Tag: fail

New Father Brogging, #039

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

27.5 inches.  That’s how high my daughter fell when she climbed out of her pack and play.

I’ve never felt as big of a failure as a parent than this incident, where barely 60 degrees behind me, my daughter managed to climb out of her pack and play and fall onto the kitchen floor, while I was preparing her dinner, chopping green beans.

Given how increasingly mobile she gets on a daily basis, I didn’t stop to consider that with walking would come climbing, and I’ve witnessed her trying to climb things already, so I don’t know why I didn’t even think that she wouldn’t do it in the pack and play, as she’s attempted everywhere else.

But instead, I was blissfully taking for granted that she would be safe in her pack and play, while I was preparing her dinner, and I naively positioned her to where she was not within my line of sight or even my periphery, so that she couldn’t reach and grab things on the counter or on the nearby shelf, not considering that I wouldn’t see her when she inevitably managed to get up and over the side railing of her enclosure.

The thud still resonates in my brain, and the delayed shock at turning and seeing her laying on her back on the floor, her own shock still just registering the fact that she bumped her head and the pain hadn’t kicked in yet.  I picked her up immediately, hoping this would be something that she would no-sell and impress me with pain tolerance that hopefully mirrored my own, but this was for naught, so much as she was really gearing up to let loose some shrieks of pain from having fallen 27.5 inches, roughly somewhere in the neighborhood of her own height.

Fortunately, save for an unsightly bruise, nothing seems to be that bad.  No signs of concussion, no signs of any breaks or serious injury, just a tender bruise for her, and a monumental amount of frustration, defeat and self-loathing for dad.

Obviously, with raising a child and growing up, scrapes, cuts and bruises are going to happen.  But we’ve gone a year without a tremendous number of those, which made me feel like I was probably doing something right, but all it took was a few minutes of taking my head out of the game, and taking safety for granted for all that equity to come crashing down, and me feeling like a horrible fucking parent for having let it happen.

lol Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not much to really say.  As a fan of both baseball and human rights in general, I for one stand in full solidarity with the decision to strip the All-Star Game from Atlanta because of Georgia’s turrible voting rights laws.  I hear it’s going to Denver instead, which will probably be good for baseball, because people like legalized weed, and home runs, both of which exist in abundance in Denver.

But in spite of being for lack of a better term “my team,” I’m taking sadistic amusement of seeing ScumTrust Truist Park being forced to embarrassingly remove all mention of the All-Star Game from the ballpark and probably all around the surrounding Battery.  Probably at the airport too.  Oh fucking well.

This is what leadership like Bubba Kemp looks like – big talk, no action, and getting owned.  Yea c’mon~

Oh Miami (Marlins)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For as hip of a city Miami thinks they are, when the day is over, the pursuit of money tends to run roughshod over everything else, like the naming rights to a fancy, high-tech baseball stadium.  And I’m not entirely sure why, perhaps I just sometimes feel that no other team is capable of making boring, square-like business decisions other than the Braves, but I guess it should be of no surprise that the long-awaited naming rights to Marlins Park have finally been sold, and moving forward, will be loanDepot park, the home of the Miami Marlins.

And because identity is everything, it will be in that precise format, with lowercase L and lowercase P, with an uppercase D in the middle, which is appropriate, because the stiffs that chase the dollars that ultimately go to them are typically dicks to begin with.

Maybe it’s because Derek Jeter is among the ownership group of the Marlins, that I thought that perhaps even they would break from the timeless tradition of chasing dollars, and actually name the park that isn’t something as soulless and boring as loanDepot park, but as stated above, when the day is over, money rules the world, apparently even for a guy like Derek Jeter, who often played every game like it was his last.

Because there’s little reason to believe that whatever hundreds of millions of dollars loanDepot pay the Marlins to be a giant billboard, will actually invested into the team itself, and the baseball organization will continue doing what the Marlins have historically always done, which is rely heavily on their scouting department and development to continuously find diamonds in the rough at an impressive clip to keep the team remotely passable while ownership swims in pools of money like Scrooge McDuck.

