Tag: travel

I think I’m done gambling for a while

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I took a whirlwind, 24-hour trip to Las Vegas this past weekend, primarily to bear witness to one of my closest friends getting married.  I deliberately made the trip short, because I’m stingy with my PTO at work, mythical wife couldn’t come with me, and frankly there’s nothing good to come out of me having too much time in Las Vegas.  I’m already uncomfortable in my financial life these days, and trips like Vegas can be colossal hazards to anyone’s personal finances.

Still, short as the trip was, I made sure to tackle some of the things that I missed out on during my last trip during Labor Day, like hitting up Ellis Island, and visiting Sayulita’s, where I needed to try for myself one of the monster big ass burritos that I’d seen from their social media presence. 

And let me tell you something about this burrito pictured here, it was without question the largest burrito I’ve ever encountered in my life, and this wasn’t the biggest one on their menu too.  I waffled on the idea of going there, since I was still full from the post-wedding dinner that I got to indulge in, but I knew that if I didn’t go there, I’d be left with no real other food options except the one Shake Shack in McCarron Harry Reid which would be slammed packed from other travelers left with no other option, plus I would just simply regret not going when I was already in the city.  So I went, and even thought it was $20 after tax and tip, it definitely is more than $20 worth of food.

I wasn’t hungry at the time, but I ate a quarter of it before my flight, because I didn’t want to get hungry mid-redeye flight, and be that asshole unwrapping a monster burrito on an airplane and letting its aroma get all over the place.  After I got home and took a little bit of a recovery nap, I ate 3/4 of what was left before I felt like I was going to burst, and later in the day, I finished it off, and then I literally didn’t have to eat again for the rest of the day.

And it was fantastic, and every bit worth the trip off the beaten tourist path to go try them out.  Would definitely drop them a five-star rating on Yelp if I weren’t low-key salty about them not making me Elite status again for 2023.

But anyway, to get to the point of the title of this post, I think I’m done gambling for a while.  Not solely because I didn’t have a particularly good gambling trip in the small opportunities I had to gamble (I got pretty decimated, so much for wedding luck), it’s just that I frankly don’t have the bankrolls or the means to build the bankrolls I’d need in order to gamble as I’d like to in Las Vegas anymore.

I used to be able to stretch $500 to last a whole weekend in the past, but that amount barely kept me in the game for a single day this past trip.  Table minimums have risen across the entire Strip, and pretty much at no point does a table drop beneath a $15 minimum at any casino I’ve been to, from Harrah’s to Bally’s Horseshoe to Cosmopolitan to the Venetian.  And after like, noon, those “low” limits vanish and it’s basically $25 minimums anywhere and everywhere from there on.

Nice, manageable $10 minimums are an extinct relic on the Strip now, and that means a $100 buy in here or there just doesn’t last as long as they used to, not to mention that even at a $15 minimum, they’re harder to manage and round off to nice increments of hundos, and obviously such is done deliberately to more expediently part money away from us gambling schmucks in the first place.

Lower, more appealing to my broke ass limits are still available, off-Strip and places like Ellis Island, but other than my brother, it’s hard to convince anyone at all to go to Ellis Island with me.  I think I’ve talked about the place so much it’s to the point where people want to deliberately shun it just to troll me, that and the fact that for whatever reason, people just can’t seem to want to ever wander off the Strip in the first place.

The bottom line is that it’s gotten to the point where I can’t really afford to gamble in Las Vegas anymore.  At least at this juncture of my life, where nearly all of my earnings goes towards my kids and bills and there’s practically nothing left for me to do anything.  But it’s still a little demoralizing, because I really do enjoy gambling and being in Las Vegas, but aside from rising minimums and my cash flow not rising commensurate to keep up, the place has changed a lot since the days in which I’d make 3-4 trips a year, and after this past trip, I think I can safely say that my itch to Vegas it up in all applicable ways, is kind of gone.

But never say never, who knows how things will change in the passage of time.  Maybe I’ll make more money one day, and not all of it is hoovered up by responsibilities, or maybe but not likely Vegas will drop their minimums and bank on getting more action.  Or maybe I’ll come across some more gambling videos with supposed unbeatable, low-risk grind methods in roulette or craps that will reignite the itch.  Until then, we’ll see how long it takes for me to get back out there next.

I love when a bad plan backfires

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Blue Jays pitcher goes on Twitter to bitch about United Airlines asking his wife to clean up after their kids on a flight, gets bodied by The Internet

See, now this is an instance where The Internet made the right call on someone to unleash the fury onto.

