Tag: lowered expectations

5 associate degrees? Why no bachelor??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: 12-year old California tryhard kid graduates from community college with five associates degrees

It seems like every single year, people get more and more competitive about academic achievements, but to a degree where it’s not actually cool anymore, and just kind of attention seeking and insufferable.  And the internet doesn’t help, as there are countless platforms for these tryhards to flex and humblebrag about the things they’re accomplishing; don’t get me wrong, it’s great that people are flexing something useful like educations, but if they’re only doing it for the sake of getting people to sing their praises then it’s really no different than inventing an obnoxious viral dance or something.

Here in Atlanta, every year, my old neighborhood’s Nextdoor feed has become this escalating pissing contest of parents sharing stories or flexing their kids’ accomplishments of how many acceptances and how much scholarship dollars the local high school graduates are.  It has literally escalated every year, and for every person who loves to proclaim their kid got into every single Ivy League school and has amassed over $1M in scholarship offers, there’s two other kids who have been accepted into 20+ schools and has totaled over $2M in scholarship offers.  And the ships sail endlessly as people resort to internet passivity to vent before someone inevitably says can’t we all just get along???

Obviously, this behavior is not exclusive to Atlanta, and throughout the years, we’ve seen all sorts of tryhards who have turned educational achievements into sport itself, and all across the country there are people who are always trying to out-do and one-up everyone else with college acceptances, scholarship values, how many degrees, youngest to do something, oldest to accomplish X, etc, etc.

But shoutout to this 12-year out in California who managed to notch his fifth associates degree from Fullerton College, which sounds and is kind of impressive in its own right, seeing as how he’s only 12.  But then the low hanging fruit of jokes channels my inevitable becoming a high-expectations Asian dad, and wondering why his Asian parents seem to be okay with him taking a victory lap on the internet when all he’s accomplished were a handful of associates degrees.

Not even bachelor’s degrees!  WTF?

Of course, regardless of the snarky shade, he’s still set up perfectly to transition into actual college eventually, and I’m imagining that a large part of this game is to be able to transfer the evident butt ton of credits that he’s amassed from community college into an actual bachelor’s program, and he’ll still inevitably graduate from a real college well before he’s 18.

But the thing is that his motivation for embarking on such a tryhard path really wasn’t so much the fact that he wanted to learn faster and reach adulthood in a better place than most, as much as he heard that some 13-year old had done it, and he wanted to match or exceed them.  So it’s like, did he really, learn anything, as much as he checked off boxes and requirements for degrees, so he could beat someone else, or was he just basically trying to speed run through community college in order to have bragging rights?

Regardless, it’s all way too tryhard, way too obnoxious, and frankly a disservice to parenthood and raising a child in my opinion.  The boy probably has no friends and no social skills from being either taught at home by Asian parents or being surrounded by much older teens and young adults all through his college journey, and even if he is the wunderkind, when there’s no more school to be had, will probably end up as a sad sack adult with a whole lot of catching up with living amongst human beings, all because he and his family were caught up with trying to better someone else instead of bettering their kid.

When my kids are nine-years old, I’m hoping they’re finishing up the third grade, and have friends and peers their own age.  If they’re smarter than the curve, we’ll assess how to challenge them appropriately, but I’m pretty sure sending either my kids off to community college probably isn’t going to be on the table.  Meanwhile, by then, this tryhard kid will probably be 18 with a college degree, and completely incapable of getting a job, because he will be a social skill invalid, have no ability to interview or interact with other human beings, and end up working at his parents’ business whatever, stereotypical Asian one they’re in.

When you try hard, you die hard.

Yet another losing faith in humanity scenarios

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In one of my friends group chats, one of my bros posted a picture of himself with a book, attempting to be funny; it’s okay because he’s black obviously.  Now of course there’s a part of me that did think it was funny, but more than that, I had more questions than I thought it was amusing the whole irony of black guy perusing book with inflammatorily racist title.  Namely, the curiosity on if it really were a book with 328 pages with nothing but the N-word in it, or if it were just an attention-grabbing title, with the contents of the book actually being something substantial.

