Month: August 2021

I hope the afterlife is ready to get their asses destroyed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

By now, I would wager that just about everyone has someone they can name off the top of their heads as someone whom they think has been the greatest casualty of the coronavirus.  Whether it’s a family member, or family of a friend, or a friend of family, a celebrity, regional personality, or what not, at this point it’s probably not a stretch for people to be able to have been affected to some degree of sadness at the death or someone they cared about.

For me, short of anyone in my family, the news of the passing of actor and martial arts legend, Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba is without question, the one death that stands out above all others in my personal little world, and it upset me tremendously to have learned of the passing of this icon.

At 82 years old, it’s not like he hasn’t lived a full and fruitful life in his own right, but the fact that he passed due to pneumonia associated with coronavirus says to me that he still died in a pointless, unfortunate and completely avoidable manner.  I won’t sugarcoat the disappointment that I felt to learn that he also wasn’t vaccinated, but given his age, I’m hoping he was more of the type to be concerned over a vaccine of such nature to a person of his age, versus someone who was just anti-vax, and flat out refused it, but this is something that I guess we’ll never know.

I don’t even really know where to go with the rest of this post.  I wanted to make sure that even in spite of my complete lack of any time to do any writing, that when I started writing this, I wanted to be clear headed, and relatively available to gather my thoughts and write, because most anyone who knows me probably knows that I’ve always been a die-hard Sonny Chiba fan, and that I saw him as more than a martial artist and an actor, and more like an icon and a personal hero, that started kind of as a joke, but really grew into something genuine and meaningful.

Continue reading “I hope the afterlife is ready to get their asses destroyed” →

Thanks, I hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I like baseball.  I like wrestling belts.  You’d think a collaboration between the WWE and MLB to release team-themed replica wrestling belts would be a layup for a guy like me, right?

If you think so, you couldn’t be any more fucking wrong.

An obvious cash-grab for starters, but all I see when I think about the fact that there are going to be 20-30* belts that will be put into production starting in the 2022 season, all I see are 20-30 blets that stand in the way of the WWE getting off their lazy asses and actually making replicas of the only fucking WWE blet I want left, the NXT UK Tag Team Championship.

*why anyone would want a replica belt for teams like the Rays, Rockies, Reds, Marlins or Orioles is completely beyond me, but homers are homers for a reason

For the record, I don’t just hate these MLB-WWE collab belts, I hate every other belt out there that’s not an actual active or historic belt.  I hate all the shitty tribute belts that WWE makes that takes existing plates and slaps them onto some overly-designed shitty straps themed to a hall of famer, and calling it a tribute.  I hate Xavier Woods’ and Tyler Breeze’s shitty YouTube show belts that have come into existence ahead of the only active fucking belt without a replica available.  I hate when they take some shitty stinky brown leather and wrap it around an Attitude-era World championship and call it a Mankind tribute.

But both MLB and the WWE really like money, and it really is low-hanging fruit to make these and watch them sell a justifiable number of them to warrant the decision to produce them.  I can’t hate on the business of it, I just hate that these things are definitely going to stand in the way of what I actually want.

And frankly, given the news over the last months of NXT kind of being rumored to being shifted back into a true developmental territory, who’s to say that any of the NXT and NXT UK blets will even get to be sold for much longer in the future, especially if they’re deactivated and removed from television.

Only hardcore blet-heads like myself may have noticed that for about four days, the WWEShop released the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship Replicas that’s still listed as available in the Euro store, but was already taken down from the American site, which initially had me curious that they took it down in order to have a brand new blet available at promotional discount, but seeing as how it hasn’t been brought back, it makes me wonder if it’s more the possibility that the blets will be deactivated on television, and therefore not needing replicas to be sold online.

As far as the NXT UK Tag blets, I’m beginning to think that they’ll never even be made in the first place, because perhaps the division as a whole might get folded up, if the talking heads surrounding Vince McMahon in Stamford see them as a risky ROI.

At least I’ll have an Atlanta Barves blet available to me with the cash I’ve been sitting on for literal years, waiting for the one blet I actually wanted.

