Tag: white people

The WWE fan meet and greet experience brought to you by Cricket Wireless

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite being a shitty wrestling fan these days, one of the things that I still like to try to do is meeting wrestling talent, and when possible getting signed 8x10s because one day I’ll have a personal space again where I can frame and hang them, and just in general, getting autographed photos is one of those things that if I don’t get them if the opportunity is there, I’ll inevitably end up regret not doing so later on down the line.

That being said, The Algorithm fed me intel about a free meet and greet that was happening in the Metro Atlanta area, where Alexa Bliss and Penta were going to be appearing at a Cricket Wireless location out in Norcross.  I don’t hide the fact that I am a fan of Alexa Bliss, and I’ve grown to appreciate Penta more and more throughout the years, so I thought to myself that this was one that I was interested in, but probably not likely to do, because of being a dad, as well as the fact that I’d heard that these meet and greet experiences, especially the free ones, typically require fans to arrive in ungodly early amounts of time, in order to ensure not getting cut off.

But then as the weekend approached, grandma took the girls and suddenly I really had nothing stopping me from attempting to brave the experience and see if I could get autographs from a prime Alexa Bliss and Penta.  The idea of waking up in the middle of the night and then have to go wait 5-6 hours didn’t seem at all that appealing at first, but the fact of the matter was that it’s not that I wouldn’t really be able to do what I’d probably have end up doing in the first place, which was dicking around on my phone, being lazy, doing Duolingo, etc.  I would however be forfeiting an extremely rare opportunity to turn the alarms off on my phone and sleep in, but again, going back to the thought of potential regret, I would’ve been disappointed to pass up on Alexa Bliss, and Penta to a degree, in circumstances where I could’ve been available.

So I made the decision to go for it, got an 8x10s of each to try and get signed, and I got my ass up at 3:45 am, with the intention of getting to Norcross as early as possible and hope that I would be far up enough in the line to where I wouldn’t be cut off, and had a chance to get autographs.

I got to the shopping plaza right around 4:30, and I came prepared based on the intel of netizens who have detailed their experiences; lawn chair, a snack, and a water bottle, despite the fact that I really didn’t want to figure out what to do if nature struck over the six hours I had to kill.  From what it looked like, I was unfortunately not early enough to be the front of the line, but it only looked like there were like 40 or so people in advance of me, so I knew I would probably be good enough to stay and wait; my biggest fear was making the trek out there, only to discover the line was already wrapped around the building, and then be immediately defeated, but at least I’d be able to go back to sleep, but I was pleased knowing that I was possibly okay.

Honestly, the waiting wasn’t really that bad.  I did my Duolingo, did my Wordle and Connections and a crossword puzzle on my phone, and caught up on the previous night’s Week 1 College Football scores, feeling disappointment in Virginia Tech for allowing VMI to actually get on the board with a field goal in spite of hanging 70 points on them, and fascination at the masterclass of gaslighting done by the NCAA and Michigan to justify allowing Michigan to get a second, and ultimately successful chance to avoid the upset despite the fact that the clock struck zero but that’s possibly a post for another time.

I made a single-serving friend with the person next to me, whom I figured out the bathroom problem, by offering to get them a Red Bull while I jetted off to the nearby QT to take care of business since we still had like 4 hours to go, and we chatted wrestling and it helped chew up a lot of time.

However, it’s when the sun started to rise and the schedule event time neared did things start to progressively go from dubious, to hairy, to dishearteningly deflating, and frankly this post probably doesn’t happen if everything were as perfectly successful as I’d hope they would be.

When it was the darkness of the 4-5-6 am hour of the morning, the temperature wasn’t bad at all, but once that sun started coming up, the heat started to rise, and the impatience of the constantly growing line started to emerge.  All the while, Cricket employees would at first just be checking in, but the manager of the place would get on the megaphone to go over some of the expected rules of the event.