Nope, it was the exact polar opposite in the sense that it actually had absolutely nothing at all inside of it, as in zero text whatsoever, between the header and footer of every page.  And according to Amazon, it’s not even actually 328 pages, so it’s more like 242 blank sheets of paper sandwiched into a book form, and it’s somehow $14.99 on Amazon, and shocking to absolutely nobody is that it’s been purchased enough to have a slew of verified purchasing reviewers doing their best jobs of being internet comics and failing predictably with “reviews” of it.

All the same, what we have here is another classic example of people out there in the world who knowingly put out means for people to spend actual currency that are useless, pointless, known wastes of said currency; and then to no surprise, people go out and actually do it, because they think it’s funny and/or they really are that stupid to where they’re completely at ease with dumping their cash for goods or services that serve no purpose whatsoever, instead of, possibly putting it to any good use at all.  Not for themselves, not for charity, not for anyone at all, but basically the equivalent of knowingly setting their own personal cash on fire.

It’s like the idiots who raised $50,000+ for some clown’s GoFundMe trying to make a potato salad, or that time where Cards Against Humanity had a live-streaming sale where people paid in real-time to keep an excavator operating digging holes for absolutely no reason, or when Cards Against Humanity literally sold nothing for $5 a pop and still raised tons of money.

People just, love to throw their money away, when they think in doing so, they’re in on some clever joke.  And it’s instances like this where it’s apparent that some people have too much money or too little intelligence or both, and it just turns into scenarios where the end result is just a nihilistic feeling of disappointment and losing faith in the species to where people would rather spend $5 on nothing than putting it to absolutely any form of productivity instead.

I know this is rich coming from a person who has spend an inordinate amount of money on replica wrestling belts, but at least those purchases are going to businesses or individuals, or parties where amassing money is some sort of objective, and not knowingly throwing it into a barrel fire.

And here’s the worst part; while looking up the particular book, just to get my facts straight, it turns out that it’s not alone.  I wish I could say I were surprised by this, but of course I’m not surprised, that there are basically two other alternatives, with one of them literally changing out one word and adding “Fun” into it, while the other is just fewer alleged pages.  And that’s just on Amazon alone, I can only imagine how many other copycat “publications” of this same title are floating out there.

Naturally, people are buying them, and aside from disgust, I’m also a little envious in the fact that these clowns are also getting a cut of the purchases of their bad jokes, while I’m struggling to make ends meet every single month and always looking for ways to try and make some extra money in order to have some breathing room.  I can’t say that I wouldn’t be above trying to capitalize on bullshit to make money, but there’d probably be a part of me that wouldn’t want to be a flagrant hypocrite in order to try it out.

Someone get the Minnesota Timberwolves a trophy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

They avoided getting swept!  They may as well be NBA champions for demonstrating such guile and determination and defeating the mighty and championship pedigree of the Denver Nuggets to stave off elimination.

This, is the very definition of lowered expectations, and precisely the instance why I actually have a tag in my brog entitled “lowered expectations.”

Sometimes, the NBA is just so hilarious at how soft and silly it’s become over the decades.  There’s so much noise surrounding the entire league, that the actual act of playing hoops seems so almost tertiary.  It is entirely possible to get sucked up in the drama and storylines of an entire NBA season and not actually watch a single game.

