Tag: tradition

Of course it’ll be Duke that kills a tradition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: #8 Duke loses to unranked Wake Forest, students storm the court; Duke center Kyle Filipowski allegedly injured by fan during the mob, coach Jon Scheyer calls for an end to storming

The low-hanging fruit is that if Duke could just stop sucking and getting upset by lesser-heralded opponents, they wouldn’t have to deal with other schools’ fans storming the court on them.  Furthermore, we’re long past Coach K’s retirement and it’s apparent that Jon Scheyerface isn’t helming a perpetual national champion anymore, so if the NCAA could stop overrating the fuck out of Duke and having them in the AP Top-10 all the time, then maybe opponents will stop thinking they’re upsetting Goliath every time they eat another L, and fans won’t feel the need to storm the court.

Put me in the segment of sports fans that is particularly enjoying the new reality that Duke is far from the automatic win they used to be, and regardless of the diminishing importance of beating Duke is becoming, it’s always a pleasure to see them take a loss.

But here’s the thing, I can see where Jon Scheyerface is coming from, as well as all those who are in support of his remarks to plead with an end to court storming.  Just because it’s a long-standing tradition across the college athletics landscape, most notably in football and basketball, and just because it’s something that’s “always been done,” it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t ever been a potential risk to tons of student athletes and team and venue personnel, and it doesn’t mean it’s really ever been right.

It’s just that this particular season, there have now been two noteworthy incidents where players have gotten bodied by jubilant fans storming the court, where Iowa’s Caitlin Clark was trucked by a fan, and now Dook’s Kyle Filipowki* took a tumble and had to be helped off the court.  If there’ve been any other incidents in the past in hoops or football, none have really made the media such as these.

*which sounds about like the whitest name in the world, even for a Dook player

As traditional and exciting it is to see a court storming, it really is a recipe for disaster where it’s a miracle that things haven’t gotten worse than these isolated incidents throughout the years.  Hundreds to thousands of people, swept up in emotion and excitement of being on the right side of a victory, rushing towards a central point where there might still be opposition present, trying to process an L while going against the flow of human traffic; suddenly accessible when they typically aren’t, because a venue’s security has long since been physically overwhelmed.

The reality is that a court storming can happen at any point of a game, not just the finish, and there is literally nothing a venue could do about it.  There is nothing short of employing the Justice League to guard the access points to the court or field from being swarmed by hundreds to thousands of rushing human beings, and even the most imposing of security will get overwhelmed by a mass of people eventually.  Unless there is a ratio of security that is closer to 1:1 and not 1:500, court storming is literally impossible to prevent from happening.

It’s just that traditionally, there is an understood agreement and civility that saves court storming for upsets of heralded opponents.  Dook has done a good job historically, be it through their students, alumni, PR and brand management, of becoming the school that everyone loves to hate, and seemingly regardless of their rank or position in the NCAA rankings, has probably been the school to have to deal with the most number of court stormings against over the last 25 years or so, so in spite of my general disdain for the school, I actually do understand where the concerns over court storming come from.

Like I said, it’s easy to make the joke that maybe if they just stop losing, they wouldn’t have to deal with it, but the concerns and potential dangers are no less real when it comes to when it actually happens.  Frankly, I don’t think Filipowski was actually hurt as much as he was more trying to cushion his bruised ego for taking an L against Wake Forest, much like any player who gets rocked in any sport suddenly having an spontaneous injury announced afterward to try and salvage their ego.

But if court storming actually does have action taken against it, regardless of the fact that nobody can really stop it from happening, all eyes are going to be on Duke as the party responsible for attempting to kill a tradition that has been a part of college sports almost as long as the existence of college sports.  And as much as people who didn’t go to Dook generally revile Dook, this outcome would probably, undoubtedly make things much worse for them, and probably set up a situation where even more schools will feel the compulsion to storm on them if they ever lose in their houses.

Would be pretty impressive to be Kyle Filipowski, because it would most definitely put him up in the upper echelon of Hated White Duke Player history, with Christian Laettner, JJ Redick and Grayson Allen, but unlike them, it’s not because he was so good at basketball as much as he was trying to kill off a timeless tradition and change the general landscape of college sports.

I am so over shopping for presents

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I understand that over the last year or two, I’ve been coming off like a tremendous Scrooge.  I will be the first to admit that I am suffering from depression in the span of that time, because at the root of everything I feel that my life is very difficult, and largely in part due to the feeling financially insecure, and the gamut of factors why it is as well the results of it.

