Month: June 2023

It’s the little things

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When mythical wife told me that we were going to go on a field trip for Father’s Day, I thought that perhaps we were going to head to the ballpark and catch a game.  The Braves were at home, they were playing hot, and there’s usually some sort of Father’s Day promotion or giveaway associated with the day.  Plus, we haven’t been to the ballpark since like 2021, and a nice day game seemed like a viable option for Father’s Day.

But when I saw her punch in “Columbus, GA” into the GPS, I knew what we were doing.  She probably knew I knew, because she knows how fixated I am on these sorts of things.  Regardless, it very much was a me kind of thing to be doing, but obviously with the introduction of kids into our lives, things like me are fewer and further apart, so it really was a welcome idea to turn the clock back a little bit and do something completely random and time-consuming for what really amounts to so little in the grand spectrum of a day.

We went to the newly opened Tim Horton’s in Columbus, the very first in the state of Georgia. The first of allegedly 15+ to come in the state.  But as much as I love their iced cappuccinos made of crack like they were actually made of crack, I really didn’t have much thought about trekking all the way to Columbus for it, because they’re nearly like two hours away from Atlanta.  Especially since there’s already a proposed location in Atlanta, even if it’s in the shitty Midtown area.  But I was willing to wait out my first ever Georgia iced capp for when they were closer to where I was, and not Columbus, Georgia.

However, mythical wife knows me pretty well, and this is totally the type of thing I’d do in my previous life.  And so we made the journey down to Columbus to the first-ever Timmy’s in Georgia.

I was curious to whether or not the place was going to be slammed or not slammed, because Tim Horton’s is still a Canadian company, and there’s no guarantee that the yokels of Columbus really knew what was going to be put in their little town.  I feared the place would be a shitshow, but fortunately when we got there, it wasn’t that bad.  If we were driving through, it would’ve been a wait, but after the drive down, I wanted to go in and take my time a little bit.

Unfortunately, despite the name and brand being brought down here, the service and performance of the staff were still reliant on locals, and despite the fact that the restaurant was just three days open, and they were overstaffed to the gills, they were still completely overwhelmed, and they took forever to fulfill even the most basic of orders.

And unfortunately, they kind of messed up on my order, by completely forgetting to give me my hash browns, and more importantly, botching up my iced capp, the one thing I really wanted.  Granted, they botched it by making it an Oreo iced capp, which was delicious in its own way, but I still wanted a regular, vanilla iced capp, with no shit in it.  I didn’t notice it until we were gone, because it wasn’t mixed very well, and it wasn’t until I got a chunk of Oreo coming up the straw did it dawn on me, but at least I still got sort of what I was hoping to get.

Either way, for Father’s Day, yes, mythical wife and I drove two hours each way, so that I could get an iced cappuccino.  It was worth it, and I look forward to the next time I can have another Timmy’s iced capp, and hopefully it will be correct then.

But it’s the littlest things that make me happy, and short of my yearly belt photo with my daughters, there’s not really anything else I could have asked for.

Oh, MARTA #699

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: apparently retired train cars can be cleaned and dumped into the ocean to create an artificial environment that can eventually grow into reefs

When I first came across this story, it was actually brilliant; the headline was something along the lines of MARTA trains to be dumped into the ocean, and I could already feel the gears grinding at just how such a story can write itself, with less thought to how Metro Atlanta Rail Transit Authority trains go from Atlanta to like, Savannah.

How it surely sounded like some sort of catastrophic fuck-up that only a company like MARTA would be capable of doing, to where trains from the city end up in the ocean, and just the thought of MARTA trains being unceremoniously dumped into the ocean would have to be quite the visual.

But then I come to learn that MARTA is just jumping aboard a program that’s apparently been around for a while, the practice of dumping retired train cars into the ocean, so that they can ultimately be grounds for reef life to grow and become artificial reefs for marine life to inhabit.

Honestly, once I started looking into the whole thing, it really does sound kind of cool, and I can understand the logic of how an old and busted dead train car could still serve a purpose, 20,000 leagues under the sea.  And as much as I love to clown on MARTA, I do have to give them a tip of the cap to participating in a program that’s progressive, creative and resourceful.

