Tag: reminiscing

The Power of The Rock

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

By now, everyone knows that The Rock is back in the WWE, presumably just for Wrestlemania SZN, but the reality is that he’s still back on television, making appearances here and there to hype up the event.

His return has sparked a lot of debate among the general wrestling community, and there are some pretty concrete sides on the field: those fans who dislike when guest stars pop up during Mania SZN, just to hype up the event, and ultimately vanish into thin air once Mania is over, and then there are fans who love it when part-timers like The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, or the Undertaker show up for Wrestlemania, because they’re legends, they’re icons from their era, or whatever reason.

Typically, I’m often times in the camp of not really preferring when guests show up for Wrestlemania, because I’m of the mindset that the people who carry the company week in and week out, should be the ones to get the biggest billings at the biggest show of the year.  And in lots of cases, I don’t want to see some older performer who’s rusty, out of shape, and incapable of putting on a good show any more, having the opportunity to do so, and denying one of the aforementioned week in and week out guys in the process.

Stone Cold Steve Austin had a respectable program two years ago, but I’d still maintain that it had largely to do with the fact that a very respectful and capable Kevin Owens was carrying him, and let’s not forget all the times in history we’ve seen the Undertaker, Mick Foley, Hulk Hogan and even Triple H gear up for Wrestlemania, only to be one of the least impressive contributors on the card.

But The Rock, I have to say that he’s just on another level when it comes to drumming up excitement and hyping up a program.  For starters, mythical wife, who actually did watch a little bit of Attitude-era wrestling when she was a wee lass, heard completely independently, that The Rock was back, and put forth her own independent effort to check out his first promos.

Since then, The Rock set an incendiary blaze on the internet wrestling community, diving up the fanbase entirely, and even forcing me to soften my stance on Cody Rhodes, and then adjusted based on the crowd feedback, and has gone full-ass heel mode, and has returned to his Attitude-era roots and is once again doing the lord’s work when it comes to cutting promos and building up hype for a show.

Obviously, I look forward to Wrestlemania just about every year, but I have to say that I’m really looking forward to Wrestlemania this year.  Even if it’s going to be in a cesspool like Philadelphia, I know the crowd will be hot, because Philly fans get hot for wrestling, and The Rock, being the mutant athlete he is, is sure to still be capable of putting on a decent match.

Despite the fact that when The Rock came back, I was just kind of like oh cool, I have to say that the way he just so effortlessly creates excitement and drums up anticipation for the event, is truly why he is the most electrifying man in sports entertainment.  It’s just so easy and organic for him, and now I’m looking more forward to this year’s Wrestlemania than I have in prior ones.  The card seems wildly predictable in what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m looking forward to it this far out, and that, really is the power of The Rock.

Year four of forever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And just like that, #1 is four years old.

Throughout my own parenting journey, one of the most heard things I’ve been told is to not blink or take any time for granted, because it’ll all be over in the blink of an eye and the kids will be grown and be pains in my ass before I know it, and I’ll wonder where the time went when they were still in diapers and couldn’t do anything for themselves.

Honestly, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of not taking my time for granted, and I’m so often reflecting on the past and I think in this age where everyone has phones and cameras on their phones and it’s fairly possible to chronicle our lives through photographs, that it makes it easier to have a visual reference to reflect with as we can simply just open up our photos app and scroll through time.  That, and the fact that I’ve also been a prodigious brogger for more than half my life at this point, and I’ve always got the means to not only look back in time and reflect, but to also read my very own words to recall specifically where I was throughout the journey of life.

I’ll often times just stop and watch my kids doing the things they do, and marvel at the state they’re in now, as opposed to when they were babies or infants or toddlers, because it’s just incredible watching someone else’s journey through life, through the eyes of a spectator, and of course being their father, I’ve literally seen just about every single day of their lives.

