Reunion - 10 things I think

10 THINGS I THINK

1. The reason for Donald Trump’s surprising popularity amongst GOP electorate is simple: he doesn’t back down. Over the past few years we’ve seen scores of people from the Republican Party spew all sorts of crazy rhetoric, and nearly all had to apologize in public for it. Well, the GOP base is sick and tired of seeing their mouthpieces and representatives apologize for words that they don’t think of as wrong at all. They blame the liberal PC media for bludgeoning their voice and opinion out of existence. Enter, the Donald.

Trump began with a bang, didn’t he? Incredulously referring illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists whilst in the middle of his campaign announcement, the general public was expecting a swift mea culpa from Trump - but it never came. He doubled down on his words, refusing to cave to media and corporate pressure. The move proved popular with the GOP base, the lot of whom believes the same fantastical idea as Trump: illegal immigrants are the scourges of society. The base was immensely happy to see a public figure from their parts for once, stand his ground.

As we’ve watched with great amusement and hilarity, Trump hasn’t yet rescind any of the radical rhetoric said since his campaign commenced, and his poll numbers are the better for it. The Republican Party establishment must be squirming at Trump’s continual staying power, because they know that while his message is massively popular with the base, he will never win a general election antagonizing immigrants, women, and veterans of the armed forces (to name a few).

I have to say it is incredibly fun to see Trump point out the hypocrisy in the GOP (McCain is a hero, but John Kerry, he’s a loser!), though likely not his intention. I hope he stays in the race as long as possible, because it’s highly entertaining indeed.

2. Never lend money to a friend you couldn’t otherwise bear to lose. It’s a maxim that has served me quite nicely, and one that has thus far allowed me to avoid getting punched in the face and left with a broken jaw. No matter how good of friends you are, the person who keeps hounding the other for money always end up looking like an asshole. The proper thing to do is simply wait for the friend to pay you back, no matter how long it takes. If you need the money in haste, you shouldn’t have loan it out in the first place.

3. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is absolutely essential reading, and I’m only ashamed that I haven’t gotten to it in my formative years. His account of two years spent in a cabin by Walden Lake is a masterpiece in prose and storytelling, and the lessons and maxims sprinkled sporadically over the book is as critical as any found in religious texts (in my opinion, anyways). My key takeaway from the book is that life is at its most rich when it’s the simplest.

4.  Really, EPA? You quite literally had one job. The EPA spilling waste into a river is like a babysitter leaving the kid at home whilst he goes off gallivanting at the local mall. The agency hand out fines to polluting corporations, but who there to penalize the EPA when they themselves, however unfathomable and illogical, neglect the environment? Wasted tax dollars is what it is. I for one welcome a congressional hearing on this incident, rather than a forum on Benghazi for the fiftieth time.

5. Within the same calendar year now, we’ve witness the end of both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and that is a stark and strange reality indeed. It’s super cliché to say this, but I absolutely grew up with those two programs of political satire. Like many of my generation, it’s the only political “news” program I watch, and while it most certainly did shape and color my own political compass, I would’ve gone the same direction regardless of Stewart and Colbert - I wouldn’t have kept on watching for over a decade otherwise.

I’m expecting big things from Trevor Noah, Stewart’s heir to The Daily Show throne, and anticipating seeing Colbert out of his signature satirical character (forever?) in hosting The Late Show. That said, an immeasurable void will forever remain in Comedy Central’s 11PM to 12PM hour, an end of an era indeed.

6. When I do make my prodigal son-like return to the motherland of China, I’m for sure taking the stairs at all times. The news of Chinese persons getting eaten alive by escalators is Final Destination sort of frightening, if it weren’t so real. Yes, Chinese regulations and building codes aren’t exactly world renowned, but that isn’t going to change overnight, is it? I don’t care if it’s the soon to be finished Shanghai Tower - stairs is the only option if life preservation is important to you, and it is to me.

7. Watching Ronda Rousey fight (or do anything, really) gives me tremendous amounts of joy. Her withering stare is altogether fearsome, and oddly attractive. Dominance does not even begin to describe what she has done to her opponents over the past few years. For those of us born too late to witness Iron Mike Tyson in his utter prime, Rousey is every bit the substitute.

She’s also a noted fan of Pokemon and Dragonball Z. That’s just not fair.

8. It seems we care more about a lion in Zimbabwe than we care for the actual people in Zimbabwe who are struggling with poverty and hyperinflation. While I am all for preservation and ensuring a planet populated with as many species as possible, let's take care of our fellow man first before we worry about endangered species. Just as a mother on a distressed airplane should put the mask on herself first before the child, any charity of mankind must first be towards our own. It’s a difficult visual indeed when social media is full of Cecil the Lion sympathy, whilst hundreds of migrants are drowning in the Mediterranean.