At first, they pissed off a lot of people by saying that there would only be one autograph per party, so all the people who wanted to get both Alexa and Penta to sign something now had to pick; it was an easy choice for me, and I was at least satisfied knowing that I could still get Alexa’s autograph, since I didn’t know I would really have a shot at it, coming into the event.

Then, they stated that photographs would be limited to a single group picture, meaning no individual pics with Alexa and individuals with Penta.  Presumably also, entire groups had to go in at once, and no family pic, and then pervy dad alone with Alexa pic in the same group.

With each successive announcement, there would be some grumbles, none more than from this one party of like 9 in front of me that brought like the whole fuckin’ family, including the kids and presumably a grandma with a cane, and I often ask myself why I’m such a fan of something that also has such downtrodden rednecks as superfans of it as well but that would be overly judgmental of me.  I had an idea of bringing the girls to meet Alexa with me, with their tag blets, since Alexa is a multi-time holder of those specific blets, but I definitely wouldn’t have wanted them to wait 6-7 hours like I ended up doing, and I’m surprised but not surprised at the families who actually did have their kids do such.

10:30 rolls around, and nobody’s seen any limo or luxury SUVs to indicate that the stars of the appearance were there and ready to go, and as if he knew what everyone was thinking, manager announces to everyone that the talent is “en route,” eliciting more bitching and moaning, specifically from the party of 9 rednecks in front of me.  I’d learned from stories of other Cricket appearances, that talent tardiness does tend to occur fairly regularly, and as disappointing as that is, it’s a free event, that alone right there gives all associated pretty much all the leeway in the world to do whatever the fuck they want to.

Probably around 11 is when two black SUVs arrive, and it’s obvious that the talent has arrived.  But the meet and greet doesn’t happen immediately, and the sun is up and blazing, and people are getting ornery at why things aren’t starting and the line not moving.  Nosier people than me who meandered up to the front to peep inside the store were reporting that Alexa and Penta were doing photos and autographs with the employees first, inciting even more angst from those in line.

And then the shit really hits the fan, when manager announces to the crowd, that neither Alexa or Penta will be doing any autographs, and that it’s just meet and photos only.  Maybe the first 10-15 parties got autographs, and those who were coming out of the store were clearly getting way more than a single article per, and combined with the employees who got to bogart talent time in advance of all the people, now everyone started getting pissed.

Party of 9 were basically screaming NO! NO! and loudly proclaiming their protest at the news of no autographs.  It’s clear they brought the whole family, thinking they would walk away with a Kay-Bee Toys worth of signed crap, and progressively complained more and more throughout the morning about the escalation of policy.

I felt the gut punch of disappointment at the revelation that I wasn’t going to get either of my photos signed, much less from Alexa, and it was agreed that the general mood of the whole event deflated tremendously from everyone in line, many of whom had been waiting as long, if not more than I had at this point, who were going to be going home empty handed.

But again, this was a free event, and nobody asked anyone to wait 6-7 hours for this, and they owed nobody anything, since they were not getting paid.  The manager, exasperated by the sudden rage, hilariously got on his mic to remind everyone that this event was being done by their generosity.

Obviously, seeing as how I’d already burned seven hours, I wasn’t going to leave without at least meeting Alexa and Penta, so I stuck around and got my ten seconds to shake their hands, and get a few rapid-fire shots on my phone as evidence that I did get to meet them.

Also to ask Alexa who her favorite Disney princess was because my daughters wanted to know (they didn’t, but it was a good conversation starter that made her stop and think) – she said Elsa.  

Needless to say, I’m not mad, just disappointed, in the whole experience.  I’m glad I got to meet two talents I like, but like many, I’m extremely disappointed in not being able to have a keepsake in the form of an autograph from it.  I’d rather have had the auto and no photo, than the other way around, but as many have documented these events being, it truly was a cattle call to churn people in and out of line as quick as humanly possible.

Again, as it was a free event, there’s a very low ceiling to how actually mad people are really allowed to be at it, and its rapid-fire changing of policy during it, and as is often the case, I’d frankly rather pay money for a guaranteed meet and autograph, and had Alexa Bliss done a paid appearance in advance of Saturday Sunday Night’s Main Event, I probably would have done it.

