Month: June 2017

Using two lockers at the gym is a dick move

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seldom does a day go by where at least once, I don’t think to myself how great it would be if I were Luke Cage.  A fairly unsuspecting guy who can blend in anywhere he goes, but he’s really practically invulnerable and has super strength and for the most part doesn’t ever have to be afraid of anyone because not just anyone can actually harm him with fists, knives or even bullets.

Seriously, if I had the capabilities of Luke Cage, I probably wouldn’t go off and become a Defender and try to be any sort of a superhero.  Superheroes get super villains, and then there are a whole lot of superhero responsibilities that come with being one.  No, I’d just want to capitalize on the confidence of knowing that I’m pretty much invincible and start doing all the things I think and say in my head, and say them out loud, since all fear of physical retribution is off the table if one were Luke Cage.

If I saw someone littering outside, I could actually not be reluctant to call out and reprimand them and then force them to pick up their shit.  They could step up all they wanted, and even throw the first punch, but when I’m Luke Cage, their fist would get shattered, and then they’d have to do what I told them, lest I grab them by the collar and personally walk them to some police or something.  Or if I’m on public transportation, and someone is blasting music out of their earbuds that everyone can hear, I can tap them on the shoulder and ask them to turn it down, and when they escalate the situation from their rotten defiance, I can wait for them to try and land the first blow and then dominate them without any fear of harm.

The list of things that would be great if I were Luke Cage could go on for days honestly, but of all the things that could possibly actually get this particular post off the ground, it would be calling out people at the gym, that for whatever reason it is, feel the need to occupy two lockers in the locker room to store their shit.

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Not sure if fan of dumping V6s

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Honda is dumping the V6 engine from the Accord, replacing with turbo-charged four

Despite its fairly vanilla existence, I’ve often held the Honda Accord in relative esteem.  The first time in my life that my family got a new car, it was a 1990 Honda Accord.  White, naturally, as Asian people loved cars that were either white or champagne color.  It was like the coolest event in the world back then, and the Accord seemed like a spaceship compared to the dated old Toyota Celica that it had replaced.

Years later, my family ended up getting another Accord, a 1998 model.  I remember this one, because I thought that the car was intended to be for me, but ultimately ended up with my dad absconding with it, when he was working away from home, out in Chattanooga for a few years, which led to a lot of sour grapes on my end.  For a while, my dad drove the shit out of it before he ended up barely driving it at all, and when he traded it in a little over a year ago, the car was nearly 16 years old and never crossed the 100,000 mile mark, which for a Honda is barely half its lifespan.  Along the way, my mom got a used 1994 Accord that she ran into the ground, but the point is that my family has had a lot of Honda Accords. 

Ultimately, I view the Accord as a trustworthy reliable car, in spite of its vanilla existence, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned more recently, it’s the de facto car of choice for Indian families; seriously, the sheer amount of Honda Accords in my apartment complex belonging to Indian families is almost an anthropological marvel.  But the Accord is a name that people associate with affordable, safe, and decently performing, and if I were at that stage of my life where I wanted a family-friendly automobile that I’d feel good about anyone driving and wouldn’t be too much of a chore for me to drive myself, the Honda Accord wouldn’t be the worst choice in the world.

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Remembering Adam West

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ll be honest, the vast majority of times I hear about a media personality dying, I don’t really care.  Actors, musicians, performers, guys like Chris Cornell, Roger Moore, Chuck Berry or Bill Paxton come to mind.  Some, I feel like I should have appreciated more than I did, like Mary Tyler Moore and Don Rickles, but they were also of a different time than my own, and I never sought them out later in life.  Often, I’ll see stories of their passings flash on the web and social media, and sometimes I’ll recognize their names, but other times, I quickly come to the conclusion that as unfortunate as the loss of life may be, I didn’t really know much about them, have any sort of emotional, nostalgic connection with them, and not really care and be off with the rest of my days.

Adam West is a different story however, because I am a nerd who was and is a fan of Batman in just about every possible iteration of the property.  And despite all the jokes throughout history about a jaded and resentful portrait of Adam West, resentful of the passage of time and the laundry list of other actors who have portrayed the character, there was always a shred of truth to his underlying message: he’s Batman.

As campy and corny the 60s television series was, it was still classic and iconic television that will probably never be touched in terms of formula and execution.  As a kid, I wanted to mock it and goof on how campy it was, but when the day was over, I realize that I had sat through two episodes of the show and found myself enjoying it.  Every day after elementary school was the same formula:

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I should go tryout for the Braves

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Don’t be deceived by the Braves’ second third place in the standings – they’re in the division that refuses to have anyone other than the Nationals at over .500 in record, and if the Braves were in almost any other division in the majors, they’d be the last place team they deserve to be.  Which speaks volumes to how much the Phillies and Marlins are sucking, when they’re somehow worse than the Braves and the Mets.

