’s gross Saudi shows, and in spite of the fact that the E has gotten a lot of credit in recent years for not treating viewers like complete idiots like they used to, such doesn’t seem to apply to the Saudi shows and the company pretty much does nothing but grasp at low-hanging fruit out in the Middle East.  It’s very easy to assume that Sami won in Saudi Arabia almost entirely to satiate the local audience, getting to see an openly Muslim man win the largest prize in the company.

Such narrative was justified just nine days later, when Sami would immediately drop the WWE championship to a returning CM Punk; contrary to what I was just saying about not treating fans like idiots, such had occurred in Chicago, Punk’s hometown, being seen as yet another low-hanging fruit cash grab, or that Sami was seen as nothing more than a transitional champion and that this was the plan all along, neither of which is particularly good optics among the IWC.

The E has been harder and harder to keep up with, much less actually, like and enjoy, as the sands of time have progressed since the company had been sold, folded into the parent TKO company, and turned into this NASCAR-like ATM of corporate greed.

Months ago, I stated that I’d never felt more alienated from the WWE and my general fandom, and not only has that not changed, but the chasm has widened and continues to do so.

Obviously, companies like the WWE and their parents TKO don’t become the bloated fat cash cows they are because they care about lifer fans with lots of opinions like me, but if it actually mattered, they’re at constant risk of fans like me turning my back on them because of how much they’ve changed things, primarily for the pursuit of moar and moar money.

The point of all this is that I’d actually been debating with myself since coming back from vacation, on if it really wanted to bother getting back into watching big wrestling anymore, because over the last few months, watching wrestling has begun to feel more like a chore and that my time was not being spent well doing such, versus actually enjoying the product. 

For every Iyo Sky vs. Rhea Ripley or El Grande Americano vs. El Grande Americano banger classic, there are hours upon hours of ads to have to sit through, predictable, ChatGPT-generated storylines, moar ads, moar shitty product, and a whole lot more ads.

But for lack of a better alternative, as well as probably false-hope clinging that just one more RAW will get better, I still tuned into RAW the other night, just to see where things were.  And honestly, nothing was really new, and I’m left wondering why I even bother, yet again.  I’d say I’ll just keep up through YouTube, but even those videos are so loaded with ads now as well, that they’re becoming a chore as well.

I was chatting with some of my bros during the broadcast, and it dawned on me that watching the WWE was a lot more like a job, than the last time I opined such, and it was slightly more explainable now, because as someone who has worked for large corporations for the most of their career, watching WWE truly feels like a scenario where I like and appreciate all the workers and talent, but I really dislike and detest all of the higher-ups, shareholders and people who are steering the workers and talent into soul-sucking and inefficient uses of their skillsets.

Frankly I realize that I’ve had this mentality and relationship with other fandoms in my life, like how I’ve felt/currently feel about the Atlanta Braves, as well as how I’ve felt about most of the companies I’ve ever worked for.  I appreciate (most) talent, workers and colleagues, but I don’t particularly care much for those higher up, playing a different game than the rest of the pleebs.

This is probably one of those revelations where I’m amazed to realize at the age of 44, and that there are probably tons of people way more enlightened than me that figured it out way longer ago.  That fandoms all eventually feel like jobs at times, and that it’s worth pondering on if they’re worth continuing to keep once they hit that point, or if we should always just be looking for better things to invest our time into.

As far as professional wrestling goes, I still enjoy going to indy shows with friends, and thankfully Atlanta has no shortage of availability of such shows, and even though I’m jaded and completely skeptical of the E these days, I still have hopes for the few storylines that it’s clear that the company actually gives a shit about, like the masterpiece that is the redemption of Chad Gable. 

Granted, I know that on a long enough timeline, they’ll fuck it up because they always fuck up eventually, be it through he’ll fall short at Summer Slam due to some shenanigans, an injury, or they won’t plan for anything beyond his initial journey and that he peters out after victory, but at least for the time being, he’s probably the best thing going under the E umbrella, and the only thing I’m truly vested in with the company.

My Español education has led up to this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I try not to live a life of too much envy, but if there’s one thing that I am often green with envy of, are polyglots and their abilities to be able to competently communicate with people of various nationalities in their native tongues.  Fewer things are as cool to me than seeing people who are able to change linguistic gears at the drop of a hat, multiplied by how competent they are at each language not native to them.

The more languages a person can bust out, usually the more envious I am, and there’s this one dude on the internet who probably makes his living through reaction videos of himself going around, mostly preying flexing on the Chinese, surprising them with Mandarin or Cantonese after putting himself in these deliberately orchestrated scenarios.  He speaks a large number of languages competently, but he seems to have his niche creating content surprising Chinese people, which makes me resent this rare form of white privilege he’s capitalizing on, but at the root of it, I’m just jealous that he’s able to speak so many languages.