Also, lots of the false outrage over Cecil’s death reeks of vegans driving a car with leather seats.

9. My already immense love for Amazon Prime shot up a whole other notch after it announced the former Top Gear trio of Clarkson, Hammond, and May - along with much of the old production crew - will migrate to Amazon and signed on for at least three series worth of motoring program.

It’s a surprising coup for the retail giants, as most of us expected the trio to land with Netflix. Both are equally good platforms; unencumbered with advertisements, the forthcoming show won’t have to placate any one automaker. Clarkson will, just as before on Top Gear, have free reign to rubbish the Porsche 911, or reference Ferrari road car’s propensity for spontaneous immolation. Of course, it likely came down to money, which obviously Amazon has in spades over Netflix.

I’m just happy to see the magic of Clarkson, Hammond, and May, continue on.

10. It’s Monterrey Car Week! Though I’ll be stuck at work for much of the week, I’m excited to attend for the first time the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion this coming Saturday at the legendary Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. It’s going to a (hopefully) bright and early morning indeed, as the doors to the track opens at 7AM, and I’m about two hours up north in San Francisco. 

Perfect weather, can't get no better - 10 things I think

10 THINGS I THINK

1. Where were you the night Reddit when all to hell? I seldom frequent the website (I personally find it difficult to navigate), but it was interesting to see the uprising of the site’s moderators in protest of the administration. Who knew that underneath the immense success and traffic volume, lays such amounts of discord and dissatisfaction?

Judging from my Twitter feed, quite a few of the people I follow have sworn off Reddit for good. And good for them, because rather than spending inordinate hours of time in front of a computer screen reading message boards, people should go out and take in some of that fresh air while they still can - before climate change destroys it completely.

2. 11AM east coast baseball games should be banished from existence. This past Fourth of July I was extremely annoyed to wake up to a baseball game that has already gone on for a few innings, and it was only 9AM! Whoever did the scheduling for this particular day ought to swiftly walk themselves in front of a moving bus.

I understand baseball’s need to schedule a slew of games for the holiday, but they must take into consideration the home markets of the respective teams. MLB simply can’t schedule an early east coast game for a west coast team. I missed nearly a third of the Fourth of July Giants game, and would’ve been even more incense had the early innings been critical to the outcome. Get it together, baseball.

3. 50 wins might only get a team the 8th seed in the NBA’s western conference next season. It appears the Warriors’ historic season has prompted other westerly franchises to load up and retool. The Spurs became the instant favorites after the acquisition of LaMarcus Aldridge, Durant and the Thunder will be back with a vengeance, and the likes of the Rockets, Mavericks, Clippers, Grizzlies, and Pelicans will only improve from the previous season. There’s the x-factor of Kobe’s final season with the Lakers, too. Of course, with Draymond Green back with a long-term contract, the Warriors are doubly equipped to defend their recent crown.

More so than other years, it’s looking to be an absolutely gauntlet to emerge out of the western conference. And you already know the Cavaliers are coming out of the east.

4. I’m not overly fond of Fourth of July, because living in the hood means all through the night there will be a constant barrage of illegal fireworks from the neighborhood children. It’s literally non-stop bang after bang from around 7PM onwards until hours pass midnight. It must’ve been terrible for normal folks trying to get to their slumber but don’t possess proper earplugs (I’ve got a pack of them for this exact occasion).

Also, it must be said that people who dabble in illegal fireworks during the holiday are being massive assholes towards pets and war veterans with PTSD.

5. McLaren Group CEO Ron Dennis referring BBC F1 pundit Eddie Jordan as the village idiot of Formula One was completely hilarious. No one dishes out insults in the most prim and articulate manner quite like the British do. Big Ron could’ve simply used any of the common, single-word insults to disparage Edide. Instead, the audience gets to enjoy this roundabout yet elegant prose: "I consider F1 a kind of family and a village always has a village idiot and [Eddie Jordan] is the idiot."

6. Many congratulations to the United States women's national soccer team on their World Cup triumph in Vancouver this past Saturday. What a brilliant display of dominance from the first whistle on, with Carli Lloyd doing something (a hat-trick in a World Cup championship game) only done once before in either the men’s and women’s game. What an inspiration the team is for the many young girls in this country; that gender shouldn’t and isn’t an impediment to pursuing whatever they dream to do.

