Tag: wtf

Can I get a do-over on my birthday?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So far, I’m having a birthday that has been leaving a lot to desire, and I’m trying my best to stay positive because I don’t want to get down on my birthday no matter how much I try to tell myself to treat it like any other day, but it’s feeling like one of those days where I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed and I should’ve taken the day off from work.

Because it’s naïve of me to have thought that being a WFH day, things would be easier on the workfront and that being my birthday, I would be a little more resistant to bullshit flung in my general direction.

Honestly, it didn’t start off poorly, my kids wished me a happy birthday before they went off to school, and I got some early work accomplished.  I felt like a million bucks when I was able to go to the DMV and successfully renew two cars’ registrations in four minutes because people that typically go to the DMV are afraid of technology and the self-serve kiosk was completely available, easy to use, and I was in and out in a manner that made post a bunch of eggplant emojis to various friends/groups.

I had a good run on the treadmill, and I’ve already come to the conclusion that my home treadmill and the ones at work are two completely different species of treadmills, because a 6.3 speed at home is completely tolerable, but trying anything 6.0 or higher at the treadmills at the office, and I might as well be trying to race Usain Bolt.

And that was really the last positive thing to happen, because, and I blame myself for this one, I really shouldn’t have tried to accomplish selling something on Facebook Marketplace on my birthday, because the failure rate of a sale is astronomically high, but I’ve been desperate to unload this item for months now, and I got a general commitment from this one shithead.

Naturally, he ghosted, so at this point since I had it loaded into the car, I was determined to not return home with it because I just wanted it fucking gone, so I took it to a Goodwill drop, where they claimed it was basically a piece of furniture, and wouldn’t take it, so now I’m pissed, but at this point there’s nothing else I can do about it, so I go get some lunch, so I can try to redeem some free birthday shit.

Or so I thought, despite the fact that I had an offer for some free loaded fries, the restaurant is saying I can’t redeem it because they’re already half off for a FRYday promotion, and that I should save it.  I tell them that I’d rather pay $0 than 50%, and I don’t come here often to where I probably won’t be able to save it until it’s expired, and at this point I’m annoyed that they’re challenging me at all, that I just turn around and walk, and so I end up paying for my own lunch somewhere else nearby, very agitated.

So as I’m driving to my next free shit, I remember that there’s a pawn shop, and despite the racket those places typically are, at this point, I’d take $0-10 for this piece of shit in my car.  Surely, they’d take a piece of fitness equipment right??

Wrong.  Maybe if I had some jewelry, or a gun, or perhaps some spare Air Jordans laying around, I might be able to have done business, but who would’ve thunk that lowly pawn shops have become so insufferably curating, to where they wouldn’t take my crap, even for free?

Which brings me to now, where I’m at Starbucks, amazingly the one place that made it free and easy to get something, where I decided to bring my laptop to where I could check my work email, cruise for the remainder of the workday, and perhaps do some casual writing.

I get my free drink and sit down, and lo and behold, Outlook is blowing up with many emails about new tickets, and shocker of the century, all of the tickets have less than a week turnaround.  I stare at my screen with a  face, and ping my boss that I should’ve taken the day off, and instead of doing the mountain of work that materialized out of nowhere, I opened up Word and started vomiting this colossal failure of a brog post out, because so far, this has been a real forgettable birthday that it’s taking a tremendous amount of patience to not go scorched earth on.

I want to hope that my birthday will get better, but with the exception of myself, my entire household is sick and combating various illnesses, so it doesn’t seem likely that anything but taking it easy at home is going to be on the agenda for the remainder of the day, but honestly, compared to the afternoon that I’ve had so far, that doesn’t really sound bad.

Dad Brog (#131): Con Pollo es mierda

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Look at this photograph of Jennifer Lopez and Jimmy Fallon.  They’re laughing at all the parents whom they duped into buying their “collaboration” book, Con Pollo.  Frankly, I don’t know how my household ended up with this book, we’ve inherited a lot of books and mythical wife has a lot of books from school, and we’re often given books as gifts for the girls, because it’s known just how much we read to them.  I just know that I didn’t purchase it, because if I saw anything “authored” by Jimmy Fallon or Jennifer Lopez, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, especially if it was by both of them.

