Tag: nostalgia

Happy trails, Batman

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This one really hurts: Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman from Batman the Animated Series, passes away at the age of 66

I remember I was in the fifth grade when Batman the Animated Series debuted on FOX Kids. It was slotted at 4:30 after Tiny Toons and Animaniacs.  I was dubious about how good it could be, considering it was intended to be a kid-friendly cartoon, and to that point I was already aware that Batman comics were pretty heavy-handed, gritty and violent.

Despite my skepticism, before I knew it, I was hooked on the show, and I was amazed at how the show reimagined the entire property to be kid-friendly but still tell great stories and implement all sorts of Batman expanse and really open my horizons to more characters, villains and arcs.  Without the show, I never would have become as big of a fan of Batman in general.

Before I can go off in the wrong direction with this, it all really started with Kevin Conroy’s performance as both Batman and Bruce Wayne.  Unlike the Adam Wests and Michael Keatons who  portrayed live-speaking Batmans before the cartoon, Conroy transforming his voice to adeptly transition between the two personas really raised the bar of what the character should have always been portrayed like.

It only happened a few times in the life of the show, but I always got a tremendous kick out of whenever Batman in full Batman gear, would use the Bruce Wayne voice, usually over the speaker phone in the Batcave.  And his eyes were always animated more happy and not the angry stern look that Batman typically has, and once the phone calls were terminated, we’d immediately be back to the cold and calculated Batman voice before the episode resumed.

The point of all this is that as far as I’m concerned, Kevin Conroy is to me, truly the one and only Batman, as I am sure he is to all sorts of Batman fans out there that share my sensibilities.  His passing is one that genuinely hurts and really does take chunks of our collective childhoods with him into the grave, because he really was one of the actual voices of my generation’s childhoods.

On a personal level, Kevin Conroy’s passing truly is up there with Sonny Chiba and Bobby Heenan for me. His portrayal of Batman really was one of those things that helped raise and shape me, and there’s a very clear reason why he was always tapped to reprise the role for all sorts of shows and video games, long after the Animated Series had ended its original run.

So happy trails, Mr. Conroy.  You will forever be remembered as the official voice of Batman, and although comics live forever, the world is a poorer place without your talents and legacy.

Damn it, I have to side with the conservative chick

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s obvious that my brog has kind of devolved into this cesspool of parenting, wrestling and occasional sports posts, and that I don’t really write so much about the variety of topics that I tried to spread out throughout my ability to write.  Parenting has really shrunken my general world into a very small space that I obviously need to focus on more than anything else these days, but every now and then a slice of the world outside my own manages to sneak in through social media, grasp my attention, and trigger an avalanche of thoughts, and ultimately words that I can put down onto a word doc and call it a brog post.

Normally, when I hear that an alleged victim is of a conservative variety, I expect to get ready to roll my eyes and imagine at what nonsense a white person is going to be bitching about next.  But in this particular story that someone found its way to me, about a girl who is enraged with American Airlines, because she was on a flight where she was the unfortunate middle seat in between two, morbidly obese siblings, for a three hour flight, I kind of get it.

I think it’s a safe bet to say that I’ve flown more than the average traveler.  And in my travels, I have sat in more than my fair share of middle seats, especially considering all the standby traveling I did where middle seats were really my only option versus not making it out at all.  And let me tell you, in the age of seats getting smaller and smaller so that more seats can be crammed onto aircrafts, I have definitely been this girl more times than I can count, where I’ve been victimized by people whose girth far exceeds the confines of a standard airline seat.

Of course, I am no small individual by any means.  I’m probably like 20-30 lbs. away from an ideal mass ratio, but for the most part, I fit adequately into the boundaries of an airline seat.  Sometimes my shoulders exceed the boundaries, not necessarily because I’m swole or anything, but because everyone’s shoulders usually exceed the boundaries of a seat, and most of the time it’s a domino effect of everyone in a row gradually leaning to one side in order to try and get some physical reprieve.

Except in the case of this poor girl, there was no reprieve, because she was literally sandwiched in between two mammoth masses of humanity.  The fact that they were spread out with a gap seat in the middle indicates that they knew they were both blobs and needed the space of a seat in between them, but the fact that they didn’t just outright purchase that seat meant that there was always the chance of some poor unfortunate soul getting booked in it, which is exactly what happened in this case.

