Tag: motherland

Squid Game: of course Korea can make the battle royale genre better

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I think I only needed like 30 seconds of the trailer to determine that Squid Game was probably something that I was going to really like.  Even before the trailer reveals that the games were deadly for those who couldn’t compete, it seemed fairly obvious that such was going to be the case but all the same I was all-in for such a concept, because I was a fan of such battle royale notions like Lord of the Flies as well as Battle Royale.

The thing is, despite the fact that the general concept of Squid Game is kind of lifted from numerous predecessors, it still in my opinion, ended up being a better execution than all of them, mostly because the long-form format of being a Netflix series gave the story a tremendous amount of room to breathe, develop its characters, and tell the more comprehensive story about just how desperate people can be when facing the weight of mass economic despair in their lives, that somehow become determined to become expendable at the potential reward of sudden generational wealth.

Needless to say, the show as a whole was about as easy of a layup to love as I thought it would be.  It’s lock on the top rankings of Netflix since it’s drop date goes to show that I’m not the only one who feels as fondly to the series, but since it’s made in Korea, I can take just a little bit more ownership to it than all other non-Koreans, and everyone else can kiss my ass and continue to overanalyze and pretend to be experts on Korean dramas suddenly because they watched Squid Game.

Frankly, after watching through the series, it’s actually an unfair comp to put it in the same breath as stuff like Battle Royale.  Squid Game is far more nefarious and thought-provoking due to the fact that all participants of the entire thing are basically voluntary, and there’s few things as jarring as the thought of people willingly putting their lives on the line for a very minute chance at winning a large pot of money.

I won’t go into too much analysis because I don’t want to give away any spoilers to zero readers, plus the imaginary weight of my writing queue is probably about as heavy as the economic hardships all 456 participants of Squid Game feel, but it really all boils down to the fact that Squid Game most definitely delivers on the massive amounts of hype and mania as people are rightfully giving it, in my opinion.

Leave it to Koreans to make a better battle royale story than all of its predecessors, and it makes me happy that shit like this continues to further the obvious narrative of just how high quality and good at telling stories and making media that Koreans are capable of.  I enjoyed the show immensely, and I look forward to what comes next from the Motherland as far as future projects are concerned.

I don’t want this, I need this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t want to think about what I would’ve done if I had never known about this until it was too late.  Despite my general ambivalence towards MLB these days, my general love for minor league baseball has never waned, and I feel fairly confident I could go to the grave thinking minor league baseball is vastly superior to their stuffy, corporate, money-grubbing major league big brothers.

But the Montgomery Biscuits, the Double-A affiliates of the Tampa Bay Rays, as in Montgomery, Alabama, one of the largest redneck populations in the country, for whatever reason, is doing a Korean heritage night, where they are going 200% balls to the wall all in on it, to where they’re even changing their name to Montgomery Kimchi for the night.

More importantly, they are releasing a variety of branded gear for the occasion, and even more than the NXT UK Tag Team championship belt replica that I covet that seems like it will never be released, I realize that don’t just want a Montgomery Kimchi cap, I absolutely 17,000% NEED a Montgomery Kimchi cap.

Like, I wanted a Florida Marlins cap before their identity transformed.  I kind of wanted a Chief Nokahoma cap or a fucked up Cleveland Indians cap for their ironic notoriety.  I wanted a large variety of minor league caps from my travels, like the Modesto Nuts, and I actually went to some pretty great lengths to get the sliced bacon cap for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs because I wanted that too.  And I actually have a Montgomery Biscuits cap, and despite being one of the prime centers of the Confederacy, I actually liked the city of Montgomery and their ballpark, and the brand and colors were so gaudy and cheesy that I wanted that too.

But when the Montgomery Biscuits transform into Montgomery Kimchi, I won’t just want a cap, I WILL NEED A CAP.  Full stop, period.

I haven’t been this excited about something to throw money at in ages.  I’ve already got the Montgomery Biscuits’ shop site perma-opened in a tab, I’ve got their Twitter account open and ready to refresh daily to see when they’ll drop.  I will be ready to go to war for a Montgomery Kimchi hat, and make it look like Dragon*Con Marriott room day seem like the demand for a Stryper cover band.

I already had a soft spot for the Montgomery Biscuits, because I liked their park and I liked their identity.  This kind of outreach and promotion not only makes me love them forever, but more apt to become a supporter of the Rays, since the Braves are shit and I’ll need someone to root for that I can give a shit about and not just the pursuit of being right and riding on the hopes that the Padres go all the way just to make me look smart.

