The year-end post, circa 2018

As I believe more and more with each passing year, time begins to feel like it moves faster the older we get.  I go to work in the morning, do my thing there, come home, have dinner, tidy things up and do one or two tasks I had in mind, and then it’s suddenly 10 pm, and now I’m at the point of the day where I can’t really commit to anything too time-consuming, lest I put myself into a position of going to bed too late, and then being tired at work the next day, and therefore I usually just end up going to bed at a sensible time.

Rinse, repeat, and suddenly it’s the end of December, and we’re on the cusp of closing out 2018 and entering 2019.

I’ve often said in the past that it seems silly the notion of encapsulating things into calendar years, and having hope that things will miraculously be better the following year for no reason at all other than the fact that the last number in the date has ticked up one.  I say that, but I still find myself at the end of every year putting together these kinds of posts reflecting on a calendar year, and deciding whether it was good, whether it was bad, or more often than not, somewhere in the middle.

As far as two thousand and eighteen is concerned, I’m fairly confident that I can say with conviction that it was a pretty good year.  Not somewhere in the middle, but definitely up in the upper quartile of being good.  To those who kind of follow my life, the reasons for such are pretty obvious, but it kind of goes without saying that I’ve made some pretty big strides in my life in general, with none of them being larger than proposing to mythical gf, and making her mythical fiancée and soon-to-be future wifey.

I always figured there would be marriage in my life at some point, and it’s been an enjoyable albeit steady and deliberate ride, as that’s pretty much how I do most important things in my life, but I knew I was making the right choice moving forward, because as has been often times the case with the things in our relationship, things just felt right, and it was just time to make it more right, and move forward in our relationship to the next logical step.

Before I go any further reminiscing, getting engaged is what sets 2018 high atop years past, and by that logic, 2019 already has the groundwork laid down for it to be hopefully better. 

Continue reading “The year-end post, circa 2018”

Oh, Atlanta #877

To quote an internet commenter who was quoting any brand consultant:

the best diversion to consistent mediocrity is new branding and messaging.

That being said, you know what that means!  A new logo was made for something that didn’t need it!  And not only was a new logo created for something that didn’t need it, it also cost $590,000 to “make!”

Man, I am absolutely in the wrong business.  I totally need to find a way to get back onto the agency side that somehow has entire cities in their back pockets, to where they can charge over half a million dollars to rip off the Airwalk shoes logo, and then package it in 75 words of fluff and bullshit that could sell water to the ocean.  Because I’m pretty sure I could plagiarize one thing a year and be completely satisfied pulling in six figures for doing such and then calling it a year.

I mean I don’t even know where to begin with this perfect example of federal waste and in all likelihood crooked Atlanta politicians spoon-feeding their bedroom buddies.  But I think the most succinct place to start is with just the symbol itself:

  • The shapes that form the “star” in the logo are a series of “A’s” – or arrows – that spiral around a central axis, “symbolizing the freedom of movement provided to the region.” 
  • The arrows point toward and away from the center, “creating pulse-like movement.” 
  • The shape is reminiscent of a star, “and stars have provided guidance to travelers for thousands of years.” 

Continue reading “Oh, Atlanta #877”

The epitome of owned

I know that I concluded that Atlanta United winning an MLS Cup “counts” towards the city getting a long awaited championship, but if you ever wanted more proof that MLS doesn’t get any respect, look no further than the fact that the reigning MLS Champions won’t be able to play its CONCACAF Champions League home games, at home; due to a scheduling conflict – with Monster Jam and Supercross.

AKA the Grave Digger white trash redneck monster truck show and a bunch of dirtbikes pretending like they’re Excitebike.

So despite the fact that Atlanta United accomplished the impossible in getting the cursed monkey off the city’s back by winning a professional sport championship, they’re still denied the opportunity to represent the United States to a likely packed home field against Costa Rica’s Herediano fútbol club.

This is what I liked to declare, owned.

It’s really kind of silly too, because anyone who lives in Atlanta has probably seen just how maniacal it gets in the city whenever there’s an international friendly featuring one or two Latin American squads.  Mexico vs. Venezuela easily filled 65,000 at the Georgia Dome, and Honduras vs. Mexico easily matched that. 

If Atlanta United drew 73,000 into the Benz for the MLS Championship game, imagine just how easily it would draw another 73,000 featuring the heroes of the city versus, a Latin American squad?

Continue reading “The epitome of owned”

Everyone could use some emotional support chicken

Just when you think Popeyes is onto something potentially legendary with their unveiling of Emotional Support Chicken, they have to shoot themselves on the foot and only make it available in a shithole like Philadelphia.  And not just the city itself, but instead the fucking airport, which is already, much like the rest of the city it’s in, one of the biggest blights within the country.

However in spite of my general ambivalence for Philly, I still have to tip my cap to Popeyes for such a hilarious and creative idea, that just tickles my fancy and makes me green with envy that it’s not available everywhere else, or at least Atlanta, so I could get my hands on a box of emotional support chicken as well.

I fly enough to have plenty of aggravation at the current state of the world, where the concept of emotional support animals even exists.  The airline industry has morphed into this hideous symbiotic orgy where the carriers have carte blanche to fuck customers left and right with price gauging, shrinking seats, antiquated boarding procedures and a myriad of things that makes flying amongst the worst occasionally necessary experiences there is, but because there’s an endless demand for travel, passengers are now allowed to get away with shit like emotional support animals, which is basically a bastardized ruse for people to be allowed to fly with their pets.

