Month: February 2022

Of course Patrick Ewing wants to get rid of the handshake line

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sportsmanship?  What’s that?  NBA legend and current Georgetown Hoyas coach, Patrick Ewing opines that the tradition of the post-game handshake line be eliminated

In all fairness, I don’t really disagree with Ewing.  This whole discussion came into question after an incident where former player-now coach of Michigan, Juwan Howard took a swipe at a Wisconsin assistant after losing to the Badgers, it’s probably not the worst idea in the world to keep two teams apart from each other after a game ends, especially since society today is full of sore losers who can’t handle defeat.

It’s an antiquated custom that creates more room for conflict than it does at preventing it, even if it is an attempt to curry the notion of sportsmanship in the game.  It’s the kind of thing that’s practiced at the junior, junior, kids level, but considering basketball is still originally a children’s game, I understand why they try to force it onto participants even at a level as high as D-I collegiate.

But this post comes to fruition because it’s Patrick Ewing who came out and said this, and it’s just such a low-hanging fruit easy opportunity to clown on Ewing, because as many players have proven throughout history, it’s just so easy to dunk on him.

And as the subject of the post said, of course Patrick Ewing wants to get rid of the handshake line – since he’s taken the reigns at Georgetown, the Hoyas have gone 26-48 over four years in the Big East, so that means Ewing and his players have had to go through a whole lot of post-game handshake lines as the losing squad.  It’s no wonder Ewing wants to get rid of the handshake line, because he’s been getting owned way more than doing the ownage, and he’s tired of it.

The funny thing is that in doing the cursory fact-checking for this post, I had no idea that Georgetown actually won the Big East conference championship last year.  The Hoyas went 7-9 in conference play, but then used a Game Genie during the conference tournament and ended up winning the whole fucking thing from the 8th seed.  That was four straight critical games in which Ewing was actually on the winning side of the handshake line, and fairly recently, so I’m surprised to see that he’s still against it.

Oh shit, but then I realized what I was looking at wasn’t factoring in this season, and at the time I’m writing this, the once vaunted Georgetown Hoyas, are an abysmal 0-16 in conference play this year.  FFfffffuuuck, no wonder Ewing is completely over the handshake line, after all.  Poor guy just can’t stop getting owned, he might want to consider leaving the industry if he ever wants to stop getting dunked on.

WTF is Capcom thinking with Street Fighter 6’s logo?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I started seeing people posting about the recent Street Fighter 6 teaser, the very first thing I thought was that it was a fake and/or a joke, because there’s no way that this was going to be the logo for one of the most iconic franchises in video game history.

Ohhh, but it turned out that it really is.

Honestly, I couldn’t give two shits about the game itself, I’ve been so long out of video games in general, much less Street Fighter, that there’s a very high probability that I’ll never even play it in my lifetime.  I never played SFV once, and I only played SFIV a handful of times before I got pissed about there being a quick released SFIV champion hyper turbo or whatever new edition that made my version obsolete, so I never played it again.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t sit on my pedestal and judge logos.  And SF6’s logo is fuckin’ godawful, and it really makes me wonder just what the fuck Capcom is thinking when they phoned it in and “designed’ this shitty piece of clipart and decided it to let it represent the franchise that basically made them who they are today.

I couldn’t even get home from work to point out how turrible the logo is before other sites had already sunken their teeth into the same observation, and a few have already gone as far as to call out the obvious low-effort low-key plagiarism Capcom has done in creating this “logo” that basically says all the same things that I would say.

Seriously though, this isn’t just another case of resisting change for the sake of resisting it.  Street Fighter’s general wordmark has been recognizable and iconic throughout every iteration of the series, and there are common elements and a color palette that continuously make it work no matter the number of sequels they put out.  The gritty, violent-looking delivery of brush strokes to create the words, to the signature yellow-to-orange gradient palettes used in every iteration up to SFV.

And then SF6 phones it in with this lame rip off of some Adobe clipart, and then typing out “Street Fighter” in a jersey typeface that appears to have been modified slightly so they don’t get sued to oblivion by the original font creator.  It’s a sad and insulting edition to an iconic franchise that doesn’t look like it’s real, but it is.

I know I already said that the likelihood of me ever playing SF6 isn’t very high, but I most certainly judge books by their covers, and seeing what is becoming of Street Fighter from the logo alone, would probably give me pause to give it a whirl, even if I were still avidly gaming.

