Month: August 2023

We’re long past how the mighty have fallen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: WWE Hall of Famer, Tammy Sytch “Sunny,” pleads no-contest to vehicular manslaughter under the influence, faces upwards of 25 years in prison

I haven’t really kept tabs on Sunny since her gradual disappearance from the world of professional wrestling, but when the story came out a while ago where she killed a guy in a drunken car crash, it opened the doors to wondering how her life had gotten to this point.  The last time I really saw her was when RAW had their 1,000th episode, and I remember thinking how she had held up pretty damn well, but it’s abundantly clear that the last 12 years of her life most definitely have not.

I knew she had some legal issues and had been in and out of jail a few times, but nothing seemed more than her own dumb choices of DUIs and being flippant about parole or unauthorized travel, so despite her poor judgment, at least she wasn’t like a hot mess of violence or more than a drunk for a criminal.  Frankly, her manslaughter charge, as tragic as it is that it resulted in loss of life, was just her doing what she had been doing, but to an extreme point, seeing as how she allegedly blew a ridiculous .280 BAC, which is almost as impressive as Johnny Damon’s also-Florida drunken escapades.

So we’re long past the point of stating how the mighty have fallen, because over the last twelve years, ‘ol Sunny has fallen quite a bunch of times, but not to as severe of a degree as this one.  Goes to show that being one of the original OG breakers of the internet back in the day really doesn’t have any monetary worth, although like many people in my generation, probably feels she would have thrived in today’s society with what they had at the table back in the day.

Honestly, the only reason this post came to fruition was the .280 BAC and how it reminded me of how amused I was with Johnny Damon’s DUI.  Frankly, I was never really a fan of Sunny, even if she was supposed to be eye candy, and as time has passed, aside from her personal demons, I’ve never really heard much good about her ever.  She was not well-liked in the locker room, mostly due to her ego on top of the typical chauvinistic culture back then, but much as come out with her extramarital affairs and basically how she cuckolded her husband Chris Candido numerous times, which doesn’t really jive with my ideals.

You can take the trailer park trash out of New Jersey, but can’t take the New Jersey out of the trailer park trash.  Especially when they relocate to the trailer parks of Florida instead.

But if I really have to have a last word on this, I suppose it’s for the best for all parties that Sunny gets the book thrown at her.  Not only will she be taken off the streets and be one less liability of a driver to not DWI and kill any other innocents, perhaps some nice quiet time in incarceration is what she actually needs to try and overcome her personal demons.

Dad Brog (#118): What the future might feel like

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This past Friday, I dropped my kids off at school for the first time this year, since I have to be in the office on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Obviously it’s important to me to be present and active in my children’s lives at these early stages of their life, even when doing little things like taking them to school on the days in which I work from home.

Despite the fact that our au pair said that #2 didn’t cry at all on the first or second day, naturally she busts out crying when I drop her off; I’m guessing their general separation anxiety they feel with me from time to time kicked in, and I’ve got a crying child being escorted into school.

Anyway, I get home from dropping the kids off, and I step inside from the garage, and it’s suddenly eerily quiet.  I told our au pair to take the morning off and relax, because I don’t want to be a clock watcher in regards to her working time, and there was little point for her to get up early for like 15 minutes when I was going to be the one taking her to school, so she was chilling up in her room, adding to the quiet calmness in my house.

It’s like I don’t think non-parents understand just how noisy and elevated excitement the presence of children are, much less two toddlers.  Even when they’re doing something quiet and calm, there’s always this metaphorical sense of bated breath, that at any given moment, one or both of the kids can go off the rails, the thumbing of running footsteps, anything in arm’s reach is in danger again, and it’s back to high-alert for the kid watchers.

Last school year, only #1 was in school, and regardless of how chill #2 typically was, it was still the duty of parenting that made me or whomever was watching, to have to be on readiness for, needing to parent, to where it still didn’t feel like the complete sense of calm that was felt when I got home from dropping them both off.

With no kids in the house, it’s like even the house itself was taking a giant exhale of relaxation.  The dog was chill, when our au pair came downstairs, she leisurely went into the sunroom to exercise.  I brewed a cup of coffee without having to watch over my shoulder, and it’s like for the first time in a long while, I felt like I could actually relax in my own home for a little bit, and it was of course, a really pleasant feeling.