Anthony Bass, a journeyman pitcher of marginal talent, who has played for seven different MLB franchises, and has made over $10 million dollars in career earnings, tries to go on the internet to shame United Airlines over the crew of a flight he and his family were on, asking the pregnant mother of their children to clean up a popcorn spill.  But his evident quest to gain sympathy and shame United Airlines backfires stupendously, and he receives a healthy dose of reality from the cauldron of the internet, leading to lots of disagreement, ridicule, and of course, snarky analysis of his baseball talent.

I think it goes without saying that I’m on the side of The Internet on this one, because I’ve done my share of traveling on airplanes with kids and it is every bit as difficult, aggravating and patience testing as one without kids might think it is.  But I also do it intelligently, and even if the airline were to present fucking popcorn to my kids, I simply wouldn’t let them have it.  The probability of a mess is higher than Bass’s opponents’ batting average has been this season, and I wouldn’t want to put myself in a position to where I would have to be the parent asked to clean up after my kids.

But if I were?  I’d do it, no questions asked.  I’ve flown enough in my life and know enough about the airline industry to know that flight attendants aren’t maids, butlers, servants or custodians.  I respect what they do, and I know that cleaning up after mine or my kids’ messes aren’t their primary jobs, and any assistance that they do give is a genuine act of generosity to be grateful for, and not expected.

Bass, his wife, and his wife’s sister, who is also married to a (former) professional athlete, are all a bunch of spoiled, infantilized idiots who have lost touch with normal people in normal occupations, because they’ve been coddled in the lifestyles of professional athletes for the better part of a decade.  I absolutely am tickled by the notion that Bass and his clan all got on social media with the intent to shame United Airlines, but it mostly backfired on them all, and of all the resistance they received, I absolutely love it when a baseball player’s poor performance inevitably is brought up, because in most cases it adds nothing to the argument, but in the context of comparing it to the situation, it kind of works.

I love the fact that someone screen grabbed his Baseball-Reference page, primarily showing off his 2023 stats where he has an abysmal 7.11 ERA and a negative -0.2 WAR, and made the comparison that he had no room to complain about United not doing their jobs when it was very evident that he was not doing his.

But I kind of get Anthony Bass’s frustration a little bit too though.  I’ve been twice a husband to a pregnant wife, and I understand that if I’m not here, I could only wish people were willing to help her out when needed.  Frankly, he had some reason to be frustrated with a flight attendant, if they didn’t help at all, and stood there and watched his wife get down and pick up popcorn, but frankly I’d also be miffed with surrounding passengers who sat on their asses with seatbelts on, and didn’t help a very likely obviously pregnant woman on the ground picking up popcorn.  Sure, it’s not their job to do such, as it isn’t the jobs of the flight attendants, but a little bit of empathy and compassion can go a long way in life.

Either way, I still got a lot of amusement of reading the fallout of Anthony Bass and his beef with United.  He clearly thought he was going to have The Internet to back him up against United, but much like the confidence in his abilities he must have had after his fairly decent 2022 season, he was wrong.  And I love seeing spoiled professional athletes get owned on the internet.

That’s a whole lot of words to say “because we suck”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d heartily: San Francisco Giants GM Farhan Zaidi tries to explain the difficulty of signing free agents because nobody likes the city

I remember when my baseball travels took me to San Francisco, I looked forward to the trip.  Years of watching stuff like Full House and Mrs. Doubtfire made the city seem like a pretty cool place, but at the same time, as a sports fan, I was a little skeptical, because as far as baseball was concerned, it became pretty common knowledge that San Francisco was the city that was 69F all year long, and their sports fans were among the most insufferably obnoxious ones in existence.

All the same, I looked forward to the trip as I did most all of my baseball trips, because regardless of the preconceived notions, it was still a place I’d never been to before, and I always relished the opportunity to see new places.

After my trip was over, I had decided that it was a good enough trip, but as a whole, I really wasn’t that impressed with San Francisco.  Everything everywhere was ridiculously expensive, the weather really was static, and it was just a difficult city to traverse in general.  As far as ballparks were concerned, I thought Oakland’s decrepit mausoleum of a ballpark was the better place to watch a game, and the sports culture was everything I had expected before going there.  Giants clearly cared more about the scene than they did the team, and even when they were getting stomped by the rival A’s, the fans still went ballistic for the Fist Pump Cam, and I’d never felt more embarrassed for other human beings in my entire life.

Despite the hype and perception and the self-importance from those in the Bay area, San Francisco was not a city I am that fond of, and I have little motive to want to visit again without good reason.

