Tag: reminiscing

Say goodbye, to the bad guy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: former wrestling legend Scott Hall passes away after complications from hip surgery, resulting in a blood clot getting loose, triggering numerous heart attacks, being and being put on life support before being let go by his family

I’m not going to pretend like Scott Hall was ever one of my favorite wrestlers.  I’ve been a wrestling fan way too long, watched, read and listened to all sorts of shoot interviews, backstage stories and insider knowledge throughout the years to have a picture of Scott Hall in my own head, that is pretty jumbled up, but definitely not as quickly clear that he was among my favorite wrestlers.

As a performer, Scott Hall really was in a class of few; technically proficient, rock solid on the mic, and had charisma oozed machismo all over the place.  I still remember most of the original Razor Ramon vignettes back in the day and then eventually seeing him debut on an episode of Superstars.  He did moves like back suplexes off of the second turnbuckle, chokeslams, and seeing the Razor’s Edge for the very first time blew my mind.

He was as good a performer from my early memories of Razor, to when I picked wrestling back up in 1998 and watched now Scott Hall in WCW as a founding member of the nWo.  He definitely wrestled a lot less, but was still often on television and still entertaining, leaning more on being more of a mouthpiece and agitator, and making it more special when he actually did wrestle.

But then by the end of this period, the personal demons that Hall became synonymous with the phrase were too much, and he was more or less unceremoniously removed from television before WCW eventually went under.  In years following, Scott Hall kind of became a shell of himself, occasionally being mentioned on the internet, usually for something related to his rampant alcoholism.

Eventually, Hall cleaned himself up, and he and Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan were brought back to the WWE to reform the nWo for story purposes, and he had a fairly mediocre feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin leading up to that year’s Wrestlemania.  Afterward, he would relapse and succumb to the personal demons again.

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Year two of forever (Dad brog #080)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve liked to have written something on the actual day.  But mythical wife and I were at Disney World with #1 celebrating her second birthday, so appropriately understandable, I just wasn’t around to take the time to write and reflect.

And just like that, my first child is two years old.  Naturally, the passage of time has felt like a blip, and I can still remember lots of the finer details of raising my daughter, and the world she grew up in and has been living in, still amazed at just how things have progressed in that span.

Over the last year, between first and second birthdays, a lot has most certainly occurred.  Not long after turning one, my daughter really kicked it into gear and began crawling like a speed demon obsessed, which was a might’ve been considered a little late in the development game, but honestly that part didn’t last long at all, because before we knew it she was suddenly upright, and it was barely a month after turning one, did she take her first steps and frankly, she hasn’t stopped running around since then.

#1 basically eats everything in sight now, and she went from being introduced to solids to not just inhaling everything that’s put in front of her, but now an innate curiosity and determination to utilize utensils and not just eat everything with fistfuls jammed into her mouth.

Obviously, one of the more substantial occurrences to have happened within the last year was that even though she was just one year old, #1 became a big sister already, when #2 was born in July, and my household had to deal with the harrowing realization of being a house with two under two, and the hard mode of life we were about to embark on.

In spite of everything I may have written detailing the difficulty and hell that parenting under these circumstances might have been, one of the joys to have emerged from it all has been witnessing just how much my now elder daughter, loves her little sister.  What started off as hesitation and fussing about the new edition to the home, #1 has taken to big sisterhood quite well, and fewer things bring genuine happiness to my heart than seeing her open up her arms and envelop her little sister in big hugs, whenever the opportunities present themselves.

Not a day goes by where I don’t just stop and watch my child at varying points throughout the days, just to see what she’ll do next.  Not a day goes by where it doesn’t seem like there’s some sort of growth or development with her, most of the time pertaining to absorption of the things she’s hearing and her ability to repeat and recollect, which also means that I have to really watch out for using profanity around her, because much like this meme, there’s no doubt that she’ll remember the bad words forever.

But every night while I wind her down for bedtime, I tell her that I love her so much, and it melts my heart every single time, when she repeats the words “love you so much.”  I know for now it’s mostly just repeating the words that I’m saying, but I’m hoping that one of these days eventually, she’ll be saying it as a declarative statement of her own volition and with understanding the meaning of the words.