But somehow, this book exists in my home, and all I can think of it is just how much bullshit it is.  It’s 48 pages of a basic journey of a young chicken doing things throughout the day, but it’s more like 24, because it’s this format where query is asked two times, with the second time in Español.  I haven’t taken Spanish since the 9th grade in high school, but even I can recollect the basic words being spouted in this book.

In all fairness, it contains more words than MAMA or DADA or BABY like all of Fallon’s previous, and unfortunate New York Times bestsellers, which means that Jennifer Lopez probably used her IQ points to insert some basic words, in two languages at their most basic forms into this.

And then they slap their names on it and call it a day, and of course, because there are lots of parents who impulse buy because they see celebrity names on it instead of actually checking to see what the substance of the books themselves, this too is a New York Times bestseller.  Which further emphasizes the sheer lack of merit or sales numbers actually necessary to earn that seemingly important designation.

Frankly, it’s crap like this that exemplifies the notion that celebrities shouldn’t be allowed to write books, other than autobiographies.  Most of the time, they’re wholly unqualified to produce content that might actually have some influence on the young budding minds of tomorrow, as demonstrated by Fallon, who clearly roped J-Lo into putting her name on a turd to help fling it off shelves so that some rich fucks can get even richer.

I look forward to the future book audit where this fails to meet the cut, and ends up in the donation pile, so it can rot someone else’s shelves and collections, and be the fuck out of mine.

Wrestlemania XL brought to you by, MAGAlcohol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally I had intended on this post being a part of the post I had made about how Wrestlemania basically sold out as hard as a NASCAR event with how many sponsorships they’ve piled into the production of their grandest event of the year™, but I felt that it had some legs of its own and I had lots of jokes and puns that I thought were the best things ever, cementing my obvious status as the dad who makes dad jokes that are only hilarious to myself.

Among the numerous sponsors that the WWE allowed to dump money into ‘Mania this year, this particular one stood out leaps and bounds above the others for me, one because of just how uncomfortably white-wing it comes off, but also finding out that they’ve basically bought Cody Rhodes and plastered their branding all over his American Nightmare™ bus, but we’ll circle back to that part later in the post.

On purpose, I’m not going to use mention their name because fuck them for being some creepy dog whistle white-wing racist undertone company, but as if that doesn’t set the stage enough, that’s basically the gist of what their commercial and branding seems to exude.

It starts with a catch-phrase that does rhyme but doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue so easily, and I want to play the Stewie Griffin game with their name, because of the “wh” in it, and that serves to ramp up the difficulty in saying their name or mocking their jingle.

But as the commercial continues to unfold, it’s as if they’re continuously doubling and tripling down on their pride of being whiter than, well, a right-wing gathering, because as the scenes change to larger and larger groups of what appears to be solely white people, it’s apparent that this is a company that really gives no flying fucks about DEI and they want viewers to know that.

They even have a ridiculous line where they ponder why Moscow gets the mule, and while looking up the YouTube video to take a screen grab from, they’ve already posted a recipe for “American Mule” which is basically the exact same thing as a Moscow Mule except not Russian; which in itself is laughable considering so many orange guy disciples love Russia as much as he does.

As the commercial ends, only one word or phrase popped into my head: MAGAlcohol, because that’s precisely what the fuck this shit actually is. 

I’m not much of a vodka drinker, other than the sparse times where I like a cranberry vodka, but I kind of feel bad for the spirit itself.  MAGAlcohol makes me not want to have any vodka in general, because it’s murdering the entire category for me as if it were a white cop pressing his knee on a defenseless black man’s neck on asphalt.

Getting back to Cody Rhodes, I was abhorred when footage of him arriving to the Linc was shown, and Corey Graves was being a good soldier, by not failing to mention that his entire bus was also co-sponsored by MAGAlcohol, and I could feel my eyes widen at the disgusting sight of it.  Just when I was beginning to soften my stance on Cody Rhodes, and beginning to turn face on my opinion of him, he has to go and associate with MAGAlcohol, and I’m pumping the brakes at how much I want to support him. 