Honestly, this is no surprise, but it’s always a little bit sad to me whenever any ballpark or venue sells out to some regional no-name corporate entity that makes them sound lame as shit.  The Braves have a bank and two different regional HVAC companies that own the naming rights to various facilities of theirs, and all across the country, whether they’re sporting venues or event spaces, they’re all just named after boring companies as if the impact of their advertising is anything but residual name recognition.

Long gone will we see another Fenway Park or Veteran Stadium, or venues with names that roll off the tongue, or at least are capable of having interesting nicknames, that help mitigate the lameness of corporate greed.

And after four years, in spite of Yeah Jeets’ acquisition of the Marlins, the culture of the team hasn’t really changed as much as I thought it would, and as a closeted supporter of the team, it is sad to see them just kind of falling into the status quo of obscure lower-middle class teams.

A great way to start the MLB season

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: umpire Angel Hernandez loses lawsuit against Major League Baseball, accusing them of racial discrimination

If you’ve watched a season, or at least a regular month of steady baseball, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the name Angel Hernandez.  He’s an MLB umpire, and there’s a very good chance that he’s blown multiple calls for the team you’re rooting for.  In all fairness, he holds no bias against any particular team, as he has been consistent in the sense that he fucks everyone over at some point, regardless for whom they play for.

Also consistent, is that he is widely regarded as the worst umpire in all of Major League Baseball, and it’s not just my opinion; he’s literally been voted as such and for other (dis)honors for years at this point.  A cursory Google search will return not just links to stories about how he’s the worst umpire in MLB, but there are all sorts of video montages, memes and various forms of mediums that frustrated baseball fans have created throughout the years to share their opinions justify the notion that Angel Hernandez is the worst umpire in all of Major League Baseball.

It’s not even that he’s one of those stereotypical blind umpire who misses calls all the time; to me, it’s mostly because most of his decisions seem like reflexes, but the instant he’s challenged, he buckles down and absolutely refuses to change his mind, and the act of challenging his decisions is a personal attack to which he will hold a grudge for the remainder of the game as well have a harshly reduced trigger when it comes to ejecting players and coaches from the game.

This is nothing really out of the ordinary for all umpires in general, it’s just the perception is that Angel Hernandez relishes in it, seems to instigate incidents that have actual impact on the outcomes of games, and as Chipper Jones once opined, he tends to occasionally try and make the game about himself, instead of baseball.

Basically, it’s not hard to find evidence that Angel Hernandez is a pretty detested human being, but as long as he’s physically capable of doing his job, it doesn’t seem likely that he’s going to be going away any time soon, much to the dismay of fans and baseball players and personnel alike.

Anyway, just because he wasn’t content with everyone hating him as an umpire, Angel Hernandez decided to wander a little out of his realm to try and stir up more shit, and decided to sue his employers, Major League Baseball, and accuse them of racial discrimination, specifically towards him, because he is Cuban by birth.  He cited the fact that he was repeatedly overlooked to work World Series assignments as well as be promoted to crew chief status as means for discrimination, not considering the fact that World Series assignments are typically reserved for umpires that don’t suck at their jobs so that umpiring doesn’t impact the most important series of the year, and that MLB umpires literally go until they die, and there are still multiple guys with more seniority ahead of him for crew chief status.

Well, it only took four years because America’s legal system is fucking efficient, but the U.S. District Courts wrapped things up and sided with Major League Baseball, giving baseball fans and probably all sorts of MLB personnel and players a shit-eating grin of a victory against an asshole everyone wanted to stick it to for years but couldn’t, because umpires are given such absolute power on the field.  But frankly Hernandez made a huge mistake taking this battle off of the playing field, where he would be vulnerable and by god did the legal system capitalize on it.

Hernandez’s handful of cherry-picked examples does not reliably establish any systematic effort on MLB’s part to artificially deflate Hernandez’s evaluations, much less an effort to do so in order to cover up discrimination

The use of the phrase “cherry-picked” leads me to believe there’s a hint of vitriol in the judge’s remark, and seeing as how the judge is a man originally from Lexington, might’ve been a Reds fan, whom at one point witnessed a game (or many games) where Angel Hernandez turned the screws to his team, so he had a very easy opportunity to return the favor.  Completely coincidentally, the photo I used just so happened to be Angel Hernandez in action doing just that, to a Reds player.