I think it’s safe to say that I’m the first face they see in the morning, about 99% of their lives, I make the vast majority of their meals, and I put a tremendous amount of physical and time effort into my kids regularly.  There are times in which it feels like a lot of work, but I don’t regret any bit of it, and I take a tremendous amount of pride in trying to be the best dad I possibly can be.  There’s nothing I won’t do for my children, and the only thing I really care about at all is being a good dad.

But #1 being four years old, that’s still mind-blowing to process, even though I know the day is coming.  It’s just so hard to fathom that it’s literally been four years since she came into existence five weeks early, right at the on-set of COVID and the (majority) of the entire (intelligent) world shutting themselves into isolation.  Being born so early, she was whisked away into the NICU and stayed there for two weeks, while mythical wife and I had no idea what was really going on with her health, the world, coronavirus and everything else because so much was going on concurrently right then.

Looking at her now, it’s hard to believe she was ever considered an at-risk baby that had to be connected to a heart monitor for the first four months of her life, because within six months, we stopped referring to her as “adjusted age” and never looked back.  She’s a strong, healthy four-year-old that’s ridiculously smart, thoughtful, and brings joy to my life on a daily basis.

She’s fully potty-trained, never has any accidents, knows all her numbers and letters, has demonstrated some rudimentary reading ability, and I have a feeling math will come fairly natural to her, as she’s apparently understanding the processes of basic arithmetic, even if she doesn’t know what the words addition or subtraction mean yet.

She remembers damn near everything, and is so quick to remind me of when she thinks I’ve screwed something up, and seems to be able to recall things from the past now, which shows her budding brain being able to store and recollect memories, and even going to sleep, she always remembers to remind me of what she wanted for breakfast the night before.

Not a day goes by where she and/or her sister isn’t the brightest light of my entire day, whether it’s by making me laugh, something sweet they do or say, or just the happy peace I feel when I watch them doing kid things.  So I’m happy to do whatever it takes to bring happiness to their lives… like taking a cake decorating class, so that I could make my child a triple-layered chocolate cake with buttercream and a dark chocolate drip ganache.  But even if it’s basically pure trash food, it’s also a symbol of growth for my child in that her original severe intolerance to eggs has dissipated over time, and she can at least handle having it in baked goods or cooked into things.

Still not going to give her a straight up omelet or scrambled eggs, but considering I still can’t eat those things without considerable punishment, who knows if she’ll ever fully grow out of it, or be as limited as I am.  Only time will tell, and hopefully there will be many more decades of years to bear witness to what happens next.

Dad Brog (#121): When we do what our parents did

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#2 is sick and honestly in perspective it hasn’t been nearly as terrible as it’s been in the years past with the girls getting sick all the time.  Perhaps the world has kind of caught up to the backlog of colds, flus and other gross ailments and bugs.  Perhaps my kids’ immune systems have grown stronger from the onslaughts of colds, flus and other gross ailments and bugs over their short existences.  Maybe both.

Back to the point though, my youngest is sick right now, and it’s never easy on the soul as a parent when your kid is struggling through fever, discomfort and a body in revolt.  Nothing wants to be kept down, but she needs to stay hydrated, but consuming anything too fast results in it coming back up, so it’s a delicate game of trying to feed slow and steady so she doesn’t starve, but not too much lest it all comes back up and defeats the purpose.

Feed a cold, starve a fever, is what I always remember hearing.  I sure as heck didn’t really feel like eating when I was ailing just days prior.

Regardless, I felt it was probably best to keep any foods simple and stay away from the dairy and yogurts that my kids tend to eat when things are normal, but the options weren’t that many at my house which hasn’t yet fully reset and restocked since we returned from vacation.

That being said, given the circumstances of #2’s condition, I decided to take a page out of my mom’s book and take a stab at making jook (죽) which is basically a porridge made out of rice, or as lesser Asians know it as congee.  It was something my mom often made for me when I was a kid and suffering from keeping anything complex down, and I had memories of just how soothing it could be when you weren’t feeling well.