I take the whole experience as a valuable educational lesson learned, in the end.  Hearing how they were and experiencing it for myself weren’t far apart, and although it didn’t cost me much in terms of money, it had a massive time cost, to which that time is so precious to me, that I’m not willing to go through with this kind of thing again in the future.

I don’t know why the term ‘human kibble’ triggers me so much

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: Man of mass efficiency meal preps in large quantity, Vice opines whether ‘human kibble’ is viable or is just another internet trend

I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts and trying to articulate my words, but the bottom line is that I’m triggered by the phrase ‘human kibble’ and it bothers me enough to where it is manifesting in this brog post.

So what we have here is a guy who clearly values efficiency, not wasting a lot of time thinking about what to eat, and understanding the benefits to prepping food en masse.  What he basically makes is a gargantuan amount of fried rice, loaded with tons of veggies, tofu, chicken, rice and beans, and presumably, this is all he ever eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and has done so for several years now.

From the looks of the guy, whom based on his names is more than likely Korean, he’s in great shape, doesn’t look at all overweight, and is more than likely tremendously healthier than the troglodytes of the internet judging his culinary decision making who are mostly eating takeout sludge and closer to My 600 Lb. Life The 6,000 Lb. Diaries participants than they are to him. 

As mortifying as the thought of eating the same thing over and over again might seem to many people, it clearly works as far as this guy is concerned.  You’re not dieting for the taste… 

Frankly, I feel a bit of a kindred spirit in this guy, because I too also have the innate ability to eat the same thing over and over again without really getting tired of it.  A long time ago, I used to eat Willy’s pretty much 4-5 times a week for lunch.  Currently, I basically eat the same lunch every day.  Honestly, if I were still single and without kids and didn’t have to ever worry about anyone else, I’d probably have gone the same route as this guy, and been as happy as a clam in doing it.  

Add another idea to embark on if I were ever to discover a time machine and could go back in time to get ahead of the curve.

But where my ire begins is towards the people who have coined it as ‘human kibble,’ because I know that it’s typical dorks on the internet trying to get themselves over as inventors of clever quips, but at least to me, it comes off as demeaning, and even if it’s not its intent, slightly kind of racist.

Kibble is what was designed to the default food for all sorts of animals, and by denigrating this dude’s fried rice by calling it kibble is indirectly equating him to as being an animal.  Especially since the contents of his mass produced stir fry is all clean, fresh food, and again, probably way healthier than the people cracking jokes are eating, there’s something ironic about equating what he’s making and eating to something that is so default, for aniamls.

It doesn’t help that the man in question is Asian, seemingly Korean that doesn’t deter the racist narrative, because obviously there’s a low-hanging fruit of Koreans who have been known to eat dogs historically, and comparing what an Asian man eats to what dogs eat, dregs up this sour negative connotation that feels like it’s stemming from racism, regardless of how innocuous the origins of human kibble may have originated from.

Maybe this says more about me than it does about the masses, but the whole idea of people labeling mass-produced meal prep as ‘kibble’ rubs me the wrong way, and like I said, I’m having a hard time articulating everything the way I want to.  I don’t recall when there was a dude way back who invented a meal replacement shake and called it ‘Soylent,’ people at all denigrating it in any way, and instead applauding the idea and the massive savings in time they could enjoy by replacing all their meals with Soylent.

Mass-batch making fried rice is basically the same concept, except the end result is a hearty bowl of fried rice and not a viscous liquid.  The only differences are the skin color and nationalities of the creators.  It is nowhere near being the equivalent of kibble for humans, and the people who tried to get this to become the thing it already is, can all go fuck themselves.

When there’s an app for the commonplace

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

KRON4: SF-based dating site poorly hiding their objective of pairing white guys with Asian females in market where abnormally high WMAF pairings already exist draws massive online criticism

There’s a metaphor I like to use often, about a scenario where a hungry lion leaps into a herd of gazelle, but they’re so blinded by hunger that they can’t seem to focus on a single target, run around frenzied, and eventually all the gazelle get away.