Either way, I’m going to be lowkey anxious about my need to get Montgomery Kimchi merch, and probably a little bit crazy until I can secure some.  And I’ll go even more ballistic if I manage to get a Kimchi cap and it turns out to be one of those shitty Elmer Fudd quality caps and my life will be over.  But all the same, I will need a Montgomery Kimchi cap.  And probably a shirt, but the kimchi mascot in a men’s large is already fucking sold out, and I can only hope they’ll replenish and realize that there are hundreds to thousands of Koreans out there that will want them and be willing to throw down cash to get them.

Seriously though, fuckin’ Alabama of all places in United States to throw Korea a little bit of love.  Montgomery, no less, where the actual fucking White House of the Confederacy still stands to this very day, is the city that realizes that Koreans are a massive untapped well of cash willing to go gonzo over a little bit of love being shown.  But it’s working all the same, and I’m ready to go to war to get my kimchi cap.

Not entirely sure what’s worse

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

White people during the pandemic, or white people amidst the “end” of the pandemic?

Serious question.  Because at least during the pandemic, when you saw white people* running around maskless, it was pretty clear where they stood – deniers, racists, idiots, or all of the above, and it was nice to have a defined line to know when to stay the fuck away from people.

*or anyone for that matter, it just so happens to be that the vast majority of anti-maskers in America just so happen to be white

But now that a whopping like 23%** of the country has been vaccinated, all across America white people* have been whipping off their masks and running around maskless and arrogant and thinking they’re invulnerable as if it were 2019 all over again.  Suddenly, the clear distinctions between unvaccinated idiots and the vaccinated are completely gone, and especially considering at the time I’m writing this, those under the age of 12 are still ineligible for vaccination, that terrifies the ever-living shit out of me knowing that people are all over the place unknowingly potentially spreading coronavirus everywhere.

**not willing to try to find an accurate number

I ran some errands the other day; a trip to the inside of a bank, followed by a trip to the grocery store.  Sure, they’re two incidents that has formulated this entire overarching statement, but what the fuck ever; the conclusion on from such a brief outing was sufficient enough for me to determine that white people simply cannot wear masks.  A cursory Google search when I got back to my computer reveals a gabillion hits, with among them studies like this that all but confirm the assumption.

At the bank, there mercifully were not a lot of people inside when I went, but two white males and one white female were the only people there without masks on.  Everyone else there, who were minorities of various ethnicities were wearing masks.

When I went to the grocery store next, ironically the only white people I saw that were actually wearing masks were an elderly couple; color me surprised.  But literally every single other white person in the store, and even a surprising amount of store employees, the white ones naturally, were now sans-masks.  This isn’t to say that I didn’t see a few people of color not wearing masks, but it goes without question that the overwhelming majority of no-maskers now are unmistakably white.

I mean already, not a day goes by where I don’t opine my disgust and disappointment in America, but this gradual increasing of people arrogantly throwing their masks away most certainly doesn’t help changing my opinions.  Coronavirus is most definitely not gone, and as I’ve stated before, I have no intention of going maskless in public until like 2024, and if white people don’t get their fucking arrogance in check, it might end up stretching out until 2026 at this rate.

One, I have a child and soon children, under 12 years of age, and I’m sure the vaccination age will continue to drop as time passes, but I’m still not willing to put myself in harm’s way which would put them in harm’s way by running around maskless just because it’s occasionally uncomfortable, my glasses fog up, I don’t like the smell of my own breath or the occasional break out.  I mean seriously, if those are the inconveniences I have to put up with in order to help keep the human fucking race safer, then my god, burn all these fucking masks.

But two, being Asian, in a country where anti-Asian sentiment is bubbling up, it doesn’t seem like a good idea for me to run around without a mask and potentially feed some over-armed Georgia redneck that I’m a Chinese carrier here to spread coronavirus or anything.  I haven’t personally experienced overt blatant racism in a while, but I don’t want to reset that clock any time soon unless it came by some Fortune 100 company whom I could then sue and get Oprahrich but that’ll probably never happen.

Getting back to the original query though, frankly, I think things are worse right now, with white people arrogantly ditching their masks, regardless of their state of vaccination.  Because it’s allowing the anti-vaxxing morons to blend in in plain sight among those that are vaccinated, because the vaxxed that have been vaccinated are simply too selfish and unconcerned about their fellow man, were too inconvenienced to continue to wear masks, that they’ve basically become just like their anti-vaxxed brethren.