As much as I love her though, all the same, has arrived the time of toddler defiance; a lot more no’s, a lot more fussiness at being told what to do, and a whole lot more determination to do things herself and her way, and not necessarily how others want her to do things.  I’m guessing this is probably the onset of the suppose terrible twos, but really it’s still just the never ending adventure of raising a child that I’m clearly experiencing first hand for the first time.  Hopefully she doesn’t make my life too hell as mythical wife and I embark on this next chapter of our parenting lives, but I’m confident that our love for our kids won’t waver, no matter how much trolling and exasperation they’re going to inevitably test us with throughout our lives.

Either way, I thought I’d have more to write about this than this, but I am still a tired dad with too much on his plate, and not enough time to accomplish everything he wants to do.  Regardless of the circumstances, a happy belated-in-writing birthday to my first child, whom I love so much, and will always love so much.  I look forward to watching her grow and develop, from the good to the bad, and there will never be a day where I am not thankful to be her dad.

Happy trails, Chase the Face

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I told myself to not write anything before the fact, because that would be time spent on myself and not hanging out with the Face.  I still have no idea how people do this, where they schedule the euthanization of their pets, and then literally manage to operate their lives knowing there is a very real clock ticking down the remainder of their life.

Needless to say, the time between making the call to the vet and to the eventual saying of goodbye to my dog, has been real hazy, but fortunately for me, I’m the type of person who can throw themselves into work, just so that I don’t have to think about the anxieties of something like having to put my dog down.

Here’s a fun fact about me, Chase is actually the first dog that I’ve ever own, myself.  Every pet I’ve had in the past was either inherited, temporary or technically belonged to someone else, but not actually mine.  Chase was the first dog that I’ve ever adopted, paid for, and been solely responsible for in my entire life.

I adopted him on May 16, 2012, from the Atlanta Humane Society.  My home had always had dogs in it, and when it stopped having dogs in it, it felt like there was something missing.  I was single with no prospects at this time, so having a dog seemed like a no-brainer as far as unconditional companionship was concerned, and I wanted to adopt a rescue because I just felt that it was a more responsible thing to do, seeing as how the pet population is pretty out of control in general.

I had visited a couple of shelters leading up to eventually going to the Humane Society, and when I met Wind Chaser, I kind of felt pretty quickly that this was the dog that I wanted to adopt.  Say what you will about my general preference in dogs, maybe it’s an Asian thing or maybe it’s just me, but this maltese/shih tsu mix just kind of spoke to me.  So I paid the adoption fee in an Amazon donation, and shortened to Chase, was now my dog.

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Steph Curry hit 16 threes in a game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sure, it was an all-star game, where nobody plays any defense, but still.  In the span of a single 48-minute basketball game, Steph Curry still sank an astounding 16 three pointers.  Now if you’re doing the math, that means he scored 48 points on treys alone, so it’s funny to see that his final score was still a ridiculous 50 points, meaning that aside from all the three pointers, he made just one singular two point field goal.

Numbers like these will never fail to astound me, because I grew up as an NBA fan in an era where John Starks sinking six threes in a game is a rare occurrence, Dennis Scott going nuts and draining nine was bonkers, and then Kobe Bryant hitting eleven threes in a game was flat-out ridiculous.  50 points in an all-star game was unheard of, and I remember the last time the all-star game was in Cleveland, Glen Rice won the MVP after scoring 26 points and hitting a paltry four threes.

So seeing that a guy hit 16 three pointers in a single game is definitely something that makes my face contort and say really, because that’s just flat out ridiculous.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t hit 16 threes in a single game of NBA Jam, even with the fire cheat code on, because the quarters were like two minutes long and I simply didn’t have the time to launch sixteen threes.

The more I think about it, the more it’s clear that Steph Curry really did change the entire sport of basketball, arguably more than any other guy before him.  To a degree, even guys like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James were evolutions of Michael Jordan, who were all dominant scorers and utilized strong post games and mid-range shooting to amass their points.  But then Steph Curry came along playing like he were a video game character, and launching twenty three pointers a game, but the thing was that he was still hitting like 8-9 of them every single game and next thing you know he’s cleared 25 points on threes alone.