And now that I’m back in the office four days a week, I’ve noticed that pretty much nobody does absolutely any work at all on Fridays, which doesn’t bother me one bit.  I haven’t had a Friday meeting in three weeks, and although I know that won’t always be the case, it’s been really nice not feeling tethered to my machine in preparation for a meeting.  That being said, it adds to the general and fairly sudden influx of going from stressful, hands-full high workload to suddenly relaxing calm on Friday.

I think in future Fridays, I may use the lax atmosphere to try and catch up with things around and outside the house that I simply can’t get to, because I’m pretty much always on kid-duty when I’m not in the office.  I got a chainsaw and a pressure washer for Christmas, and I haven’t been able to use either, and there’s a lot of shit outside that needs to be addressed that my landscapers won’t do unless I pay them moar, so it’s on me to try and do the other touchups around my property.  I’ve also got frames to hang, shit to clean and general housekeeping that I’d like to take care of, and I might start utilizing some of these kid-free Fridays to try and tackle things like this, because fuck, I don’t know how to actually relax, and always have to be accomplishing something.

Either way, it was a very surreal feeling when I got home from dropping the kids off, and I wonder if this is a small glimpse into the future.  And of course, there’s that emo-dad part of me that’s always melancholy and seeing every moment I’m away from my kids as a threatening sense of this is what it will be like when you’re empty nesting, no matter how much there are times in which I just want to turn off being on dad mode and just be by myself, staring at a wall and doing nothing.  But at the same time, I’m looking forward to future Fridays, because of the potential there might be for me to actually get some shit done at the house without having to worry about the kids.

In conclusion, WFH Fridays with the kids in school = a good thing!

Welp, it was bound to happen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

😮 – Will Ospreay busts out the IWGP United Kingdom championship blet at the NJPW G1 Climax, supplanting the United States championship

I remember after getting my NXT UK Tag Team championship replica blet, thinking ahhh, no more blets are even in existence for me to even want now.  Maybe I can start actually saving my money for more responsible things or investing or putting it back into my house or something that isn’t trying to get more wrestling blets.

In spite of the title of this post, the itch actually kind of low-key came back a few times already at this point, with the WWE predictably releasing new renditions of existing blets, and Impact’s Joe Hendry and previously Matt Cardona giving me reason to possibly want an Impact Digital Media (World) Championship replica blet.  But those were mild itches that I could focus my body to not think about them, and they’d go away on their own.

But when I read highlights of the G1 Climax where after his loss to Tetsuya Naito, Will Ospreay cut a promo about how he’s British and doesn’t care about the United States, so the fact that he was holding the IWGP United States championship meant very little to him.  And then channeling Lance Storm, but instead of putting a sticker over the US title, Ospreay busts out a brand new version of the title, but instead of US flags all over it, is the same blet, but with UK Union jacks all over it, the IWGP United Kingdom championship effectively.

And to no surprise, my mouth did a partial gape, and now I’m thinking how much I already want it.  Regardless of the fact that structurally it’s basically the same blet as the IWGP US, but my general love and appreciation for British wrestling that has grown over the years makes this instantly appealing, and I would like to acquire one if it is possible.

The good news is that because NJPW are such hipsters and barely do replica blets, and none that aren’t made from 24 karat gold and would constitute as legitimate financial investments, I’ll have no other option than the Pakistani bootleg route where all my other NJPW, NWA and Impact have come from, and fortunately, their price (and quality) won’t really be that high.

One day, the blet wall will go back up, and once again, it’ll be a challenge to try and accommodate any new blet(s) that I may have acquired from that point.

Better start looking for a bigger home.

Voting for the Rome Rednecks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d heartily: the High-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, the Rome Braves announce rebranding of the team starting in 2024; reaching out to the pleebs for suggestions for the new team name

When I learned that the Braves along with a few other franchises, were selling their minor league affiliates, I knew that this was going to eventually happen.  The Braves, as well as the Yankees, Cardinals and Cubs off the top of my head, maybe a few others, were some of the only teams that owned one or more of their minor league affiliates. 

As a result, these teams would often times be generically branded as the Springfield Cardinals, Staten Island Yankees, Iowa Cubs, and in the case of the Braves, the Gwinnett Braves, Richmond Braves, Macon Braves, Mississippi Braves, Danville Braves and so forth.  In fact, the Braves were probably the worst team at brand suffocation; at one point, they basically had the rights to nearly their entire minor league pipeline, branding them all “the Braves.”