So I was quite tickled pink to read this article where the Giants’ GM Farhan Zaidi maybe said a little too much in an interview, because he basically said that free agents don’t want to sign with his team because the city kind of sucks.  He cited a couple of things that were not at all sports-related, and the author of the aforementioned story injected a little bit more of their own opinion into the article trying to smokescreen it as Zaidi’s.

But they mention stuff like homelessness and drug problems in the city, and although they don’t expressly say it, their use of sociological factors is basically trying to skirt around the fact that San Francisco is pretty well known to be one of the gayest cities in America, and I don’t say that with any hint of criticism or animosity, after all I’m in Atlanta, which is probably right behind them in population of the LGBTQ+.

Ballplayers probably don’t care about homelessness or drug use in the city, what they’re more likely to care about it the fact that it’s an expensive as fuck city to live in, and even the biggest of superstars are going to have a hard time trying to find a place to live, having to compete with all tech millionaires and billionaires that live in Silicon Valley.  Over the last few years, there have been numerous professional athletes who have turned away opportunities to play in New York and Canada over anticipated tax costs, and gone to places like Texas and Florida where tax laws aren’t as costly, they get that granular with their money.  San Francisco and the highest real estate costs in the country aren’t very likely to be that attractive to anyone, much less professional athletes.

Maybe the more country bumpkin athletes might have an objection with living in a blue state full of the gays, but it’s more likely that what will drive them away is a city with horrendous traffic and mountainous hills where they can’t drive their sports cars around in and have any fun, but it really was hilarious that the author of the post cited being the home to Nancy Pelosi as a potential reason why Aaron Judge wouldn’t sign there.

The thing is, no life-long Bay area resident would ever publicly decry their hometown to anyone other than other Bay area lifers.  Hometown criticism is like mom jokes, as in only we are allowed to make them, but coming from outside us, fuck you.  So it makes it that much more entertaining to me, that a notable representative of the city in the form of the hometown baseball club’s general manager goes on the record to point out all the faults why free agents wouldn’t want to sign there.  I’m sure he’s going to be a popular fellow until the next shiny distraction emerges.

Naturally, at the time I’m writing this, word drops that the Giants succeeded in signing shortstop Carlos Correa to a 13-year megadeal worth $350 million.  Most interestingly about the initial details is that I’ve noticed that there are no opt-out clauses, which means I really hope Correa likes the city, because he’s going to be there for quite some time.  Hopefully he knew what he was getting himself into, otherwise it’s going to suuuuuck.

Either way speaking of suuuuuuuck, suck it, San Francisco.  Y’all are an overrated city that nobody outside of it likes.  I relish in the fact that coronavirus exposed the town more than any other in America and their ridiculous real estate market took a notable hit, and it almost nearly gets some blood flow to hear that the Giants’ own GM think the city sucks too.

Dad Brog (#099): The Worst Parenting Product Ever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout the last two-plus years, mythical wife and I have come across plenty of products that weren’t that useful, and/or drawn frustration from mostly me.  Things like wipe warmers, butt paste applicators, the 78 different types of sippy cups that mythical wife purchases despite my protests that we don’t need any more god damn cups, can fall into the category of being useless.

Our ridiculously expensive double stroller has been a tremendous source of frustration for me throughout the journey of parenthood, because it was ridiculously expensive, but it’s also absurdly cumbersome, heavy, doesn’t fit into my car at the same time as an extra human being, and taking the thing down to Disney is a sure-fire trip-ruiner based on how often I have to break it down to fold because it’s either fold it to ride a shuttle or a Skyliner or fold it to put into the car to drive somewhere with.  But at least in spite of it all, it provides massive utility as the sturdy, smooth-rolling stroller to both my kids, when we need to roll them around.

But this past weekend, I discovered the absolute worst parenting product we’ve ever had the misfortune of being duped into spending our money on: the SlumberPod.

It’s basically a supposedly portable blackout tent that you put over the sleeping peripheral of a child, so that they can sleep in simulated darkness.  It has vents and even a clear plastic compartment to tuck a camera into so that you can monitor your child still.  The sales pitch of this product is that it’s perfect for you to use in hotels or anywhere where you have to shack up with your children in the same room, and you want to be able to sleep in the dark but not have to give up the convenience of lights outside of it.

But for my kids?  Colossal failure.  The SlumberPod seems like a great way to inflict trauma or cultivate claustrophobia to my kids.  We got it for #2 originally, because she typically needs a nice dark, isolated setting to sleep optimally, and sharing a hotel room with her seemed like a daunting task.  When we finally got it set up and put over her pack and play, it lasted all of two seconds before she was screaming bloody murder, and it didn’t even make it ten minutes before we realize that this wasn’t going to work.