But back to this hilarious screen grab, it’s perfect on so many levels:

  • First, it’s not even remotely accurate that the Timberwolves avoided getting swept for the first time in franchise history; back when the playoffs were still best-of-five, the Wolves were swept in both 1997 and 2002, but the NBA for some reason likes to disregard the BO5 era unless it’s in support of whatever narrative they’re phishing for.
  • They act like the Wolves getting swept would be some sort of monumental history or something; Minnesota isn’t an OG NBA franchise, having come into the league in the 1990 expansion, but in 30+ years, they’ve only made the playoffs 11 times. That’s literally 33% of the franchise’s existence they’ve gotten into the playoffs, and of those 11 times, only once have they gotten out of the first round, and that was Kevin Garnett’s MVP season.  Otherwise, the Minnesota Timberwolves are definition of a middling pretender that may never actually win an NBA championship ever.
  • Rudy Gobert being in the frame is like the cherry on top, because I can’t say that I follow the NBA much, but whenever I do hear about the NBA, Rudy Gobert’s name has come up a surprising amount, and it’s almost never in a good context. This is the guy that was the league’s Patient Zero when COVID started, but not only did he deny coronavirus, the guy dared the world to give it to him, and he made a spectacle of rubbing microphones and tried his best to get it, and by golly did he succeed.  As soon as he tested positive, the NBA shut down shortly thereafter.  Oh, and just a few weeks ago, the Wolves ended their season with Gobert getting into a fight… with a teammate.  Real smart guy, that Rudy Gobert is

Whatever though, let’s hear it for the Minnesota Timberwolves for winning the NBA Championship after 33 long years of operation staving off getting swept because they’re totally going to be the first franchise in NBA history to ever come back from an 0-3 series deficit, and that statistic, is very much factual with no asterisks or caveats.  Maybe the Wolves can build on this grandiose achievement, and perhaps in 22 more years, get knocked out of the first round in game six instead.  Progress!

That’s a whole lot of words to say “because we suck”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d heartily: San Francisco Giants GM Farhan Zaidi tries to explain the difficulty of signing free agents because nobody likes the city

I remember when my baseball travels took me to San Francisco, I looked forward to the trip.  Years of watching stuff like Full House and Mrs. Doubtfire made the city seem like a pretty cool place, but at the same time, as a sports fan, I was a little skeptical, because as far as baseball was concerned, it became pretty common knowledge that San Francisco was the city that was 69F all year long, and their sports fans were among the most insufferably obnoxious ones in existence.

All the same, I looked forward to the trip as I did most all of my baseball trips, because regardless of the preconceived notions, it was still a place I’d never been to before, and I always relished the opportunity to see new places.

After my trip was over, I had decided that it was a good enough trip, but as a whole, I really wasn’t that impressed with San Francisco.  Everything everywhere was ridiculously expensive, the weather really was static, and it was just a difficult city to traverse in general.  As far as ballparks were concerned, I thought Oakland’s decrepit mausoleum of a ballpark was the better place to watch a game, and the sports culture was everything I had expected before going there.  Giants clearly cared more about the scene than they did the team, and even when they were getting stomped by the rival A’s, the fans still went ballistic for the Fist Pump Cam, and I’d never felt more embarrassed for other human beings in my entire life.

Despite the hype and perception and the self-importance from those in the Bay area, San Francisco was not a city I am that fond of, and I have little motive to want to visit again without good reason.

So I was quite tickled pink to read this article where the Giants’ GM Farhan Zaidi maybe said a little too much in an interview, because he basically said that free agents don’t want to sign with his team because the city kind of sucks.  He cited a couple of things that were not at all sports-related, and the author of the aforementioned story injected a little bit more of their own opinion into the article trying to smokescreen it as Zaidi’s.

But they mention stuff like homelessness and drug problems in the city, and although they don’t expressly say it, their use of sociological factors is basically trying to skirt around the fact that San Francisco is pretty well known to be one of the gayest cities in America, and I don’t say that with any hint of criticism or animosity, after all I’m in Atlanta, which is probably right behind them in population of the LGBTQ+.

Ballplayers probably don’t care about homelessness or drug use in the city, what they’re more likely to care about it the fact that it’s an expensive as fuck city to live in, and even the biggest of superstars are going to have a hard time trying to find a place to live, having to compete with all tech millionaires and billionaires that live in Silicon Valley.  Over the last few years, there have been numerous professional athletes who have turned away opportunities to play in New York and Canada over anticipated tax costs, and gone to places like Texas and Florida where tax laws aren’t as costly, they get that granular with their money.  San Francisco and the highest real estate costs in the country aren’t very likely to be that attractive to anyone, much less professional athletes.