I think the best part to me is that this wrapped up the day before the regular season was to begin.  There’s something about it that feels like MLB saw an opportunity to get this shit rushed and concluded right before a season was to begin, and give Angel Hernandez a humiliating loss, but at the perfect time where he wouldn’t have time to lament about it, since he has to get right back to fucking work on Opening Day no less, and take the field after being slapped with a defeat where he wasn’t omnipotent.

I can’t commit that I’ll actually watch any real amount of baseball this season, as I am a terrible fan plus I will have two kids by the time the playoffs roll around, so most likely I’ll be one of those guys that’s invisible throughout the entire regular season, and only show up in October when the Braves go back to the usual status quo of getting bounced in the NLDS, if they even make the playoffs at all.

But as far as the start of the season goes, Angel Hernandez getting bitch-slapped and put in his place by Major League Baseball, that’s a great way to start it, no matter how you look at it.

“COVID” must be like, Italian, for “sucking”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The only thing that sucks about both Duke and Kentucky missing the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1976 is that both of their blowhard coaches are going to be using coronavirus as their excuse for the fact that they just plain sucked; and because it has been such a devastating thing throughout the last year, or the fact that most people with brains know that sports probably shouldn’t be happening in the first place right now, that they’re both going to have an act of god-like rationale to justify it and chalk the 2020-21 season as some sort of asterisked aberration that shouldn’t count.

However, make no mistake – coronavirus or no coronavirus, both Duke and Kentucky played like shit all year, and they are exactly where they belong right now as a result of it.  There’s little reason to believe that either would have done any better if the world weren’t currently in a pandemic, and if anything at all, there should probably be some suspicion to why they just suddenly sucked when there’s no crowds, no extra noise or any other external factors that being in a non-pandemic scenario would have differentiated from.

Of course, aside from coronavirus, both programs will probably cite some key prospects opting out of the season, and I don’t have enough shits to give to try and find out, but these are two of the most notorious hoops programs in the nation; at any given time, they’ll have numerous 4-5 star recruits waiting in the wings, and for every one that opts out, there’s probably another talented prep salivating in the wings to get on the court.

Either way, as a detractor for both overrated programs, it’s good that neither are in the NCAA tournament, as reckless as it might be to hold in the first place.  Both would have undoubtedly gotten bounced in the second round if not the first, by like Florida Atlantic, UMBC or Louisiana Tech, so it’s better for the NCAA to have those layup losses be filled by a potential Cinderella team from a non-power five conference.

But on that same note, for those who might actually give a shit and actually tune into any March Madness, we’ll all be denied the smug satisfaction and gambling pool of when Duke and Kentucky get upset much less filling out a bracket in the first place.  As I said, I just don’t give a shit to look closer, but in previous years, I always tried to earmark when Duke would get bounced, based on whom was in their region.  Kentucky, I often times gave a little more leash, but they were almost always bounced by the Elite Eight in any bracket I ever fill out.

Anyway, good on sports for Duke and Kentucky not making it to the dance.  Chalk one point up for supposed parity.  As for the rest of the college hoops season, none of it really counts or matters this year; that is, unless Virginia Tech wins it all, to which then it’s the greatest season of college hoops in history, and they overcame tremendous odds and adversity to climb to the top of the mountain.  But considering their placement in the ACC tournament and still got bounced by the UNC squad that ducked them earlier in the season, I don’t have too many hopes for that.

New Father Brogging, #037

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly?  Maybe it’s because I’m months past the period of infancy where babies do not sleep throughout the night and I’ve long forgotten the rigors of sleepless nights and daytime fatigue.  Or maybe my daughter has been particularly amenable as far as babies go.  But if you were to ask me how difficult raising a baby for the first time has been, and I think I would say that it wasn’t nearly as hard as people made it out to be.