Isn’t it obvious what makes Invincible invincible?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last two weeks or so, my daily routine has gotten to the point where I can afford to watch a little television every night, and chip away at the queue of shows and programs that I’ve wanted to watch over the last year.  Obviously, this will come back to a screeching halt once #2 comes into the picture, but for the time being, I’m trying to enjoy the feeling of a little bit of expendable downtime again, and soaking in all the stories that I’m hearing good about, and getting to experience them myself.

Among the things recently watched would be Amazon’s Invincible; I’m so long out of comics, I had no idea what this property even was, but from what I can tell it’s by Robert Kirkman, the guy who made The Walking Dead, and it seems to be something of a lampooning of lots of popular superhero comic stories, while having its own cohesive storyline.

As a whole, I found season 1 to be pretty enjoyable.  It’s fairly obvious what properties are being emulated in some characters, and there’s something about the general goriness of the series that kind of takes the veil of the sidelines off of traditional superhero stories, because obviously there is such a thing as collateral damage, and whenever any invasion or attack occurs, there are going to be people negatively affected.

But a comprehensive review isn’t the point of this whole post; it’s the answer to the question in the headline of this post, because I think it’s pretty obvious where Invincible’s overall superhuman aspects originate from, and it’s most definitely not because he’s a half-Viltrumite.

Like I said, I went into this as blind as Ray Charles’s long-decomposed remains, so I had no idea that Mark Grayson’s mom was Korean, therefore making Invincible half-Korean in addition to being a Viltrumite.  That said, it becomes clearer than crystal to why Invincible is basically invincible, warranting being a mega super hero worthy of his own comic and television series. 

Frankly, the only thing that gives it away is this little piece of framed artwork in the background of the Grayson’s household.  And then I notice the way Debbie Grayson is drawn, and then the black hair on mother and son makes some sense.  Also, the fact that both characters are voiced by Stephen Yeun and Sandra Oh, actual Koreans, and the animation credits are basically a rollcall of a Shinsaegae employee roster, and it all makes perfect sense to just how inherently of a Korean operation this whole thing is.

Either way, Korean or not, I enjoyed Invincible.  The fact that it’s so very Korean in the roots only makes it that much more enjoyable for me, and I look forward to seeing how the story unfolds in future seasons.

Minari: chicken soup for the Korean-American soul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I finally got around to watching Minari.  I didn’t watch it because of all the Academy Award acclaim it was getting, nor did I watch it solely because it was a film about Koreans, starring Koreans and was produced by mostly Koreans.  I’ve been wanting to watch Minari because based on the premise of the film, it was something that I knew was probably going to hit home to a Korean-American person like me, and I went in knowing that there were probably going to be a lot of moments of reflection, reminiscing, comparing and probably shit that was going to make me cry.

Without giving anything away, the basic plot is a Korean family moves from California to Arkansas, primarily so that dad (Steven Yeun) can chase his dream of starting up a farm.  Naturally, this is a cause of culture shock for Koreans to move into rural middle America, and the struggles and rigors of surviving and adapting at the same time.

What was endlessly amusing to me is that I feel like Steven Yeun, since rising as a star from The Walking Dead, I feel like took his appearance in David Chang’s Ugly Delicious to heart a little bit, where Chang’s circle-jerk of celebrity friends was giving him a little bit of shit for being able to make it as a big-time American star in spite of being Korean, and almost since then, has been doing a lot of roles that inject him into his Korean heritage.  Despite the fact that his Korean sounds a lot like most Korean kids who did a lot of their growing up in America, it’s his attempts to sound like fresh-off-the-boat English that had me cracking up. 

But if there’s anything that was truly right about the entire film, it was undeniably Youn Yuh-Jung’s role in the film, playing grandma Soonja.  Obviously her performance was justly recognized seeing as how she was a shoe-in to win best supporting actress and did such, becoming the first Korean actor or actress to win an Academy Award.  But she shines from the moment she shows up in the film, and it makes me reminisce to my own childhood, where my grandma often stayed at my home to fulfill the same role as Soonja did, being the free babysitter for primarily me since I was the baby of the generation.  My grandma wasn’t nearly as hands-on, or quite nearly as sassy or show as much personality as Soonja did, nor was I nearly the shithead to her as David was to Soonja, but it definitely gets the memories flooding through the gates.

