Pokémon is what makes it funny

Newsworthy: parkour hero scales four stories in like four seconds in order to rescue child hanging off of a ledge in Paris.  French president applauds his act of heroism and immediately expedites his pursuit of French citizenship and immediately offers him a job with the Paris fire brigade.  A wonderful story of bravery and a reward fitting of a hero who deserves it.

Brogworthy: child ended up in the precarious situation because his dad left him unsupervised so he could go to the market and play Pokémon Go on the way back.  Dad faces two years in prison for child neglect.  Because of Pokémon Go.

Even before it was revealed that dad was out being an idiot, this was still a fantastic story of a legitimate hero who did something extraordinary.  It’s a happy ending for all, because the kid didn’t fall to his death, and the Malian immigrant who scaled the building like Spider-Man to rescue the kid is instantly rewarded with the French citizenship he was aspiring to gain. 

There’s not much to talk about in a situation like this, and it’s easiest to simply marvel in the incredible feats of human bravery and feel like our collective faith in people can gain a point or two for such selfless courage.

But then it comes out that the kid was left unsupervised by a deadbeat of a father who went out to the market, and then decided to leisurely take his time coming back so that he could play some Pokémon Go.  Now, it’s something to brog about.

Full disclosure: I still play Pokémon Go.  It’s literally taking me an entire year to go from level 34 to 35, and there’s a litany of life milestones that I’m fairly confident that I’ll hit before I can get to the maximum level 40, and knowing my luck, Niantic, if they’re even still around in six years, will raise the max cap to like 50, and then I’ll be fucked and proclaim I’ll stop but then probably won’t anyway.

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So bad, it’s worth a post

I’m not even going to bother prefacing the post about how I think today’s NBA is shit, it was better in the past, yadda yadda.  But the sports fan in me was intrigued by the fact that both the eastern and the western conferences were going to game 7s, and when I had little else to do on a long holiday weekend, I figured why not tune in to see what was happening?  When the dust settled, we were left with the Golden State Warriors versus the Cleveland Cavaliers; for the fourth straight year, which is a marvel in itself, and something that if Marty McFly told me was going to happen back in 1998, I would’ve disavowed the entire Back to the Future franchise as a whole.

I mean, going into the playoffs, I would’ve bet money that it was going to turn out this way; Golden State is the modern day super team that actually is super and actually does win basketball games.  And on the other side, we have LeBron James whom with each passing year truly deserves to have his name mentioned in the same breath as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, as a player who inexplicably has the ability to win, by almost nothing more than sheer force of will sometimes, regardless of whom the Cavaliers field around him, because he just puts the team on his back and has overcome some majorly dubious odds this particular playoffs to get to where they are now.

But the point of this post isn’t about how great the Warriors are or how amazing LeBron James is, but more about how the Houston Rockets basically gifted the Warriors the west, and how they weren’t so much a team that was beat by the superior team as much as they were the squad of fucking idiots that simply didn’t understand how to change plans when it was abundantly clear that their Plan A was just not working.

The eye test when watching the game notices that the Rockets are jacking up an inordinate amount of three point shots.  The Warriors too, but the difference is that the Warriors were making a few of them here and there, while the Rockets were flinging enough bricks to build a village in Zaire.  The Rockets’ 11-point lead at the half was quickly whittled away and when Durant, Curry and Thompson started burying some practically half court shots to start taking the lead and begin their usual pulling away from the opponent spiel, the Rockets simply did not pivot and change up their plans accordingly.  Instead, they threw up bad three pointer after bad three pointer, and I’m thinking to myself, does this team know how to play basketball inside the key?

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Thoughts on Solo: A Star Wars Story

*SPOILER FREE* If there’s any more indication to how I felt about Solo: A Star Wars Story, is the fact that it’s been just a day since I watched it, and I’ve already forgotten that I’d seen it.

This isn’t to say that it was a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, it’s hardly a film that’s remotely memorable in any real fashion.  On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being bad and ten being excellent, I would rate Solo at a 5, for average, solid mediocrity.  It was far from the excessively fatalistic and pessimistic expectations of the film that the cesspool of the internet and the cancers of social media would lead people to believe, but it was nowhere near the level of quality that was Rogue One, the other Star Wars Story film.  I would still rank it above Episodes 1-3 of the canonical storyline; although that doesn’t say that much, it at least shows that it’s still better than other films and therefore not the worst movie in the history of film.

It’s just not a particularly memorable film that has any sticking power in my opinion.  One of the only sentiments of the film prior to its release that I agree with, is that I questioned the necessity of a standalone Han Solo film in the first place.  I don’t disagree that it’s in all likelihood a money grab, trying to cash in on the familiarity of existing intellectual properties, but after Rogue One, I had hoped that future Star Wars Stories films would be similar, in the sense that they would be widely original characters and storylines independent from the reset of the main canon plot, while existing in the same universe.  But instead, two editions in, and we’re getting an origin story that kind of floats almost independently in the timeline of the canon, that would require some creative shoe-horning in order to make fit adequately in the stream of the story, because they’ve used primary characters.

To me, this implies that there will be a future necessity for Luke and Leia, since the childhoods of either would probably be way too boring to sustain their own films, and from what I understand, there’s a lot of scuttlebutt about a film about Boba Fett, to which I’ll never understand the mass astonishment for a character that really had a total of maybe 7-14 minutes of total screen time within the original trilogy, to have such a devout following, not to mention that his origins were already somewhat explored in the abysmal episodes 1-3.

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Danny’s latest television binges, May 2018

Sometimes, a show isn’t great enough to warrant its own post, but still good enough to be worth mentioning, when combined in the same breath as several other like-quality shows.  And when we have enough of them, it becomes worthy of a composite binge topic to where I can list off some of the shows I’ve seen recently that weren’t groundbreaking or mind blowing, but still worth something enough in usually time or effort to mention.