Needless to say, despite “not” being a “last place” team, the Braves are smart enough to continuously be putting feelers out in the world, and looking for diamonds in the rough.  Which is to say, the Braves are a notoriously cheap team that is always hoping to find diamonds in the rough that they can pay the absolute minimal amount of salary and hope to get the absolute maximum amount of output for.

With that being said, the Braves are one of the few teams in baseball left that still holds open tryouts, with 2017 being no exception.  Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like, where the Atlanta Braves conduct baseball tryouts, to the public, to see if there’s any diamonds in any rough, that are worth taking a flyer out on, and offer the slightest sliver of chance at earning the chance to get paid (peanuts) to play baseball, professionally.

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When to not fuck with Wawa

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Wawa suing New Jersey convenience store named Dawa for infringement of copyright, citing that their name and wordmark is too similar to theirs

I’m torn – on one side of the field is Wawa, the convenience chain that I went to a lot when I got my license, whose sandwiches and iced tea I love more than many people on the planet.  But on the other side, Dawa is Korean owned and operated, and I always have a soft spot in my heart for my people just trying to make a living and minding their own business.

Ultimately, as much as it pains me to take the side against Koreans, the reality is that they don’t really have much ground to stand on when it comes to going up against a vastly larger company such as Wawa.  And honestly, Wawa’s not wrong, since Dawa’s storefront and wordmark are pretty much copied straight out of Wawa’s identity.

The defense isn’t wrong, and “dawa” in Korean (다와) is roughly translated to “come all,” which is a pretty positive name for a convenience store, but the unfortunate reality is that when the day is over, Wawa came first, and they have the high ground when it comes to who gets to use the goofy-sounding word and what all imitators are based off of.

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Why change a solid logo?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly, there are rumblings that the NBA needs to change its logo.  The Undefeated has made a game of potential silhouettes to replace Jerry West; naturally being The Undefeated, ten of them are black guys, and then Larry Bird, almost like an obligation to option out a non-black guy as to not seem too obvious. But the question I really have is, why??  Why change the NBA logo?  There’s nothing at all wrong with it!

This isn’t like the Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves or any other sports team name that triggers white guilt and is always in the conversation of needing to be changed because they’re construed as offensive.  This isn’t like the Vietnamese skin care center that uses a logo that’s too infringe-y to an existing copyright and needs to be changed, so people don’t mistake them as manufacturers of zombie serum.  Or this isn’t like, Wendy’s, whose prior wild western-looking type face made their brand look as old as the era in which the font best represents.

The NBA logo is an icon in itself, and has no need for change, especially for no good reason other than the sake of change.  It doesn’t help when Jerry West, the alleged basis of the silhouette in the logo is all white-guilty and is clamoring for a change as well, but thankfully the NBA themselves continues to deny it as to deny leverage to West.

But really, there’s no need for change.  What for?  MLB has never changed their logo, and you better fucking believe that the NFL isn’t going to change their logo.  Stability and longevity is what gives strength to logos, and the NBA would be flushing 70+ years of tradition and history down the toilet because the world feels like change should occur on some basis other than never, for everything, including long standing identities and brands. 

Brands that want to last and thrive know how to commit and stick with something for the long haul.  The NBA changing their logo for no real good reason is a stupid idea, and I hope they never actually do it.

Now it’s time to party

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Honestly, I’ve lost track of all the contents of all the trucks that have overturned, crashed and dumped their contents all over Georgia highways.  I remember off the top of my head the hams, some potatoes, a few beer trucks, and the recent spilling of watermelons all over the highway, but the intricate list of everything I’ve posted in the past is kind of forgotten in the time being while my site is still mostly offline.

So my general intentions of trying to see what ingredients were available, that might be able to pair or mix with the truck full of Jack Daniels that overturned on the ramp to I-75 south this morning is not really going to happen, but if anything at all, we can simply add a liquor truck to the hall of pain of rogues to have crashed and dumped all their shit onto the roads.

The funny thing about this particular situation is that given its location, near a lot of bougie, WASPy area is the speed in which this was taken care of.  At the time of me writing about this, the truck has already been uprighted, and will probably be towed off and cleared by the time I’m done vomiting words about the incident.  Coincidentally, all those who contributed to the expedient resolution of the incident just might be absconding with any unbroken cargo, and when loss prevention tries to inventory the payload, they’ll just be deemed lost assets.

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