It also didn’t help-actually helped that I woke up at 5:30 this morning for no real reason, so I had an adequate amount of time to simmer and render down the rice and liquid before the kids woke up, and make a halfway passable 죽.  The real question mark was going to be, would my kids like it?  They’re at a finicky eating stage in life currently, but they do like it when I make fried rice, so there’s a chance that they might like rice in a different presentation, right??

Fortunately, after some morning snuggles, an explanation that the following recipe is something that halmoni (grandma) made for me when I was a kid, and I was going to make it for her, #2 actually ended up liking the 죽, much to my joyful satisfaction.  I mean, it’s basically mushy rice in a porridge consistency, and it takes to the same flavors as any ordinary rice.  So with a drop or two of soy sauce to give it some flavor, it has the same taste, but also goes down really smooth and is easy to digest, and I’m hoping that the pot of the 죽 I made can last another day or two and by then I hope she’s all better.

Unsurprisingly, #1 saw what her sister was eating and was curious, and turns out that she thought it was pretty good as well.  Great knowledge to have for when inevitably she gets sick too, that both my kids like the same stuff that I liked when I was a kid, and it does make me happy to do something like my mom did for me, for my own kids when they’re sick.

돈ball

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Made in Korea: it’s discovered that talent in the Korean Basketball League have developed a system of converting high percentages of free throws across the league – the bank shot

Let me tell y’all just how much I love this story.  Most of my zero readers probably know just how much of a fan of Tim Duncan I was, with a large part of it being his reliance on the bank shot, so it should come as absolutely no surprise that this story gets me pumped up like nothing else, more so because it’s coming out of Korea.

Frankly, the only reason why bank shots are not utilized more in the most popular variants of basketball in Europe and America is simply the fact that “it’s not pretty” and is universally accepted as such, as if using the glass makes a basket count for less points.  A three-pointer is still worth three points whether it’s a high-arcing rainbow swish or a flat, zero spin clunk-clunk off of the glass.

But honestly this isn’t something that should be any surprise, because whether it’s a corner jumper from the wing, or from the free throw line, bank shots are designed to be high-percentage by utilizing geometry and physics to optimally a basketball through a hoop as safely and optimally as possible. 

Korea is obviously no powerhouse when it comes to the sport of basketball globally, but regardless, every Korean boy grows up thinking he can hoop and make it to the NBA.  Despite my dumpy prepubescent stature before hit my teenage years, there was no sport I loved more than basketball and I’m confident to say that I had a pretty decent jumper throughout the years in which I played a lot, but the point is basketball is still a distant runner-up when compared to the presence of baseball, soccer and even esports nationally.

That being said, with such low-presence, good for the Koreans for putting aside silly biases like the need to be aesthetic in exchange for improved efficiency and higher accuracy when it comes to shooting free throws.  And I love that they’ve found so much success with banking home a ton of free throws to the point where it’s gotten global attention, and opening up for discussion the validity of the technique, which of course, is best summed up with, why the fuck NOT consider the possibility of having struggling shooters try the bank out, especially if what they’re doing isn’t working?

I’ve touched on it before, but Shaq could have easily, easily eclipsed the vaunted 30,000 point milestone, had he been even just 5% better at shooting free throws in his career.  Here’s a guy that most definitely should have tried the glass at some point in his career, instead of chunking up the bricks that only went into the hoop at a career 54%.

And even LeBron James, as good as he, he’s still a career 73% free throw shooter; had he been able to reach even the 80% clip that both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant both exceeded, he would’ve passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record nearly two seasons sooner.

I don’t disagree, bank shots aren’t pretty.  They’re ugly to watch, the clunk-clunk sound they make is goofy, and the way they explode the net and hang for a second before they fall through is unsightly.  Who doesn’t love the nice wet swish of a perfect shot, or when a Steph Curry bomb just pings the bottom of the back of the rim and barely moves the net at all?

I most certainly do, but there is one thing that I like more – scoring a lot of points.  And if an aversion to the glass solely because it’s just not as pretty is the only thing that stops me from scoring MJ points and keeps me in Jeff Hornacek scoring territory, I’m going to the bank seven days a week.