2 Under 2: Fuck Jimmy Fallon (#058)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I are raising our daughters with some fairly simple rules, one of which being no screen time until the age of 2, in which we will introduce small amounts of screen time of quality kid-friendly content with at least some educational value, and work our way up from there, so they don’t become lifeless couch potatoes by the time they’re age five.  Maybe that’ll happen when they’re seven instead, but hey if we can bilk out two years of life where they’re not parked in front of a screen, then all the better for us.

That being said, we’ve accumulated a lot of books over the last year and change, as books and reading have been among the primary forms of entertainment and storytelling to our first, and will be for our second.  Among the things that brings pride and happiness to me is seeing my first hustle over to her bookshelf, pick out a book, rush back, hand it to me, and then plop into my lap to enjoy some story time with dada, and her appreciation and enjoyment in books is already being established.

However, of all the books that we’ve amassed so far, few make me scrunch my eyebrow and hope that my daughter doesn’t pick it and bring it back, than the books mythical wife picked out by none other than quote-unquote “comedian,” Jimmy Fallon.  Everything is Mama and Your Baby’s First Word Will Be Dada, specifically, because I for one won’t go out of my way to pick either myself.

Why?  Because they’re both complete and utter bullshit.  Spoiler alert, both books are basically 15 pages of either “MAMA” or “DADA” over and over again, with literally nothing other than single contrast words and some singular illustrations.  I’m not saying my children should already be capable of reading The DaVinci Code or anything, but even infants and newborns deserve better than this horse shit.

Let’s be real here, if not for the simple fact that these books are “authored” by, and has the name of Jimmy Fallon slapped onto these things, these shit books would probably rank lower than the bible at being usable for toilet paper.  It truly is a case of how nice it must be to be a celebrity, because an unfunny hack like Jimmy Fallon can literally produce a bullshit no effort stack of cardstock paper, put his name on it, and it will make it onto bookshelves, and I bet if I took two seconds to look it up, these were probably New York Times bestsellers at some point in history, but I’m not going to because I’d rather spend 52 seconds typing this sentence up instead.  He’s probably made more than what I make in a year in salary, on the royalties of this fucking snooze job of children’s literature, which only further feed the angsty narrative of how unfair the world is.

The takeaway of this post is that if any new or impending parents ever read this, do yourselves and your children a favor and stay the fuck away from Jimmy Fallon’s shitty books, especially if you actually love your kids and want their brains to actually develop.  Might I recommend authors such as Anna Dewdney or Sandra Boynton instead as opposed to the guy who could barely keep it together on SNL and often times failed, to not laugh at his own unfunny shit jokes?

2 Under 2: I have already become my mother (#057)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

All through my life, my mom would accidentally call me by my sister’s name, before correcting herself and addressing me by my name.  There were younger points in my life where I would let that piss me off, but eventually it more or less because everyday occurrences, and I stopped really noticing them beyond hearing them when they happened.

It didn’t even take a full 24 hours to pass before I had already called #2 by #1’s name.  It happened more frequently in the AM hours where we were struggling to get any sleep we could.  But by day two of #2’s life, I had already slipped up numerous times, and even the times where I stopped myself from making the mistake, if there was ever any hesitation in my flow of speech, mythical wife would pick it out and know that I was on the verge of using the wrong name again.

Therefore, I have become my mother in this regard, and I can only hope that as their lives progress, they can forgive their dad for being just like halmoni, and roll with the slights as well as I eventually learned how to do as I got older.

The Shishio Effect

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally written for July 27, 2021

Over the last few months, I’ve been watching a lot of The Walking Dead.  A long time ago, I stopped at the season 7 mid-season finale where AMC stops running episodes because they don’t want to compete against late-season NFL and the playoffs, as well as to milk out the ratings, which honestly isn’t a bad idea.  However, when they stopped midway through season 7, is when I basically embarked on the process of selling my own home, moving, lots of changes in life, and so forth.  I never watched again, regardless of how compelling and interested I was in the Negan storyline.