Steph Curry hit 16 threes in a game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sure, it was an all-star game, where nobody plays any defense, but still.  In the span of a single 48-minute basketball game, Steph Curry still sank an astounding 16 three pointers.  Now if you’re doing the math, that means he scored 48 points on treys alone, so it’s funny to see that his final score was still a ridiculous 50 points, meaning that aside from all the three pointers, he made just one singular two point field goal.

Numbers like these will never fail to astound me, because I grew up as an NBA fan in an era where John Starks sinking six threes in a game is a rare occurrence, Dennis Scott going nuts and draining nine was bonkers, and then Kobe Bryant hitting eleven threes in a game was flat-out ridiculous.  50 points in an all-star game was unheard of, and I remember the last time the all-star game was in Cleveland, Glen Rice won the MVP after scoring 26 points and hitting a paltry four threes.

So seeing that a guy hit 16 three pointers in a single game is definitely something that makes my face contort and say really, because that’s just flat out ridiculous.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t hit 16 threes in a single game of NBA Jam, even with the fire cheat code on, because the quarters were like two minutes long and I simply didn’t have the time to launch sixteen threes.

The more I think about it, the more it’s clear that Steph Curry really did change the entire sport of basketball, arguably more than any other guy before him.  To a degree, even guys like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James were evolutions of Michael Jordan, who were all dominant scorers and utilized strong post games and mid-range shooting to amass their points.  But then Steph Curry came along playing like he were a video game character, and launching twenty three pointers a game, but the thing was that he was still hitting like 8-9 of them every single game and next thing you know he’s cleared 25 points on threes alone.

I used to root against the Warriors because I’m resistant to change and I had a hard time accepting the Golden State Warriors as championship material, and then I rooted against them because nobody likes seeing top dogs continue to succeed.  But regardless of how ambivalent I am towards the NBA in general, there’s no denying that rooting for or against the Warriors, Steph Curry is a phenomenal talent, and seeing him drain threes from all over the floor is truly awe-inspiring and never isn’t entertaining.

Time to combat the dad bod

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the challenges that have emerged during the journey of raising a second child is that I’ve basically had to give up running.  I haven’t run since October, and it’s been way longer than that since I’d last had a formal workout in a gym.  Raising kids has a tendency to make stuff like exercise expendable in a day’s agenda, and it was bad enough I had to forfeit gyms due to pandemic, but throwing a second kid into the mix has taken running off the table for me as well over the last few months.

Needless to say, I’ve watched my weight do some rollercoaster-ing since the original lockdown occurred, and now it’s not headed in the right direction.  At first, my weight started to drop because I wasn’t eating well, often not eating enough, and with the gym off the table, muscle mass began deteriorating, so the weight from muscle mass presumably started coming off.  Eventually, running became my only real exercise, and doing cardio with no weight training meant that I could really only lose more weight, and I actually got my weight down to almost my peak high school weight, in the 170’s area, and I actually felt like I was looking pretty decent, in spite of the loss of all my gains.

Eventually #2 showed up and life went into hard(er) mode with two kids in tow.  With my job also ruining my life at this point and the challenges of raising two kids simultaneously, the running eventually ceased, and mythical wife and I more or less went into survival mode as far as our eating habits went.  We never had the time and/or energy to cook not-trash food for ourselves, and with the little time we did have, we have been eating a whole lot of garbage over the last few months.  My weight has been creeping up in this time, and it’s been especially noticeable when I’d be doing virtual job interviews and putting on dress shirts, and feeling the bulge and tightening in all the wrong places.

I normally don’t like to put too much stock into weight numbers, since when I worked weights I always spouted the whole muscle weighs more than fat thing, but with no weights in play, I knew that each and every pound that I’d gain was solely based on my own poor choices.  At the time of starting this post, I’d crept up to 192.4 lbs., and with the reality that I haven’t exercised in months, that means I’m 192.4 lbs. of fat fucking American embodiment of failure.

Anyway, my intention is to stop the bleeding, and to try and get back on the horse.  Due to the fact that #2 has been sleeping at night fairly well as of late, I had the confidence to get back on the treadmill and go for a run, the first one I’ve done since October 7th, 2021 (thanks Garmin fitness tracker).