And normally I tend to not feel much empathy for those who proudly identify as conservatives, but as a fellow human being who has traveled on his share of airplanes, I completely feel for this girl.  It is absolutely the worst feeling in the world being stuck next to a blob of a person who is oozing into your personal space, and you’re stuck touching these usually less than hygienic My 600 Lb. Life patients for more than two hours otherwise you might’ve driven in the first place.

I have loathed every time this has happened to me, and in my case it’s usually been from one side, but it has happened where I’ve been the schmuck stuck between the Natural Disasters and it is the absolute worst.

The ironically funniest thing about this story is that after the initial, fairly nonchalant response from American Airlines to this girl, is the secondary follow-up response where AA basically sided with her, low-key admit our bad, and gave her a voucher for the horrendous atrocity of having to endure a flight being a literal Jill sandwich.  It’s like after the initial shot was fired, some case worker actually analyzed the scenario and realized how miserable she was and had the empathy to reach back out and offer a peace offering.

It reminded me of my own experience, where the above photo was a picture that I took on an AirTran flight coming back from Las Vegas.  We were surrounded by a family or three where everyone was massive, and fortunately they weren’t in my row, but they definitely were all around me, and because of their girth, they were obviously uncomfortable in their seats, resulting in them constantly getting up and meandering all around me, to where at one point, they just gathered in the back, right next to me, just so that they wouldn’t have to be seated in tight quarters on account of their blobbiness.

I contacted AirTran about the incident, and they actually sided with me with no resistance, and gave me a credit.  It’s like they too know how much of a pain in the ass huge motherfuckers are to the airline travel experience as much as everyone else does, but because so many Americans are so fucking fat, it’s just something that happens on the regular, and they just hope people don’t reach out to complain about it.

Anyway, this chick obviously got blasted by the internet for being so callous as to fat shame, but the funny thing is that there was also a notable amount of sympathy for her situation, because at the root of it, just about everyone who’s ever had to deal with it themselves knows just how much it sucks flying next to a bunch of fat fucks who ooze all over the place.

Anyone else feel this way too?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was inside a Target recently, mostly to admire #2’s prevalent presence in their baby section, and over the PA system, among the music that usually is tantamount to white noise, I was able to pick out the lyrics to Ricky Martin’s She Bangs.

The strangest thing to me, was the fact that it was actually Ricky Martin’s version of the song, and just how foreign and alien it sounded, hearing it for the first time in like, maybe 18 years.

Because in my head, when I think of She Bangs, the only version of the song I ever hear in my head is William Hung’s terrible rendition that he tried to audition on American Idol with.  In fact, while at Target, I was kind of awestruck at the simple fact that the lyrics actually continued past “looks like a flower but stings like a bee” because I practically expected there to be an interruption by Simon, Randy and Paula, except there wasn’t one, but instead a whole lot of unfamiliar lyrics.

It’s no secret that FOX and the internet gobbled all of William Hung up for making an ass out of himself on one of television’s most viewed programs, but in hindsight, Hung took it like a champion, and parlayed his abysmal appearance on Idol into all sorts of appearances and gigs afterward.  Given the crash and burn nature of so many Idol alum, I think it’s safe to say that in spite of everything, Hung still came out smelling a lot better than many who were probably a little bit more successful in the show than he was.

Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, She Bangs belongs to William Hung.  Anyone else feel this way too?

Cobra Kai S5: Attack of the Koreans

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Like seeing a lamer version of Ryu, Ken and Gouki

One of my friends that I can’t remember whom, said it the best when it comes to describing Cobra Kai: it’s a show that has no right being as good as it is.  All throughout all prior seasons of the show, I always spoke about it with this air of superiority, like I was too good to like the show.  But then I’d watch every single episode and dare find myself enjoying them all.  And as the seasons progressed, I found myself fast-tracking the show ahead of the endless queue of shit that I want to watch.

Needless to say, when I saw some online ad stating that season 5 was dropping on September 9, my first reaction was, aw shit; now I have to jump this shit in the line and watch all of it as soon as I could.  By now, there was no denying that I was a fan of the show, and that the show had no right to be as good as it had been up to this point.

And with all the Emmy consideration the show has gotten throughout the years, it’s clear that the show runners have found a good formula of appealing to a younger demographic, while still being captivating to us olds through nostalgia and not-always that clever references to stuff from the past.  Fewer things seem as cheesy as seeing footage from and of the prior films in a flashback, and then coming back to present time to seeing an old-ass Daniel or Johnny looking all reminiscent.

