Tag: television

WTF is AEW doing #412

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: AEW unveils the Unified Championship to be awarded to the winner of Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada, thus “unifying” the AEW All-Atlantic International championship and the AEW Continental Championship

Man, there’s a lot to unpack for me upon this topic coming up.  I know that I have a fairly unhealthy collection of replica wrestling blets, but I’m fairly certain that Tony Khan is worse than I am.  Almost to the point where I begin to have doubts on whether or not I want to continue my collection, because TK is running so many blets out there that it risks them all becoming meaningless, and ultimately uncool.

I mean, AEW has Mercedes Mone running around carrying five blets currently, with only two of them being remotely meaningful with the TBS championship and the RevPro Women’s championship.  But she’s carting around the Queen of Southside title which frankly nobody outside of England has ever heard of, recently went to Austria to win some backyard federation’s championship, but my favorite is that she’s carting around the Women’s Owen Hart tournament blet, which really was meant to be a blet to be shown like three weeks of the year, for the winner and maybe 1-2 weeks afterward.

Hangman Adam Page basically held the men’s title up once, and then immediately gave it back, while Mercedes is still slinging the honorary degree around like it actually means something, and it’s a shame that she’s inevitably going to overthrow Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s championship, and as much as I like Blet Collector gimmicks, Mercedes’ is just really kind of off-putting, given her station within the industry.

But this post isn’t meant to be about Mercedes Mone, but I was able to barf out these thoughts without having to dedicate an entire post to it in the process, but rather the fact that AEW has unveiled yet another new blet on television, and all I can really do is laugh and shake my head about it, even if it’s ultimately meant to kind of alleviate the excessive number of titles within the TK-verse.

The AEW Unified Championship is a hilarious name for a title, considering the titles in which they are unifying are for lack of a better term, mid-card titles.  In all other combat sports, boxing, MMA, and even the WWE, the term of unifying titles is typically reserved for unifying top prizes.  Boxing especially has had all sorts of unified world champions throughout its history, due to federations and promotions merging and separating and merging and requiring consolidation.  Even the WWE has had unified champions in its history, but always reserved for World championships, most notably Roman Reigns unifying the World and the Universal titles and then holding it for 1,000+ days.

But AEW is basically unifying two mid-tier titles, into a single one, but then best of all, calling it the Unified Championship.  It will have an A-tier name, but still have stemmed from B-tier titles, and inevitably, if they don’t swap the name of it at some point like they did All-Atlantic to International, the Unified champion will run into the AEW World champion, and what are they going to do, unify the Unified championship into the World?  Call it World Unified championship?

Honestly, I don’t really know what TK thinks, beyond when he’s going to get his next bump, but I dunno, you have the International championship, and you have the Continental championship, seems natural if it were to become the… Inter-Continental championship or something.

I mean, it’s no secret that AEW has absolutely refused to adopt that name, seeing as how the WWE Intercontinental championship is one of the most coveted prizes among those in the industry, but it’s not like they own the word or anything.  NJPW for the longest time had their own Intercontinental championship, and they built that title into something equally as coveted within the company, thanks to guys like Shinsuke Nakamura and Tetsuya Naito.

And perhaps NJPW has been spending too much time with TK, because they dropped the name when they unified it with their World title, and in an attempt to re-create a mid-card title, have only produced the woefully uninspiring IWGP Global Championship, but designed it to look precariously similar to the old, white-strapped IWGP Intercontinental blet.

Back to AEW though, it’s funny that the Unified Championship is just a merger of two mid-card titles, because within the company and all adjacent companies, there are still a whole litany of other B-tier prizes, and C-tier prizes within the TK ecosystem.  The TNT Championship, the ROH World and Television championships, and the revolving door of straps from other promotions that their talents drag onto AEW television, like the NEVER Openweight, the IWGP Strong championship and the RevPro World championship.

Would the Unified champion be like a Borg and just go after other champions to unify their championships into the Unified?  Or what if a Unified champion takes an L to another champion, does that keep the titles separate, or does the winner take the Unified and unify their titles? 

So many question marks!

Of course, the true motivation behind all this hullaballoo most likely stems from the fact that the two titles being unified in question are currently held by Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, two of the biggest stars within the company.  And TK seems to have this belief that the importance of them coming together for a match actually needs the incentive of both guys carting championship straps around, and decided that two guys with blets need to be fighting over a new blet, despite the fact that they have had some of the greatest matches within the last decade, whilst in NJPW.

If I had to put money on it, I’m guessing Okada is going to be winning, and becoming the FIRST-EVER AEW Unified championship, because Omega is banged up and doesn’t need to be taking on a champion’s workload and frankly, Okada needs the professional rub more than Omega does.

