Month: July 2018

Thoughts on GLOW season 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I loved GLOW season 1 on Netflix.  I was very pleased when I heard that they were going to make a second season of the show, and I was excited when it came out.  The thing is, I didn’t watch it right away, and it eventually fell behind in a queue of other films and shows that I didn’t watch immediately as well, because I’m neurotic about wanting to have more than adequate time to watch things, and simply won’t if I feel that I don’t.

While mythical gf has been out of the country, I’ve been systematically chopping away at this queue, and I’ve been watching films like Ready, Player One (book was way better), and shows like Cloak & Dagger (took 4 episodes before it actually started going somewhere) and Sharp Objects (still not sure what’s going on, but it’s an HBO show and they’re always about the long form).  After I got caught up with all these other things, I found myself in a place where the only thing that I feel that I really needed to catch up with was the second season of GLOW.

There’s a part of me that wonders why I waited this long to watch GLOW, but then there’s another part of me that’s glad that I watched it last, because much like the first season, the second was as enjoyable, and at just ten, 30~ish minute episodes, it moves quickly, and if there’s one thing I love in programming these days, it’s quickly.

In my opinion, season 2 doesn’t so much feel like a choppy pick-up from where the first season left off, but it’s a pretty smooth transition from one season into the next, that if I were told that it was filmed sequentially immediately after the first season, I’d have believed it.  The storylines are nothing complex, much like the professional wrestling industry itself, but there’s a lot more character growth and spotlights being distributed a little better amongst the women of the show, and just about everyone gets at least a minute or two to shine at some points of the show.

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Welp, Georgia’s fucked

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I really want to care about the governorship of Georgia, but I’ve kind of enjoyed how the state has been over the last few years, and I’d like to see it continue on a similar path.  I dig how Nathan Deal has been this left-leaning Republican that always sides with money, even if it means going against the things that the right loves to gobble up like institutional racism and homophobic discrimination in the name of religion.  It’s always been somewhat of a societal safety net knowing that no matter what bullshit bills or laws rise to be on the cusp of sending the state of Georgia back a few decades, Nathan Deal has pretty much always gone against it, if there was any modicum of chance that it would negatively impact the state’s financial fortunes in any way, shape or form.

Unfortunately, all things do come to an end, and because of term limits, Nathan Deal is on his way out.  Vying for his seat is Democrat Stacey Abrams, but I’m kind of already discounting her chances, because she’s a black woman, and despite the fact that I’d prefer her win over her opponents, I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that’s she’s going to win over enough votes in the racist redneck parts of Georgia whose votes unfortunately still count the same as they do in Atlanta. 

Abrams winning would definitely be a massive victory in so many ways, but I unfortunately don’t think she has much of a chance.  Georgia represented hard as it ever has in 2016, but the state still tilted red, and regardless of how much the culture of the country may have shifted since then, there’s still an inexplicable amount of people who will vote for the Republican for the sake of political affiliation, and then there are the racists who won’t vote Abrams because she’s black, and then there are the sexists who won’t vote Abrams because she’s a woman.  Or all of the above.

That being said, I’ve been way more interested than I ever thought I would be in the race for the Republican primary, because the way I predict it, whomever comes out the Republican race is pretty much already the new Governor, and it’s basically a lesser of two evils scenario that I feel Georgians should really be concerned about.

I’ve posted more times about this than I thought I ever would have, but on one side we have Casey Cagle, who’s basically like a snake, who is under the Republican ticket, but is abundantly clear to be a lot like Nathan Deal, and is most likely to chase the money and operate the state in the most financially fluid manner as possible, even if it goes against stereotypical Republican beliefs.  And then there’s Yosemite Sam, Brian Kemp, who’s a Republican extremist who has tripled down on boasting how much of a racist, Trump-worshipping, fully armed redneck he is.  And because America is as fucked up as it’s ever been, he has naturally made it this far to being right outside the steps to becoming Georgia’s next governor.

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When changing the terminology makes things acceptable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not long ago, my department at work sent out emails for people to sign up for the departmental Slack channel.  Prior to starting working here, I’d never even heard of Slack.  I figured out quickly that it was a chat client, but the most substantial use for it that I’d heard of it prior to receiving my own invitation to join was that people on campus had a specific channel that sent notifications if there were any free leftover food up for grabs anywhere on site.

I didn’t feel that a chat client was remotely conducive to work productivity, so I ignored the invitation and didn’t have any intention of signing up.  Frankly, in my career, I’d been admonished in the past and conditioned to think that chat clients were counterproductive in the workplace.  Seeing as how I like my job these days, I decided to not join in on something that I thought would be counterproductive, so I just let the invitation go ignored.

And then I got a follow-up email a few days later from management, that was sent directly to only the individuals who had not yet signed up for the departmental Slack channel, imploring them to do so.

This was my reaction to being told that I was supposed to join Slack.

Upon logging into the client, I started toggling around the work-sanctioned channels to see what all the fuss was all about.

I saw more gifs than I did human-written words.

I logged off Slack, and haven’t opened it since.  I do not feel at all that I’ve missed out in any capacity of essential information or anything pertinent for me to do my job.

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A show about deathbed confessions would be straight $$$

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a concept that I’ve thought in my head many times as being something that would be absolutely fascinating to watch, but it came back into the forefront again upon seeing the president of the United States basically turn his back on the United States while kowtowing to the president of the Russian federation.  Because this is one of those stories in which we the people will never hear the truth about until the people directly involved in it are on their deathbeds, and are more willing to disclose truths because they’re on their way out anyway.

And if this were a television show, I have no doubt in my mind that it would probably be the most compelling and fascinating show in history, hearing notable people throughout history spilling the beans on all sorts of undisclosed information, with no concerns for consequence or repercussions because they’ll be dead soon anyway.