Ugly Delicious (pictured above, Netflix) – At first blush, I’ve never really been a fan of restauranteur, David Chang.  Part of it was the fact that I found his opinion of his New York restaurants versus the world to be pretentious and arrogant, but mostly the fact that David Chang really reminds me of myself, that is if I were successful in my field and world renown.  But he grew up in Northern Virginia, is only a little bit older than me, and based on a lot of his monologues throughout the show, thinks in ways that I feel is very similar to my own lines of thinking.

However, Ugly Delicious, as much of a celebrity circle-jerk it tends to turn into repeatedly, was still a really quality series that I enjoyed a good deal.  It’s thought-provoking, definitely conversation worthy, and there’s a lot of laughs to be had from it.  It’s a definite good show for anyone who either likes food, is interested in classism, racism and cultural appropriation, is Asian, or frankly, all of the above.  It changes my opinion of Chang to be a little more favorable, but at the same time I’m skeptical that a lot of the soul in the show is still staged for the sake of show creation, but when it was all done with, I still enjoyed the series and would recommend it to others.

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I’m over having my Star Wars fandom invalidated

I’m a fan of Star Wars.  This shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise, as I am very nerdy and have many nerdy interests.  However, throughout the years, I have been told that I am “not as much of a fan” of Star Wars as other people because of a myriad of reasons, with more recently because I don’t have a strong definitive opinion about The Last Jedi.*  Or the fact that I’m not remotely associated with the 501st or have a Rebellion or Empire sticker tattooed on me or brandished on my car.

*I didn’t think it was the best SW film, but I have not declared a jihad against it either

With the standalone Solo film around the corner, I’ve noticed people on social media being super curmudgeon about its release, and how they’re going to make zero effort to watch it and have basically denounced Star Wars as a franchise.  Or any other rhetoric along those lines.  I mean that’s fine and all that they’re not looking forward to it, but I think it’s a little excessive to be lifting a leg and farting all over those people who don’t take SW as serious as a religion.  Perhaps consider learning how to temper expectations, because even the best people in their fields don’t bat 1.000, and it’s only with the possibility of failure where the cream of the crop can truly rise.

But because I tend to not be so extreme in any direction about my excitement or apprehension about Star Wars, or anything really, I often get accused of being something of a filthy casual fan, who knows little about the franchise, and whose opinion about the franchise doesn’t matter as much as someone who, has SW tattoos, emblems on their car, or dresses up as Stormtroopers at Dragon*con.

The thing is, just because my fandom in Star Wars isn’t as vocal, as outwardly or so open to the rest of the world doesn’t mean that I’m no less of a fan.  I could name planets that aren’t mentioned in the canon films like Kashyyyk.  I played my fair share of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and Knights of the Old Republic.  There has been a lot of Star Wars in my life over the years, it’s just that I’m not so obnoxiously outward with it as the whole rest of the narcissistic world is.

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Kind of want

Despite the fact that I generally try to eat pretty clean the vast majority of the days of the year, every now and then I still cave into the temptation of absurdly ridiculous food monstrosities.  Fried Oreos, racks of ribs, Aporkalypses, Chinese buffets, Golden Corral, etc.  Sure, I certainly wouldn’t mind dropping 25-30 lbs., but at the same time, I’m not willing to go cold turkey on the good shit of the culinary world.

That said, I’m reading about Chili’s The Boss burger, and I’m just thinking to myself, “that doesn’t look half bad,” and “I can take this.”

Now I don’t have a jihad against chain restaurants like most of the people in the world who think they’re the anti-christ of commerce.  They exist, but often times pale in comparison to the better food available at the various local or independently owned restaurants that exist all around Atlanta.  But as far as chain restaurants go, I’m actually quite fond of Chili’s, even though I’ll probably be conscious to pay with cash the next time I ever go to one.  I think they have some of the better quality ribs available at a chain, and I can’t really recall the last time I was utterly unsatisfied by an experience there.

But with the emergence of The Boss, I can’t help but feel that my next excursion to a Chili’s is bound to happen sooner rather than later.  I don’t really care about the alleged 1,650 calories and lord only knows how much saturated fat in that burger, all I know is that it looks like an adversary that I can easily defeat and relegate into my digestive system, and I want to do it.

The Boss – we’re coming for you n

Welp, Georgia is kind of fucked

I’m always a little bit surprised at myself whenever I decide to write about politics, especially local ones that only really those people who live in Georgia, a smaller parameter would even understand.  But I guess caring about politics is one of those things that comes with age, for those of us who weren’t destined to be into politics as younger people, or who really knows, it’s something that I feel like I have some words to expend, and it’ll still be a ways before this even gets seen by eyes other than my own.

Anyway, long story short, Georgia has now narrowed down its field for the next governor of the state.  And in my opinion, no matter who emerges from this field of muck to become the next governor of Georgia, I hope Georgians are ready to suffer and/or be prepared to go back in time.  One way or the other, I can’t help but feel like Georgia is fucked no matter what happens in this particular race.

In one corner, we have Stacey Abrams representing the Democrats.  To say she won handily would be an understatement; at hoovering up 76% of the vote, she obliterated the competition, and patiently awaits the runoff to see who she will be opposed against on the Republican side.

Oh, and she’s a black woman vying to become the first black woman to ever hold a seat of elected state governor in the entire history of the United States.  Georgia may have become a little more progressive over the last few decades, but emphasis on “a little.”  Outside of Atlanta, Savannah and parts of Augusta, the whole rest of the state is still red as the Chicago Bulls logo, and I can’t imagine that people in these remote country areas are going to even hesitate to pick “not the colored woman” on the ballot in November.

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