But I would also wager that, even though it won’t be for long afterward, despite the fact that the Unified championship was introduced to remove two blets from play, I would bet that Okada will show up at least once, carrying all three blets on television, like when Eddie Kingston was carting around a ton of blets at one point, because Tony Khan appears to have a bigger hard-on for championship blets than I do.

Love Death + Robots Vol. 4: Maybe it’s time to hang it up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I had an evening where I was surprisingly free to sit down and watch television with no specific show in mind.  I had recently finished several shows that was on my never ending list of things that I want to consider watching, and I didn’t want to delve into any of the series that I’d know would be gigantic commitments, so I sat down with an objective to comb through different platforms and do somewhat of an audit of things that things that I would watch eventually.

When I got to Netflix, Love Death + Robots had the little red label on it indicating new episodes, and my plan to merely refresh the list went out the window and I was diving into the first episode.  I’ve been a fan of the series as a whole in general, even though I think the initial momentum had slowed down in ensuing seasons, but considering the one-off nature of all the episodes, redemption is always the next story away.

Unfortunately, after I finished, quickly, all ten of the episodes of season Vol. 4, I was just left with this unsatisfied feeling of ehhhh that’s it?  To me, there weren’t any particular standout episodes like there had been in prior volumes, and my general vibe was that the collection as a whole seemed to be pretty devoid of love, way low on the robots, but still had plenty of death.  I felt as if, kind of like Black Mirror, the series had gained some notoriety, and it became a property that niche celebrities wanted to associate with, and the series was more than willing to accommodate, even if it came at the expense of the quality that put it on the map in earlier collections.

David Fincher, Tim Miller and even fucking MrBeast were notable contributors to this collection, with Netflix making the conceited effort to let people know about the latter’s appearance in Screaming of the Tyrannosaur.  But it seemed to me that this collection banked on people recognizing some of the more notable contributors and watching just for that, but in the end, none of the episodes were really that standout great.

I mean, the final episode that was presented to me, Can’t Stop was literally just a glorified music video; I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but this was literally just a fucking puppet show on top of Can’t Stop.  The song is good, and the video was chill and fun, but in the grand spectrum of things, I watch shit to be told stories and be entertained, not be fed regurgitated content with puppets replacing the actual people.

There’s really not much else to add.  The volume as a whole was a holistic letdown in my opinion, but thankfully it wasn’t a tremendous time commitment, so it’s not a situation where I’m upset about the sunk cost of time wasted.  If this is the direction that the franchise is headed, I’m under the impression that perhaps they should consider stop where they finished.  I know the order of the series isn’t anything concrete, but if they ended with Can’t Stop, they can at least say they closed the book on the series with David Fincher.

Anyway, here’s how I’d rank the episodes; not that it’s really indicative of actual quality, it’s more like ranking the turds in the bowl that are the least to most stinky:

  1. How Zeke Got Religion (Ep. 8)
  2. For He Can Creep (Ep. 10)
  3. The Other Large Thing (Ep. 5)
  4. 400 Boys (Ep. 4)
  5. Golgotha (Ep 6)
  6. Spider Rose (Ep. 3)
  7. Can’t Stop (Ep. 1)
  8. Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners (Ep. 9)
  9. The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur (Ep. 7)
  10. Close Encounters of the Mini Kind (Ep. 2)

Happy Trails, Jonathan Joss

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AP: Actor Jonathan Joss, shot and killed at the age of 59

Although falling through the ceiling of my attic really sucked, in retrospect it was nothing compared to finding out that Jonathan Joss was tragically shot and murdered.

And it’s not just because of the freshness of the incident that I say this, but the man was legitimately part of two shows that I hold in the highest esteem, in Parks and Recreation as well as King of the Hill, with the latter being where I knew him from the best, but then being super stoked when I got into Parks and Rec, and finding out that the guy behind Ken Hotate was John Redcorn.

Needless to say, my sadness is legitimate sadness, and not just sad that someone in showbusiness I liked is gone kind of way.  I didn’t need a refresher on the roles he played when I saw his name in the news as being a murder victim, and it’s all just really sad and tragic and fucked up in a variety of ways, and it boils down to the fact that guns in America are long past out of control, and shit like this happens way too frequently.

Frankly, I didn’t even know that Joss was gay, not that it matters at all to me, but seeing as how it’s Pride Month, and learning that the shooter was using homophobic slurs just adds to the infuriating tragedy of the whole scenario.  He was clearly a proud representative of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the oft-overlooked indigenous community, both of which take a sad hit in the loss of Jonathan Joss.

At this point, I don’t really have anything much else to say.  It’s just he was a guy whose work I loved so much, making me a fan of his by proxy, and I felt like I had to at least put some words down to express my grief at this senseless and tragic passing.

The whole John Redcorn joke was pretty much my favorite subplot on King of the Hill, and it was always a treat to see whenever he appeared on Parks and Rec, playing white people like a fiddle.  It’s all just a fucking shame that the world will never get to see him pop up anything else anymore, because aside from being such a strong advocate, man was just such an iconic talent.

