Tag: observations

This is where the ‘You Sold Out’ chants would start

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment


The funny thing is most people weren’t aware how close Greg Valentine and JYD were in real life, in spite of this horrifically racist promo from 1985

That is, if the WWE actually had live crowds anymore.  The inspiration of this post comes from news that NBC’s Peacock streaming service, which acquired the entire WWE Network library and has formally liquidated it as of a few days ago, has begun going through their archives and scrubbing all sorts of perceived racist content.

I’ll be the first to admit that professional wrestling has a long history of having done some racist shit during its existence; but that can be said about absolutely everything that’s been around as long as the business has.  If Dr. Seuss, the freaking godfather of children’s literature was found out to have made some racist illustrations way back in the day, it should be no surprise when Triple H had a feud with Booker T with some severely racist undertones not so way back in the day.

Racist shit is all pretty bad stuff, but it happened, will always happen, and in spite of all the rah-rah rhetoric that’s thrown around left and right these days, I unfortunately wouldn’t wager a single penny that it’s ever going to go away any time soon.  It’s sad to admit that, but would you rather I lie about how I feel?

But one consistent opinion I have is that I am absolutely not a fan of any sort of revising of history, no matter what it is that’s trying to be canceled, censored, hidden or deleted from the past.  It doesn’t matter if it’s confederate statues or episodes of Community, I abhor the idea of anything that’s been created being deleted because they’re perceived as offensive.

Personally, it’s not so much it’s because I’m callous and fucked up and want racist shit to exist in plain sight of everyone, as much as I firmly believe that creators of these things need to own that this shit has happened, but most importantly, that they’ve (hopefully) learned something over the passage of time, and that such opinions and thoughts might not be their actual beliefs today.

The mistakes of the past are lessons for the present, of things that should be avoided, should be corrected, and should be worked towards improving upon, and not buried in the closet, stashed in a plastic Publix bag and hidden inside of an Amazon Prime cardboard box behind a larger box that was never unpacked from the last time you moved homes.

NBC going through the WWE video library and trying to scrub out racist content is no exception to these opinions of mine, and I wince and look at NBC with disgust at their cowardly attempt to hide the past instead of trying to learn from it.  When this stuff was all on the WWE Network, the WWE just slapped a disclaimer on all old content, succinctly explaining the content of these programs reflect their original air date’s time and ideals, and that not everything is applicable to modern times.  But NBC being so lily white homogenized, just would rather delete it from existence, to where, as Winston Churchill once said,

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it

Imagine one or more of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon’s kids; if the WWE Network still existed when they’re old enough to watch some of the old content, they’d eventually come across the aforementioned HHH vs. Booker T feud.  Daddy could easily get in front of the topic, and explain to his kids the implications of the storyline, that they were wrong, that he was just acting, but to not replicate that sort of behavior or thinking.  It could be an actual teachable moment.

But in the Peacock world we’re living in now, his kids will never see that daddy portrayed an arrogant racist in a storyline, and one day, someone will find a clip on YouTube of daddy saying “you people” to a black man, and Hunter’s kids will come to their own conclusions and realize that daddy is racist.

He’s also into necrophilia when he was feuding with Kane, but for some reason, NBC seems to think that racist content is just a little bit more offensive, and his kids would be able to see that regardless of the platform but anyway.

The point is, I really dislike that NBC is doing what they’re doing, but frankly I’m disappointed that the WWE liquidated their fantastic network in the first place to sell to NBC.  I know coronavirus really put the hurt on the industry, due to the complete tanking of live events and all the revenue that comes with that, but this shit will pass, but what’s done is done, and WWE sold their shit out. 

I don’t know if they ever knew just how influential they were to the world we’re in now, where damn near every media company has an app now, and as much as none of them really would want to admit it, almost everyone’s eyes were on the WWE Network when they launched, and it was through them, most realized that they could survive and thrive on that model too.

But now they’re a tiny cog in a larger machine, that’s also going through their hallowed libraries and censoring all of their old shit that they think might hurt someone’s feelings.