That’s how I feel when I read this article, and I can’t help but wonder if the state of news these days aren’t really so much reports of actual topics as much as they’re reporting on the reception of actual topics.  Like I kind of get it, if I saw an article that was all like ‘there is a new dating app in SF that specializes in hooking white dudes up with Asian gold diggers women’ I’d just be kind of like lol eww fuckin white guys, but give me an article with the hook of ‘internet tears into new dating app in SF that specializes in hooking white dudes up with Asian women’ and now I’m kind of like rage?  What kind of rage?  And then I’m clicking the article and here we are.

But yeah, there’s so much to digest with a story like this that I can’t seem to focus and figure out where to start writing about first, because there’s just so many damn angles to approach this from.

Like how San Francisco is already a place where because there are so many nerdy white dude tech millionaire/billionaires in the area, there’s already a noticeably disproportionate amount of Asian women who land there pretending they’re not digging for gold, and the pairing of WMAFs organically happens, solely based on just fuckin’ nature.

Or how SF is such a smarmy arrogant place so reliant on tech, that they need to make apps and dating services and sites in order for people to function in daily life.  Like, white guys wanting Asian women in a city like SF should be as accessible as walking out the door and breathing fresh air, but these dorks needing apps to curate and do some of the lifting for them seems to be about as the most SF thing in the world.

Or just how gross white guys are, that they continue to fetishize Asian women as much as ever, to the point where fucking apps and services are developed in order for them to expedite their searches, instead of them waiting until they’re in their 50s and relocating to Thailand or the Philippines like legions of white guys before them.

Oh, and Asian women aren’t without criticism either, they’re not helping break the stereotype of Asian gold diggers who are looking for rich white wimps/simps/nerds to seduce and claim for their assets, and then entrap them either.  They’re as palpable to the problem as the white guys they’re seeking.

But like I said, so many angles, so difficult to approach.  San Francisco seems like such a weird place, and I frankly still have to say it’s up there on my top cities in America that I wasn’t impressed with and didn’t care much for.

Maybe they should focus on making an app to help rehabilitate the image of their shitty town, that focuses on identifying savvy PR people to try and take on such a lofty task.

The white man’s equivalent to blackout license plate covers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While I was commuting to the office one day, I noticed a Ford Bronco that had a vanity license plate that consisted of nothing but 1’s and I’s.  So if you can picture this description in your head, you can imagine that it’s basically a vanity plate with seven straight lines at a quick glance.  You can also probably also imagine that at a quick glance, it’s probably impossible to accurately pinpoint what the correct combination of characters is, which is more than likely the intention of the white guy who chose it and I’m confident that it’s a white guy because only white people drive and covet Ford Broncos the way they do.

The thing is, this isn’t the first deliberately deceptive vanity tag I’ve seen, it’s just that now I felt like writing about it, and how it seems to be a pattern that it’s always white men who tend to have them.  1I11II1, 0O00OO0, B888BB8, or any other combination of characters that have the capability to blend and confuse human eyes, which is more than likely the intention.  And when people have the intention to deceive, than more than likely it’s so that they can get away with deceit; probably just driving like a dick, but these days the hopes and thoughts that they can confuse the antichrist-like nefarious flock cameras that are all the rage in the increasing environment of surveillance.

And it’s always white males that do this.  Every time I’ve noticed one of these types of plates and I’ve managed to pull adjacent to the vehicle, it’s always been a white guy.  It’s not hyperbole, and it’s not just an isolated incident.  Definitely more than this one instance, but maybe not quite ten times, but every single time I’ve seen a deliberately confusing vanity tag, it’s been a white guy.

Clearly, this is the white man’s equivalent to the blackout license plate covers that black people who want to drive like dicks put on their cars; the intention is the same, but the approaches are different.  Black folk don’t want The Man and Big Brother to have it easy identifying their whips while they drive however the fuck they want to, so they use dark covers and obscurers, but in only the way Whitey can do, white folk do it by hiding in plain sight with completely legal, albeit hard to decipher, vanity plates.