The futile pursuit of Steel Armor

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In the original Final Fantasy, about 25% through the game, you come across the town of Melmond.  The town has been decimated by the elemental fiend, Lich, and there are tombstones and graves scattered all around the place to denote the carnage that he has brought to this continent.  Otherwise there is nothing really of importance in the town other than what’s available at the armor shop.

Steel Armor, which doesn’t sound like anything that special, but the reality is that it is one of the highest-rated armors in the entire game, quite literally viable until the very end.  Its effectiveness is reflected in its cost, which at 45,000 GP is one of the most expensive items in the entire game. 

Its availability as early as Melmond is kind of laughable, because at this point of the game the ramping up of difficulty at its worst, and 45,000 GP would require a massive amount of grinding and effort in order to afford.  And if you have any sort of meta or any team with mages on it, acquiring their spells is of higher priority, considering the importance of magic to attack enemies, heal allies, and cast Exit, that you’re looking more like needing 60,000 GP if want to mage up and get Steel Armor before you head to the Earth Cave.

By the time you get to the point of the game where 45,000 GP is no big deal, money is flowing like water.  There’s a chest somewhere in the Sky Palace that contains like 68,000 GP, and I remember thinking, wtf is this even needed for at this point in the game, because you already have most of the best equipment in the game at that point, and your white mage can heal more HP than spamming heal potions over and over again outside of battle. 

When you have money, money comes easy.  When you don’t have money, it’s an agonizing struggle, finding that bridge to where you can get to the land where you can have money.

It’s usually not worth the effort to go back and get Steel Armor, even in spite of having the airship to whisk you back to Melmond without much effort, there are comparable pieces of armor available, found in the natural progression of exploration and advancing the story, that usually also have some degree of bonus protection instead of the base armor stats.

Most teams probably aren’t going to have multiple fighters, given the expense of equipping them, and if you don’t actually have a fighter in your team, it’s a moot point because no other class in the game can utilize Steel Armor, so really Steel Armor is kind of obsolete by the time you get to the end of the game.

The point is, Steel Armor becomes this kind of metaphor of being a reward for those who are capable of putting in the hard work, managing money well, and want to enjoy the fruits of labor at an earlier stage of life, rather than waiting until much later when you have the money, to get something that’s kind of not really needed anymore.

Continue reading “The futile pursuit of Steel Armor” →

#TRYHARDSZN2025: this one will contribute to our demise, Black Mirror style

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WWNYTV7onmyside: Massachusetts teen accepted into 88 colleges, amassing over $6M in scholarship dollars

As far as acceptance numbers, I think it’s going to be a hard task for any potential #TRYHARDs to surpass the one chica who cleared like 155 and one in every state.  But what piqued my interest with this #TRYHARD wasn’t the acceptance numbers, but the amount of scholarship dollars he amassed in his 88 acceptances.

For context, Ms. Queen #TRYHARD and her 155 acceptances notched $6M in cumulative offers.  But this kid out of Chicopee, Massachusetts also amassed $6M in scholarships from nearly half of the acceptances.  That’s an average of $68K per scholarship, versus the $38K/per from the Queen of Westlake High.  He doesn’t get to brag about having acceptances from random schools out in Idaho, Wyoming or North Dakota, but it’s evident that schools see more value in this kid over Queen Spray and Pray.

Additionally, aside from Chicopee kid’s ridiculous 4.39 GPA (like I still don’t understand just how much extra work one has to do to blow past a 4.00 GPA so hard) is the fact that this egghead is all into AI and robotics, and is pursuing a future where he can work on AI systems and/or robots.  Considering he’s from the New England area, and among his offers is Boston University, it seems like a very good possibility that he goes to BU, and then gets a job with Boston Dynamics, the company that is making robot dogs and robots that can run, do moonsaults and basically complete Ninja Warrior courses, and then contributes towards the rise of our eventual robot overlords.

Anyway, I got nothing else.  Among his other notable acceptances were UConn, Florida, and Purdue.  No mention of any Ivies, and as impressive as his GPA and his current acceptance haul is, the seeming lack of mention of any other extracurriculars lends to believe that he probably doesn’t have any.

Thus, he is not #TRYHARDing enough, and probably won’t be worth mentioning again the rest of this #SZN.

White Lotus S3 probably fucking with #TRYHARDSZN2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the thing, this article came up in my routine searches for #TRYHARDs to write about, about how Duke’s acceptance rate has hit an all-time low, where only 3.67% of applicants get accepted.  I mean, sports bias and perception bias on account of sports, aside, Duke is a fine educational institution, and the name holds a tremendous amount of weight in the world for those who have gone there, and graduated from the university.