Like in so many walks of life, y’all can learn a lot from Korea.  It’s a culture obsessed with identifying ways to be more efficient, and it should come as zero surprise that they found and are exploiting a massive efficiency in the game of basketball, simply by sacrificing aesthetics for accuracy.  Because especially now and until the end of time, I don’t think there’s going to ever be another Mark Price who had both, the sweet shot and the deadeye accuracy at the stripe, so may as well start getting good at using the glass if we want to start evolving the game.

Happy Trails, Bob and Arleen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Talk about an absolutely brutal week as far as fandoms, nostalgia and symbols of millennial childhood go.  Wrestling fans had to endure the passing of a legend, and a sudden departure of a star that wasn’t anywhere near the heights he was destined for, but then fans of the same television I grew up watching had to bear witness as a legend passed, and an icon that defined basically an entire television series.

I don’t particularly have a ton to say about Bob Barker or Arleen Sorkin, at least nothing new from one of the many countless tributes on the internet there are for either of them, but it hit me enough in the feels when both of them left us to where I still feel like at the very least, documenting it in my own brog to try and emphasize at the very least, my appreciation for them and what they did.

Obviously, at 99 years of age, it’s easy to say that Bob Barker did not leave us to soon, and he most definitely lived a full and successful life and career.  Cue the bittersweet jokes about how if anyone was going to ace the big wheel game of getting as close to 100 without going over, it’s Bob Barker.

But like many, the OG Price Is Right was the show that we all watched when we were home sick from school, or over summer vacations, because at least where I grew up, it was always on at 11 am, obviously not a time in which we could watch it at school.  But Bob Barker’s talent was so effortlessly immense that it didn’t matter if you were nine years old, 29 years old, 59 years old or 79 years old, his delivery, his smooth on-screen charisma and charm made him watchable, made him entertaining and made the show the legendary program it was, all because of him.

I always enjoyed watching the show, playing along with the showcase, screaming at the television when contestants didn’t ever seem to realize that the items on the show were always marked up 5000% and undershot their estimates, and of course loved Plinko.

Drew Carey’s variant of the show is garbage in comparison, and as far as I’m concerned, the show ended when Bob Barker retired.  There was once an incident where a contestant hit the nail on the head in the final showdown at the end of the show, and Drew Carey immediately deadpanned him and killed the episode, because he thought that the guy must have been cheating; most everyone was quick to point out that if that had happened under Bob Barker’s watch, he would have sold it like the greatest achievement of mankind, and made it into a memorable event. 

There are just some things that can never be replaced, and Bob Barker is most definitely one of them.  The show is better off discontinuing, than to let Drew Carey sink the prestige and equity that Bob built with his legendary run.

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Happy Trails, Windham Rotunda

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Talk about a brutal week for the wrestling business; losing a genuine icon, legend and forefather of the industry on one day, and then losing one of the most captivating and yet to be fully untapped stars of today, very much in the category of having gone way too soon, in Windham Rotunda, whom most people know primarily as Bray Wyatt.

I’m very deliberate in using his real name over Bray Wyatt, because with no disrespect to the the departed, I can’t say that I was really ever that big of a fan of Bray Wyatt.  The whole supernatural character is something that I’m clearly not in the right demographic to really be a fan of.  And as much as I did like the originality and intrigue he brought to the table earlier in his run as Bray Wyatt, I do think his whole character evolution went from weird to progressively weirder and more bizarre, and not in good ways either.

I loved the whole creepy southern gothic cult leader of the original Bray Wyatt persona, but then that it literally killed by Randy Orton in storyline.  The eventual return of the split personality, super-positive and cheerful Bray Wyatt compared to the emergence of the demonic Fiend started off well enough in my opinion, but when he started up with brainwashing Alexa Bliss and being basically unkillable against Seth Rollins but then getting squashed by fucking Goldberg, I was kind of losing my shine to the character as a whole.  Ironically, this too was killed by Randy Orton in storyline.

