Month: February 2013

How the times have changed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Whenever I walk up to the elevators in my building, sometimes there is an elevator waiting open, and sometimes I have to push the button to call for one.  Regardless of whichever of those is the case, I can fairly easily say that it’s with a majority consistency; the very last elevators in the back of the corridor are the ones I end up having to ride.  I like to call those last two elevators the Rosa Parks elevators; because they’re all the way in the back.

In honor of black history month, it’s time for yet another danny is a racist post, poking fun at double standards and ironic inequality.

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Warm Bodies was a warm something alright

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I think the most telling thing is that when the ending credits roll, Jonathan Levine’s name doesn’t show up anywhere on it; probably because he doesn’t want anyone to realize that he was responsible for such a lame movie, as the director and screenplay writer.

So yeah, Warm Bodies was a pretty crappy movie, in a nutshell.  It was slow paced, predictable, mostly anti-climactic, and often times just plain boring.  Not even Rob Corddry could rescue it, and John Malkovich wasn’t in it nearly enough to bring it back to some degree of watchability.

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The things that shape us

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure what brought this memory to surface, but when I look back at it, I feel like it deserves a bit of contribution to shaping who I am today. Meaning that someone was once harshly abrasive towards me with racist undertones, contributing towards making me the person who is astute to racist issues while laughing at them at the same time.

When I was in the fifth grade, I remember being pulled out of class, and taken to the office. Back in elementary school, I was a pretty non-descript unpopular fat kid (can’t really say that much has changed) who mostly kept quiet, so this occurrence was puzzling to me, as well as concerning as getting pulled into the office would be for any grade school kid. The lady that pulled me out of class was one of the ESL teachers; I have always spoken English, being born in the states, so this was doubly puzzling.

Anyway, I was sat down in one of the cushy office chairs in the waiting area, and the woman stood in front of me and with a narrowing of the eyes, and the finger of accusation pointed at my face, began tearing into me.

“Where are your parents from??”
“Do you know what they’ve gone through??”

But then came the words “How DARE you??” and I knew that I was being accused of something. What it was, I don’t really know, because frankly I don’t recall to having done a single thing wrong in this particular instance. The bottom line is that I don’t recall all of the specific words, but it was clear that this was a race-related issue at hand, because it was the ESL teacher (who was white, by the way), who naturally by nature of her job, dealt with all of the foreign-born students to whom English was not their native language.

The thing was though, she was approaching this lecture to me in what I thought was the absolute worst approach ever; by disciplining racism with well, racism. Her scathing reprimand on me targeted my parents, my Korean heritage, and there were a lot of undertones insinuating that my being Korean was somewhat of a pejorative. I sat there kind of leaned back, trying to get away from her finger point of righteous American justice, during her entire maniacal tirade, completely baffled out of my mind to why this was going on.

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Photos: Porkapalooza 2013

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This past weekend, I made a brief trip up to Charlottesville to visit some friends.  On the docket was a trip into rural bumfuck Gordonsville, where they happened to have a pretty decent barbecue joint called The Barbecue Exchange, where they happened to be having their annual Porkapalooza event.  Basically, ten bucks, and as much bbq buffet as one can stomach.

In spite of snow flurries and actual freezing temperatures, it was a good occasion of eating pigs like pigs, as well as enjoying good company.  The quality of the bbq, despite being churned out quickly for buffet purposes, was still pretty good, and I liked their variety of sauces.  Their creative desserts were also almost all very good.

In terms of bang for buck, it really doesn’t get any better than this, so I’d have to say Porkapalooza was one fantastic event, and was a highlight of a pretty pleasant trip.

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I’m not sure what DC Comics is thinking

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When I first read about this story, my kneejerk reaction was that I sure hope that this wasn’t going to be part of a canon storyline.  Fortunately for all parties involved, this is more of a one-off storyline that coincides with the release of a DC Comics related video game of some sort, but the point remains about how dumb this concept is, and that this is not the first time that DC Comics has failed to grasp a concept that they created.

Despite the fact that it’s not canon story, I’ll still exercise the consideration to refrain from discussing it without the fair warning that there are some spoilers ahead; after all, like in Inception, once an idea is put in place, it can never be removed, like a festering disease, and if you don’t have to think about it, it’s best to never be exposed to it in the first place.

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An obligatory Varentine’s Day post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I use the term “obligatory” because honestly I’m starting this post without my idea of what I’m going to write, but I feel like writing something anyways, so I’m taking a stab at it regardless.

I’m single, and I’ve been single for the better part of the last, shit, seven years. Since then, my life as it pertains to romantic pursuits has been as sporadic as locust swarms, and if that analogy’s too discreet, it’s to say that I have gotten very, very little activity over a long period of time. It’s impossible for me to say that there’s really anyone to blame for this drought but myself, as I’d be the first to admit that I have as much game as the Sega Saturn, to which if that analogy is too obscure, it’s to say that I’ve got very little game, period.

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Imagine eSports playing sports games

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, I know I take a lot of time and use a lot of words to criticize professional gaming, but really it is very silly to me, and I have a hard time grasping that it’s become so big.  It’s watching people, playing video games; sure it takes talent, but I could watch people playing video games in lots of places.  And based on the frequency in which I see ads for “whatever regional world championship tournament” when I’m playing LoL, it’s hard to imagine that any one particular title has any meaning.

But the funniest thing for me is when I see pictures of the tournaments, and they’ve got these pretty grandiose graphic treatments, and they try to present the matches as if they were like an actual sport.  Out of all of the live graphics that they use, none of them stands out more to me than when a LoL tournament goes to the effort to present a startling lineup card, much like it would be in an NBA or an NCAA game, since it’s five starters.

And then it got me thinking about how LoL positions would compare to basketball positions.  I would use the analogies as such:

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