In some regards, I get it, he’s the American Nightmare, his ring attire is basically a Homelander from The Boys skin, and he’s a white guy from Georgia.  There’s few guys at his stature in the business that would be as worth co-sponsoring as Cody Rhodes.

But he’s also a pretty sensible, intelligent human being, from what I can surmise from interviews and the way he conducts himself in and out of the business.  I would’ve assumed that he would’ve been a little more cerebral than to associate himself with a company that clearly has no hidden agenda on whom they want their demographic to be.

Oh and his wife is also black.  I know that Brandi Runnels seems to be as white-washed as perhaps I am, but when push comes to shove, white folks wouldn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus if there was an incident that needed a minority scapegoat and she was within eyesight.

Perhaps it was out of his control, and it was the bigwigs at the E that forced it onto him.  But I would’ve also figured Cody, by now, and at his position within the company, would have the ability to veto this if he really wanted to.  But as so many legends in the business have so often said, the business is all about as making as much money as you can, because there will come a day when you can do it anymore.

Not that I think Cody was starving before his associate with MAGAlcohol, but accepting more money when you’re already rich is among the whitest things a white guy can do, so unfortunately, as much as The Story has been compelling, there is a little turd in the celebratory punch bowl, that most definitely does not make it go down so sweetly.

Re: the literal selling out of Wrestlemania

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I’d wait until both nights of Wrestlemania had passed before passing on any sort of judgment, but this is fresh on my mind, and I’ve got this small window of time to write where it’s not enough to take a nap or do anything other than knock out a quick brog post.

The title of this post is not indicative to what I thought the quality of the show, at least Night 1 was for Wrestlemania, but it’s to refer to the fact that this show, and probably going forward future shows, had more sponsorships than a NASCAR race.  Prime energy drink, Snickers, Dude Wipes, Credit One, some Insurance company, and some super creepy right-wing sounding vodka company that I’ll circle back to later, but it was evident that every match had a sponsor, commercials were being aired in between every match for non-premium Peacock subscribers.

Very literally, Wrestlemania sold the fuck out.  They’re probably making millions of dollars in doing so, and I don’t judge that, but for a company that used to have zero in-ring sponsorship and usually relying on a singular chief sponsor per show, it is a stark contrast of the yesteryears, the generations of wrestling fans are hell-bent on creating a rift from then and now.

Prime had the top turnbuckle, and their logo emblazoned in the center of the ring, and it made Cody Rhodes look like he was kissing the Prime logo during his entrance.  Dude Wipes appeared to sponsor more matches than anyone else, and there’s something to be said the demographic when company that manufactures basically baby wipes for grown men has such sponsorship flex during a professional wrestling event, especially the magnitude of Wrestlemania.

My brother was the one who pointed it out, but he brought up the query on if it was fucked up or not, that the match that had a team of three black women, was the only match of the night to have been sponsored by WingStop.  I didn’t notice it at first, but once it was pointed out to me, I couldn’t not see the giant-ass WingStop logo lighting up the LED apron board and on the ring barrier throughout the match, and it definitely falls into the category of that’s fucked up.

Like seriously, surely there are marketing people at the E, and at some point, they’re milling among themselves, or coordinating with their sponsors, namely the WingStop people, and somewhere at some point, while divvying up the on-screen advertising, made the conscious decision that the match featuring Naomi, Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill, was the appropriate time to advertise WingStop.  Not that I was trying to be an eagle eye, but I don’t recall seeing them advertise again after that match.

I haven’t paid that much attention to the card for Night 2, but I do know that there is a match featuring Bobby Lashley and the Street Profits, and I have this sneaking suspicion that WingStop might be the chief sponsor for that match too now.