Which brings us to his final incarnation and last stint with the company, kind of this strange amalgamation of Bray Wyatt who is kind of good, but kind of dark, with the Field still lurking around, but then the introduction of Uncle Howdy, and I’m just kind of like wtf is all this bullshit now.  At this point, I was no longer a fan of the Bray Wyatt universe, and I likened him to being like, Randy Orton, as in a guy whom with once you get tangled up with in storyline, you’re stuck with it for like 3-5 months of having to play scared patron to a haunted house, and barely a professional wrestler anymore.

It was actually during his feud with LA Knight, that I realized that I was starting to become impressed with LA Knight, seeing as how his whole tenure prior, ol’ Eli Drake wasn’t impressing me at all, but while feuding with Bray Wyatt, I found LA Knight to be a shining beacon of charisma and promo school, and even though he was getting his ass kicked and having creepy shit thrown at his character for three months, he was absolutely killing it on the mic, and even though he lost the feud, he clearly won over a lot of fans, seeing as how over he is with the WWE Universe currently.

I just felt that Bray Wyatt was a character that was clearly not geared for people my old age, and is clearly meant to capture the imaginations of those who are in “the demos” that the professional wrestling industry tries their hardest to cater to, children, and the vaunted 18-35 male range.  Aside from such, I just felt that a supernatural character is among the hardest characters to write and book for, especially when you exist in a universe with MMA converts, European wrestling purists and a Samoan dynasty running roughshod through the rest of the company.

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Revisiting a revisiting post: Stephen Strasburg’s wallet

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Upon hearing the news that Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg was planning to retire, it got me thinking about all the times I’ve posted about him, because primarily, I’ve always been fascinated with just how much money the Nationals have been willing to throw at him throughout history.

A really long time ago, I wrote about how the Nationals were taking a big gamble on the big contract they gave to Strasburg, which was a 7-year, $175 million dollar deal, where $45M of it was deferred money, and if there’s one thing that my zero readers know always captures my attention, it’s the topic of deferred money in baseball contracts.  Between the lines, the post was critical and meant to ridicule the Nationals for putting themselves in a situation where they could be paying out the nose for a guy whom might not even be playing for the team at the time, because that’s generally the risky nature of deferred money deals, the potential for embarrassment when a guy takes their talents elsewhere, but you’re still on the hook for their supplementary income.

But then just a long time ago, I revisited that post to eat my crow and admit that the deal actually did pan out, because not only did the Nationals win the World Series that year, Stephen Strasburg himself pitched like a god-killer throughout the playoffs en route to the championship.  I realized that in the crap shoot that is actually winning championships, just about any cost is worth it, if it actually pans out, to which the Nationals enjoyed the spoils of.  And in the case of the Nationals, they paid the fuck out of Strasburg to keep him, and he actually delivered the baseball championship that the Nation’s Capital so greatly wanted.

However, since then, things changed yet again; mostly because I wasn’t really paying attention, nor did I really examine the finer details upon learning of it, but apparently after the 2019 World Series championship, Stephen Strasburg opted out of his original 7/$175M deal, and became a free agent, and the Nationals were quick to snap him back up, but it was going to cost them $245 million for the next seven years, and in typical Nationals fashion, was loaded full of deferred money, that would undoubtedly be due when he was either at the end of his career, or no longer playing.

So for all intents and purposes, the crow I ate for criticizing the original 7/$175M was short-lived, and we were moving onto a clean slate where the Nationals were undertaking another massive gamble where the clock was ticking on a 7-year window with zero World Series championships won.

And this time, it didn’t take long for the wheels to fall off this car, as between the start of the 2020 season to the present, Stephen Strasburg has pitched in just eight games, and completely ineffectively at that, going 1-4 with a 6.89 ERA.  Not that I wish him any ill-will, but the poor guy was absolutely demolished by injuries, to his neck, nerves, wrist and ribs.  Eventually, it turned out that he had thoracic outlet syndrome, and just nothing seemed to be working out in order to get him back into playing shape.

Continue reading “Revisiting a revisiting post: Stephen Strasburg’s wallet” →