Sure, early on there’s the endless amounts of fear and anxiety at the start as new parents, we don’t know what the heck we’re doing.  And then there’s sleep regressions quarterly that make me want to jump out windows.  And then there’s teething, and the introduction of solid foods, and then more teething that make running with razor blades seem like a mercy.

But once routines are established, reinforced and set in, things actually operate fairly smoothly.  The days become somewhat predictable, and once you know when you might actually have time to manage, things become somewhat more manageable.  So either I’ve been cruising on a nice little routine for a while, or I simply was not prepared for the difficulty jump that comes with the start of being able to say “years” in age, instead of just months.

Needless to say, the photo above has been a frequent view of mine throughout the last weeks since my daughter turned one year old.  It was almost perfect at the rate in which she hit 12 months and it just kind of clicked for her to go from awkward army crawling, to not just full-fledged crawling so much as she often uses her little left leg to thrust her further and faster, and covers ground at an impressive pace.

When I saw that there was a class of Huggies diapers called Little Movers, I just had this feeling that my child was destined to become one of those kids.  And at one point, mythical wife and I had a little concern that she might be falling behind in mobility, and prepared for more time of constantly disclaiming adjusted age since she was premature.  But then came army crawling, and like lightning striking she’s not just crawling at a rapid pace now, she’s been experimenting with getting up onto her legs and standing without assistance periodically now.

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There’s a reason why I call it AEWCW

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
I can’t see how far my career has fallen from here…

Although with each passing week, it stands to believe that it could very well be turning into TNAEWCW, based on the questionable decisions the company keeps making in spite of their bold proclamations that they are going to be the anti-WWE, not compete with WWE, and don’t really concern themselves over what WWE is doing.

So Revolution was over the weekend, and although there’s plenty to criticize about what seemed like a pretty wince-worthy show, there’s one thing that stood out the most to me.  And no, it wasn’t the embarrassingly pathetic “explosion” that was supposed to kill Jon Moxley that was set to the same timer that’s in the background of the battle against Emerald Weapon from Final Fantasy VII because Kenny Omega is huge FFVII fanboy, because as far as the actual match itself went, it wasn’t that terrible, and tried its best to harken back to the days of old Masato Tanaka matches in FMW, it’s just the post-match shenanigans were pretty cringe-worthy bad.

Or the face of the revolution ladder match to which the prize at the top of the ladder wasn’t a sack of money, the managerial services of Terri Runnels or a blet, but a giant golden ring that looked like the one that took you to the bonus stages in Sonic the Hedgehog, that was at least won by a guy with actual legitimate talent in Scorpio Sky, who really is one of the shining beacons of the entire promotion.

Leading up to Revolution, there was all sorts of buzz on the scuttlebutt about how AEW was going to reveal this big massive acquisition, and there were all sorts of predictions thrown about.  Some as grandiose as Brock Lesnar, some as wildly unlikely as CM Punk. My personal take was that since the W in AEW stands for Weebs, I figured it would be a Japanese wrestler that few in America had ever heard of, and since the so-called forbidden door is open between AEWeebs and New Japan, maybe it would be an on-loan Kazuchika Okada to threaten Kenny Omega in North America for a change of scenery.

And then there were the less-fun predictions of hardcore marks who actively scour and look for the contract status of active, or recently-retired-not-retired guys or potential free agents, out there like Kurt Angle, Christian, Marty Scurll or Tessa Blanchard.

All the same, AEW had successfully generated some buzz and hype, and even the most lukewarm of fans like me were remotely curious to who it possibly could be.

When it was revealed to be Christian, I literally laughed out loud.  As loud as a dad to a 1-year old in a nearby room could possibly laugh, but an actual, audible sound came from my mouth when I found out that of all the names that were thrown out there, it was a 47-year old WWE mid-carder who’s biggest success in the big leagues came as a metaphorical substitution to an Edge storyline when Edge himself had to call it quits at the time due to neck injury.  A former TNA world champion at a time when that belt was passed around to other “TNA legends” like Bobby Roode, Bubba Ray Dudley and a pre-renaissance Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley.

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