And frankly, as with most nice things in the world, selfish shitheads ruin and abuse the small pleasures by lying their asses off and proclaiming every Tom, Dick and Harry dog and cat as emotional support animals, or even more offensive, service pets.  There’s no secret that just about anyone can buy on eBay or just make their own service vests for their pets to futilely deceive the world around them that they’re more important than the average pet, and they most certainly capitalize on such inefficient enforcement, by trotting their very-much-not service animals into airports and acting surprised when they defecate in public or on the plane or bite people or attack other fake-ass service animals.

But because the world today sucks, nobody’s really allowed to call out any of these fake fucks, because everyone’s afraid of the one person that actually is legally and medically cleared to have a service animal and their service animal is actually a service animal, and then getting sued, or worse, made viral, because any scene will inevitably be caught by someone’s phone and then put on YouTube.  So despite the fact that there are hundreds of miserable lying fucks, nobody can really stop them.

Continue reading “Everyone could use some emotional support chicken”

Photos: A couple of engagement pictures

[2020 note]: because mythical now-wife and I wanted to unload most of our wedding budget on stuff like hiring a baller photographer and getting the best catering we could (that we ourselves were barely were able to eat), engagement photos were one of those things that we kind of took a DIY approach.  I’ve got an okay camera with a few okay lenses, and in the end, we only needed like 1-2 good photos to use, so we took it upon ourselves to orchestrate our own shoot on a cold-ass December afternoon like the geniuses we are.

And then we went to get some beer at Gate City Brewery in Roswell, to where it turned out to be a good place to take a few shots there as well, because we’re classy folks.

Continue reading “Photos: A couple of engagement pictures”

Resurrected to punish further

I’m not sure what I’d been looking at on the internet for Facebook to decide that it was a good idea to advertise Mitsubishis to me, but considering it’s given me something to write about, I can’t be too agitated in the end.  But despite the fact that it’s been available for the entire year thus far, I’d apparently been completely unaware that this car even existed, much less the fact that it was the vehicle that Mitsubishi decided to bestow the once-prized name of Eclipse.

Seeing this, I can’t help but wonder what the hell Mitsubishi is thinking these days; frankly, I’m often curious how they even survive in the automotive industry considering just how obscure they’ve become over the last few decades.  I can’t even name any models outside of the Lancer Evolution, but I want to say that that car’s been retired now as well.  Does the Gallant even exist anymore?  The Diamante?  And North America never got the FTO, and the 3000GT has been gone for ages now.

But bringing back the Eclipse name?  And then putting it onto a baby-SUV that for whatever reason have all been rechristened as crossovers?  I do not understand the logic.  Does not compute.

The Eclipse was a name synonymous with sports cars throughout the 90s and even into the 2000s; I was a big fan of the first generation, which also shared production with Plymouth and Eagle, who released the Laser and Talon respectively, but all came available with a beastly top-end model that was equipped with the legendary 4G63 turbo-charged motor, and was all-wheel drive.  

The second generation, Mitsubishi really outdid themselves, creating one of the most popular sports cars of the 90s, with a very tuner-friendly Eclipse that looked like a baby-Supra, but was like half the cost, that also came available in a GSX top-end that had the same turbo engine plus all-wheel drive; almost like it was a sleeker looking Evo, years before the Evo really exploded in popularity. 

Continue reading “Resurrected to punish further”

Does an MLS Cup break the Curse of Atlanta Sports?

No, serious question.  Don’t get wrong, I like soccer and I can sit down and watch a match and understand what’s going on, but the truth of the matter is that soccer doesn’t get a fraction of the respect and acknowledgement of The Big 3 sports (MLB, NFL, NBA) when it comes to general recognition, at least in America.  I feel like hockey and the NHL took a serious ding from their last strike and lockout, and they’ve fallen to a second-tier of prevalence where it only matters to the people whose teams are actually in contention, but it’s really difficult for those outside of those fandoms to actually care. 

And that’s where I get the impression that MLS is at, in spite of the fact that Atlanta United just won the top prize in the organization, the MLS Cup.  Personally, I don’t know how many teams there are in MLS.  I don’t even definitively know how many teams are in New York.  Obviously, I know Atlanta’s got a team, and I know for a fact that there are teams in Toronto, Seattle, Portland, Orlando, Los Angeles, and I think there’s one in Kansas City.  Otherwise, I don’t know much else about MLS as a whole, and I indulge in a lot of sports, be it on television or partaking in sports news on the internet.

That being said it brings me back to my original question, does Atlanta United winning the MLS Cup actually break the Curse of Atlanta Sports, the superstitious mythos behind the sheer inability of Atlanta sports teams to win any championships?

When sports media started coining the discussions about “cursed cities,” it almost always started with Cleveland, since for the longest time, the Browns sucked at football, the Indians sucked at baseball, and the Cavaliers sucked at basketball.  An NHL team lasted there for two seasons, a WNBA team for just six, and they’ve never had an MLS club.  Needless to say, they were undoubtedly the worst luck sports city in America, until LeBron James gave the city a second shot and basically willed the franchise to an NBA championship in 2016.

But ever since the debate of cursed cities came into existence, it really wasn’t hidden that curses and droughts really referred to championships in The Big 3; this was never made more prevalent than when the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2014, and for the ensuing weeks, there were all sorts of statements flung around about the first major sporting championship brought to Seattle in history, completely ignoring the fact that the Seattle Storm had won two WNBA titles prior to this.  The Kansas City Royals’ World Series win ended the drought in 2015, despite the fact that Sporting KC won the MLS Cup in 2013.  And Washington D.C. often ignored that D.C. United won four MLS Cups before the Capitals “broke the curse” with a Stanley Cup win just this year.

And the last two instances are prime examples of just how ignored MLS is in the grand spectrum of professional sport organizations, and why I pose the question on whether or not Atlanta United’s MLS Cup win actually breaks the Curse of Atlanta Sports.

Continue reading “Does an MLS Cup break the Curse of Atlanta Sports?”