Maybe the more country bumpkin athletes might have an objection with living in a blue state full of the gays, but it’s more likely that what will drive them away is a city with horrendous traffic and mountainous hills where they can’t drive their sports cars around in and have any fun, but it really was hilarious that the author of the post cited being the home to Nancy Pelosi as a potential reason why Aaron Judge wouldn’t sign there.

The thing is, no life-long Bay area resident would ever publicly decry their hometown to anyone other than other Bay area lifers.  Hometown criticism is like mom jokes, as in only we are allowed to make them, but coming from outside us, fuck you.  So it makes it that much more entertaining to me, that a notable representative of the city in the form of the hometown baseball club’s general manager goes on the record to point out all the faults why free agents wouldn’t want to sign there.  I’m sure he’s going to be a popular fellow until the next shiny distraction emerges.

Naturally, at the time I’m writing this, word drops that the Giants succeeded in signing shortstop Carlos Correa to a 13-year megadeal worth $350 million.  Most interestingly about the initial details is that I’ve noticed that there are no opt-out clauses, which means I really hope Correa likes the city, because he’s going to be there for quite some time.  Hopefully he knew what he was getting himself into, otherwise it’s going to suuuuuck.

Either way speaking of suuuuuuuck, suck it, San Francisco.  Y’all are an overrated city that nobody outside of it likes.  I relish in the fact that coronavirus exposed the town more than any other in America and their ridiculous real estate market took a notable hit, and it almost nearly gets some blood flow to hear that the Giants’ own GM think the city sucks too.

Dad Brog (#091): childcare in America sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the span of the last five months, I’ve had two nannies quit on my famiry.  I’ll be the first to admit the high level of difficulty in simultaneously overseeing two kids the ages of mine, but the thing is that before anyone gets the idea that my kids were the ones driving them off, it’s just that we’ve just been very unlucky with the people we’ve hired.

The first nanny quit because she basically had a mental breakdown after two days of solo duty, despite having over three months to prepare for it.  And the worst part was that she did it spontaneously by calling out one day and then ghosting us for nearly two weeks before resigning over the phone, after we had already moved on to hire someone else by the time she reached back out.

Unfortunately, that someone else has just given her notice after just barely four months, because her personal life has imploded and she’s decided that it’s just not possible for her to continue nannying for us any further.  I won’t go into specifics, but at least she’s given us the courtesy of some lead time, and mythical wife and I are scrambling to find someone else before we reach her hard stop last day, and that’s if she doesn’t decide to phone it in and peace out before then.

Needless to say, if not for the fact that I was already souring on nanny #2, I’d be apoplectic about the fact that for whatever reason, my famiry just can’t seem to lock down competent, reliable childcare.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about the current scenario, because I was already on the path of looking for a replacement and this saves wifey and I an uncomfortable conversation of having to let someone go, but it doesn’t change the disappointment of having yet another nanny who crumpled to the job, mostly on account of their lives just being another hot mess.

I know my kids won’t really remember much of this in the grand spectrum of things, but I would love for them to have some stability and consistency in their lives.  After nanny #1 peaced out on us, my eldest mentioned them by name a few times when they heard the garage door, thinking that they were coming to see them.  And she’s also cognizant of both nanny #2 and her own son that she brought in daily, but now both of them will be leaving our lives too.

My kids deserve better than what we’ve been giving them.  Unfortunately, it’s been very challenging on our part as parents to find a good nanny, because they all talk a good game to get the job, but we’re 0-fer-2 now at fielding someone that has actually remained up to the task at being able to handle it on a regular basis.