7. Starbucks raising prices on its drinks is coinciding perfectly with my recent decision to stop drinking coffee. Not by choice, mind you. Readers of this blog should know that coffee’s innate acidity is preventing me from enjoying the good cup. Even the less acidic cold-brew method has proven futile to stop the stomach’s protests.

8. Greece and China’s financial sectors better get their shits together, because my domestic and international investments are taking quite the beating thanks to their economic malcontent. Particularly, Greece should leave the Euro, default on their debt obligations, and start anew. For sure there will be immense amounts of financial hardship the first few years, but I reckon by allowing the free market to work, Greece will come out better and stronger than continuously accepting bailouts from European banking consorts.

9. Whatever labor/wage exploitation that Amazon is doing to offer Prime members free same day shipping, I don’t care - I’ve seen the future and it is awesome. I click to buy something in the morning and by the time I return home the item is there waiting.

This past weekend I ventured to IKEA to do some furniture shopping (needed a new bed-side drawer) and eat Swedish meatballs. While there I was reminded how hassling it is to wait in a long line to pay for your purchase. I’ve been so pampered and spoiled by the benefits of Amazon Prime - having stuff deliver right to my door in two days’ time - that Brick and Mortar shopping has largely been relegated to last-resort status. Now with Amazon offering free same-day shipping on certain items, I just might never leave the house to do shopping other than for food (unless I can get on the Soylent program).

10. "Our cars are meant to be driven, not polished." - Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche   

Love is love - 10 things I think

10 THINGS I THINK

1. How serendipitous and fitting that the United States Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage across the nation the same week the annual Pride celebrations are happening. It must’ve have been a raucously good time this past weekend at the respective parties and parades. It’s very well deserved, too.

I think even the most optimistic of us would say that we’d never thought the day love ultimately prevails would come so soon, but damn was it such a moment. It was especially fun turning to Fox News after the ruling was handed down to watch conservative squirm and yell at the clouds in resounding defeat. Religious freedom? You’ve still got it, my fellow Americans. Gay people marrying aren’t going to all of the sudden corrupt whatever’s going on inside your Church. As for what you call “traditional marriage” and “core family”, please explain to me the national divorce rate.

2. Apple Music launched yesterday, and I’m in love with it thus far. I most enjoy the ability to cue up my own music library right on the phone (a function I use often in iTunes on the Mac), letting me interject the playlist with a new song without disturbing the rest of the list. I can also now see the once shuffled song list, and can rearrange the track order to my liking. Cuing up a set of songs for my weekly runs is going to be much easier and more enjoyable.

The brand new, 24-hours live BEATS1 radio station has supplanted my go-to Pandora station as the in-car music of choice. Apple is brilliant in bringing back the human element to Internet radio, something I did not realize I missed until I fired up BEATS1 yesterday evening. I can’t wait to try the Apple Music playlists that are designed by music experts from round the globe. Even the non-curated, algorithmic radio stations have been much better than the previously atrocious effort - I can listen without it turning into a total skip-fest.

3. The Greece debt crisis situation is putting an enormous damper to my international stock holdings. It’s continuously baffling to me how a country that makes up only 2% of the entire Euro Zone output can affect such disastrous consequences if its economy were to fail. Perhaps the UK was smart to keep its pound sterling and not integrate to the Euro currency, because the European Union’s singular monetary device is precisely the reason why the other nations feel impelled to prop up tiny little Greece time and time again.

On a related International fiscal tangent, the Chinese stock market isn’t look so good, either.

4. Donald Trump made some outrageous and highly erroneous comments regarding Mexican immigrants during his campaign announcement, yet it’s incredibly telling that not one single person from the field of GOP presidential candidate hopefuls came out to denounce his statements. Their silence on the matter might as well be the equivalent of a tacit endorsement, which is not exactly surprising given the recent anti-immigration history of the conservative party.

Good to see Univision and NBC Universal take stand against the ignorant Trump in disassociating themselves from the Miss USA pageant, even when its likely not in their greater financial interest to do so. Freedom of speech is only freedom consequence from the Government, Donald.

5. The final Top Gear episode, as known and renowned in its current formula, aired the past Sunday. It was a bittersweet moment indeed for me seeing for the very last time the trio of Clarkson, Hammond, and May on the television screen as Top Gear presenters. Of course, the three will undoubtedly move on to do another motoring show on another medium, but that happy thought doesn’t diminish the melancholy of the occasion at all.

I quite literally grew up on Top Gear. I’ve always had an affinity towards cars, but BBC’s famed motoring show taught me how to love them, and enjoy the automobile for the fun and freedom they represent. The program never fascinated itself too much with numbers and specifications; the endgame is precisely about driving, and how a car makes you feel when doing so. The show’s stunning and awe-inspiring cinematography was the perfect playground to showcase the world’s beautiful locales being made better by the roaring sounds of an automobile.  