I used to root against the Warriors because I’m resistant to change and I had a hard time accepting the Golden State Warriors as championship material, and then I rooted against them because nobody likes seeing top dogs continue to succeed.  But regardless of how ambivalent I am towards the NBA in general, there’s no denying that rooting for or against the Warriors, Steph Curry is a phenomenal talent, and seeing him drain threes from all over the floor is truly awe-inspiring and never isn’t entertaining.

A 2021 year-end post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Looking back at all my old posts on a near-daily basis through the On This Day plug-in I use, I realize that I’ve written a whole lot of year-end posts throughout the years, which makes me feel somewhat obligated to write one for this year as well.  Initially, my thought was “fuck, ain’t nobody got time for this shit,” but then I stopped to actually think about the year 2021 as a whole, and realized that making one, really shouldn’t be that difficult.

Seeing as how in my double dad duty life, I’m typically always in search of the path of least resistance, “shouldn’t be that difficult,” pleases me.

Although plenty of things happened both in my own little bubble, as well as the rest of the world, for me, the year really can be summed up pretty succinctly as a tale of two halves.  The first half of the year was spent preparing for the birth of #2, where my job made me miserable and was sucking the life out of me.  And then literally halfway through the year, #2 arrived, embarking on the second half of the year where my job still made me miserable, but it was compounded by the ever-living difficulty of parenting two under two with insufficient help.

All while the coronavirus pandemic that plagued most of 2020, still raged on throughout the entire 2021, regardless of how stupid, arrogant and ignorant the rest of the world seemed to become because we’re all a bunch of selfish fucks who can’t understand the importance of quarantine and distancing, and have to be out in public events and crowded restaurants.  Vaccinations came into fruition, and smart people got them, but it didn’t make everyone suddenly invincible, as much as it dulled the fatality capabilities of coronavirus.  But that was good enough for everyone, and I stopped pondering which was worse between the unvaccinated and the vaccinated who thought they were bulletproof.

On that description alone, it sounds like 2021 may have sucked, and I’d be the first to admit that I did have a tremendous amount of time with dark clouds over me and inside my head.  But none of it has any bearing for the love I have for my children, no matter how hard they’ve made my life in this current juncture, and no matter how much I bitch and write pissy brog posts, they are still my happiness and the greatest things to have happened to my life along with mythical wife.

This isn’t to say that the year was entirely a wash.  It’s just pretty easy to sum up in very broad strokes, that make it sound negative.  Aside from the birth of my second child, she brought baby luck into play, and despite thinking I wouldn’t ever see it in my lifetime, the Atlanta Braves won the World Series.  I mean if that isn’t the very embodiment of baby luck, I don’t know what was, the Braves had 88 wins and had no business making the playoffs, but they did, got hot, and rode the momentum all the way to the Commissioner’s Trophy.

I also got the NXT UK Tag Team replica blet, that I’ve been waiting to come into existence for three years.  That pleased me greatly and was a good way to wind down the year.

Oh, and the new job I secured with the year winding down.  A substantial raise, elevated job title, and for the inevitable future where I have to report back into an office, a shorter commute.  Plus, it gave me the long-awaited departure from my toxic current boss, and I can’t wait to get the fuck away from her.  That shit is really fantastic news too.

But because I’m a nerd that takes general notes on the happenings that interest me, the following things also occurred in 2021:

  • Baked potato worshippers basically tried to throw a coup and invade the Capitol in Washington DC in defiance of the failed 2020 election
  • I took a UX course to try and pivot my career path
  • Got vaccinated, had it kick my ass. Got a booster later in the year, which kicked my ass again
  • Tried the Dr. Now diet from My 600 Lb. Life of eating 1,200 calories a day; I lasted a week before throwing in the towel, but still lost 3.1 lbs.
  • The housing market in America went completely bonkers, and I capitalized on it by refinancing on my house to help ourselves financially
  • Alabama won its 52nd National Championship
  • Tom Brady won his 43rd Super Bowl; but first with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
  • The Milwaukee Bucks, yes Milwaukee Bucks, won the NBA Finals
  • My upstairs HVAC died in the middle of summer and had to be replaced, causing a very uncomfortable week in August
  • And finally, speaking of deaths, notable passings in my world included: Hank Aaron, Larry King, Screech from Saved by the Bell, Jessica Walter, New Jack, Norm Macdonald, John Madden, Betty White, and most tragically, Sonny Chiba. 

