Tag: memes

The Family Guy effect for sports

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not even going to pretend for two seconds that I’m a hockey fan.  The biggest importance of hockey in my life is Al Michaels’ call of Do You Believe in Miracles? from the 1980 Olympics when Team USA upset the Soviet Union in one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports.  Otherwise, I know and care very little about the sport, personally considering it fourth-tier in the hierarchy of professional sports.  I know a lot of names of players and teams mostly through osmosis of ESPN and other sports outlets I keep my ear to the ground with, but really I’ve given no shits about the NHL ever in the history of my life.

However, it hasn’t been lost on me that over the last few years, the Washington Capitals have had some difficulty in overcoming the Pittsburgh Penguins.  Something like the Penguins winning three straight playoff matchups against the Capitals, en route to winning the Stanley Cup each time or something or other.  A cursory search shows that that the Penguins won seven consecutive playoff series against the Capitals since 1995.

This stigma had been amplified over the prior two seasons, with the respective stars of both squads, Alexander Ovechkin of Washington and Sidney Crosby of Pittsburgh in the primes of their careers, as well as the ever-prevalent and pervasive presence of social media for all the fairweather and casual fans to blow shit up more than others might want.  And as had been the norm, the Penguins ended the seasons for the Caps, and went on to win Stanley Cups each time, while fans in the DC/Virginia/Maryland area bemoaned the seemingly endless curse of DC sports.

When I noticed that the Caps and Penguins were on yet another collision course in this year’s NHL Playoffs, I talked a few times with a close friend who is an actual hockey fan, and a Caps fan no less.  And as a DC sports enthusiast, he’s pretty much been there, done that as far as the low expectations for sports teams in DC, regardless of their records or the hype.  Whether it’s the Redskins, Nationals, Wizards or Capitals, we’ve all seen them ascend to contention, only to fall from grace, perpetuating the stereotype with each crushing defeat.

We basically talked about how it was about to be another year, another Caps jobbing to the Penguins, and to prematurely begin engraving the Stanley Cup with this year’s Penguins personnel.  And then the Penguins went on to win game 1 of the best of seven, further reinforcing the feeling of déjà vu of another Caps shortcoming and another DC sports team, collapsing.

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Just when you think the NBA couldn’t get any dumber

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It was naïve of me to think that the Houston Rockets attempting a million three pointers when it was apparent that nobody had the NBA Jam fire code running was the dumbest thing to happen in the playoffs.  After all, the NBA Finals hadn’t yet occurred.  And much like tempting Murphy’s Law, something worse must occur.

Obviously, I didn’t watch the vast majority of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, but thankfully I watched the part that really mattered.  Where Cavaliers guard JR Smith corralled an offensive rebound on a missed free throw, with the score tied at 107 with five seconds left, but instead of calling for a timeout or attempting a game-winner, he dribbled it out to half court and let time expire – much to the abhorrent dismay of his teammates who clearly understood the situation better than he did.

Despite the fact that Smith alleges that he thought a timeout would be called or he was going to get fouled, the fact of the matter is that he clearly was not aware that the score was tied, and that he could have very well won the game, had he even bothered trying to get a shot up or passed it off to someone else who could.  Commentators quickly and often, pointed out claiming to have heard that immediately after the gaffe, Smith claimed to have “thought we were ahead,” which is mortifying that a guy would lose track of the score, in the NBA Finals.

This isn’t really a big deal if the Cavaliers won the game, but naturally they lost in overtime, magnifying the incident fifty times over, as the sole reason why they lost.  And this isn’t an instance where a player could politically correctly state that the team lost as a team, because LeBron James scored 51 points and JR Smith’s brain fart is what denied the Cavs a chance to even win in regulation.

Bottom line is, JR Smith is an idiot.  He’s a bonehead that somehow managed to lose track of the situation in the most critical part of the game in the most critical part of the season, in the NBA Finals.  Regardless of if he actually knew the situation and was hoping for a time out or to pass the ball off, or he did in fact forget, neither changes the fact that he’s an idiot.  His excuse that he was waiting for a timeout or that he was going to get fouled is weak, because as the ballholder, he himself could have called for a time out, several of tenths of a second faster than the coach could have, but he didn’t want to take accountability for that decision.  Or, despite the fact that when he snatched the offensive rebound, he had the ten-foot tall Kevin Durant up in the air and could very easily have gotten up a fairly uncontested shot at close range up and made a game winner, but again, no accountability assumed there either.  Neither of which are any better than simply having forgotten the score at the most juncture of the game.

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Growing Up Type-R

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know I touched on this subject before in the past at some point, but seeing as how the car has been green lit very similarly to the initial concepts, it doesn’t hurt to revisit this.  Sure, cars rarely change dramatically from their concept stages, and I wasn’t expecting the Civic Type-Riceboy to go from Gran Turismo Edit B pocket rocket to a sleek sophisticated sleeper, but we all can wish, right?