You-Sold-Out!  You-Sold-Out!

My 600 Lb. Diet – fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After seven days, I decided to throw in the towel on the Dr. Nowzaradan 1,200 calorie diet.

It’s not so much that I couldn’t handle the diet, as much as it was that I had actually started doing some research on what was and what wasn’t healthy numbers of calories to ingest, and what it really boiled down to was that 1,200 calories a day for someone as active and capable as I am on a daily basis, just was not a good thing.

I actually began to have doubts as soon as day 2, but I compromised with myself and gave myself the rest of the week to make sure that I wasn’t just going through knee-jerk doubt, and to stick it out just one week, to see if it might get easier or if it really was something that was capable of defeating my willpower.

As I said, it’s definitely something that I know I’d be capable of doing for an month, but not without its own series of inconveniences, outside of just hunger and radical energy spikes.  What helped justify the decision to call it after a week was that I was also running out of the healthy food that I had bought to embark on this test, and the thought of having to go to Costco again, just for a whole bunch more meat was about as appealing as the idea of sprinting through a forest naked.  Apathy and laziness trumped Dr. Now in this regard.

Speaking of apathy and laziness, 1,200 calories, in spite of being way below normal for just about anyone, much less an active and capable person, works for rapidly reducing weight for people who inherently live sedentary lifestyles and are already morbidly obese, but for all others, it’s just simply not enough calories to operate without there being some parts of the day in which your body feels sluggish from having no energy to burn, and occasional hangriness, even though we know it’s a thing.

The real kicker though for me was when I looked up general calorie calculators, on how many calories someone like me should be consuming in a day (photo above), and seeing how if I wanted to lose weight at a normal pace, two times of 1,200 is what I’d be allotted to have each day, a little bit less than that, but still significantly more than 1,200, if I wanted to “lose quickly.”

And anyone who’s ever taken any sort of interest in nutrition knows that when your body goes into a deficit, the first place that it goes into is typically muscle, and seeing as how I’ve already shriveled and likely lost a bunch of mass from the last year of pandemic and no-gym, losing even more was the last thing in the world I wanted to happen.

I could have adjusted the diet, and stayed low-carb/high-protein and just consumed 1,800 calories a day, but then it wouldn’t have been the Dr. Nowzaradan 1,200 diet; and that was the point I was trying to make, being able to do.  So after the seventh day, I went to bed knowing that the following morning would be back to normal for me, where I could have cereal, I could have creamer in my coffee, and the world of food options was once again my oyster to where I could eat whatever I wanted. 

Final Number after 7 Days:

Initial weight: 189.4 lbs
Final weight: 185.8 lbs (3.6 lbs lost)
8,310 calories consumed
951.5 grams of protein
$67.56 worth of food for 21 meals and 18 snacks

My 600 Lb. Diet – Day 7

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today marks one full week of eating as if I were a featured patient on My 600 Lb. Life, wanting to get weight-loss surgery from Dr. Nowzaradan [Bariatric Surgeon].

Honestly, it hasn’t been so much difficult adhering to a 1,200 calorie diet, so much as it just sucks having these weird energy spikes from being hungry to eating and feeling normal for a little bit before your stamina bar depletes down and then it’s kind of a slog until the times when more food enters your system.  And in spite of my claims to be able to eat the same things over and over again on end, I guess it should be modified to be more along the lines of being able to eat the same trash over and over again on end, because there’s a difference between eating Willy’s for 240 days out of a year versus if I had to eat the same canned chicken and spinach salad every day for lunch for the same amount of time.

However, in some ironic sense, today’s menu was kind of altered, on account of the fact that I’m running out of the first week’s supply of food.  The package of Kirkland turkey and the Kirkland-branded canned chicken have been depleted after six days, and basically my only source of protein left are the one flank of salmon I have left, and a whole shitload of chicken breakfast sausages – so I’ve been eating a shitload of chicken breakfast sausages today.  Which is actually fine, because those are among the things I liked the most during this week.