But let’s not end this post talking about deaths.  As droll and depressing some of the tone of this post might’ve read, there is absolutely no reason for me to not be optimistic about 2022.  I have a new job that pays better and gets me away from the toxic situation that shit all over my 2021, and as my girls grow and develop, life should become a little simpler, and pave the way for me to get bits of my own life back, gradually, little by little.

Those things alone carry great weight, and as long as those things can progress positively, not even the dismal state of the world’s handling of coronavirus can drag me down.  And with that, I close the brog book on 2021, and hope for nothing but the best going into year 22 of fairly consistent brogging.

Time to get a new Braves cap

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I got this cap during the tail end of the 2008 season.  The Braves lost 90 games that year and they were not a very good team.  But, I was working for Cartoon Network then, and as a Turner network, one of the perks we got were these booklets of house money that was redeemable for tickets.  And then one day, a colleague told me that they didn’t work on just tickets, and could be used to purchase merchandise in Turner Field.  So I cobbled together what remaining vouchers I had left, and decided to get a new cap.

NewEra was still young at that time, as hard as it is to believe considering they’ve been the official baseball cap of just about everything forever now.  And my unknown-brand red and navy Braves cap was beat to death, so it seemed as good as any to get a new one if I didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket.

I went with the road navy, because I already had the aforementioned two-tone, and I just really dug the all-navy.  I loved the way it fit, and I was sold on NewEra caps, and it quickly became my default cap.  It’s so old, that it was before NewEra put their logos on the side of caps, and the only identifiers to the brand is all the 59Fifty markings on the inside of it.

Over the next 13 years, this cap has been to countless Braves games, MLB games, MiLB games, a World Baseball Classic game, and visited 14 of the 30 MLB ballparks.  It has been worn in 117F degree summer games, 49F spring games, and been rained on countless times, and had enough sunlight beaten into it to power a house if could absorb the solar energy.  It has never seen the Braves win on the road (except in Washington DC, where I’ve seen numerous Braves games against the Nationals). 

Now I could make up some story about how I vowed to never change this cap until the Braves won a World Series, but I’d be lying if I said that, but seeing as how the Braves have become world champions 13 years later, I think now would be as good time as any to explore retiring this cap, and getting a new one.  The color is faded and tired and the integrity of the fabric and brim is flimsy.  But mostly because this cap is a size 7 3/8 which fit perfectly back in 2008, but my head alarmingly is now a 7 1/2. 🙁

But in all likelihood, the new one will be another road navy, because it’s classic, subtle, but just the fucking best.  However, in true fashion to myself, who can get sentimental over the littlest shit, here is a fond farewell, to a baseball cap.

Finally, let’s talk about the World Series Champion Atlanta Braves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Firstly, baby luck is real, boys.  If you want to see your team win a championship, go have a kid.  I’ve seen it work for the Cubs.  I’ve seen it work with the Nationals.  Both those teams were laughing stocks not very long ago, and good friends of mine with their then-new children, got to witness the pinnacle of baseball fandom. 

Despite the fact that the Braves lost megastar Ronald Acuña, Jr. to a blown ACL, Mike Soroka blowing out his arm, and Marcell Ozuna getting suspended indefinitely for a domestic abuse incident and were sitting as low as fourth place in the division at one point, #2 was born, the Braves stopped sucking just enough to win a horrid division, and then got hot at the very right moment, and rode the momentum all the way to the top.

And now baby luck has worked for me, finally getting to witness a reality where the Atlanta Braves are World Series champions.  How can anyone not love baseball when an 88-win team that had no business making the playoffs ends up winning the whole thing?

Honestly, I never thought I’d see this in my life.  Between the Braves, Virginia Tech football, Korean national teams in, anything other than video games, I don’t have a lot of world championship potential, so y’all will have to excuse me if I’m still in a little bit of disbelief at the fact that the Braves are actually champions.

I wasn’t a Braves fan in 1995, when they won the World Series previously.  Growing up where I did, the team to root for was Cal Ripken, Jr. and the Baltimore Orioles, and the O’s got bounced by the same Cleveland Indians who went on to lose to the Braves in that World Series, but I make no claim to that championship.  So 2021’s World Series, really is for me, as it is for all Braves fans who have waited over 20 years for another championship.

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