I have a friend that’s in law enforcement, and they said that modern plate readers have no issue in being able to identify vague license plates, so really the intention of them is to confuse other people on the road.  The irony is that white or black, people who want to act like they’re trying to obstruct and make their license plates less identifiable, only draw more scrutiny to themselves by going to the lengths they do. 

If I saw an orange Ford Bronco whose license plate was a state-issued CWN5637, I’ll have forgotten it by the next light, but regardless of if I’m accurate or not, I’ll remember seeing I1II11I or whatever such combination actually is and know that the guy driving it is probably some entitled white guy who drives like a douche.

KOREAN JOHN CENA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I have an observation that I want to share with others.  But I sometimes have this anxiety of feeling like I make other people feel like I’m too frequent a social media poster, and I don’t like feeling like I’m the only one in some of my group chats that starts conversations or blurts out random things, and frankly social media is trash and is often times not worthy of the things I have to say, so thank goodness I have a personal brog for me to use as an outlet, even if nobody will ever see it.

But even if it’s just a statement that really doesn’t need much explanation, it then makes me feel like I need to write more words about it to justify making an entire post despite the fact that I have no real rules about what I write on a personal site but that’s just one of those weird self-imposed obligations I hold myself to, but if there’s anything at all, it’s a good exercise to endlessly be practicing my writing.

I just finished watching 참교육 which for all the white folk is Teach You A Lesson on Netflix.  When I first saw it popping up on the home screen, I couldn’t help but notice that the obvious main character of the show (김무열) was a dead ringer for John Cena, but if he were Korean.  Like seriously, it’s basically John Cena’s face with Korean eyes and black hair, but generally the exact same jaw line, cheekbone structure and silhouette of his head.  I couldn’t get over it, and always said to myself, or aloud when I saw him, KOREAN JOHHHHHN CENAAAA

Then because big brother is always watching, I got a preview reel of it on social, and I watched as Korean John Cena was killing a bunch of high school punks with defense, getting them to swing and miss and wail on each other, and then I thought to myself, yeah ok, this might be interesting to watch after all, and when the moment was right, I dove right into watching.

My mom would have called this an 엉터리 show, which is Korean for trash or bullshit, and from a literal point of view, yeah, it might be.  But I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy the it, because the plot was very linear, situations were exaggerated heavily for emphasis, it wasn’t a season of 26 episodes at 94 minutes each like a lot of Korean shows tend to drag on for, and of course, it had Korean John Cena.

And the best part is that his character, ERPB Inspector Na Hwa-Jin basically was like John Cena, in the sense that he was basically permanently Super Cena where nobody could hurt him, he was always coming out on top, and always seemed to have the moral high ground no matter the circumstances.

Hopefully the show doesn’t achieve the level of popularity to where white folks feel the need to re-make it for white people, even if the very Korean tropes featured throughout the show mostly wouldn’t hardly apply to Americans, but never underestimate white peoples’ ability to appropriate and twist things in order to make it work for whitey.  However, if this were ever to come to fruition and an American version of Teach You A Lesson starred actual John Cena in the leading role, then maybe it would have a chance.  Lord knows the role is tailor made for him.

Braves Job Alert: mid-tier Latino pitchers pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I saw a news article about how a former Atlanta Braves pitcher, Carlos Carrasco, had signed with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization.  This tingled my spider-senses because it was about baseball, it was about a guy who had been on the Braves, it was about Korea, it was about the KBO, where I had just seen a game for the first time, and it also just so happened to have featured the LG Twins; who lost to the Doosan Bears in spite of being the team with the better record when they play, but hey that’s why the play the games.

Anyway, in spite of my general ambivalence and distance from the Braves and just sports in general, I am familiar with Carlos Carrasco, because he was a guy on the team that it seemed to be notorious that he was cut from the major league roster pretty much every other week, before being re-signed by the Braves, pitch in a game or two, before being designated for assignment again, and the cycle would repeat itself, seemingly over and over again.