Frankly, there’s a lot of parallels to the film I could feel with my own life, seeing as how both my parents were also chicken sexers growing up, and how my family grew up in rural Virginia, which wasn’t nearly as remote as Arkansas, but was still similar in the sense that there probably were like 15 Koreans in the entire town, with some of them being relatives.  And I imagine just about every Korean family in America could probably feel some sort of kinship to the film as I did, and just about everyone in my own family has stated similar feelings themselves.

There’s a lot of subtle symbolism and interpretation necessary in the plot and its happenings throughout the film, and at first blush I was kind of perplexed at the way the film concluded, but when I lay in bed thinking about it, most of it kind of falls into place, and it makes me admire the film even more than I did while watching it.

Bottom line is that the film really is like chicken soup for the Korean-American soul, and although it’s nowhere near as critically acclaimed or attention-getting as Crazy Rich Asians or Parasite, but in my opinion, is still a tremendously important film for Korean or other Asian cultures to try and watch sometime.

We can all use a feel-good story

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago, I joined a Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) Facebook group, because I was really just looking for intel on how to get tickets to baseball games in Korea.  Mythical (then) gf was going to Seoul for a month and expressed interest in going to a baseball game while out there, and I figured English speaking Koreans on this particular KBO group would be a great resource to tap into.

I never left the group, and when the coronavirus pandemic started and all sports shut down across the globe, one of the very first professional leagues to get back on track was the KBO, and for a very brief part of summer, all sports-starved eyes of the world were all focused on KBO.  As far as the Facebook group went, the membership exploded, with the most prevalent sector of noobs showing up being degenerate gamblers, practically begging the group for any tips any info to use.  Still, I stayed in the group, because it was Korean and it was baseball, and I enjoyed seeing the perspectives of fans in a completely different realm outside of MLB and affiliated ball. 

A few weeks ago, I saw a post pop up, about a guy who had witnessed a bus hit a dog, and how he was trying to rescue said dog.  Frankly, given my general attention span when it comes to social media, I didn’t even realize at first that it was coming from the KBO group, and then I saw the name of the person who had made the post – a person named Anthony Lerew.

The reason why this name rang a bell for me, is that a long time ago, when I was still early in my quest to visit all 30 MLB ballparks, when my travels took me into Boston, naturally I planned it during a weekend when the Braves would be making a rare interleague appearance out there, long before I realized that I was a walking bad luck charm for the Braves* whenever I traveled.

As was often times the norm back in those days, teams loved to call up pitchers from Triple-A for interleague games, mostly on account of the fact that their opposite league opponents would have zero familiarity with them, and hope that such would give them an edge.  The Braves called Anthony Lerew up from Richmond to pitch against the Red Sox, and I remember sitting in Cheers in Boston, having a massive burger and a Sam Adams, while the game started, relishing in being that tourist with the away team’s hat, hoping for a good game for the Braves in hallowed Fenway Park.

Lerew gave up three earned runs, and the Braves lost 13-3.  As was occasionally the case with Bobby Cox, he had a short trigger with young pitchers like Lerew and pulled him after the second, and let a bunch of trash pitchers absorb the rest of the afternoon.

What I didn’t really realize was that was Lerew’s last appearance for the Atlanta Braves.  He was back in the minor leagues the following year, and I vaguely have some recollection of him getting shelved with injury before being released.  As was the case with many former Braves, Dayton Moore was quick to pick him up and bring him to the Royals, where he had a few more appearances in the bigs in 2009 and 2010, before his major league career ended.

Unbeknownst to me, his career continued on long after his time in affiliated ball, and he kept on pitching wherever his talents could be utilized.  Japan, Korea, Venezuela, the Independents.  He had one particularly good year in 2012, where he pitched 170 innings for the Kia Tigers, while maintaining a 3.83 ERA. 

I have no idea if that one particular year had anything to do with his present, but fast forward to present day, and Anthony Lerew is still in baseball now, where he is on the coaching staff for the Kia Tigers.  This made me happy to learn, as there’s always something so beautiful about the guys that are baseball lifers that always stay involved in the game, even after their playing careers are over.

Anyway, back to the story about the dog, one thing that I learned from my two trips to Korea, is that their bus drivers are among the most reckless drivers on the planet.  I spent maybe cumulatively 20 days in various parts of Korea over those trips, and I witnessed no less than three different incidents of buses hitting cars or guys on scooters, from Seoul to Jeju to Geongju.  The notion of a Korean bus driver hitting a dog and driving off is about as surprising as finding out about pollen in Georgia.