In this span, I have been largely incapable of enjoying holidays in the manner in which they really should be enjoyed, because when you’re in a position that I’m in, holidays mean a lot more work, a lot more effort, a lot more money, with the latter variable being largely in part of why I’m often times so anxious and fretting over the most.

But to the point of the subject of this post, I’m really over shopping for presents, mostly because I just don’t know what the fuck anyone and everyone wants, but I feel obligation to provide gifts to a lot of these people, because it’s the most efficient way of demonstrating that I care and I really do care and I really do want to show my appreciation, but the truth of the matter is that I just don’t know what people want and/or I do, but it’s something that’s ridiculously expensive and I don’t have the means to get it and that’s a whole result of sucking as well.

Anyway, I have a list of people whom I want to get something for, and the vast majority of it is blank currently, because I just don’t know what to get anyone.  These days, or maybe that it’s always been the case, people are capable of getting what they want, when they want, to a degree that by the time the holidays roll around, there’s nothing left to ask for.  And not knowing what to get someone seems like the worst possible outcome, because if I knew what to get everyone, I wouldn’t be typing up this conversation piece in the first place.

Yet I feel obligated to get things for everyone because I know that the most of them will be doing the same for me.  Honestly if it were up to me, there would be no gifts shared, so that neither party feels obligated to exchange gifts and go through the time, effort and finances to demonstrate with gifts the importance of one another to each other.  I try to do that for others by giving them time, effort, favors when called upon, or being there in times of need.

But the point is, I’m sick of gifts.  I’m sorry if that sounds horribly crass and blunt and really curmudgeon but that’s where I’m at right now.  I’m tired of not knowing what anyone wants because I don’t have the capacity to be around everyone that matters to me to pick up hints and ideas for what I can provide for them, and it’s driving me insane sitting in front of my computer and trying to rack my brain fruitlessly for ideas of gifts that will inevitably end up being shitty because the rationale for them will be so convoluted and stretched that they’ll suck and people will try their hardest to be nice and try to not feel in the backs of their minds that they were given a stinker.

I want nothing, so that I can be absolved of the feeling obligated to return the favor, so that I can spend my sparse time, shits to give and money on more important thing than gifts, which is exactly what I’d really like the most.  There is a direct correlation with my depression and those things being in more copacetic places than they are now, and I just don’t know what to do to improve things and this is not how I want to be feeling at a time of the year where people are expected to be happy, festive and grateful for things.

Dad Brog (#115): Father’s Day 2023

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As many should know about me, when I say I’m going to do something, it’s a safe bet that I’m probably going to stick with it.  I’m not bragging about it, it’s just who I am.  I don’t commit to a lot of things in the first place, so when I do commit to something, it should be expected that I will follow through with it.

That being said, last year was year one of my Father’s Day gift to myself, which is truly the only thing that I genuinely want on a year basis, which is a picture with my daughters with their tag team championship blets, with me with one of my numerous blets from my collection 25 blets deep.  I genuinely could keep this going for 23 moar years even if I didn’t get any more blets, which is a fat chance, because all promotions eventually redesign and there will always be title reigns that inspire me to want them, but the fact of the matter is that it is also genuinely my life’s mission to have this photo, every year, with my girls, for the rest of my life.

So here we have it, year two of dada and his daughters with our respective blets.  I’m not sure what really made me pick the IWGP United States championship as my blet of choice this year, but it seemed to work out, because Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay tore the roof off of the arena in Toronto, and I just love how gaudy and red it is, and I was just feeling it for this year.

But more importantly is just how big my girls have gotten over the last 12 months since the last photo was taken, and #2 is rapidly catching up in height to her big sister.

Full disclosure, this was still a composite photograph, cobbled together from three separate photographs, because it’s nigh impossible to expect to get a perfect picture of both my girls posing with their blets and expect to have me in the photo as well, and I wonder how many years it’s going to take before I’m able to do this in one fell swoop where all three of us are in position at the same time.

Regardless, much like last year, and much like all future iterations will probably do, this photo makes me extremely happy.  No matter how hard life gets, parenting gets, and how much emotional turmoil I go through every now and then, these photos calm me and brings me back, and I think about just how happy I will be in the future when I’ll have enough of them to make collages and scrap book them, and maybe become internet famous for five seconds when the Buzzfeed of 2045 gets wind of my timelapse and wants to use me for clickbait.