Alternatively, we tried it on #1, to see if it would prove useful with her, but not only did she hate it as much as #2 did, she had the capability to fuck around with the camera compartment, reach outside of her crib to monkey around with the sound machine, and was just overall physically capable enough to jostle the entire thing to where we I threw up my hands and declared this the worst parenting product we’ve ever had.

Sure, there is no one-size-fits-all parenting product that is guaranteed to work on every single kid out there.  That’s not entirely why I’m so disenchanted with the SlumberPod.  My primary point of frustration with the SlumberPod, aside from its bullshit $170+ price tag, is the fact that it’s pitched like it’s this easy-to-assemble jesus tent that will help put your kids to sleep, but the reality is that you basically need the surface area of Lambeau Field in order to have adequate space to put it together.  Works kind of counter to the idea of assembling and using these in hotel rooms with limited space.

It’s a Christmas miracle that I didn’t, or my kids didn’t get hurt by one of the bullshit tension rods that requires an unnerving amount of bend in order to assemble, and I was afraid that one wrong move would result in a violent whiplash of a metal rod whipping the shit out of either myself or one of my kids.  It would’ve probably been violent enough to slash out an eye on a human being, and probably rip a massive scar into drywall.

It’s definitely not easy to assemble, and once it is, it’s this giant fucking blob of useless that you don’t want to break down on a daily basis and have to wrestle with it all over again the following day, so you leave it assembled and let it take up a giant chunk of space in your limited hotel room’s real estate.

And when it doesn’t work on top of the aggravation of having to assemble it, it’s a really easy call to make that this is basically the most useless and regrettable parenting product ever purchased.  Basically, my prevailing thought after having to put up with this failure, is that if you don’t want to have to deal with the stress and struggle of having to share space with a child that requires adequate darkness in order to sleep, don’t fucking travel with them.  At least it wouldn’t cost $175 and an entire weekend of sleepless nights because the kids are struggling to sleep in a shared space far from home.  But fuck the SlumberPod, I hope I’ll be able to recoup anything for it, because I sure as shit don’t want to keep this in my house full of kids stuff any longer.

Thoughts from a much-needed weekend off

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Paris – my #2 favorite place in Las Vegas

As mentioned in the fanny pack post, I was actually in Las Vegas over the Labor Day weekend.  This was effectively the first real, multi-day, kids-free breather that mythical wife and I have had since, before the arrival of #1 back in March of 2020, right before the pandemic shut the world down.  Since then, we’ve literally never had longer than a single day where we were both not without children.  We obviously love our kids and our budding famiry very much, but we’d also be kidding ourselves that having gone through such a stretch has been difficult at times, and it’s amazing we’ve gone this long without a true break and not ended up going insane in the process.

Needless to say, the highlight of the trip was without question, simply getting to sleep in for two straight nights.  As in, turn off all alarms, pin the blinds shut, and go to sleep, only to wake up naturally, once our bodies deemed it no longer necessary to remain asleep.  I know we were in Las Vegas, the city that never truly sleeps and we’re supposed to be out gambling, drinking and being total shitheads all night every night, but damn if it wasn’t so refreshing to wind down the evenings knowing that we could sleep as long as we wanted.

To any of my zero readers who might be under the age of 32, I can imagine just how depressing of a paragraph the preceding one was, as a glimpse of what life after the age of 40 and with multiple kids can await but I really do love my famiry I really do.

As for Las Vegas itself, it was a good weekend to get away from the grind of daily living, but I have to say I had a lot of thoughts about not just Las Vegas, but the experience of traveling, and the state of the world itself.  And not to shit on what was a very welcome weekend to relax some, but me being who I am, of course these aforementioned thoughts are quite critical.

If I could get right to the point, I would have to say that I feel like there is a pretty wide disconnect when it comes to the world of business and the people of the world, and where they stand on how “re-opened” everything really is versus how re-opened everyone thinks it is, or should be.

Case in point: travel to Las Vegas is expensive as fuck, due to supposed demand and inflation.  What should be no more than really a $350 RT give or take anywhere in the continental United States was like an $800 RT per person, resulting in mythical wife and I settling with Greyhound Spirit Air in order to not get to the casinos already broke.  Except when you get to Las Vegas, casinos and restaurants all over the city are operating at less than pre-pandemic capacities, almost all of the buffets are either shut down or completely impossible to get in on account of them being the only ones left, table minimum bets are way higher than they used to be, and it’s basically impossible to be spontaneous or do anything substantial on short notice anymore.