Also, I picked up a bottle of hot sauce, because the stuff has zero calories and adds a ton of flavor to just about anything.  Much like the tagline for Frank’s goes, you really can put that shit on anything.

Regardless, today has been somewhat of a challenge, mostly unrelated to food however.  The guinea pig we had to take to the emergency vet last night, somehow required being there for 5.5 hrs in the end, which doesn’t change my perception that they prioritized every dog and cat that was brought in over my little pig, regardless of how much sooner I came in, and I didn’t get to bed until around 3 am, knowing that I only had three hours to sleep before it was time to start my child’s day.

But as is the norm in my life, I endure, I solder and I keep on moving along, regardless of the myriad of stress, frustration and general disdain I might feel.  Always forward.

Breakfast – Same as Day 3

Snack

  • 1 link Amylu chicken sausage (43 cal, 4g pro)
  • 1/2 slice Martin’s whole grain bread (55 cal, 2.5g pro)
  • 1/4 cup Daisy low-fat cottage cheese (45 cal, 6.5g pro)

143 calories, 13 grams of protein. Total cost: 70¢

Lunch (pictured above)

  • 5 links of Amylu chicken sausage (215 cal, 20g pro)
  • 2 cups of spinach (20 cal, 1g pro)
  • 1 slice cheddar cheese (80 cal, 5g pro)

415 calories, 26 grams of protein. Total cost: $1.99

Snack (same as earlier)

  • 1 link Amylu chicken sausage (43 cal, 4g pro)
  • 1/2 slice Martin’s whole grain bread (55 cal, 2.5g pro)
  • 1/4 cup Daisy low-fat cottage cheese (45 cal, 6.5g pro)

143 calories, 13 grams of protein. Total cost: 70¢

Dinner – Same as Day 1

Exercise

  • 50 sit-ups (50)
  • 120 push-ups (25, 25, 40, 30)

Total
1,186 calories, 105.5 grams of protein.
Total cost: $7.96

Moar AEW observations

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As my schoolwork has begun loosening up a little bit, I began trying to play catchup on all of the wrestling that I’d missed throughout the last month.  Naturally, this would include TNAEWCW, and I got many a great chuckle out of the unimpressive fireworks display they constituted as an exploding ring at their last pay-per-view event that also makes me wonder how their PPV buyrates are in a day where so many people are now used to basically getting PPVs for free through the WWE Network.

Anyway that said, I blew through four episodes of Dynamite just because I wanted to see how a couple of things that I’d heard happened, happened, and as much as I clown on AEW for being TNAEWCW, I still like some of the things that they’re doing, and always do hope that things will eventually get better . . . someday.

A couple of things really stood out when watching a whole bunch of TNAEWCW at one time, and I will disclaim that I fast forward through a whole bunch of the matches themselves, because for a smark like me, the matches themselves don’t always matter so much as I like to see how storylines progress, guys cutting promos, and general flow of segments.

First: AEW really does operate like two separate promotions under the same umbrella.  You have one chunk of the roster all in this weird sub-promotion within AEW that revolves around the TNT Championship, and then you have another chunk of the roster that’s entirely focused around Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, the Elite, and any and all remnants of any sort of Bullet Club/New Japan talents, even if they are Impact guys like Carl Anderson and Luke Gallows, and whomever they’re feuding with at the time, which appears to be Jon Moxley, Christian and for some reason, Eddie Kingston. 

There practically no crossover between the two sub-promotions, and the show might as well swap out ropes and mats between segments, they’re so diametrically different from each other.  The nepotism that AEW fought in year one is clearly no longer being held back, and now that the inmates run the asylum, they’re letting all their fantasy ideas come to fruition, even if it means lots of actual AEW talents are getting their TV time usurped by guys from other promotions.