And because I’m neurotic, I’m going to make sure to make this post always drop on June 25th of every year, regardless of when Father’s Day actually is, because I started it last year on June 25th, so it’s forever going to be the dada and daughters blet day from here on out.

Wrestlemania: suck it, Cody

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was chatting with some of my bros over the two-night extravaganza, and I explained that no matter how much my level of involvement to professional wrestling ebbs and flows and wavers throughout the passage of time, there’s always a conceited effort to watch Wrestlemania.  It always comes back during Wrestlemania, and Mania and the Royal Rumble are the two shows a year that I feel very strongly about watching live.

This year’s Wrestlemania had a pretty stacked card on paper, and I felt that the WWE had done a pretty decent job of building up a respectable card from top to bottom, and wasn’t going to be anchored solely by Roman Reigns and then everyone else.  The Rey and Dominic Mysterio feud caught fire real late, and went from a cliché match to one that had some heat behind it, and as much as I hated the relegation of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens because of the existence of Cody Rhodes, there was still a large amount of interest with their match against the Usos, because the Usos can have great matches against anyone, much less the level of talents that are Sami and Owens.

On paper, I was actually looking forward to night 1 more than the second night, because I thought that the card was better quality than then night 2’s card.  But after both shows, I actually thought night 2 was the stronger show, and it really wasn’t even close.

I thought almost all of the matches on night 1 were underperformed by all those involved, which was a little head-scratching considering the level of talent that was on the card.  John Cena had a pretty uninspired match with Austin Theory, and was disappointing, Rey and Dominic had too many people get involved with their match which watered things down, Charlotte and Rhea had an uncharacteristically below-par match, and despite it being the best match of the night, I genuinely felt that the Sami/KO vs. Usos match could’ve been better.  They were the best by default, because most of the matches prior weren’t as good as they could’ve been.

Night 2 was heavily weighted by the Intercontinental championship match, with Gunther continuing his torrid 2023 defeating both Drew McIntyre and Sheamus in a brutal shit-kicking smack-fest everyone knew it was going to be, and despite my tendency to think that the main event matches are typically predictable and academic, the Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes match served up the drama of genuinely not knowing who was going to win, which made it that much more exciting as it played out.

But speaking of Cody Rhodes, one of the things holding back the anticipation of the show was the almost seemingly inevitably that he was going to be the guy that was going to dethrone Roman Reigns, which as a fan irked the shit out of me, because of all the speculation that he has a world title reign baked into his contract, which is what was a big draw in being able to bring him back from AEW.

So seeing him take the L was kind of surprising to me, because I thought for sure it was going to be the night where the Roman Empire came to an end.  Not just because of Cody’s ludicrous contractual obligation to be WWE champion at some point, but Roman had been carrying the company for over 900 days at that point, and Joe Anoa’I probably was due for a long-needed vacation.

No matter though, because unlike a lot of wrestling fans out there, I was over the moon that Roman retained and the greatest championship run since Bruno Sammartino continues on.  I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m just not a fan of Cody Rhodes, and I’m quite pleased to see him finally lose a match since he returned to the WWE.

Continue reading “Wrestlemania: suck it, Cody” →

The Thanksgiving post, circa 2022

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I am thankful for this photograph coming out pretty decently.  Through Facebook memories, I’ve seen pictures of past Thanksgivings where I remained home with my group of other vagabond friends who didn’t travel or have local family in town and we always got together for evenings of traditional Thanksgiving food, games and eventually Brack Friday shopping.

Then I got married, had kids, and it’s been a minute since we had a traditional Friendsgiving.

I called an audible this year, and made the choice to stay home for Thanksgiving this year.  With three adults and one child that no longer qualifies for lap travel, and no real place for us all to stay whilst up in Virginia, the idea of going up for Thanksgiving seemed like a colossal clusterfuck, so I made the call to forget the plan and just stay in Georgia in the comfort of our own home.  

I just didn’t want to sink a boatload of money on a trip that was going to stress me out when I could’ve gotten the same results staying at home.  Needless to say, the tone of this post is probably going to go downhill really fast now.

Because aside from the obvious things, like the health of my kids and having a better job than my old one, I can’t really think of anything that I’m thankful of this year.  I understand that putting such a sentiment in writing makes me sound like a bitter and miserable person, but at the same time all of the above isn’t really that inaccurate.