Everyone else can get Dude Wipes for the colossal amounts of shit that much be swirling around the city of Philadelphia’s sewer systems from 150,000 neckbeard wrestling fans converging in a single location.  Too bad most of them will believe their claim that they’re flushable, because there’s no such thing as a flushable wipe, and the streets of Philly are destined to be overflown by sewage at some point sooner rather than later.  But I guess such wouldn’t really be that far off from daily life up there.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: the blind veterinarian

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No offense, but I’ll take my pets elsewhere: Texas woman accepted into the Texas Tech School of Veterinary Medicine

Okay, so this isn’t a story about some overachieving youth applying to all of the Ivy Leagues and 75+ other schools just to see how many acceptances they can get so that they can humble brag about them on the internet, but I still felt it warranted the pound sign, because the fact that someone who is legally blind is determined to be a veterinarian is pretty bonkers in my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect determination, perseverance and chasing a dream; but when it comes to the care of my pets, I most definitely am not thinking twice about looking for an alternate opinion if I knew that my veterinarian, were blind.

I admire this girl’s determination and her positive mentality, but the reality is that if I have a pet going through some health problems, I’m going to have a hard time accepting the words and analysis of someone who can’t really see what they’re dealing with, with my pets.  I can’t believe that they’re going to be like fucking Daredevil, and have the ability to sonar my dog’s kidney issues, or my cat’s urinary tract infection, and that their other senses will be hyper productive to where they don’t need eyesight to be able to do their job.

And she wants to be a mixed-animal vet, that cares for large and small animals, which is to say she wants to take care of horses and goats and other animals that are outside the typical veterinary realm of dogs and cats.  Like, what is she going to do when she is called to check up on a skittish horse or goat and gets the fuck kicked out of her because she can’t really see it escalating.

No offense, but it just seems like not the wisest career choice in the world in my opinion.  There are all sorts of other occupations out in the world that someone with limited sight can do, while not being responsible for the life of another living being.

But hey, I’m just a rando guy on the internet with no readers, typing away into the aether for over twenty years.  But what this girl is doing, insisting on following a career path where the ability to see is generally among the unwritten top job qualifications, definitely constitutes #TRYHARDSZN2024.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: 149 out of 149 accepted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Jesus: San Diego high school senior applied to 149 colleges, accepted to all 149

Naturally, the first thing my mind thinks is, who the fuck is paying for 149 college applications?  But then I remember that when it comes to all of these #TRYHARDSZNers, they’re most likely not having to pay for ANY college applications at all because certain programs in this country are fair, balanced, and couldn’t possibly be exploited inequitably.

Of course, it can’t not be mentioned that the current value of all 149 current college acceptances is over $3M in scholarships; but honestly, that really doesn’t sound like that much, considering we’re talking about 149 colleges here.  Obviously, all scholarships are not equal, but even dividing $3M by 149, we’re getting an average of just $20k per, and assuming the higher-tier schools probably aren’t offering anything, while lower tier ones are offering more, $3M from 149 school actually doesn’t seem like that much in the grand spectrum of things.

All things considered though, this TRYHARD’s credentials are pretty impressive:

a 4.86 GPA, is taking AP classes and is part of the San Diego Police Department Cadet Program.

I don’t even know how these kids today get so high above a 4.0 GPA.  Even my high school class’s valedictorian was like a 4.3, and she got accepted into Harvard

But this TRYHARD is also on her high school’s varsity basketball, softball and lacrosse teams on top of her academics, and that probably doesn’t hurt her cause when it comes to all these applications.

Either way though, I roll my eyes when kids are getting into 50+ schools, but this chick has tripled even the local TRYHARDs with her 149+ applications.  Must be real nice knowing that you don’t have to pay any application fees, and now that schools all across America are ditching their legacy programs, I can only imagine how much more aggressive #2024TRYHARDSZN is going to get in coming months.

WTF is AEW doing #302

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure if Tony Khan thinks he’s being clever, subtle or he’s flagrantly doing it on purpose, but pretty much every wrestling fan on the planet knew that BIG BU$INE$$ in BO$$TON was going to be the debut of Mercedes Mone.