Prior to the arrival of #2, both mythical wife and I had the same idea to watch a bunch of television and movies that we’d been sitting on, because we knew that once we were dealing with two kids, our television time would evaporate like rain in the desert.  Amidst my list of things to watch was to finally, catch up on The Walking Dead.  It was a daunting task to embark on two and a half seasons, and naturally midway through my journey, Netflix dropped season 10, and at the time I’m writing this, season 11 is knocking on the door for its eventually premiere.  But it was a show that I never didn’t enjoy, so I figured while I still had time left, I should try and catch back up.

Anyway, without spoilers despite the fact that this show is old as fuck now, I got through the Negan arc, and I have soldered onto to the arc of the Whisperers.  And as diabolical and nefarious things said Whisperers have done so far, I can’t help but get this feeling that they just aren’t as good of antagonists as Negan was.  Which is often times a common pattern in all sorts of long-term stories, to which I would like to officially coin as the Shishio Effect, which is defined as a series that has at one point and antagonist that is leaps and bounds superior than any other antagonist prior to them, and unfortunately more importantly, after them, which leads to a quality bell curve in the overall timeline of said series.

Named after the antagonist Shishio from the Rurouni Kenshin anime television series, which is probably one of my earliest observations of said effect, plus the fact that naming it after him makes it way more unique and memorable for all zero of my readers.  But throughout the 95 episodes of the television series, Shishio and the Kyoto storyline was somewhere in season 2, went for about 30 or so episodes, it was some of the most compelling and marathon bingeable anime in history, but after the story arc was over, the show struggled tremendously to get back to that level and instead began this slow decline until the plug was inevitably pulled on the series.

Other good examples of the Shishio Effect would be the Trinity Killer in Dexter season 4, Gus Fring in seasons 2-4 of Breaking Bad, and in the case of The Walking Dead, Negan.  These guys were unmistakably the baddest motherfuckers in their respective properties, and all of the shows struggle to get back to the levels of intensity and interest once their respective storylines conclude.

I mean seriously, the guy who played zerocool in Hackers was the guy that followed the Trinity Killer in Dexter, some generic white supremacists followed Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, and now we have the Whisperers following Negan and the Saviors after like two and a half seasons of The Walking Dead?  All of them are weak successors to the mantle of big bad that their predecessors had laid down, but it can’t really be their faults, entirely.

High potential properties at high risk for future Shishio Effect-ing would be just about every Marvel Cinematic Universe property that is moving onto the next phase; after working with Thanos, everyone else is going to seem kind of pathetic in comparison.  And after a guy like Killmonger, the Black Panther franchise is going to have double the difficulty, especially after the passing of Chadwick Boseman.  But still high risk for Shishio-ing, all the same.

Regardless, I will solder through, because while my second child doesn’t sleep at night, I’ve been gradually chipping away at the remaining episodes of The Walking Dead at night, as I am determined to clear this fucking series out of my queue, so that I can feel liberated to move onto something else.  But make no mistake, the series has been feeling like it’s been sputtering since the story has moved on from the Negan arc, and I couldn’t help but feel like it was watching Rurouni Kenshin all over again.

2 Under 2: It’s all worth it (#056)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know it might seem like a lot of the things I’ve written since the arrival of #2 might seem a dour and with a negative lean.  Sleep deprivation, temperamental screaming babies, having almost zero time to decompress and catch my breath, yes there’s no denying the tremendous amount of work and effort that goes into raising kids, especially under these specific circumstances of having two under two.

I’ll be the first to admit, as much as I might regret or feel ashamed of it, of how often I’ve lost my cool, get frustrated, and generally get fried, because I’m human and this is reality of just how hard things can be.

But then there are moments like this specific photograph, of where my oldest is giving my youngest a gentle kiss, after knowing her new sister for all of five days, and all my anxieties, stress and negativity washes away like beads of water off a waxed surface.

One of the biggest concerns mythical wife and I had about having a second child, especially so soon after the first, was the potential for jealousy and the resulting behavior from the first.  We can talk about plans and ideas all we want to try and help mitigate things, but we wouldn’t really know what was going to happen until the day came where we introduced the kids to one another.

And much as my first has often times met or exceeded my expectations, she appears to have welcomed and accepted her little sister with no complaints or objections.  If anything at all, it’s mostly fascination and curiosity at her smaller doppelganger, but no real signs of aggression or animosity, yet.

