Tag: honor

Pokémon is what makes it funny

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Newsworthy: parkour hero scales four stories in like four seconds in order to rescue child hanging off of a ledge in Paris.  French president applauds his act of heroism and immediately expedites his pursuit of French citizenship and immediately offers him a job with the Paris fire brigade.  A wonderful story of bravery and a reward fitting of a hero who deserves it.

Brogworthy: child ended up in the precarious situation because his dad left him unsupervised so he could go to the market and play Pokémon Go on the way back.  Dad faces two years in prison for child neglect.  Because of Pokémon Go.

Even before it was revealed that dad was out being an idiot, this was still a fantastic story of a legitimate hero who did something extraordinary.  It’s a happy ending for all, because the kid didn’t fall to his death, and the Malian immigrant who scaled the building like Spider-Man to rescue the kid is instantly rewarded with the French citizenship he was aspiring to gain. 

There’s not much to talk about in a situation like this, and it’s easiest to simply marvel in the incredible feats of human bravery and feel like our collective faith in people can gain a point or two for such selfless courage.

But then it comes out that the kid was left unsupervised by a deadbeat of a father who went out to the market, and then decided to leisurely take his time coming back so that he could play some Pokémon Go.  Now, it’s something to brog about.

Full disclosure: I still play Pokémon Go.  It’s literally taking me an entire year to go from level 34 to 35, and there’s a litany of life milestones that I’m fairly confident that I’ll hit before I can get to the maximum level 40, and knowing my luck, Niantic, if they’re even still around in six years, will raise the max cap to like 50, and then I’ll be fucked and proclaim I’ll stop but then probably won’t anyway.

Continue reading “Pokémon is what makes it funny” →

Fulfilling destiny

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It wasn’t as nail-bitingly exciting as the finale of the World Series last year, but I guess it seems kind of fitting that the deciding game of an otherwise insane World Series would end in such a mundane and anti-climactic manner, with the Astros jumping all over Yu Darvish in the first two innings, and then basically just holding on for two and a half hours, counting down 27 outs.

But in the end, the Houston Astros stand triumphant, winning their first ever World Series in franchise history, and I am pleased.  Contrary to the belief that I’m solely happy because it validates a moon shot of a pre-season prediction and makes me feel like I actually know a thing or two about baseball and how to make an educated guess, there are lots of other reasons why the Astros winning is a good thing in my opinion.

I’m happy for Carlos Beltran, whom I felt was one of the missing pieces for a championship-caliber squad, and it’s nice to know that such a talented star throughout a long career will get his ring.  I’m happy for Brian McCann, Evan Gattis and even Charlie Morton, as former Braves players who additionally filled out the Astros roster and contributed big-time performances throughout the playoffs with clutch hits and big innings; I always wanted McCann to be a Brave for his whole career, but such notions are pipe-dreams today, especially with a tightwad organization like the Braves.  But I’ve always rooted for McCann, and I’m happy to see him reach the peak, even if it’s for someone else.

I’m happy for the organization, who went through The Process and actually hit pay dirt in the end; all the years of living in the basement of both the National League as well as the American League when they moved, netted them numerous high draft picks whom most have developed and matured into stars like Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and the World Series MVP George Springer, who absolutely went nuts throughout the series.  So many teams go through The Process, because there’s really no other alternative unless their organizations have massive payrolls, and so many fall short, because baseball is ultimately one gigantic crapshoot anyway.  But the Astros stuck with it, and with nothing more than good development, and smart acquisitions like McCann and Beltran, the team ascended up the mountain as contenders, and come out on top as champions.

Continue reading “Fulfilling destiny” →

I like Deshaun Watson

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Good people just get it: Texans rookie quarterback, Deshaun Watson donates his first NFL paycheck to NRG Stadium workers affected by the flooding of Hurricane Harvey

Seems fitting to talk about this since we’re on the eve of the biggest college football game of the season for me, when #12 Virginia Tech hosts #2 Clemson, where it just might be a good game, but nobody on the planet can defeat Clemson, so it’ll be the that game where Tech stumbles and falls far in the rankings before dropping out outright by season’s end.

But in spite of my general disdain for Clemson, and how they have owned Virginia Tech for the last five years, I have to confess that I’m a Deshaun Watson fan.