Anyway, upon seeing the updated photos of the release model, the first thought that popped into my head was the immediate comparison to the Homer Simpson car that tanked his half-brother’s original fortune, that’s how clown-y it looked, with its giant spoiler that I’m sure will be described as “aggressive” and face that looks like a smashed down Stormtrooper helmet.

And that’s just the superficial details that aren’t to the standard that I once held the vaunted Civic Type-R when I was still 19.

Mechanically, it’s definitely the strongest Civic, and one of the strongest Hondas in general off the factory line in history, but there too, it seems to have lost all the cool shit that made Hondas back in the late 90s.  An alleged 306 horsepower is advertised, but it’s coming from a turbocharged 2.0 liter with a redline of “just” 6,500 rpm.

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Oh, MARTA #100

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, I can’t have entitled this “Oh, MARTA #1,” because I’ve been chronicling MARTA fuck up stories for a few years now, but at the same time, I didn’t feel that this particular incident could just be summed up in the arbitrary numbers that I make up on the fly that make it sound like MARTA fucks up way more often than they actually do although it’s not really that much of a stretch to believe if they did.

So much like they do in comic books or any sort of regular periodical, I figure to just let’s just call this commemorative #100, because it truly was a MARTA incident that can’t simply be recognized with some made-up number.

As the story goes, since it all happened while I was overseas, the long-awaited implosion of the Georgia Dome, as covered by The Weather Channel, had their video feed utterly and completely ruined by a MARTA bus that just so perfectly timed its arrival into the shot right as the initial charges went off and the Georgia Dome came crumbling down.  Usually, I like to believe that I’m capable of coming up with way better headlines and descriptions of events than popular media does, because I don’t have to play by the rules of censorship or any sort of policing.  But when scuttlebutt declared the event as “The most Atlanta thing to ever happen” or something along those lines, I simply had to shake my head and just agree.

Seriously, I can’t really think of something more symbolic of Atlanta than a MARTA bus photobombing a momentous occasion.  And you know the driver had no fucking clue of its actions, as it was probably some wage slave just doing their daily job, trying to keep to the schedule and continuing to move . . . people, routinely through Atlanta.  But to the people at The Weather Channel who were completely banking on this footage, this was a cockblock that not even a Michael Cera film could have possibly executed. 

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Hashtag white-washing lol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Ghost in the Shell starring Japan’s own Scarlett Johansson attempts to create promotional meme; blows up in their face like Japan’s own bukkake

Honestly, I thought too much time had passed for me to bother talking about the white-washing of GITS.  Sure, I’ve got lots of opinions about whitey taking over yet another story conceived and taking place in ‘ze Orient, but none of them would really be any different than the litany of white guilt white knights that are all over the internet crying over the injustice of it already.

I mean there was a movie about the Great Wall; of China, starring fucking Matt Damon of all the people on the face of the planet, so it shouldn’t be the least bit surprising that GITS would star a woman as Japanese as Scarlett Johansson as the lead character.  I don’t think we’re that far off with a remake of Roots, starring Topher Grace as Kunta Kinte, or perhaps a rendition of Frida starring Blake Lively as the titular Frida Kahlo, and neither would be a surprise if such were to occur.

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How to civil war

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A year ago to this day, I asked people on theFacebook a question about where they stood on couples that sit next to each other, side-by-side, at restaurants.  Personally, I think it’s a little tacky and potentially inconsiderate if the restaurant is one that is apt to get crowded.  Of all the random questions I ask people on social media, this one seemed to elicit the largest pool of responses, ranging from agreement to my sentiments, and a whole lot of agitated disagreement.

Needless to say, I was greatly amused seeing this old thread on On This Day, which is pretty much my favorite component of theFacebook outright, I think.

Anyway, I decided to do a little cursory researching over the internet about this specific topic, to see what a little bit more of a mass audience felt about it.  In the end, I found countless Yelp discussions, message board threads, and various opinion pieces complete with passionate commenters, on the topic, and it’s not difficult to get a generalization of the types of responses:

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Forcing terminology: A Bundy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve decided to start referring to good things happening in fours as “a Bundy.”  As in Al Bundy scoring four touchdowns in a single game.  Sure, the meaning behind four touchdowns in a single game has been somewhat diluted and turned into something of a joke thanks to seasons of Married… With Children, but the fact of the matter is that four touchdowns in a single game is an extraordinarily difficult task to accomplish.

Looking at the list of all-time single game records in the NFL (before it turned to shit), there are literally a single handful of guys who have managed to score five touchdowns in a single game, and slightly more guys who have managed to score four touchdowns in a single game.

Bundys.

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