It was the worst run I’ve had in probably 16 years, since I’m basically starting from scratch.  I was running at a pace that I had to keep slowing down .1 at a time because I was blowing out and getting gassed, and it took me nearly 40 minutes to traverse three miles.  Now I say traverse, because I definitely didn’t run the whole time, like I used to do my old workouts of non-stop running.  My pace was probably around 12 minutes a mile, a far cry from my old 9:50 pace, and I feel like I have a long way to go before I can competently get back to those kinds of splits.

But it was also the best run I’ve had in a very long time, because I actually got to do it.  And one thing I’ve always stated is that at no point ever, does running ever feel like a waste of time, and that’s absolutely one thing that I love, because I abhor feeling like I’m wasting time.

If all goes well, I’ll get back to a general routine of running every other day, which is good because running is also when I can try to catch up with watching things, since I can watch things on my iPad.

Furthermore, at the new gig, I’ve done some recon and my access to the fitness center has been activated, so I now officially have a place where I can hit some weights again, which I’m super excited to get started with.  I’m not really looking forward to the fact that I’ll be starting from scratch there, which means the inevitable soreness from doing, everything, is going to be pretty prevalent, but once it dissipates, I’m hoping to try and build back some of the muscle that I’ve clearly lost over the last two years.

It’s not the best stocked fitness center there is, but it doesn’t cost anything and has some free weights, so I can at least not feel entirely like a geriatric living on machines.  I intend to make the best of it, and declare war on the flab that I’ve amassed over the last few months, because how far I’ve fallen off the wagon is not okay, and there’s little I want more than to change that.

Changing the eating habits is probably going to be a bigger hurdle to clear, but at least if I have some exercise back into the rotation, that should help suppress some of the physical decay I’ve been allowing to happen to me.  I’d prefer to have the dad bod that actually looks like I work out occasionally versus the dad bod of the guy that’s let go of everything and will have to start buying bigger clothing because of it.

Let’s make a deal

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw this article about how the internet went bonkers because supposed-to-have-been-cancelled Awkwafina was in some Disney commercial during the Super Bowl, because prior to the release of Shang-Chi, the internet was offended because she spoke with too much of an urban black affect that she was clearly maliciously culturally appropriating and therefore needed to be boycotted and cancelled.

And after rolling my eyes at the pitiful double standard that it’s okay to lecture and bully Asian people on race because the white people world is so collectively afraid of black people, I just thought that the cool kids world needs to be proposed this idea:

If Asian people can’t speak with black people affects, then black people can’t get tattoos of Asian language.  Deal?  

Seriously.  Speaking on behalf of all Asian people, we will stop speaking with any sort of rapper or black person affect, but all black people, from rappers to NBA players, are prohibited from getting tattoos of any Asian characters on their bodies.  No kanji, no hangul, no katakana, none of it.  And we Asians will never put an affect in our speech, ever again.

Like, I don’t know where people get the nerve to pick this battle so often.  As if Awkwafina is the first person in history that wasn’t black to speak like black people do.  You don’t see the internet trying to cancel Eminem or Pitbull or any other not-black rapper that’s ever made money spitting rhymes.

This is a classic textbook example of Margaret Cho’s observation about how white people love to lecture Asian people on race because they’re afraid to say this stuff to black people.  The internet all white-knighting for black culture at the expense of Asians, because we’re seen as docile and subservient and okay to try and boss around because they know they can’t get away with doing such towards black people.

All the while, all sorts of not-Asian people all think it’s okay and acceptable to tattoo Asian characters on their bodies – because it fucking is.  Freedom exists, and although it might seem silly, white people, black people, Hispanic people, or whatever race there is, is free to tattoo Asian characters on their bodies, and not be criticized to the point where they are suggested to be cancelled.

People who lose their minds over how Awkwafina speaks need to get off their high horses, off her nuts and off of the nuts of Asian people in general, because they’re embarrassing themselves by feeding into a bullshit double standard that they’re too stupid to realize that they’re committing.

Suggesting cancelling someone over how they think someone is speaking is fucking idiotic and anyone who buys into that should cancel themselves for how stupid believing it actually makes them.

I’m surprised anyone is surprised about Cody Rhodes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The wrestling internet is abuzz right now with the news that Cody Rhodes has left AEW, just a few years after he basically helped launch the entire promotion from the ground up.  And not just leaving AEW, but also tons of reports about how he’s on the track to returning to the WWE, the promotion that AEW’s cult-minded fans basically think is the antichrist.