At first, I hated the guy for being so good and just so far beyond everyone else on the field, and thanks to his talent, Clemson’s success never wavered while he was at the helm.  I rooted for any team to beat him; NC State, Boston College, Auburn, Alabama, and even teams that I really don’t care for, like Georgia Tech and even fucking Florida State.  But that’s just how much I wanted to see Clemson knocked down, because if they didn’t take some losses, they were always a threat to the National Championship, and they were about the last team I wanted to see winning one.

Continue reading “I like Deshaun Watson” →

Oh how different my life could have been

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It begins in Asia: Video games will soon be a medal sport in the 2022 Asian Games

To all you non-Asians, the Asian Games are kind of like a mini-Olympics, but exclusive to, you guessed it, Asia.  There are all sorts of athletic competitions performed at the Asian Games, from baseball, judo, wrestling, weightlifting to gymnastics and ping pong, much like the Olympics.  It’s a very big deal, because it’s not as exclusive as the Olympics can be, so it really gives smaller, lesser-heralded Asian countries opportunities to represent themselves, and it’s where some of the larger countries like Korea and Japan can flex their advancement without competition from the Western world.

But anyway, news comes from the East that by the 2022 Asian Games, eSports might be a category in which countries can participate in.  As in video games; teenagers playing video games featuring characters that are usually athletic to compete against other teenagers playing as athletic characters.  But video games, for actual medals and actual national honors and prestige nonetheless.

Continue reading “Oh how different my life could have been” →

Failing at failing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When the Braves started the season 0-9, I thought “oh man, this is the year.”  This was the year I would sit back and watch the Atlanta Braves drop 100 games, and I would feel some sadistic satisfaction that the organization that chose to deliberately flip the bird to all their collective fans in exchange for dirty money, would watch large numbers of said collective fans shake their heads in not mad, just disapproval.

I felt good when they finished the month of April at 5-18.  I felt even better when they finished May with a record of 15-36, with more than twice the losses than they had wins.  Things were even looking good when the Braves hobbled into the All-Star break at a paltry 31-58 record, a putrid win percentage of .348.

Now a .467 winning percentage is nothing to really boast about, but that’s what the Braves have played since the All-Star break, and at the time I’m writing this, they’ve gone 29-33 since the break.  They’re sitting at 60-91 with 11 games to play, and even a .467 team would have difficulty in going 2-9 and securing the unholy 100-loss season. 

The math simply does not favor the failure.

Continue reading “Failing at failing” →

Hashtag NFLOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Only in the NFL: Darren Sharper nominated for the NFL Hall of Fame; the same Darren Sharper who is currently in prison on an 18-year sentence for having drugged and raped upwards of 16 women

This wasn’t the screengrab I really wanted for this post, but apparently in the 21st century, replay footage of Sportscenter is seemingly impossible despite being a digital medium.  But this screen grab is close enough to what I saw on television, laughable at its absurdity that it’s actually true: a convicted rapist has been nominated to the “hallowed” football Hall of Fame.

No doubt, he won’t make it, regardless of his statistics and his participation in the Saints’ Super Bowl win in 2010.  But the fact of the matter is that someone, who will in all likelihood remain anonymous because they don’t want to be outed as an imbecile for nominating a convicted felon, actually looked at the ballot in front of them, saw Darren Sharper’s name and thought “yeah, that’s a Hall of Famer.”

Continue reading “Hashtag NFLOL” →

This is what insanity looks like

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Superstition would dictate that I would never share the details of any contest that I was interested in.  I know far too many talented people out there whose skills, acumen and tenacity render me the equivalent of like a toddler when it comes to particular contests.  Call me selfish, but sometimes I’d rather not have the super-talented people I know in my life not beating the shit out of me in any forms of contest.

But in an ironic sense that because of the server outage, nobody will actually read this until god knows when, I feel like I can talk about this contest whose hat that I’m going to throw my name into.  Without concern of jinxing it, or having anyone I know being better than me at it and winning it out from under my nose.

Thankfully this is a contest that I’m fairly certain nobody I know would, much less could, or even want – to challenge me in.  Because most people I know aren’t obsessive and insane about burritos, and typically probably have better things to do with their time and lives.

I got an email from Willy’s, the burrito chain that holds a dear spot in my gluttonous heart.  Long story short: visit all 27 Atlanta-area (plus one in fucking Athens) Willy’s locations, take a picture of the receipts, and try and be one of five nutjobs to be first to submit. 

Continue reading “This is what insanity looks like” →