However, upon further reading something did catch my eye and pique my critical ire:

The cost to dismantle, clean, and transport the eight cars is just over $2.1 million.

I’m no expert, but those numbers seem pretty high.  I’m going to imagine that the vast bulk of expenses have to be in logistics and the costs to get these train cars on a tanker to boat them over to their eventual final resting spots, but I’m still hard pressed to believe that $2M bones is still what it actually costs to clean and dismantle and transport eight trains.

This, is where it all seems to make sense why MARTA is doing this, so they can create a smokescreen to (falsely) justify blowing $2M on an activity that looks like they’re trying to do good, but really just pad some peoples’ pockets as is the customary norm for an agency like them.

Dad Brog (#113): I melted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After our little famiry trip to the beach, it appears everyone but me has seemed to have caught something. Mythical wife was laid out in bed for most of the day, and our au pair was feeling below average throughout the day as well.

Prior to dinner, mythical wife comes downstairs and explains to the kids that mama isn’t feeling well. #1 rushes off to get her (toy) doctor kit, and my heart melts at the sweet and considerate gesture and the urgency she demonstrated at wanting to help.  I stop what I’m doing and assist her in making sure to get the stethoscope, thermometer and of course the syringe because mama needs medicine too, of course.

I love my kids so much, and it’s little things like this that break me into pieces at the thought that perhaps I am doing an okay job of parenting, after all.

WTF is AEW doing #208

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The above picture are four of the marquee matches that are so far on deck for the 2023 edition of AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door.  Two of these matches, on paper, should absolutely blow the roof off of the venue; such could have been said about several of matches on the card last year, but in typical AEW overbooking, they underperformed as far as I was concerned.  Regardless, that means two of these matches, in comparison will not be blowing the roofs off of any venue.

If you guessed that those two duds were the two matches in which the AEW world title and the IWGP world title were on the line, you’d be spot on.  There is no reality in existence where either company would dare having their world championship going over to another promotion, no matter how collaborative and positive-working relationship exists between AEW and New Japan.

That being said, aside from the fact that there is little logic or even any buildup between the competitors in these matches, there’s little reason to believe that either of these matches will be particularly any good, much less be of any threat of being the show-stealing match of the night for such a loaded card.

MJF is so protected, there’s little reason to believe he’d lose at all this year, much less to Hiroshi Tanahashi, whom I’m coming to the personal conclusion that he’s basically the token jobber to the stars of NJPW, because sure I don’t watch NJPW with any regularity, but I’ve actually never seen him win a match in like, 4-5 years.  Him losing to MJF is about as a safe bet as expecting cash to come out of an ATM when you put in your PIN correctly.

And then we have Jungle Boy versus SANADA for the IWGP world championship, and when I saw this one, I’m furrowing my brow and thinking, there’s nobody else on the entire AEW roster that would’ve been more compelling to put in a match against the IWGP world champion??

In all fairness, Jungle Boy is a strong worker, but he’s 175 lbs, scrawny as a shoot of bamboo and can’t even sell the suspension of belief that he can hang in the ring with a stud like SANADA.  Off the top of my head, I could think of several other AEW guys I’d rather see have a match with SANADA, but none of them are one of their handpicked pillars or are really known to be tight with the Elite circlejerk to warrant getting the nod.

I mean, these turds might be by design, seeing as how lots of promoters tend to operate under the belief that a crowd has a finite amount of energy to give to a show, and it really is safe to assume that Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay are going to be competing with each other to see which will be the first-ever Ten-Meltzer Star match in history as if it means anything in the long run, but on that same vein why bother having World title matches at all, if it means forcing the booking to include obvious and unexciting matchups?

Initially, I wanted to say that the show should have no titles be on the line, but thanks to the collaborative booking prior to the show, it’s fairly obvious that Ospreay is going to go over Omega and regain the IWGP US title, because Omega had gone over to Japan to take it from him months ago.  And if you’re going to defend one, might as well put others on the line, but most definitely the World titles shouldn’t be on the line, because they’re definitely not changing hands.