Initially, I thought that this could be the start of some elaborate work, but as the last few days have progressed, it’s seemingly like it really is legitimate; unless this too is some Uber-meta working going on, designed to swerve all wrestling fans into oblivion, but as scuttlebutt keeps trickling, this is seemingly not likely.

But when it really comes down to it, I have to say that I’m more surprised that today’s average wrestling fans are actually surprised by this at all.  This is where I’d like to think that I’m wiser and smarter than today’s wrestling fans which isn’t saying that much but I did used to call myself The Oracle among my friends, based on how good I was at predicting wrestling bullshit, but the reality is that I’ve just watched and witnessed a lot of professional wrestling in my lifetime, and there just seemed to be a lot of common patterns and scenarios, and on a long enough timeline, nothing is original or unique and history repeats itself all the time.

When AEW started taking off, I actually made some predictions on which former WWE guys on the roster would eventually make their way back to WWE after some time in AEW.  Chris Jericho, for sure will be in a WWE ring again at some point in his career, as will guys like Shawn Spears, Mark Henry, Big Show, to name a few.  But one guy I didn’t hesitate one bit with was Cody Rhodes, regardless of his standing, position and contributions towards the creation of AEW.

All it took was two episodes of Dynamite, and I stated to varying friends that I could 100% see Cody Rhodes going back to the WWE.  It was just a feeling I had, and maybe it was all the times I’d seen Chris Jericho return to the WWE that fed this hunch, but I just knew that Cody would probably end up back in the WWE himself at some point, no matter how much he meant or accomplished with AEW.

The initial thought process was that in spite of the fact that Cody was a VP of the company, along with Kenny Omega, and Nick and Matt Jackson, the four of those wrestlers were very different personalities.  Whereas Cody clearly had a mind, hungry for the business side of the industry, Omega and Bucks were still too busy circle-jerking over inside jokes and spending way too much time trying to create YouTube content instead of running a company.  Eventually, these approaches to running AEW would clash and when it comes down to it, it’s three versus one.  

There’s been plenty of speculation about rifts and disagreements between the VPs of the company, as well as Tony Khan’s stripping of power from all of them, and I basically said that a time would eventually come where Cody would get tired of all the bullshit of running a company, and would probably prefer to just be a performer, focus on wrestling and make WWE money in the process.

And here we are, just a few years removed from the birth of AEW, and Cody Rhodes has walked away, and appears to be on the fast track back to the WWE.

The thing about the WWE is that there is a 100% never-say-never attitude when it comes to talent returning to the fold.  It doesn’t matter how much anti-WWE shit a guy spews in another promotion, or if they say racist shit (Hulk Hogan), or even admitting to incest and murder (Marty Janetty), if a guy can bring interest, eyes, fans and money to the company, the WWE will open their arms.

Cody Rhodes helping launch the WWE’s most prominent rival since WCW has little bearing on the WWE’s decision to bring him in, because Cody still won titles in the NWA, Ring of Honor, New Japan and AEW since his last departure from the company, so in the spirit of raising one’s own stock and value, Cody has accomplished that.

Sure, I think his ceiling back in the WWE will be no higher than Christian after he came back from TNA, no matter how much creative ideas and influence he’s promised to get him to sign back up, but Cody Rhodes returning to the WWE is a big deal, big name, and a guy with an impressive resume and not just Dusty Rhodes’ kid anymore.

Frankly, anyone who didn’t see this coming at some point is either just too young, hasn’t watched enough wrestling in their lives, or maybe I really am just that more insightful and observant to the industry than other people are.  But Cody going back to the WWE was about as much of a layup as Wilt Chamberlain playing hoops in his own era.

2 Under 2: A catch up on dad brog post (#078)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Hard to believe it’s been over a month since I made any additions to this series.  I suppose I felt a little guilty that I was using it pretty primarily as an arena to bitch about parenting and that’s really not what I had wanted the tag to be in the grand spectrum of things.  This isn’t to say bad things that stress me out haven’t happened, but a lot of things have occurred over the last month and a half since the last time I made an official dad brog post, and I feel like writing about them before the thoughts, words and motivation to do so vanish into the aether, never to be materialized.