That’s not the kind of distinction any player should want, but for a bad sports fan like me who is more often times fascinated by the weird and interesting happenstances of sports, it’s how I remembered who he was.

It was in the 2025 season that I first noticed the pattern of Carrasco being jerked around, because it seemed to happen a lot, way more than I’d noticed it happening to any player before.  I mean, Uncle Jesse Chavez got a similar treatment in prior years, especially by the Braves, but not to the frequency in which it was happening to Carrasco.

According to Gemini, Carrasco’s 2025 season actually was, the most extreme case of revolving door roster ping-ponging for any player in history, as the poor guy was released and brought back an unprecedented seven times throughout the season. 

My knee-jerk reaction was that this had to have been related to the cheap-ass Braves wanting to save money and that the small gaps in between his cuts and re-signings, they’d be absolved of having to pay prorated daily wages, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how contracts work and that he was still due his contracted amount, and that his roster spot was more valuable and the chief reason for constantly shuffling him around. 

But at the same time, I don’t think the cheap-ass Braves’ payroll department was complaining about the lack of logistics and per-diem envelopes they were saving by the occasional absence of his physical being, so fuck those cheap bean counters all the same.

But the thing is, and I touched on it a second ago, with Jesse Chavez getting a similar treatment before Carrasco, is that I’ve come to the scientifically proven conclusion* that the Atlanta Braves seem to require the need to have a Latino pitcher of the mediocre, swingman variety, that they will jerk around back and forth on the roster and give them absolutely no chance to breathe, settle in, or genuinely feel like a part of the team.

*As much as I don’t want to have to explain that this is tongue-in-cheek, and that I have zero readers, I’ve been dealing with a lot of astonishingly stupid people on the internet and that’s my bad for engaging communities in the first place

So, it started, or rather I actually noticed this, in 2024, with the aforementioned Jesse Chavez; the man was already beloved in Atlanta, and prior to 2024, already had four prior stints with the Braves, including being a member of the 2021 World Series squad.  But after his championship contributions, the team didn’t get caught up in recency bias, let him walk, and he signed with the Cubs in 2022, where he did not start well, and in April, was traded back to the Braves, where he suddenly turned back into good Uncle Jesse, and pitched so well that the team was able to sell high on him and traded him to the Angels that August.  Apparently, changing out of his Braves uni made him suck again, and not even a full month later, the Angels cut him, and take a guess who was waiting to pick him back up?  The Braves.  Naturally, he pitched well for Atlanta again, and there was a funny narrative that was born about how he sucked for everyone except the Braves.

Uncle Jesse would sign and stay with the Braves for the entire 2023 season, and because he was on the Braves, he pitched well, enough to where he parlayed it into signing with the White Sox for more money the following season.  He bombed out in Spring Training and the Sox were forced to cut him, and naturally the Braves would pick him back up, and with someone else picking up half of his salary, would deliver again.  And then he’d sign with the Texas Rangers, suck, and of course the Braves would snatch him up again.

Which brings us to the 2025 season, where at 41, the magic was wearing off, and even in the magical Braves uni that gave him so much strength in the past, Chavez had become the next victim to the undefeated Father Time, his ERA ballooned up to 9.00, and the revolving door roller coaster began.  Two times he was cut and picked back up, with the second one of those he wasn’t even used, but it was at his third cut on July 17, 2025 that Chavez would declare his retirement from the game outright.

And on July 31, 2025, Carlos Carrasco was called up from the minor leagues.  I don’t know if he realized it, but he was basically going to be filling the void that Jesse Chavez had left behind, and he would remain on the squad for two weeks before getting his first cut, and then be brought back to finish out the season, literally one day later.