This golden-era of Top Gear will be dearly missed.

6. When I do my running exercise on Sundays, I always head to Chipotle afterwards for the post-workout meal. This past weekend, I ran at an earlier time than usual, leading me to discover that Chipotle chains don’t open for business until 11AM. Unfortunate for me, I finished my exercise around 10 AM. First world problem for sure, but I didn’t particularly enjoy having to wait that hour for the local Chipotle to open up. I might need to find another spot to satiate myself after running.

7. Media coverage of the annual “Race to the Clouds” Pikes Peak International Hill Climb has got me extremely excited about my trip there in two weeks’ time. While I won’t have quite the same machinery as I make my very own drive up the famed mountain (a rental Nissan Versa, as it’s projected), I’ll be too busy taking in the spectacular scenery to care. I just hope the weather cooperates and the latter half of Pikes Peak wouldn’t be shut down due to snow, like it did for the hill climb. 

8. John Oliver is on the absolute point, as usual: 

9. The end of Justice Kennedy’s opinion on the same-sex marriage ruling is simply beautiful:

10. This: 

One last chance - 10 things I think

10 THINGS I THINK

1. I’m not the lease excited about the prospects of a third Spider-Man origin story within the last 15 years. I understand the franchise is starting afresh within the Marvel universe, but can’t they just skip all the getting bit by a spider business and get on with fleshing out new stories?

Sadly, people are no doubt still going to come out in droves to see the forthcoming Spider-Man movie, even if it means seeing Uncle Ben get murdered for the third time.

2. Bravo to the lovely and talented Taylor Swift in standing up to the great Apple empire. Her open letter to the Cupertino tech giant made Apple reverse course, and will now pay artists for streamed songs on their forthcoming Apple Music platform during the free three-month trial period.

Now if only she can get Apple to finally make a Macbook Air with a retina display (no, the MacBook is far from being that).

3. Dietrich Mateschitz is a sore loser. When Mercedes was struggling all those years, they had the integrity to keep their mouth shut, their heads down, and got on with the program. Red Bull F1 is hurting mightily right now; publically stating your discontent with the sport and throwing your engine supplier Renault under the biggest bus ever is not going to change a damn thing. What does it say about your brand/team when the top boss comes off as such a crybaby?

4. Pride Week is always a special time here in San Francisco. I wish plenty of happiness to those who are reveling in the annual celebration. I on the other hand will be trying my best to avoid the downtown gridlock that is bound to occur during this weekend.

5. I have no words for the church shooting that happened last week in Charleston, South Carolina. Jon Stewart’s soliloquy on The Daily Show the day after best captures how I feel: people in power aren’t going to do jack shit about this terror. Nothing's going change, and that’s the ultimate tragedy in my view.

6. A woman should not displace Alexander Hamilton the 10-dollar bill. Rather, a woman should go on the 20-dollar bill in place of Andrew Jackson. Isn’t it bad enough that Hamilton got killed in a duel at the hands of Aaron Burr?

7. More than a week later and I am still in massive disbelief that Final Fantasy VII is finally getting remade for the Playstation 4 system. If you thought the wait for the announcement was lengthy and excruciating, the wait for the game’s release will be unimaginably more so. But heck, another three to four years of wait is peanuts after the incessant begging for the remake for over a decade.

8. I recently setup my GoPro Hero 4 as a dash-cam in my car, using a GoPro-branded suction cup mount. While the main purpose of a dash-cam is to have a visual recording in the event of an accident (to prove innocence or otherwise), a side benefit is that I get to review footage of the myriad of crazy drivers I encounter on the road on a daily basis. I might even throw some footage on here if it’s egregiously terrible or hilariously funny, likely both at the same time.

Now I'm just waiting for that meteor, airplane, and or a crazy Russian.

9. If your song features Fetty Wap then said song is utterly ruined.

10. I always get tremendous amounts of grass-is-greener syndrome during the summer months, because the European continent has got all the cool and awesome automotive events. Back in may it was the 24 hours of Nurburgring, last week was Le Mans, and now coming up this weekend is the Goodwood Festival of Speed. I’ve had endless dreams about living in the EU, and traversing the its fine road networks to attend all these automotive events. The views are often spectacular as well, from what I gather.

Then again, being an automotive enthusiast in California isn’t so bad. We’ve got a few marquee events here as well, one of which is the Rolex Monterey Motorsport Reunion in mid-August, which I’m most anticipating making the trip out to Laguna Seca.