It started with one of the worst nights since #2 was born, as she woke up in the middle of the night like four times, required a bottle each time to go back out, only to sleep for like, 45 minutes before blowing up all over again and completely nuking mythical wife and I out of our minds.  We got to the point where it was trial by fire, and was time to evict the little night gremlin from our bedroom, and officially placed her into hers.  The crib, camera and just about everything else had already been set up, but being right next to #1’s room, our biggest concern was that her night tantrums would run the risk of waking her sister, and two miserable kids was the last thing either of us wanted.  But seeing as how our lives were being ruined at that very moment, we pulled the trigger and kicked her out, and put her into her own room.

The rest of that particular night didn’t improve much, but we did learn that through a combination of maximum-distanced cribs between adjacent rooms and two white noise machines, it was possible for #1 to not really hear the screaming going on next door, which was a small victory in itself.  Now we knew that we could start working with #2 to sleep in her own room without risking waking up her sister, no matter how much she screamed.

And since then, knock on wood, things have been showing some nominal improvement.  I hope I’m not jinxing it by notating it, but she has been sleeping better more than she hasn’t, and it’s creating some optimism for mythical wife and I, and I’m feeling like if this improvement starts to grow, then I may begin to have the capacity to get some evening runs in on the treadmill, which I’ve been pining for like crazy, because I’ve been gaining weight in not a good way over the last few weeks and it’s feeding into my general anxiousness about life as it is.

As was the case with my first child, my mom has come down to stay with me for a few weeks in order to help out as well as bond with her grandchildren.  Unlike the first go around, I don’t have my head up my ass for most of this time, and I absolutely love having my mom around and I’m not all (as) mopey and depressed about life while she’s here, and understand that this really is the best month ever all over again.

If you want proof of the importance of early bonding, #1 has lived a life very sheltered from people in general due to the never-ending pandemic we live in, but among the few people she met within her first year of life, my mom is one of them.  Now, she is basically stranger-danger to every single person she meets, including my sister, my dad and pretty much all of my relatives that she met for the very first time this past Thanksgiving, because she never knew them when she was an infant.

That being said, one of the greatest joys of my life is seeing just how happy #1 is around my mom, and just how much she wants to be around halmoni, except in toddler speak it keeps coming out as halmi which warms me to the very core of my often hard dark heart.  She loves my mom, all of her cooking, and I’m over the moon at the help and stability she brings to our chaotic household of two kids.

But also the fact that #2 is getting the same opportunity to bond with my mom and hopefully create a similar lifelong appreciation for grandma that my first child has.  My mom’s not getting any younger, and I’m just so grateful that she’s still got enough in her to lug around a 16 lb. and growing infant, and bringing some old school parenting tactics that is getting her to take naps and take a tremendous load off of my shoulders.

I’ve never felt more productive and relaxed during the workday than I have over the last two weeks with my mom in tow, because it means my nanny doesn’t have to pull double duty, and I know both my kids are getting the individualized attention that they really need.

Finally, on the topic of work, this week marks the first time that I’ve been reporting to an office in two years.  Sure, the company has since changed, and I’m going into an office I’ve never been to before, but the point remains, I’m now getting up in the morning and driving into work, three days a week, two days from home.

Among all sorts of awkwardness and germaphobia of doing such, I had a moment on Monday morning where I had to fight a clock, which was nothing out of the ordinary, but I had to pick up #1 and give her a kiss and tell her that I had to leave for work, for basically the first time ever.  Yes, there were 1-2 days after her birth and before coronavirus shut the world down where I went into the office, but she was in the NICU, and completely unaware of the world around her that she didn’t know that I was going to work.  It was a very surreal and unusual feeling moment, but is something that will for the time being, be the norm.

And it sucks knowing that after two years, I’m away from my kids for 7-8 hours a day, because without eyes on them, I genuinely have no idea what’s really going on, save for the mercy of updates from my mom or the nanny.

However at the same time, being in the office environment and completely devoid of all the distractions of home, I’m getting more work done than ever, and I feel like I’m actually learning more about the job than I did while being full remote.  It’s a good and a bad thing because of the tradeoff with my home and kids, but still essential nonetheless in order for me to actually grow in my career.

So that is where life as dad is right now, which is to say that these dad brogs don’t always have to be so miserable and full of mirth.  At this current juncture with my mom helping out, and me not dreading my job, things are actually feeling pretty optimistic currently.  Hopefully I’m not jinxing anything by acknowledging it, but it does feel refreshing to not feel so drowning all the time, and hopefully the myths of things getting easier as the kids get older starts beginning to come to fruition.