November 6, 2025, Carrasco would be cut by the Braves which is funny because the season was already over, but this would effectively be start of the 2026 season, where he would be about to make history:

11.06.25: cut by Braves (1)
11.08.25: signed by Braves
04.30.26: cut by Braves (2)
05.01.26: signed by Braves
05.07.26: cut by Braves (3)
05.08.26: signed by Braves
05.31.26: cut by Braves (4)
06.02.26: signed by Braves
06.12.26: cut by Braves (5)
06.15.26: signed by Braves
06.26.26: cut by Braves (6)
07.05.26: signed by Braves
07.09.26: cut by Braves (7)
07.22.26: signed by LG Twins

The scary thing is that this was just half of the season.  Imagine how many more times Carrasco would have ping-ponged in the months of July and August alone, before September call-ups would have probably done him in.

My knee-jerk reaction was naturally of amusement, and how Carrasco was probably thrilled to be getting a steady paycheck and probably have a consistent locker to use for the remainder of the 2026 season, even if he had to pack all his shit and go to Korea.  But the results speak for themselves, in his first start, Carrasco pitched seven perfect innings against the Doosan Bears, setting himself up to look like a demigod in Korea after being a training dummy in MLB.

Which brings us to the third guy in the picture above, Elieser Hernandez.  He’s no spring chicken at 31 years of age, and his MLB experience is nothing to sign about, having around 300 innings over six years of MLB experience, pitching in a variety of roles.  His career ERA was 5.10 prior to coming to the Braves. 

However, with the departure of Carrasco, Hernandez was called up on July 19, 2026, and he made his presence felt for Braves fans when he came out of the bullpen in a slugfest with the Baltimore Orioles on July 24, 2026, and pitched three innings of one-hit ball, getting the win.

He was promptly rewarded for his heroics by getting cut by the Braves on July 27, 2026, but he would re-sign with the team one day later.  Three days after that, he’d pitch three innings in a win against the Washington Nationals, notching an old-school three inning save, and I’m sure there’s some obscure stat where Elieser Hernandez is the first guy in MLB history to have his first two appearances with a team getting a Win and a Save, with a DFA in between.

Guess what happened two days ago?
August 3, 2026: Elieser Hernandez released by the Braves.

But then guess what happened one day ago?
August 4, 2026: Elieser Hernandez signed by the Braves.

Obviously the game is different now than it was five, ten, and twenty years ago.  Roster management is more important than it’s ever been, especially for poor teams and crying-poor teams who need to maximize their processes and efficiencies as optimally as possible to hope to have a prayer at competing against the Dodgers and their billion-dollar payroll of superstars that don’t have to be micromanaged.

And I’d be naïve if I didn’t assume that this is the kind of behavior that every team does to a degree, and that it’s not just the cheap-ass Braves doing it.  But it funny to conclude with the narrative that the Atlanta Braves have this mandatory requirement to have a Latino pitcher to be repeatedly spinning through the ringer, cutting and re-signing over and over again, and frankly it’s probably this kind of front office bullshit that will surely be a bullet point of contention this off-season when the owners and MLB players union embark on their collision course for next season’s inevitable strike.

SummerSlam, blets and moments

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t watch SummerSlam, nor did I actually care to even exert a modicum of effort in order to watch it.  I know that my general fandom of the WWE product has been tested and waning over the last year or so and the grand consensus of all the changes and corporatization of the company is resulting in me gaining more and more distance from the product like it were 1990 all over again and my parents cancelling cable television, preventing me from keeping up with the biz.

Every show is behind a different pay wall, Fanatics has standardized and priced merchandise to inaccessibility, and frankly the product blows chunks now.  Storylines are convoluted and limited to the smallest of pools, and RAW on Netflix is so overwhelmingly buried in ads, I sometimes feel like I’m watching a pirated stream instead of a program that I’m paying a subscription to watch.

That being said, when one of my bros asked our group chat if anyone were watching SummerSlam, it took me 0.2 seconds to respond ‘no.’  I left out the part that I thought it was probably going to be mid as fuck, and the whole two-night show thing that TKO is trying to force like it’s a second Wrestlemania seems like bullshit and when the day is over, there were only two matches on the entire event that I remotely cared about.