None of these teams got to be quirky, have fun names, and the freedom to brand, market and advertise, because of stuffy corporate brand standards.  And for every minor league team that was owned by their parent organizations, there would be five other teams with fun, local, unique, memorable or all of the above names and identities, that paired up with all the same, to an MLB organization.

The Montgomery Biscuits, Modesto Nuts, Myrtle Beach Pelicans, Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, and the Asheville Tourists come to mind off the top of my head.  All unique, quirky and interestingly branded organizations with contractual obligations to be minor league affiliates of MLB squads.  I’ve also been to the homes of all the aforementioned minor league teams, and let me tell you how much more fun minor league baseball is compared to the too-serious, pain-in-the-ass experience of big league Major League Baseball.

Well, now that the Atlanta Braves don’t have the right to lord over the Rome Braves anymore, it comes as no surprise that the newly anointed Rome Professional Baseball Club has decided to ditch the Braves name and come up with something new, fresh, and hopefully a lot more fun than a name that every so often gets brought up as whyyyy do they still have such an offensive name to indigenous people??

No more stuffy, constricting bullshit corporate standards, no more obligation to be contractually married to using nothing but red, white and navy.  The world is now a blank canvas for the Rome Professional Baseball Club, and I hope for the best that they manage to tap the people and actually get something clever, fun and with high potential to do some magical branding with.

Continue reading “Voting for the Rome Rednecks” →

Dad Brog (#117) – If I could bottle it, I’d be the richest person alive

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much as it might come off like all these dad brogs, and just my general tone of writing in a brog is that my life isn’t that great and that I’m always pissed off and miserable or something, that’s obviously not the case.  Sure, I have my share of days in which I think things could be better, but ask yourselves if you really feel that much differently than I do.  Perhaps it’s the Korean in me always having high expectations for everything and no matter how much I tell myself to temper them, I don’t, and then I get predictably disappointed when things aren’t like, A+ rating at the end of the day.

But really, my life isn’t miserable, because I definitely know that things could be so very far worse, and I am fortunate to be in the position where I am at, to where the bills can remain paid and my kids are well taken care of.  Sure, I don’t feel like I have a tremendous margin of error, and it probably doesn’t take a lot to derail things into stress-filled catastrophe, but for what it’s worth, I’m hanging in there, and if there’s anything at all, the time I’m writing this, I’m not in one of those dark-filled headspaces, where there’s a tone or an edge to the words that I will be writing.

Really though, this is just a tiny story, that if not just wanting to share, for my own documentation, so I can remember this moment as one of those moments in life that I will treasure until the day I die, and as long as my brain can remember it, it would be like a core memory that I’ll always go back to whenever I feel like I need it.

I came home from work, another day in the office.  For the better part of the calendar year, work hasn’t necessarily been difficult, but it has been busy, to the point where it feels like nobody on my team can really breathe, due to the sheer volume of tickets and requests we get.  I don’t really feel like I’m getting to do my real job function, which is to be creative, and am more just punching in and punching out production type of requests, and considering I’ve witnessed my current company have a turnover rate that’s probably six-times higher than my previous employer, it’s a little unnerving.

But anyway, I come home from work, I park my car.  Instead of going in right away, I usually take an extra two minutes to go get the mail from the mailbox because I’m the only one who does it, and if it doesn’t happen now, then it won’t happen.  I can already hear my kids screaming from inside the house, and despite being off-the-clock with my job-job, I’m preparing myself to get back to work with the job that really matters.

I go to the mailbox and retrieve the envelopes in the box; undoubtedly moar bills, moar spam, moar junk.  No sooner than when I look up, I see #1 running towards me, with #2 not far behind.  Both are barefoot, and both have the biggest smiles of joy on their faces.  I scoop up #1 into my left arm, and seconds later, pick #2 up into my right, and begin carrying them back into the house. 