My job doesn’t burn me out on a daily basis, but the rigors and daily tribulations of parenthood more than makes up for it these days.  Even with an au pair that is like a gift from god, there’s still way more time than I want where I’m on double duty with both girls, and it’s just so tremendously difficult to manage a toddler and an infant at the same time.  It always makes me feel like a failure, because I can’t really give any one of my kids quality attention because I’ve always got to remain on defense that one doesn’t hurt herself while trying to man the other, and it fills me up with resentment when I logically should not be on double duty but I am anyway.

I am so burned out on a daily basis that people in HR would probably be willing to extend me a little leniency.  I haven’t had a proper or adequate break from being in this stage of dad mode, and I think I might be headed towards a breakdown if I don’t.  I love my kids more than anything in the world, but the day-in and day-out responsibilities that they are, and the fact that I get less than 2-3 hours a day to unwind unless I want to jeopardize sleep and being even a shittier dad the following day never helps.

Even trying to be introspective and analytical, I genuinely don’t feel anything to be thankful of otherwise this year.  I’m just so perpetually full of piss and vinegar that I have no thanks to give.  I am on an island where maybe one or two other people I know probably understands what I’m going through, and my mood swings are becoming more scathing and bitter the longer this continues.

I probably need therapy, a solo vacation wouldn’t hurt, and maybe stopping saying I’m fine when I’m actually filled with anger is a good idea too.   Maybe a Fight Club-like cry session would help.  But none of these seem particularly feasible without clashing objectives and wants, so I’m just left in this bitter mass of existence within myself where I can only hope to find solace in the little things and try to convince myself that they’ll make everything alright.

Dad Brog (#093): Year One of Forever, part 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often the case with life with two kids as young as my own, things seldom go according to plan. And as much as I loathe tardiness and inability to be on time, things happening behind their intended time has become more and more of a routine occurrence that I hope one day rectifies itself as/if life ever calms down to a less frantic pace.

That being said, with no disrespect for my second child, #2’s birthday has come and gone now, for a few weeks now, but finally I’m taking the time to really reflect on the monumental  occasion.

To be fair, some of this delay had to do with the fact that unlike with #1, #2 got to have a traditional big Korean first birthday party, as the travels I described in prior posts was so that my side of the family could celebrate the first birthday, as is a big tradition in Korean culture.  And that particular weekend was the best chance at getting as much of my family members present, even if it meant celebrating a little bit past the actual date.

But my little #2 is officially one year old, and it most certainly has been an eventful twelve months since her arrival into the world.  I’d be full of shit if I didn’t talk about just how difficult it had been at times, especially considering her challenges she’s had with sleep in general, that still rears up every now and then even to this day.  And when she gives us hell about going to sleep, I fantasize about when she’ll one day be a groggy teenage girl who wants nothing more than to sleep, and I’ll be the obnoxiously awake dad who will gleefully remind her of her infant days when she fought like war to not sleep on a daily basis.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#093): Year One of Forever, part 2” →

Dad Brog (#089): Father’s Day, for the rest of my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#1 of until the end of my time

A while ago, mythical wife asked what I wanted for Father’s Day.  Usually whenever anyone asks me what I want for my birthday, Christmas, or now that I’m eligible, Father’s Day, I have no idea.  I don’t have a want for things except wrestling blets, and understandably nobody(ies) want to drop $300+ on effectively useless straps of fake leather and metal plates.

However, this year, I had an answer pretty quickly, because I have been thinking of it for a while.  And the best part is that it doesn’t cost a thing, but will still have unlimited value and meaning for me for the rest of my life.

What I wanted for Father’s Day this year, and every single year for the rest of my life, is a photo with my daughters, holding their tag team championship blets.  That’s it.  There’s nothing else I’ll ever need or want more than this every Father’s Day, than this request.

I figure there would be no better opportunity for me to pull this card than Father’s Day, as the my girls grow and get older and intelligent, and inevitably think my blet collection is lame and stupid.  But being Father’s Day, they’ll have to acquiesce to this small and simple request, and I’ll have them right where I want them, next to dad for a yearly photo.

I love time-lapse photography, and what I’m hoping is to one day have an impressively long photo album, built a year at a time, of myself with my daughters as they grow, blossom into the beauties their mom’s genes have set them on the course for, and watch the changing of expressions as they may be excited and exuberant as kids, begrudging and embarrassed as teenagers, but then come around and be happy and accepting of tradition as young adults and maybe one day mature women and maybe mothers in their own right.

Either way, this photo makes me happy, and I’m hoping that this will be the first of many, many years of similar photos, of forcing my children to participate in their lame dad’s hobby.