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How did the Ford Bronco become such the white peoples’ car?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I had a pretty white span of existence.  Sure, this doesn’t help detract from the narrative that I’m a Americanized banana of a twinkie kind of Asian person, but as the circumstances have it, my family and I spent a few days on the road, stopping in Savannah and for the first time in my life, visiting Hilton Head Island, which is about one of the whitest places in the country.

Seriously, thinking back to the time spent in HHI, I genuinely can’t recall seeing more than one other person of color, and that person was also Asian which is to say that I don’t remember seeing a single black person while out there.

We stayed at a bougie resort for a few days, and lounged in the pool, went to the beach and even went to the Salty Dog Café, which I’m only aware of its existence because of an old neighbor of mine growing up always seemed to have a lot of Salty Dog Café apparel.  For the record, the dining experience was pleasant on the water of a relaxed beach community, but the food and the prices were not quite as satisfactory and I could be content with the rest of my life if I never experienced them again.

But overall, it was a pleasant trip spent with my family and I got to watch my children have a lot of fun in the pool, in our suite, on the beach and chowing down on all sorts of junk food we typically don’t always make available to them at home, and in spite of the shade I spout about HHI being a really white place, it’s also a really nice place, and I’d definitely be open to going there again in the future, and hopefully for longer.

However, to get to the point of this post, as the subject goes, I’m very curious to how the new Ford Bronco seems to have become the official car of white people across the country now.  When Ford announced that they were reviving the name and creating a new vehicle to resurrect the car, I couldn’t possibly have been more indifferent.  In fact, I was more perplexed and wincing over such news, because to me, the Ford Bronco has forever been tainted and etched with death and scandal since OJ Simpson led the LAPD on the most televised chase in history after he “didn’t” murder his wife.

Apparently such reaction and recollection didn’t resonate with the white people of America, because since they started rolling off the line, Ford Broncos have been snapped up and are being driven like crazy by white people all over the place.  Seriously, I haven’t seen a single Bronco driver on the road that isn’t white, and they’re often times being driven with the arrogant mentality of “I have one and you don’t,” because of the sheer demand for these murderer cars.

And I can’t help but be curious to why the Ford Bronco has caught on with white people with such enthusiasm, when I can’t shake the association of the car’s reputation of being what a tried-but-not-found-guilty murderer drove notoriously.  And then be further curious to what kind of message it sends that not only is the Ford Bronco more popular than it’s ever been in history, it’s apparently solely within the white community itself.

All shade aside, it really is fascinating that it’s so rabidly popular.  Aside from the whole, being OJ Simpson’s car, the Bronco is still a Ford product, and I will probably never not think of all Ford products being cheap, plastic turds with questionable build quality and reliability.  Even when I was on the market for a new car a while back, and told myself to wipe the slate clean with all makes and models, Ford was the first maker to get slapped back onto the blacklist after test-driving the option I had earmarked as a potential car, because it felt cheap, performed like shit, and was blown out of the water by every other option.

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Never thought I’d ever see NBA Champion Denver Nuggets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally, when I thought about writing about the Denver Nuggets, it was contingent that they actually won the NBA Championship before anything would be written about them.  I was going to write about being a millennial and seeing the strange sensation of seeing certain teams in major sports break through the wall of success and win a championship. 

But the more I did some cursory research on the history books, at least as far as being a millennial goes, MLB and the NFL doesn’t have nearly the parity as the NBA has had throughout, at least my lifetime.  Which is really strange to say about the NBA having parity, considering the seeming dynasties that have run rampant throughout my own lifetime, with the Bulls, Lakers, Spurs and Warriors all winning a ton of championships, but at the same time, the NBA has had more teams squirt through the cracks of history and win a championship, and break streaks of franchises to never be champions before.

Growing up, the NBA really was my first love as far as sports fandom went.  I was a big Knicks fan, but also a supporter of the Washington Bullets, and whenever the Knicks were bounced by the Chicago Bulls, I’d typically prefer to see them win over whoever emerged from the West.