Frankly, and this is where I’m getting up on my old man soap box, I just think American childcare sucks.  All these nannies are mentally soft, have no work ethic, are susceptible to complacency and laziness.  They have little respect for my wife and I’s jobs and the jeopardy they put us in when they phone it in and call out with bullshit excuses like migraines and car troubles and forget that if we lose our jobs, they lose theirs.

The thing is, I think we pay fairly well; substantially better than some of the wages I’ve seen others in my community offer up.  And yet, it’s like in order to attract higher quality talent that might not be so flaky, I’d have to go up even more, and I’m already struggling to keep up with nanny wages as it is.

So it really does just boil down to the fact that childcare in America sucks.  Either people are lazy and untalented, or they’re priced too high for the middle class to be able to regularly afford.

Are my expectations too high or am I employing subpar talent?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I have decided to make a post about this instead of venting further to mythical wife because she’s probably beyond exasperated hearing me gripe, and my friends’ group chat doesn’t seem like the most appropriate place to do it either.  I’m not concerned about my hire ever discovering my brog either because pretty much nobody but me reads the bullshit I write and frankly the worst things that could happen is it might open their eyes to their shortcomings, or prompt them to quit, which in turn would force my hand at finding a replacement that might be better at the job anyway so it’d be a win-win either way.

But long story short is that I am not particularly satisfied with my current nanny situation, and I’m really over in-home child care in general, in spite of the fact that it still beats the alternative, which is putting my children into the petri-dish of daycare where they might get abused.

When it was just one kid, I employed a nanny, because it was still the peak of the pandemic, and our collective maternity/paternity time was coming to an end, and we needed someone to watch #1 during the day while I worked from home.  One adult to one child worked out great and was relatively easy for that duration, but as we all know, #2 came pretty quickly afterward.

There was a lot of time where there was adequate coverage for both kids, between mythical wife’s second maternity leave, my second paternity leave, my mom coming down for a few weeks, but there was a definitive point on the calendar when all the coverage was going to dry up, and it was going to inevitably be the nanny covering both my kids, solo.

Well, that didn’t last very long at all.  I think, maybe four total days, until they basically had a mental breakdown, ghosted us and then basically quit over the phone with me weeks later.  #2’s challenging sleeping habits basically broke them, putting us in a horrendous situation where we had to scramble to find a new nanny very quickly, in an extremely nanny-favoring market, due to the number of people who are embarking on hybrid or alternative working situations.

Fortunately, we found a new nanny fairly expediently, and they quelled our initial concerns on being able to handle both of my kids, as they have been doing nanny work for well over a decade.  But it came with a catch; they had to be able to bring their own one-year old child with them, which meant they were effectively in charge of not just two kids during the work day, but three.  However, they assured us that it was doable, so we agreed to hire, and it was a brave new world.

At first, things were going pretty good.  In spite of the perceived difficult of wrangling three kids all under two years old, they never seemed to get frazzled, always kept cool, and every time I asked if they were good, if they were okay, it always was.  I admired their ability to keep cool under the pressure of multiple infants and toddlers, and their experience in their careers as well as their own parenthood really showed.

But occasionally, there were some behaviors and actions that were done that made me scrunch my eyebrow, like showing too much initiative, by rearranging my entire kitchen and doing some cleaning, which is kind of outside of their job description, as long as it doesn’t pertain to the kids.  At one point, I got a text message that was all like teehee, I owe you a Diet Coke, and this one bottle of Diet Coke that I’d been sitting on was taken.  I was a little miffed at that one, but this person was taking care of my children, so I could let one stolen soda slide.

Continue reading “Are my expectations too high or am I employing subpar talent?” →

Wrestlemania weekend, and such a thing as too much wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few months ago, I got an email from Ring of Honor wrestling, advertising a show that would be their return show after a four-month hiatus.  It was set to take place in Dallas, and my eyes lit up at the thought of going to visit my brother, and going to a show that was likely going to be a banger of an event.