From politicians to actors, athletes and other prominent figures, don’t tell me that people aren’t curious about the things that have happened in the lives of some of these people that they wouldn’t be interested in hearing about.

Why is Donald Trump so deferent to Vladimir Putin? Did Kobe Bryant actually rape that girl in Colorado? Did OJ Simpson do it? What did Bill Murray whisper to Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation? Did Bill Cosby really drug and sexually assault all those women?

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I still can always sniff out winners in a fake sport

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know whether it’s just the WWE is just that predictable, or that I really am the self-proclaimed Oracle™ of professional wresting, but I just kind of knew that the B-Team was going to win the tag team champions at Extreme Rules.  Very likely just the former, even if the whole point of the B-Team was that it was supposed to be two jobbers who just keep lucking into wins.

The reality is that the union between Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt seems to already be getting old, and I figure that Creative has better ideas for the each of them as singular performers instead of this tag team that was more or less a hold pattern for two individual stars.  Or seeing as how Jeff Hardy jobbed the United States championship away in a gratifying squash match, maybe the Hardy’s latest run has already come to an end, and it’s time to start saying goodbye to them again, until they make yet another surprise comeback in 2019.

Who knows, who cares?

Either way, the fanboy in me is happy to see the B-Team win, because who doesn’t appreciate it when two guys who have been jobbing to the stars for the better part of the last two years finally get a little bit of recognition and reward for their dutiful work?  The funny thing is that in spite of the lovable losers that Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas portray, the two of them are guys with tons of potential and talent that is more or less kind of expiring unused on the road.  I mean one is the son of Mr. Perfect, the other the son of Mike Rotundo, so they’ve definitely got wrestling in their genes.

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A catch-up post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not lost on me that it’s been a minute since I last wrote anything.  And among the last things that I did write about, it was probably sports and or professional wrestling-related in the first place, and admittedly I don’t like to stick to the same topic too frequently because I like the idea of being a well-rounded person who has thoughts, opinions and words to write about a myriad of things and not just a small pool of interests.

Sure, a part of the dormancy is the fact that I haven’t really found much to write about, but also the fact that in my work and personal lives, I’ve actually been kind of busy.   Not a day goes by where there isn’t some local news that isn’t violent and could easily be twisted into a racial commentary, and there’s otherwise little else locally to talk about other than the impending Republican runoff for governor that I’ve already said numerous things about.

My taxes are going up in the upcoming fiscal year, which isn’t a surprise that the primary culprit of it all is the Atlanta Braves, which is something that most everyone with a brain saw coming, seeing as how the construction of ScumTrust Park and The Battery was a gigantic money suck to state and county coffers that is naturally the unfortunate responsibility of taxpayers.  Obviously, I’m a little salty over the fact that my monthly rates will go up, but at the same time, I’m okay with it if it means that things like parks and libraries aren’t shut down and rendered inaccessible services to the people.  Granted, I’d rather the Braves never moved in the first place and this wouldn’t have happened, but I don’t have the completed Infinity Gauntlet in my possession, so I can’t go back in time to rectify that.

By the way, I actually caught up and watched Avengers: Infinity War, which is in large part to making this reference.  It was slightly better than I had anticipated, because I felt there was a high possibility of them fucking things up by having to cram so much crossing over into a singular film, that it could convolute things real fast, but I didn’t think they did a bad job, and put out a pretty decent flick.

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I couldn’t have asked for a more appropriate savior

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just a few weeks after I’d declared my utter disgust over the mainstream uncoolness of Bullet Club, it’s almost as if bookers from New Japan Pro Wrestling read my words, and did something about it.  Surely, I’m not the only wrestling fan out that there that thinks the Bullet Club is worse than DJ Tanner Wrestling these days, and I was ecstatic to see the next rival stable emerge and basically declare war on them.

But that stable being composed of none other than the legendary god-beast and toughest motherfucker on the planet, Haku, and his two sons Tama and Tanga?  I couldn’t possibly have dreamed of a better or more appropriate person and his offspring to systematically decimate all the rest of Bullet Club by themselves.

Seriously, I think Haku became a bigger star than he ever was during his career, after it ended, due to the evolution of the internet as well as all the former wrestlers out there who released autobiographies.  Be it through shoot interviews on YouTube or in personal memoirs, suddenly anyone who was in the business between the 80s into the early 2000s had a Haku story to share, because back in those times, the boys always ended up at bars or dives, and it wasn’t nearly as well known that wrestling was scripted, and local tough guys always wanted to start shit with wrestlers. 

Despite the fact that general sentiment shared by most about Haku is that he’s a gentle and respectful person who just wants to mind his own business and provide for his family, he seems to be a magnet for trouble, and almost always ends up on the receiving end of harassment, to which the monster comes out when he’s forced to defend himself.  Guys getting eyeballs ripped out, noses bitten off, fish hooks and broken teeth, most idiots don’t seem to realize the idiocy in provoking a 300 lb. Tongan in a bar.  Even the cops weren’t safe from the wrath of Haku, when they had to try and either incapacitate or outright arrest him; tales of him snapping off handcuffs, inhaling the mace they tried to spray him with to simply beating the shit out of cops, nobody was safe once the monster got woken.

After hearing all these tales of how he was the baddest motherfucker on the planet, it was a shame that the vast majority of his wrestling career was over, save for the sporadic cameo appearance in the indies.  It was well documented how smoothly his everyday life was going in retirement, managing the detailing department of a Toyota dealership down in Florida.  After all this knowledge was made available of how dangerous of a man Haku really was, who wouldn’t want to see him get in the ring and decimate an endless number of wrestlers who may look more polished and chiseled, but have a fraction of the legitimate toughness of Haku.

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