Additionally, I knew that there was little point to watching the show, given the fact that with maybe an 18-minute delay, the results of every single match would be spoiled and revealed on various social media outlets, and I could get the Cliff’s notes on the entire show without having to sit through all the ads, rest holds, and botches from the gradual blunting of talent over the last years.

The good news for me was that the two matches I did care about, ended in the ways that I was happy with.  One was predictable, which was the culmination of Chad Gable’s redemption story, with him defeating Penta for the Intercontinental championship.  In the past, I would’ve said for certain that Gable was going to lose, because in the Vince McMahon era of the company, it was almost an unwritten rule that superstars did not win in their hometowns, but in the TKO era, they’re so obsessed with creating moments but more importantly farming footage for future UnTolds, that stuff like this flips, and it’s become pretty predictable, even moreso than it used to be, even for a wrestling oracle like myself.

But still, I’m happy to see Chad Gable get a signature W at the event, because the man has been one of the hardest working and mold-breaking performers over the last few years and it always brings me great joy to see hard workers get their just desserts.

The other match I was intrigued in, ended in really the only winner I had hoped for, but assumed was not going to be the case, which was Chelsea Green climbing to the top of the ladder and winning the Women’s championship, made vacant by the very legitimate Rhea Ripley injury.

As much as I love Chelsea and the internet loves Chelsea, there’s no denying that the E has treated her like this expendable comedy act, and given the fact that she was in the match with former champions like Charlotte, Jade Cargill and Tiffany Stratton, it seemed more likely the E would give it to one of the safe choices, and that Chelsea was there to provide some highlights and outstanding character work.

But the E loves to give surprises, and like I had mentioned, I’m convinced now that they’re so fixated on creating compelling content for UnTold documentaries, they allowed for the impossible to happen, and regardless of their motivations, I was stoked to discover that Chelsea Green had outlasted all the competition, and walked away as the new women’s champion.

Naturally, both these matches occurred on Night 2 of SummerSlam, and if the E really wants to ensure that two-day events have any modicum of succeeding in the long run, they have got to stop backloading their events so blatantly, because history has not been kind to the small number of two-day events they’ve held thusfar, with Night 1 shows being mid as fuck compared to their Night 2 counterparts.

Among the ocean of mediocrity that was the rest of SummerSlam, what stood out to me the most was the introduction of, what’s being called the ESPN Moment of the Night championship blet, inconsequentially being handed out, pretty informally on social media, to the worker of the show that, much to the low-hanging fruit name of the title goes, perceived to have made the best moment of the night.

Night 1 of SummerSlam, the “title” went to Oba Femi, presumably because of his emotional and landmark victory over Brock Lesnar, supposedly ending the career of one of the most impactful performers in the history of the business.  I mean, considering what else was on the card that night, it was pretty low-hanging fruit, and much like the importance of what the title represents, it’s pretty useless, and for a jaded smark like me, actually more of a detriment, because I kind of see it as ESPN giving a middle finger to all the oldhead fans like myself who don’t like all these paywalls, all these separate services, and all the infectious corporatization of the product we once loved so much.

That being said, as happy as I was to see Chelsea Green win the Women’s championship, it was like someone peeing into the pool of celebration when I later saw that ESPN had “awarded” her with the ESPN moment of the night blet, and seeing it on her shoulder in conjunction with an infinitely more meaningful prize on her other.  Fewer things spoil a good time than the arrival of the asshole that everyone doesn’t like but feels obligated to be civil towards because they have a lot of money and influence.

Either way, I’m stoked that performers I like got their flowers and moments at SummerSlam, but at same time I feel satisfied with my choice to not bother watching or pursuing the show because aside from those two matches I don’t really feel like I missed anything, and even if there were, it’s not like I wouldn’t be able to find it on YouTube or any other temporary hosting of the important things.

But that fucking ESPN blet, it is astonishing, that TKO has managed to create a championship blet that is somehow more meaningless and has less importance than any of the 25 straps circulating in the AEW/ROH wrestling space, as well as any of the 14 straps that Mercedes Mone was concurrently holding a little while back.