The above sight was something that instantaneously melted my heart and took my emotions to a place that is seldom seen, which is how I know it’s genuine and perfect, and that in the end, no matter how much stress, hardships and bullshit I might go through or think I’m going through as a parent, this is all worth it.

May my daughters accept each other as not just sisters, but as the lifelong tag team partners I hope they will become, with the blets to prove it.

Let’s talk about the Cleveland Guardians

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally written for July 23, 2021

In one hand, there’s often times resistance to change, even when the change is surrounding perceived offensive sports team names like the Redskins, the Braves and the Indians.  But at the same time, there’s this unwinnable outcome where no matter what the name is changed to, won’t be met with the unforgiving, relentless wrath of internet comedians.

And as much as I too am ready to clown on the Cleveland Indians for being among the first of red-flagged sportsball team names, there’s something to be said about the fact that they stopped dragging their feet, and made official an actual change to the team’s name and identity, because sure, they’re going to and already getting all the ridicule and jokes of the internet, but they’ll also be the first to be forgotten, moved on from, and it will really suck for the Redcorn team that changes their name last, because they’ll inevitably be the one most remembered, and hardest to move forward since they’ll have nobody after them to help take the shrapnel next.

Anyway, so let’s talk about the Cleveland Guardians, formerly the racist-ass Cleveland Indians.  Now I’ve said my peace several times about how I couldn’t really care any less about team names, but I’m neither a triggered descendent of Native Americans nor am I an evil whitey who is exploiting them.

No matter what they team name was going to be changed to, it was inevitable that it wouldn’t be good enough, logical enough, or provide nearly enough room for clowning on, to possibly make it ironically good.  And make no mistake, “the Guardians” most certainly fulfills that failed destiny of a mediocre name change, but surprising nobody at all, it’s a bland, vanilla, generic name type that of course, has no potential to offend anyone, and in the corporate, soulless world of professional sports, it’s basically perfect.

As far as their general branding goes, it’s perfectly safe, sterile, and basically feels like a little league team’s identity has been promoted to the big leagues.  The wordmark is sterile, boring and I don’t even want to know what fake-ass creative agency’s rhetoric is behind it’s boring-ass display.  And it should be of no surprise at all that the boring-ass capital C that has been the interim icon of the franchise, appears to have stayed.

But let’s talk about the, what I’m guessing is some sort of alternate logo, featuring the G of Guardians.  It’s basically a straight rip of a Korean professional gaming club, SK Telecom’s T1 logo.  Why the letter G needs to have wings is one question, but it just so happens that said wings are literally a direct rip off of SKT’s wings used in their T1 logo.  Seriously, the style of them is literally the same as T1’s, except they angle it differently as if logo savants on the internet wouldn’t notice.  It’s literally the same 4+3 feather pattern that merges into a G instead of a T1.

Either way, as a whole package, the Cleveland Guardians is about as exciting as a local home and garden expo.  But it still succeeds in moving the franchise past their supposed racist predecessors, and for corporate investor stooges, this is of the utmost importance to get back onto the MLB money train that will make money regardless of if the team was named the Indians, the Guardians, the LeBrons or the Zukes.

One funny side effect of more or less, retroactively posting something about this topic is this little nugget that showed up not long after the initial press release introducing the Cleveland Guardians: apparently a corporation as buttoned up and polished like MLB didn’t have the wherewithal to double check that “Cleveland Guardians” was entirely available, because not only was the URL, the Facebook and Instagram accounts for “Cleveland Guardians” already taken, they’re owned by a roller derby team and have been for the better part of the last decade.  Not just any roller derby team, but a male roller derby team, and this is the first time that I’ve ever heard of such a thing actually existing.

By now, all the jokes in the world have already been made that I’m not even going to bother to try and pile on top of.  All I know is that eventually, the MLB Cleveland Guardians will get what they want, but I can definitely hope that the men’s roller derby Cleveland Guardians will put up just enough of a fight to embarrass their baseball bitches, and ultimately get a nice big fat settlement out of it, because it’s basically the golden ticket that no other men’s roller derby team will ever be lucky enough to stumble on again in the future.