But anyway, season 5 of Cobra Kai; and I make no promises that I won’t say things that could be construed as spoilers – watched all of it in three days, and found it as cheesily satisfying as most of the prior seasons were.  The ending to the season seemed uncharacteristically wrapped up in neat little bows, and considering the context of everything that had happened, I get the impression that Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are kind of hedging their bets in the event that the show is not picked up for a sixth season, not to mention that they’re running out of source material from the original series to dip into for nostalgia effect, that things are at least tied up pretty well in the event that this really is the end.

Okay, a cut here, because I probably am going to write about plot points beyond this.

Continue reading “Cobra Kai S5: Attack of the Koreans” →

When did fanny packs become acceptable again?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While out in Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend, I couldn’t help but notice that there was an unusually large number of people who were wearing fanny packs all over the place.  Not only were they wearing fanny packs, they were all wearing them slung across one shoulder and chest, like people used to wear messenger bags.  And after seeing the 350th person wearing a fanny pack like a satchel, it begs me to ask the question that this post is titled:

When did fanny packs become acceptable again?

I choose my words deliberately, and I don’t say cool, because to me, fanny packs were never not cool at any point in my lifetime, but there’s no mistaking that there was a large swath of time in which they were just not deemed acceptable by popular social standards. 

When I was a kid, I rocked a fanny pack between the grades 2-4; not only was it a great place to keep all my cash on hand, but it was the perfect place to stash absolutely anything, anything at all, without having to burden my hands.  Cool rocks or sticks I found in the woods, my WWF or TMNT action figures, the metaphorical golden treasure to a fat kid that was candy and/or gum.  I always had shit on hand, thanks to the utility and convenience of my fanny pack.

But at some point in time, I began to get ridicule, and I was eventually branded some sort of nerd for having my fanny pack.  I wasn’t sure if it was the culture shift I had gone through moving from rural Virginia to prestigious northern Virginia, just the changing of the times, or asshole kids being bullies to me, but it got to the point where I stopped with the fanny pack, and short of zubaz-wearing professional wrestlers, they were mostly unseen for the next three decades.

Obviously living under the rock I do, I have no idea of when specifically they’ve suddenly become so acceptable again, but I’m just noticing just how everyone seems to be getting their hands on them these days, and amongst the kids of today, they’re being treated like some brand-new innovation of style and convenience.  I’m sure a fanny pack is perfect for holding your phone without bulking up your pockets or if you don’t have pockets because male rompers seem to be acceptable too.  Battery packs and charging cables because everyone is so glued to their mobile devices that a single day’s charge is insufficient are nice to be able to stash close to your person too.

Man, fanny packs sure are fucking cool for all the utility and convenience they provide without having to commit to an entire backpack or messenger bag!

But I have to question the part where they’re being worn around the shoulder, because fashion not-withstanding, that’s just a poor distribution of weight, and on the long-term, can have some physical detriment to the body.  I used to carry around a messenger bag, and wear all my duffel bags over the shoulder, but after long periods of time, that shit begins to wear on you, with all the weight they’re putting on a single shoulder.

It’s not lost on me just how bitter old man this all makes me sound like, but you have to understand that the backlash fanny packs got back in the early 90s was pretty fierce, to the point where they practically went extinct overnight in like 1991.

I suppose this is something that generationally, everyone eventually goes through at some points in their lives.  Perhaps in the near future, I’ll get to the backlash on fanny packs a second time, but as a judgmental bystander, and watch with smug satisfaction as all the dumb kids of today shamefully hang theirs up as discreetly as they can, and be sad that the sheep of the world don’t like utility and convenience anymore.

I love Luis Guzman, but I can’t get over him as Gomez Addams

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently because I live under a rock, I had no idea that there was an adaptation of The Addams Family on the slate for revival.  And very recently, some stills dropped to release the initial promotion for what is apparently going to be a Netflix series.  Obviously, I know nothing about it at all, but seeing the above image, was enough for me to be intrigued.

To no surprise, Catherine Zeta Jones is still gorgeous, and there’s little doubt that she’ll visually portray Morticia Addams probably very well.  The kid playing Puglsey doesn’t look nearly as fat or creepy as I always remembered the character to be, and I don’t think I need any synopsis to read that based on the promotional imagery, the show is probably going to lean heavily on swirling about Wednesday Addams, because the point of all revivals and reboots today are typically geared towards drawing in the next generation, while using easter eggs and nods to the past to satiate us olds.