So Lerew came across a badly injured dog, and decided to take it upon himself to try and rescue him.  Unsurprising, costs would be an issue, as KBO salaries are nowhere near pro salaries in America, much less for a non-player coach, so Lerew did what many in the world do whenever they try to raise money for a cause: GoFundMe.

99 times out of 100, I tend to kind of pretend like I didn’t see a GoFundMe, because there’s at any given time so many of them out there that have some degree of personal connection to me, and it’s not that I don’t care about any of these causes so much as I got a second kid on the way, my finances are pretty buttoned up, and I don’t always have the capacity to get involved.

But once a Brave, always a Brave to me, and I always remembered Lerew from Boston, and when I saw him, he always had the most killer sideburns.

Plus it wasn’t like Lerew was trying to exploit GoFundMe and/or his friends, to raise money in order to pay bills or some sort of debt that was his own fault and was totally avoidable.  He was just trying to rescue an injured dog.  Who doesn’t love dogs?  So I donated a small amount, with genuine hopes that he would reach his target goal of the equivalent of $7,000 USD to pay for surgery, rehab, vaccines and other costs.

It didn’t take long at all for the goal to be met, because clearly there are many out there that love baseball, love dogs, recognized Lerew, or whatever reason.  I think it hit the goal in 2-3 days, and I was pleased to see Anthony Lerew notch a win in one of the many things in the world out there that are more important than just baseball.

The best part about this whole story has been Lerew and his family’s complete transparency during the whole aftermath of the fundraiser.  It’s not that I wouldn’t have trusted him, but in this jaded day and age of scumbags and thieves, I can understand the Lerews’ overcaution with transparency, and they posted updates on a near daily basis of the journey of Oreo (the dog’s new name), updates on surgeries, receipts, and adorable rehab videos; in English and in Korean.

As of today, it sounds as if the worst of the journey is over, and Oreo has been discharged from the vet and is on her way to a life of care and compassion with the Lerews in Korea.

Honestly, I didn’t really know where I was really going with this post so much as I just wanted to share a story of rare positivity and a happy ending in this time of the world that is desperately in need of stories like this.  I loved hearing that Anthony Lerew is still in baseball, and that he’s a person of great compassion, faith and resourceful enough to utilize technology, and that there are many also compassionate people out there who are willing to chip in for a good cause.

The best month ever, fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In spite of the mental troubles I went through earlier in the month, I came to the realization that October truly was, one of the best months ever, as far as my life is concerned.  I have my child, I have my wife, and I have my mother under the same roof throughout the entire month, and I’ve been getting free childcare from my mom while I’ve transitioned back into the rhythm of working virtually. 

Additionally, my fridge has literally never been so full so often, as my mom is basically a machine when it comes to insisting that I be eating more Korean food, and I’m more than happy to oblige as much as my appetite can accommodate.  It’s actually been kind of humorous the pattern of her complaining about the lack of fridge space when it’s she who’s constantly buying more food to re-cram in there. 

But the last weeks have been an enjoyable pattern of me getting to work with piece of mind that my daughter was with her grandma and in the best of hands that aren’t her parents.  The two of them bonded pretty immediately, and it makes my heart swell every time I see them together, both of them smiling and enjoying each other’s company.  My mom bringing a lot of old world parenting to the forefront, with my child responding just fine, as long as she was being cared for and given attention.

The thing is, I had a harrowing thought in my mind throughout the month that I’m not entirely sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to spend this much time with my mom again in my life.  She’s in good health, and takes pretty good care of her lifestyle, but she is in her 70s now, and we live in a country where basically a plague that preys upon the elderly is still running rampant.  I feel like my child kind of revitalized my mom a little bit to where she was capable of babysitting for her throughout the working weeks, but it was clearly taxing by the end of each day, and I can’t assume that this will be able to be the case again in the future if I were ever to have a second, but I also don’t want to imply that grandma’s biggest value is solely in babysitting, because she’s still a mom to me.

Needless to say, the realization that these are the days that should be treasured the most is what helped me pull my head out of my ass, because there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever have time like this ever again in my life.  It’s been a truly incredible month for the most part, and I’m happy that I was able to capitalize and memorialize a lot of the times with my actual camera, because it was really important to me that my daughter have lots of photo evidence of her time spent with halmoni on dad’s side.  Because she’s been hitting home runs every single day while she’s been here, and as our month winds down to a close, I wanted to write something about it so that I too can look back fondly at this time of my life and remember that in a year where everyone is bemoaning as the worst in history, I had one of the best months ever.