Now I can say that I can speak a number of languages myself, but none remotely close to my ability to read and write English.  My Korean is adequate enough to be able to survive in Korea, but I wouldn’t be able to brog or be writing too many emails in Korean in a professional capacity.  I think I know enough Japanese to be able to go to Japan and not be completely invalid to the locals, and I’ve been determined to learn Spanish, seeing as how it’s probably the most utilitarian secondary language to know living in America.

Needless to say, I’m not going to be producing polyglot content any time soon.

At the time I’m writing this, my Duolingo streak is up to 556 days, entirely on Español.  I can count on one hand how many days that I’ve been forced to freeze, and every single one of them has been on account of being on cruises over international waters, and therefore being incapable of logging in to complete a single lesson.

Maintaining a streak is about the easiest thing in the world for someone like me to do.  Committing at least 30 minutes a day for most of that duration is a different story, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job, and even on days in which “I’m away” I still make sure to get in as much Duo as I can.

I think I’m still very much a novice at the language, repeatedly tripped up by verb conjugation and utilizing the correct form of them for all the variables that can change their use, but for the most part I’ve felt my confidence grow throughout the last two years at being able to actually engage a Spanish speaker, and I know that if I’m not already there, I’m going to hit a wall where I won’t ever develop further unless I actually use the language among others, on a routine-like basis.

Either way, the whole point of this post is to build up to the fact that the culmination of my current track has led up to a milestone occasion, in a slightly not necessarily just ironic sense: I was able to download the Telemundo app, navigate through the 100% Español log in process, and successfully get the Spanish broadcast of Copa Mundial de la FIFA going because mythical wife had heard that the Spanish broadcast was way more entertaining than FOX’s English broadcast, plus without the cringey right-wing ads they inject during half and hydration breaks.

It did not disappoint, even if we noticed that any goal scored by Argentina got three elongated gooooooooooollllllllls from Andrés Cantor while goals scored by anyone else just two.

This, is almost up there with being able to speak with and haggle with Mexican shopkeepers in Cancun over another La Parka mask for my collection of La Parka masks, as well as being able to respectfully dap up and ask Mexican tourists in Seoul if they were having a good time in Korea, after the Korea vs. Mexico World Cup match.

Tiny interactions, sure, but positive ones, and ones that I wouldn’t have had the thought to even entertain engaging, had I not taken the forward step to learn another language in the first place.

Ultimately, the level of comprehension I’d love to be able to achieve is, like Nate McLouth doing an interview entirely in Español good at Spanish, but at the same time there’s also that concern that if my Español proficiency were to surpass my Korean, it would be pretty disgraceful in some sense.

Either way, neither is going to ever really improve if I don’t use them, and I feel like if I didn’t have so many obligations in my life, and were independently wealthy, among the things I would do to pass the days in the absence of needing to work, learning moar languages would definitely be up there.

But hey, hurrah for my improvement in Español, y con suerte seguirá mejorando.

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.

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” →

I’m sorry, but this was one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: kid in China gets spinning helicopter kicked in the lower abdomen region by robot performing a martial arts demonstration

I know it’s in poor taste to laugh at the painful expense of another person, much less a child, but I can’t help it.  This is legit one of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a long time, and I can’t stop myself from busting out laughing every time I see it. 

I know my tune would do a 630 if the victim in question were one of my kids, but I like to think that even in time, I would see the humor in it and eventually find it funny, because it really is that entertaining to me.

Straight up Homer Simpson cracking up at Hans Moleman’s football in the nuts video vibes here.

But it’s just so entertaining, to the point where when you’re watching it for the 10th and 20th times, you begin to dissect everything about it, from the ridiculous blue afro wig that the robot is wearing, to the fact that in spite of a child getting hurt, everyone is laughing about it, and pretty much nobody is seen giving one iota of effort to check in on the child, who is doubled over, and falls out of the crowd in discomfort.  I’m hoping that in the seconds after the video is cut off, the robot, which has returned to its starting point, bowed to the audience.

And because it’s in China, you know almost nobody will help the kid, because it’s expected that parents take care of their own, but in a lot of Little Emperor culture, lots of kids are borderline feral at the lack of hands-on parenting they receive, to where they end up in scenarios like this, unsupervised and in potential danger.

I mean, you can kind of see the imaginary border that onlookers were adhering to, in order to give the martial arts robot some space to operate.  And the kid that got decked, was well past the border, and kind of got what he deserved for being in the line of fire.  In fact, the boy behind the victim was probably relieved that pink shirt got the boot, because he definitely would have caught it otherwise, because robots are clearly as shitty martial artists that McDojo-trained kids are, and was nowhere close to a full rotation before swinging that kick out.

Needless to say, let this be a painful lesson to this little emperor for neglecting to stay out of the way and prioritizing his desire to see something stupid over his own physical safety.  He will undoubtedly become scarred by this incident, and hopefully become an opponent over the excessively aggressive advancement of AI and robotics.

It would be funny if in 24 years, we learn of some activist in China who is spearheading some group or organization that is generally in opposition to robots and AI, and explains that it all started with a sunny afternoon in Xinjiang, where he got helicopter kicked by a ill-programmed robot.