Say what you will though, I’ve been critical about Mercedes over the last year and change, but I’m also critical because I care.  I was a fan of Sasha Banks, dubious in which the circumstances she left under, but happy to see when she re-emerged in Japan, won titles there, and even predicted her inevitable path that would take her to AEW.

And as much as I like the work possible by guys like Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada, their arrivals in AEW didn’t really make me stop what I was doing and carve out time to see them.  But knowing that March 13th, BIG BU$INE$$ FROM BO$$TON was going to be the arrival of Mercedes Mone, I made the conscious effort to carve out time from my generally time-starved life, to tune in and watch, because I was looking forward to seeing Mercedes Varnado, back in professional wrestling.

However, having watched BIG BU$INE$$, my thoughts were making these posts pondering whatever the fuck AEW is doing, because I just have a hard time wrapping my brain around their general MO.  I get that I probably fall into the category that’s been so indoctrinated with how the WWE operates, that anything alternative to it just seems rather perplexing, but I’ll also say that I had no problems being a fan of WCW and ECW and to some degree, old NWA-TNA back before the days of Impact.  In fact, I’m still a fan of Impact now that they’re back to being TNA, but it’s just AEW, and now the AEW-controlled Ring of Honor, that I’m just so often scratching my head about. 

I want to like the product as their diehard fans do, but there’s just so much going on that I can’t find the ability to be a fan of the promotion as a whole as much as I just like cherry-picked aspects of the company, like Toni Storm, Will Ospreay, Daniel Garcia, and my growing respect for Orange Cassidy.  And I think it’s very amusing that the some of the guys that are doing the best work for the promotion, are all former WWE hands, like Storm, Christian, Swerve and Samoa Joe.

But back to BIG BU$INE$$, it was obvious the entire show was produced structured around Mercedes getting to open the show, as well as close it out.  Because in no logical reality should a match between Willow Nightengale and Riho be the main event of a show, especially one that had Samoa Joe vs. Wardlow and Jay White vs. Darby Allin on the card.  There are three former TNT champs, a former IWGP champion, and the current AEW champion, and they all played the undercard, just to ensure that Mercedes Mone got to close the show out, even if it meant main eventing a match between two girls who were literally Ring of Honor dark match talent not even a full year ago.

Now I was happy to see Mercedes, but I couldn’t help but feel like the arena wasn’t doing her any favors.  I felt like the acoustics in the arena murdered her entrance music, it was hard to hear the crowd actually chanting C-E-O for her, and when she got on the mic to speak, the echo sounded as if the Boston Garden hadn’t updated their equipment since Greg the Racist Valentine cut his scathing promo with terribly racist undertones. 

She cut a good promo, gave love to Eddie Guerrero, and it will be interesting to see how things transpire, because in AEW there’s either really good workers (Toni, Britt, Purrazzo) and then there’s everyone else.  This won’t be like CM Punk coming in to a sea of talent, Mercedes will have to put on her carry boots on every night, and it’ll be telling to see how she measures up to this responsibility.

Again though, I don’t think it was right to structure the entire show around ensuring Mercedes got to close out the show, especially with the talent they lined up in order to make that happen.  I know the logical program is to work in Willow Nightengale since it was her that Mercedes got hurt against, but she’s still green as baby shit, and I can’t imagine that Mercedes isn’t going to have some PTSD having to work with the person who basically cut her entire NJPW deal short.

But then again, this is why this series of posts is titled what they are, because when the day is over, I really have no fucking clue to what AEW is doing.  And because of that, it really doesn’t matter if they have Mercedes Mone, Kazuchika Okada, or even Will Ospreay, unless they find the magic formula that gives them logical, watchable weekly programming, on top of their propensity to put on above-average pay-per-views, they’re never going to be seen as a superior product than the WWE.  I know they and their brainwashed fans insist that that’s not what the goal is, but everyone knows that’s full of shit.  They all want to have their cake and eat it too, which is that they need to be the #1 promotion, so they can all revel in being #1; but it’s never going to happen if AEW continues to operate in the manner that basically makes AEW, AEW.