That being said, during my own upbringing as an NBA fan, there were always certain teams that were always the doormats and/or the laughing stocks of the NBA.  The teams we never, ever wanted to play in a video game, the teams we always went ballistic whenever our favorite teams ever lost to them, if it ever happened, and the teams that were always forgotten about whenever talking about the league in general.

During this time, some of those teams were the Warriors, the Bucks, the Mavs, Cavs and of course, the Denver Nuggets.  Sure, at various points, some of those teams had some fairly successful seasons as far as win percentages go, but they were still never serious threats to win championships, usually being fodder for the Bulls, Lakers, Pistons and the Rockets.

I remember how weird it seemed when the Spurs broke through the glass ceiling and won their first championship.  I was resentful because I was a Knicks fan, and I chalked up the Spurs’ win to being a lockout shortened year, and how it shouldn’t really count.  But then they’d go on to win several more championships over the next decade, and truly cementing themselves as one of the all-time great teams.

The same could be said of when the Miami Heat broke into the upper echelon, even before LeBron James took his talents to South Beach and won two more championships, and the same was said when the Golden State Warriors not only reached the top of the mountain, they built a house on top of it, winning four championships and basically living in the NBA Finals for the better part of a decade.

However, aside from the teams that grew into dynasties, regardless of my casual, and only during the playoffs interest in the NBA, I’m always fascinated by the teams that sneak out a championship, seemingly, to me, out of nowhere.  Especially when they’re one of the teams that I grew up thinking would never, ever, in a million years, see a championship ascension, regardless that on a long enough timeline, everyone eventually has to win one of these days.

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Anthony Bass DFA’d LOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Often times in the world of sport, there are personalities that are less than savory, but no matter how much of an asshole these guys can be, they always have a job because they’re exceptionally good at playing children’s games in front of large crowds without crumbling to the pressure of performing.

Roger Clemens had an affair with a minor.  Kobe Bryant allegedly raped a woman.  Ray Lewis stabbed a guy to death.  And all went on to have hall of fame careers, with nary a punishment in sight.  Far too often, professional athletes can be shitheads but still have jobs because of the fact that they’re good at sports.

Anthony Bass is no stranger to the brog, in fact showing up just a few weeks ago when I had an opinion on his last escapade with United Airlines, involving his wife and kids on a flight, and her being asked to clean up after her kids in spite of being pregnant.  But no matter how divisive and viral their story went, when the day was over, Anthony Bass was continuing to pitch for the Toronto Blue Jays and making a lot of money.

I apparently missed it because I hardly pay much attention to anything beyond my kids these days, but apparently Bass is not a fan of the team he plays for’s support of the LGBTQ+ community and the team’s participation in hosting a Pride Night.  No surprise there, the players themselves are not beholden to the beliefs and supports (genuine or corporately forced) of the organizations they play for.  And a large portion of professional athletes are often times a bunch of rednecks whom shouldn’t be any surprise to not be a fan of woke culture and anything remotely leaning left.

But most players are typically smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves, because anyone with a brain knows that the activities and matters that pertain to the people in the stands has no bearing of what happens on the field.  Just because it’s a Pride Night at the Rogers Centre or Dodger Stadium or Wrigley Field doesn’t mean that the gays are allowed to get on the field and try to tackle base runners as they’re rounding third, but that doesn’t stop less-intelligent players from mouthing off and jeopardizing their livelihoods in the process.

So it’s no surprise that a guy like Anthony Bass isn’t a fan of the gays, in spite of the extremely likely jock behavior he’s probably done in a locker room that would easily constitute gay shit, and considering his bright idea to spout off on social media about his wife’s United Airlines escapades, he didn’t miss the opportunity to be quoted for speaking against the team’s intention of hosting a Pride Night.

At first, he was kind of expected to apologize and retract, and the team decided to try and have him be the catcher of the ceremonial first pitch, which undoubtedly would have been thrown by someone from the LGBTQ+ community, to which Bass flat out refused to participate in.  I imagine a bozo like him refused not because of the defiance of being told what to do, but probably because he didn’t want to be the literal and metaphorical catcher with a gay person.

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