Second: Rey Fenix and Britt Baker are the MVPs of AEW, hands down.  I’ve been high on both of these talents pretty early on, because it was pretty prevalent that the two of them, regardless of their actual win-loss records or active storylines, are the top male and female talents on the roster, in terms of consistency, workrate and screen impact.

Continue reading “Moar AEW observations” →

My 600 Lb. Diet – Day 5

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first started doing this, between days 2 and 3, I was often feeling hot, or just plain uncomfortable.  I couldn’t help but wonder if I was literally feeling the burn of calories that my body was doing, as there was no gargantuan excess of calories being consumed like my general living was like before Dr. Nowzaradan.  Granted, the season is in the midst of changing over right now, and temperatures have been swinging pretty hard, but still, I was wondering if the hot sensation I was feeling was like the start of ketosis or something.

I’ve had several friends do keto over the years, and I can’t say that it’s something that I’m particularly interested in trying myself.  However, given the fact that I’ve been minimal on carbs, and having cut sugar outright, I do feel kind of close to a keto diet, minus the fact that I’ve been pounding a large amount of spinach and broccoli throughout the week, since they’re so negligible in calories but high in nutrition.

Either way, five days in, and I have to say that the hardest parts of the day are in the morning, when I’m up at 6:30, and typically have to hold out until around 7:30 so that my daughter and I can eat our respective breakfasts together, and I’ve noticed a slog at around the 4:30-6:30 area, where I feel my energy level getting low regardless of how long I hold my afternoon snack off until.  It’s during these times in which I feel a little sluggish, and my heart tends to beat faster than I think it should when doing things like going up the stairs, or it could be the fact that my toddler is getting heavier or that I’m unfortunately getting weaker, because my already-diminishing muscles are probably eating themselves.

But it’s not that difficult.  The worst meal of the day is lunch, where I eat an entire can of chicken, where I simply get bored of eating just how much of it is packed into a can.  I’ve been leaning heavily on spices and mustard to help get me through them, and I’d never thought mustard could taste so good in my life until it was breaking up the monotony of plain chicken on spinach.

Breakfast – same as day 3
Snack – same as day 1
Lunch – same as day 1
Snack – same as day 1
Dinner – same as day 3

Exercise

  • 100 sit-ups (50, 50)
  • 110 push-ups (20, 30, 30, 30)
  • 2.98 miles (30:16, 399 calories burned)

Supplemental food on account of having run today

  • 1 slice Martin’s whole grain bread + 1/4 cup cottage cheese (155 cal, 12g pro, 48¢)
  • 1 slice Publix honey wheat bread + 1/4 cup cottage cheese (115 cal, 9.5g pro, 27¢)

Total
Meals/Snacks: 1,313 calories, 139.5 grams of protein. Cost: $9.92
Supplemental food: 270 calories, 21.5 grams of protein. Cost: 75¢
Running calories owed: -399 calories
Total sum of day: 1,184 calories, 161 grams of protein.
Cost: $10.67

My 600 Lb. Diet – Day 4

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, I must sound like a real mess if just four days in, I’m already talking about the things that I miss already, as if I’ve gone to like the Vietnam War and am missing my wife and kid here.  But of all the things that I miss consuming after four straight days where I’m cumulatively still under 10,000 calories consumed, I would have to say that it would be sweet things.  The flavor of sweetness, in general.

Although finding Dr. Nowzaradan’s official diet isn’t really possible, there’s plenty of claims and speculative diet plans out there to realize that among them all, there’s one consistent claim throughout them: no sweets.  No sugar, most fruits aren’t allowed because they have natural sugar, and the general idea is that sweet things trigger things in the brain that create cravings for unhealthy sweets, which gateways into ballooning up to 600 lbs.

The funny thing is that I don’t particularly feel that I have much of a sweet tooth, but far be it for me to not enjoy something sweet, multiple times a day prior to starting this stupid exercise.  Be it the creamer for my coffee, the occasional Oreo(s), girl scout cookies, of just plain fruit like bananas, strawberries or peaches; apparently, I consumed more sweet-flavored things than I might have realized until I was in a position to where I couldn’t.