But even outside of the world of sport, the Duke brand holds an abysmal reputation and is generally reviled by pretty much everyone except those people who have gone to Duke, graduated from Duke, or financially supported by someone who went to Duke.  There’s a general reputation that Duke is snooty, white-bred, arrogant, insufferable and all sorts of pejoratives meant to demean Duke, but it never really mattered, because all the people who are pro-Duke exist on some sort of weird island where nobody else seems to matter.

Which is why it seems so appropriate and fitting that Duke has seemingly decided to gatekeep to a new career high, accepting fewer students than they’ve ever done, and I have to feel that such is probably surprising to absolutely nobody at all, considering their general reputation and the political climate that’s emboldened racists to let their bigot flags fly high and proudly.

Why I decided to start a post about it is completely beyond me considering I don’t really have much else to say about the topic, but in all honesty the reason I wanted to, was so I could post a screen grab of White Lotus S3, where the character Timothy Ratliff, played by Jason Isaacs is basically losing his marbles, but every time he goes into one of his suicidal fantasies, he’s always wearing a t-shirt with a huge-ass DUKE wordmark on it.

After the last episode, I remarked to mythical wife that I’m sure Duke is (facetiously) thrilled to see their school’s name on the shirt of a criminal embezzler who is becoming suicidal, and as someone who enjoys seeing Duke fail in any capacity, it brings me great amusement to see it happening in the show.

And the funniest thing is that my hypothesis was proven correct when searching for an adequate screen grab to pair with this post, and Googling “Tim Ratliff White Lo-“ auto fills in the rest of “tim ratliff white lotus duke shirt” and all sorts of articles and spot-on screen caps of Tim Ratliff with a gun to his head with his DUKE shirt on are immediately returned, and there are numerous articles detailing the university’s general displeasure at the show that a Duke man is both a criminal and suicidal.

But yeah, I’m not surprised that Duke’s not happy about it, because the Ratliff family is proudly North Carolinian, and boasts how dad is Duke, mom is UNC, eldest son is Duke, I don’t remember which Piper went to, but how Lochte is still deciding between the two, but it’s clear that those who were Dookies are clearly vapid unhinged white people, with one of them becoming suicidal.  And I love the validation of my off-remark hypothesis.

So at this point, I have no choice but to continue on with making this post, because it succeeds at taking shots at Duke, as well as put over White Lotus as a show, because season 3 has been entertaining and has demonstrated HBO’s ability to get something that isn’t Game of Thrones or Games of Thrones-adjacent in order to anchor down that Sunday at 9 pm time slot.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Imagine if UGA were your dream school

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Lowered expectations: Georgia teen accepted to 60 different schools, amassing $1.3M in cumulative scholarship offers

Another day, another Georgia-based #TRYHARD.  I’m seriously wondering if it’s an IP thing or something or if the vast majority of the #TRYHARDs in the country are all coincidentally just coming out of Georgia, but every single edition of #TRYHARDSZN2025 so far have all been from Georgia.  I doubt that such is going to be a case throughout the whole #SZN, but it is a little head-scratching from the onset.

Anyway, if I had 60 acceptances when I was this kid’s age, I undoubtedly would have had the criteria of being how far away from home, and how much scholarship money are they going to float me, and the best combination of distance from Northern Virginia and how much they’d scholarship me, would be the strongest contenders.

Such, is not the case for this guy, whom although they don’t disclose any of the 60 acceptances he received, the State of Georgia doesn’t have that many colleges and universities in it to constitute close to 60, so I have to imagine that a lot of ideal and acceptable out-of-state, far the fuck away from bumfuck Dublin, Georgia are being left on the table by deciding to go to his dream college of, the University of Georgia.

This reminds me of Terry Jerry-Larry-Garry Gergich from Parks & Rec and how him and his family’s annual vacation was to their favorite place in the world, Muncie, Indiana, which was presumably not that far from fictional Pawnee, Indiana.

Like, the boy has the opportunity to get the fuck out of Georgia, but instead he’s taking his golden tickets and just going two hours north, up to Athens, where his supposed dream school is.

Don’t get me wrong, UGA is a solid school, reputable and moderately respected in the world, but the boy wants to go down a pre-med track, and I’m hard-pressed to believe that UGA is the most qualified school to go to for a guy who’s interested in biology and pre-med.  Just in the SEC, I know that Auburn is a better school for such things, but I can’t imagine the level of education and awareness of the world outside of Laurens County is particularly high.

Either way, I’m already getting tired of writing about #TRYHARDs from Georgia with fairly mediocre numbers in the inevitable grand spectrum of #TRYHARDSZN, so good on this one guy for 60 acceptances and $1M in scholarships, and getting to go to his dream school right up the road, but when the dust settles, there’s already bigger #TRYHARDs and bigger dreams being chased by much bigger overachievers.