But then, it was brought to my attention that this was going to be taking place the same weekend of Wrestlemania, which was also in Dallas, and suddenly the idea of going to a show that was more than likely going to be attended by other mouthbreathing marks from all over who were on their way to watching Wrestlemania really took the wind out of my sails, and the idea was dead in the water just like that.

Over the last few years prior to coronavirus, a thing that been happening was that whatever city was hosting Wrestlemania, promotions and events that weren’t even WWE, would start booking shit in the same city, around Wrestlemania’s dates, all with the obvious intent to try and leech off of the droves of people who would already be coming into town to watch Wrestlemania, and entice them into these giant weekends of wrestle-everything.

One notable example was when Wrestlemania was in Brooklyn, New York, New Japan Pro Wrestling booked Madison Square Garden two nights prior.  Over the last few years, there’ve been what’s been dubbed WrestleCon, which is exactly what it sounds like, something of a convention for wrestling fans, with the primary thing being all sorts of meet and greets with current and former wrestlers.

However, this year’s Wrestlemania weekend in Dallas, would turn into this week-long affair, where numerous events and promotions started staking claim to times and venues all around the Dallas area, and I thought to myself, man, there really can be such a thing as too much wrestling.

There was one year where Wrestlemania ended up being like five hours long, and I was completely toast by the end of it.  They’ve since moved to the two-night model which I greatly prefer, and I’m sure all involved parties do too, since there’s two nights worth of gate, merch, parking and revenues to be made instead of one.

But Wrestlemania being two nights, on the Saturday and Sunday meant that even their own in-house Saturday show, the usually outstanding NXT TakeOver, got relegated to Saturday afternoon status.  In addition to the WWE’s presence in Dallas, there was the aforementioned ROH show that took place on Friday night, and earlier in the week were events booked by GCW, and even one venue that had MLW and the upstart Control Your Narrative promotion at the same time.

And of course, WrestleCon took place too, to help fill in the time in between actual wrestling shows.  Except that WrestleCon had their own mini-show at it too, with Impact Wrestling running an interesting event with a multiverse theme, which flexed just how many companies Impact had working relationships with.

All in all though, this is a good example of how there really could be such a thing as too much wrestling.  Now obviously, I love the business, and I’d definitely love to have been able to go to the ROH show, and maybe the NXT show.  But as I’ve said numerous times, I don’t really have that much desire to go to a Wrestlemania again, seeing as how I’ve been to two.  They’re just too large, and frankly, the quality of them aren’t really as good as they used to be when they’d have cards full of actual wrestling matches and not these spectacle/moment-maker matches where Johnny Knoxville and Logan Paul get on the show while the current US and Intercontinental champions don’t.

And because I don’t have the time, nor desire to pay to watch any special events, the only thing I ended up watching was Wrestlemania, which I have to say was pretty below average as a whole.  The matches that I was expecting to be good weren’t necessarily terrible, but they could’ve been better.  I had high hopes for Edge vs. AJ Styles, but it was average at best.  I had hoped the Roman vs. Brock match would’ve been as hard hitting and Japanese strong style as some of their earlier matches have been, but a supposed injury to Roman seemed to take the steam out of it, and make it seem very abrupt.

The best match of the show was probably Seth Rollins vs. the mystery opponent who turned out to be the return of Cody Rhodes which I called within the first month of AEW’s launch.  And it’s not like it was a Macho Man vs. Steamboat-caliber classic, it’s just it was the best match on a widely mediocre card otherwise.

Regardless, I was pleased to see Roman Reigns end the show with the double belts, because I still do believe Roman is still the best thing going in the WWE now, and he’s not just cutting promos about being in god mode, because he really is performing like he is.

All things considered though, I caught much of the ROH show’s primary matches after the fact, and to no surprise, everything they did was leaps and bounds better than Wrestlemania, as far as actual wrestling talent is concerned.  But frankly, actual wrestling is hardly what Wrestlemania’s been about over the last few years, and they’ve gotten content at just being an entertainment spectacle above all else.  But 150,000 attendees over two days doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s not the wrong call either.