But for me, it’s all about Gomez Adams, who is laughably portrayed by Luis Guzman.  Now I’ve been a fan of Guzman since I saw him in The Count of Monte Cristo, where he played Jacopo the Maggot, Edmond Dantes’ sworn-for-life right hand mate, a role that endeared me to him forever, because few characters have ever portrayed selfless and die-hard loyalty than Jacopo did.

But let’s not sugar-coat it; Luis Guzman isn’t exactly the most stereotypically handsome man in the history of Hollywood media.  He’s a stumpy, pug-faced runt of an actor that so often times gets pegged as some cholo Los Angeles gangbanger named Hector or something as stereotypically bad.  And here he is, slated to be the suave, debonair, romantic love machine, Gomez Addams that was so brilliantly and famously done by Raul Julia in the 1990s.

From what I’ve heard, this reboot is supposedly aiming to harken back to the original Addams Family comic strips from way back when, where Gomez was always portrayed to be kind of stumpy, way shorter than Morticia, and in fact, a little ugly, compared to his bombshell of a wife, adding to the situational humor of the pairing.  So I guess that if that is the objective, than a guy like Luis Guzman isn’t a bad pick, but at least for olds my age, who grew up seeing Raul Julia flipping around and stealing the scenes with his portrayal of Gomez, it’s going to be a really, really hard sell to see Luis Guzman try to ooze the machismo that his predecessor did.

All the same, I do love Jacopo, and for him alone, I would consider giving this Netflix Addams Family reboot a flyer.  Sure, it’ll sit underneath tons of other titles that are in my queue, but if the conditions are right, I’m definitely willing to give it a shot, because as hard of a pill it’ll be to swallow, my appreciation for Luis Guzman would make me take a chance on the new Gomez Addams.

Dad Brog (#094): It was bound to happen eventually

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This photo here is of the remains of a snow globe that I’ve had for the last 14 years.  It was one of the few mementos I had from my time working for Cartoon Network, which to this day is still one of the feathers in my cap of my career, because I enjoyed my time there greatly, and I got to do a lot of noteworthy projects while working there.

As a freelancer, it was always hit or miss on whether or not I got to take part in any of the company perks.  Sometimes I was allowed to attend company functions, other times I was the guy that was needed to be in the office while the actual Turner employees got to.  Sometimes I was privy to swag, other times there was an air of exclusive gate keeping from the lowly hired guns.

However, this snow globe was one of the few things that I was allowed to have, and it was something that I did treasure to some capacity, long after my time at CN came to a close.  It was something fairly tasteful, branded so I would always know where it came from, and most importantly, it was exclusive.  These were only given out internally, and were not available to the public.  Those who have them, are Cartoon Network people, and it was something that I took pride in having of my own, because for the two years I was there, I was all in, wanting to be a part of the team.

Honestly, I probably should’ve moved it at the very first evidence that #1 was capable of reaching it.  Naturally, as my children grow, stand upright and become increasingly mobile and mischievous, the need to childproof things rises and rises, commensurate to their level of physical access.  And prior to this incident, I knew she was capable of reaching it, as she had done so numerous times already, but in the past, usually I’ve been readily present to be able to prevent her from harming any of the things on this particular piece of furniture, but as is often times the case with toddlers, it only takes a second and a foot apart for destruction to occur.

In some regard, I suppose I’ve been fortunate to have gone as long as this, for my kids to have destroyed something meaningful to me.  29 months since the arrival of the first one before any of them managed to find the moment of weakness in which they could inflict some damage to some personal property that’s relatively extremely difficult and costly to replace, seems like it’s been a fairly decent run.  But as the subject of this post says, it was bound to happen, eventually, probably.  Kids are kids, and sooner or later, they become destructive, whether it’s a phase or just an accident.

More importantly though, nobody was hurt or incurred any physical harm from broken glass and glittery water.  A meaningful trinket breaking is nothing compared to if my kids or mythical wife suffered any slips or cuts from the damage. 

All the same, I am pretty bummed out by this.  I really did love this silly snow globe, and as I stated, replacing it would be costly, from those former Turner folks who are hocking them on eBay for well over $130 as exclusive goods, and I don’t think I’d want a replacement anyway.  The one that broke was mine, my symbol of belonging on a team, and my personal memento of a brief but fun and memorable point in my career, and replacing it with someone else’s for the sake of having an intact variant, doesn’t seem like a justifiable idea.