The au pair is not far later, apologetic for letting the kids slip out the way they did, but it’s fine; they’re slippery little toddlers and this is the kind of things that little kids do.  Really though, it’s more than fine, it’s a genuinely perfect moment in life, and if could bottle the feelings of their happiness, my reaction, and the sheer feeling of love, joy and happiness experienced over the next minute, mass produce it and sell it to the public, I would undoubtedly become the richest person in the world, because such raw positivity is so lacking in the world in general, and I know people would be willing to shell out a mint to experience what I did that afternoon.

Seriously, my words aren’t really sufficiently describing just how perfect of a moment it was.  Although the memory will always remain with me, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to see it again, and all I can hope is that it organically happens again in future days in which I come home from work, although I’m sure the au pair will be on higher alert to make sure the door is locked lest they sneak out again.

But it made my heart burst with happiness, to the point where curmudgeonly old brogger me felt the absolute need to share it with the dark and cynical interwebs, because I want to remember it forever.  If I were in Neverland, this would be my happy thought to get me to be able to fly.  It was like a Nintendo 64-kid amount of happiness.

It was a moment that absolves any amount of darkness, unhappiness and pessimism I may have felt over the last indeterminate amount of time.  And reinforces that absolutely no matter what, the love for my kids trumps everything there is, and there really is nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice for them.

I feel like I sacrifice more than an Ultimate Warrior promo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With a post title like this, one might think that this was going to be yet another whiny, my-life-is-difficult diatribe where it can be assumed that I’m in a foul mood of some sort.  The thing is, I’m actually not in a particularly bad mood or anything, but it is just something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and I just felt like typing out some words to see if anything comes to fruition, as that’s something the brog has served for me occasionally throughout the literal decades.

But to get to the point, I feel as if the vast majority of my life these days is spent making sacrifices all the time.  I don’t drive my own car into work most of the time, because my car is the big safe dadmobile with the childrens’ seats already set up in them, and it’s left with my au pair so that she can drop off and pick up my children from pre-K.  I drive our third car, which has served me fine, but it is older, needs more care, and lacks some of the conveniences that my own car provides.

At home, I no longer have an office or a space of my own because of our choice to employ an au pair, which is no knock on them, as I still consider it one of the best decisions we made as parents, and one that I would easily recommend to other parents of young children.  But the point remains, when the house gets crowded, or I feel the want or need to just go somewhere in my own house to hide out and take a breath in, I don’t always have such a reprieve.  This was exacerbated numerous times over the last few weeks with several house guests, and I found myself in a position where I just wanted a little bit of privacy and couldn’t have it.

Most of the time however though, are the sacrifices of my time and general self I feel that I make, and I sometimes ponder if I’m doing it too much.  I basically have no hobbies left because I don’t have time for them because my weekdays are all spent working, parenting and then I have like 3-4 hours a night “off” which doesn’t account of the time it takes to clean up after the kids, reset the house, and prepare a litany of things for the following day, so I really have like two hours a night in which I’m truly free to be off and relax, but not without a clock over my head knowing that I have to sleep at a sensible time, so often times I don’t do anything that substantial or the things I want to commit meaningful time to because two hours a night just doesn’t cut it.

On our most recent “vacation” I sacrificed myself to ensure that our au pair could get to experience some things about Disney World, since it is important to me that she gets to actually live some semblance of life while here, and not just be a nanny to the kids, but what it results in is me taking kid duty and ultimately not getting to really do anything that I might want to do, not that I could think of anything I’d want to do in Disney World anymore these days.

The point is, I feel like I’m always in a state of constant sacrifice that I don’t really know where I’m generally at with my life anymore.  All I want is just a single day in which I can sleep in and not have to be the first one up, preparing breakfast, preparing everything, dealing with the girls’ cranky morning tantrums, and have some substantial time to myself.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I haven’t found myself in a position to be able to enjoy such considerations in quite some time, and I’m pretty sure the last time I was able to take some time off, was when I hopped on a plane to go to Texas to visit my brother.  But opportunities like that are few and far between, because I’m financially strapped because I’m always sacrificing everything I make to try to support a lifestyle that might be a little too extravagant for my personal preference.

I read a book not long ago about a half-Korean girl dealing with the passing of her mother to cancer.  Piggybacking off my prior post about crying, I think I was drawn to this book because I knew it was going to be a real tear-jerker and I was seeking out something to help burst my dams, but it was still a good read.  But one of the takeaways from the book, and I’m sure it was really meant to be sage wisdom passed down from a Korean mother to her daughter, but I feel like it could apply to a Korean man like me, was that far too often, there are people who give 100% of themselves to their families.  Such is not necessarily a bad thing, especially at the ages of my children, they need everything I can give to them, but her wisdom was to hold back 10% of one’s selves, and keep it for ourselves.