Aside from sleeping the fuck in, two things that I wanted to do at my first time in Vegas in like 5-6 years was to eat at a buffet, and visit Ellis Island.  Neither of which happened because pretty much every buffet in Las Vegas was either closed or required a massively advance reservation, and nobody in my party wanted to go to Ellis Island and even if we did go, there’s no doubt that their restaurant would’ve had a massive wait and been impossible to get in at.

Not that they were that bad by any means, but we had several meals at places I probably wouldn’t have gone to if there were buffets available, not to mention that they were all way more expensive than good Vegas buffets were.

But due to the general feeling of restrictions and handcuffs here and there, I found myself breaking a couple of my own neurotic rules in Las Vegas, out of a feeling that I didn’t have any choice.  Two of them, at the same time, which was no playing where you stay, and no playing at tables with robotic female Asian dealers, because to me, both are omens of horrible luck.  But I did both anyway, and found myself down a good bit in short order, and going to bed feeling agitated and dejected.

Fortunately, a positive gambling session at Paris the following day helped salvage my gambling exploits, but I still left the city an overall net negative in the process, not that such isn’t always the case when it comes to going to Las Vegas, but the point is, there’s a noticeable disconnect between how much the city wants to operate versus the demand of things from the people who are visiting, leading to a lot of obnoxious waits, crowds, rushes and rejections.

Such sentiments weren’t limited to Vegas itself, just the traveling experience in general, is very similar in the sense that airports want to operate in these pandemic-era manners with skeleton crews, early closures and basically taking away all seating from travelers, but not taking into consideration every single flight is basically oversold, because of the reduced number of flights is making every ticket a hot one, and all these people are stacked on top of each other, sitting wherever there’s floor space and an outlet on the wall.

Either way, I don’t regret the trip, and I’m grateful to have gotten away from ordinary life for just a few days, and could sleep in and feel like a self-absorbed adult for that time.  By the time it was time to pick the kids up from grandma’s, I couldn’t wait to see my girls, and give them big hugs and kisses again.  But obviously me being the headcase that I notoriously am, nothing goes by without me overthinking about it, even good shit like small vacations.  But I would wager that I’m not the only one who feels that it’s kind of obnoxious that the commercial world is trying to have their cake and eat it too when they try and use the pandemic as an excuse to operate at 75% when the consumer world is ready and itching for things to be operating at 110%.

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.

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The Clock King is most definitely the worst villain ever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, I posed the question if The Clock King really was a villain, in the grand spectrum of things.  That he really was just a punctual and time-considerate individual in a world full of shitheads that don’t have such qualities, and he’s the one that gets painted to look like the bad guy, and eventually a member of Batman’s rogues gallery.  Back then, it didn’t really seem fair to me that he was considered a villain and I wanted to open that discussion to my then-six readers.

But after a weekend like this past one, and 2+ years of parenting, all I can really think of now is that not only is The Clock King most definitely a villain, he’s without a shadow of a doubt the greatest evil in all of comics.  Worse than Darkseid, worse than Doomsday, worse than the Joker.  Worse than Thanos, worse than Kang, worse than Onslaught.  Shit, it transcends comic books, and The Clock King is the greatest evil in the history of, history.  Worse than Hitler, worse than bin Laden, worse than Trump.

Obviously this goes into the obvious notion that there is no greater force in existence than the passage of time, and how it’s unfeeling, unbiased, impervious by nobody, and never ending.  Which means those who wields it to greatest effect, like The Clock King, are basically the worst people ever.

At this current juncture of my life, there’s seldom any time in which I am not up against a clock on a fairly regular basis, and there are times in which it becomes absolutely maddening and fills me with despair and levels of stress that I have a hard time coping with.  By individual nature, I am a punctual person who believes in punctuality and adequate lead time; I hate to rush, I like getting to my destinations early, and as a worker I believe that 15 minutes early is on time and on time is late.

But since I’ve gotten older and had kids, my agenda is always packed full of things for other people, I’m routinely stretched past capacity, and I’m way more prone to being late to things, and I concern myself that I’m developing a reputation of being flaky and unreliable.  Or just a typical parent maybe.  Regardless, it goes against everything that I’ve always put a lot of conscionable effort into maintaining, and I have a hard time dealing with the seemingly endless stress that comes with being up against the clock.

Continue reading “The Clock King is most definitely the worst villain ever” →