That stuck with me, because I feel like I’m currently living a life where I’m constantly giving 100% to my family, but in doing so, I’m completely devoid of having absolutely anything for myself.  Recently, I’m trying to look for ways to try and gain back any percentage of myself, and even if I succeed, I highly doubt that I’ll be able to get up to 10%.  I guess I’m just such a sacrifice-er, that if I can get to like 5% of myself back, that should be considered a win.

I tried to treat myself to a new pair of shoes; but like so many indulgences in the world, whenever I find something that I might like, it turns out to be what everyone else tends to like, and the specific shoes that I decided I want a pair of, apparently, they’re so hard to get a hold of, that when Foot Locker gets a new shipment of them in, they’re basically treated like an online queue lottery system that everyone has to fight over, and only the lucky ping lottery winners actually get an opportunity to get.  Seriously, I made it through the virtual queue in three minutes, but my size was apparently already sold out, and within ten minutes, they were sold out of all sizes, presumably because of re-sellers and StockX pirates just grabbing anything they can get their hands on.

So, so much for trying to get any semblance of any % back for myself in that regard, back to the drawing board.  But the bottom line is that I just need to stop sacrificing 100% of myself, and find little ways to keep semblances of me, for myself, otherwise I end up as, well, this.  An angsty, emotionally volatile, usually irritable and mad, deep-fried burnt out dad.

Dad Brog (#116): TW: Love You Forever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not a particularly tough guy.  I cry a lot more than any grown man should probably feel comfortable to admitting, and frankly there are times where I wish I could cry even more.  Sometimes, life feels a bit overwhelming and I think about how a tremendous cry session would feel refreshing and maybe help open the emotional gates and purge, allowing me to end up in a better place than which I started, and if/when it does not occur, I’m left feeling disappointed.

TL;DR, I’m a great big crybaby. 

It’s obvious where #2 gets it from.

That being said, there are triggers for me that I’ve managed to get used to, or have hardened up in the face of, where it’s harder for them to choke me up and get the waterworks to start up.  Songs, books, memories, photos, etc, being the sentimental sap that I often am, learning that I’m somewhat of a crybaby should be about as surprising as racial violence in Montgomery, Alabama.

However, there’s one thing that has recently found its way back into the picture that absolutely murders me, emotionally, and that is the book Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch.  My household has like 400 various books for our children, and some books end up on one of the various shelves around the house and don’t get read for a while, but eventually everything cycles in and out of rotation, and recently Love You Forever came back out of the shelves and into #1’s pile of books in her room.

Prior to the arrival of #1, mythical wife had gotten a copy of it, and reading it then was an impossible task, because I could barely get past the fifth page before I was a sobbing, emotional trainwreck.  After #1 was born, and I would spend hours reading to her, I couldn’t finish the book then either, and it was probably even worse, because I was truly learning what unconditional love was with my own offspring, and I probably broke down after the first instance of the song.

Just thinking about these memories alone has already gotten me teary, that’s how potent this book really is.

But it’s back out of the shelves now, and just a few days ago, I took another attempt at reading it, to my now-three-year old daughter, who is whip smart, has a vast vocabulary and is a gamut of emotions and opinions.  I made it past page five this time while managing to keep the hose from turning on, but by the time I got to the part where the mom was unable to finish the song from old age, I was done.  I started crying so hard, I couldn’t even read anymore.

#1’s got this shit-eating grin on her face, amused at seeing dada completely destroyed by a book, wondering why he’s not reading anymore, because he’s too choked up.

“Keep reading” she says, and I’m ugly cry laughing at how callous my daughter is. 

The last three pages are as difficult as the rules to Apocrypha to complete, and I break down again at the part where the child now grown, is singing the same song to his daughter, but I manage to finish the book.  She’s still laughing at me, and I’m laughing too while sobbing uncontrollably, because I love my kids forever.

But holy god, does this book really need to come with a trigger warning on the cover.  Parents shouldn’t be subject to this kind of emotional genocide from a children’s book.