Like a true glutton, I’ve already given thought to what I’d like to eat once I give up this farce of a challenge, and stuff like Willy’s burrito or Five Guys burger definitely are up there.  But I’ll be damned if I won’t be craving some cookies or like a smoothie or just something with a sweet flavor, in addition to it.

However, day 4 didn’t really go that difficult.  I definitely feel it when my body begins to get really low on gas, but honestly once I eat my sparing meals, I’m finding that I’m feeling somewhat full from them, even if they do seem to burn quickly, seeing as it’s fairly clean food.  But the spacing between lunch-to-snack-to-dinner seemed somewhat organic, and I wasn’t ready to run a train on something outside of the meal plan.

The only challenges really were when I was preparing smoothies for my daughter, and then dinner for my wife.  The temptation to take a sip of a smoothie, or take just a single piece of chicken out of the oven was there, but my willpower is still stronger.  The more I keep myself occupied, the less I tend to think about it.

Breakfast – Same as Day 3
Snack – Same as Day 1
Lunch – Same as Day 1
Snack – Same as Day 1
Dinner – Same as Day 1

Total
1,195 calories, 124.5 grams of protein.
Total cost: $9.29

Exercise

  • 80 sit-ups (40, 40)
  • 120 push-ups (20, 20, 50, 30)

My 600 Lb. Diet – Day 3

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife has been making a point to not eat around me right now.  As if I’m some weak-willpower’d schlub who will cave into temptation when I see a Chick Fil-A bag, or a sniff out some Dunkin Donuts.  Once, she ate in the car in the garage, and another time, she beelined in the door and into her general office area to eat, as not to eat in front of me.  Firstly, I’m fine if people want to eat around me, I’m the one trying out the stupid diet in the first place.  Second, she pregnant: girl needs to eat.

Either way, three days in, and this day was actually a little easier than the day prior.  Granted, I had a lot of things on my plate today, and like most unpleasantries, distraction is a good way to overcome, and because work is always a feast or famine kind of thing when it comes to things being on fire, it was easy to not think about being hungry for chunks of time, and then remembering that I have to eat a snack, lest my body goes into even more hunger.

Slight modifications were made today, due to switching bread, and to compensate for running by putting in more calories to eat, which I’ll deduct from the end goal of the day of being as close to 1,200 calories.

Breakfast

  • 1 Slice Martin’s whole grain bread (110 cal, 5g pro)
  • 1/4 cup Daisy low-fat cottage cheese (45 cal, 6.5g pro)
  • 4 links of Amylu chicken sausage (172 cal, 16g pro)

327 calories, 27.5 grams of protein. Total cost: $1.16

Snack

  • 4 oz. Kirkland brand oven roasted turkey (140 cal, 30g protein)
  • 1 slice swiss cheese (80 cal, 5g pro)

220 calories, 35 grams of protein. Total cost: $1.93

Lunch: Same as Day 1

Snack: Same as Day 1

Dinner

  • Two 3 oz. salmon filets, steamed (236 cal, 30g pro)
  • 2 cups of broccoli, steamed (60 cal, 6g pro)
  • 1 slice cheddar cheese (80 cal, 5g pro)

376 calories, 41 grams of protein. Total cost $4.07

Initial Total
1,383 calories, 174.5 grams of protein.  Total cost: $10.76

Exercise

  • 100 push-ups (70, 30)
  • 30 sit-ups
  • 3.00 miles run (30:54)

According to my Garmin tracker, I burned 414 calories during my run, which I have to admit that I did some run-walking on account of precaution in the event I was feeling loopy, because I had basically no carbs in my system, and I’m operating at a very low amount of calories.  But since these exist outside of the 1,200 calorie formula, these are calories that I should be expected to make up as best as I can.

Supplemental Food

  • 1 Slice Martin’s whole grain bread (110 cal, 5g pro)
  • 1/4 cup Daisy low-fat cottage cheese (45 cal, 6.5g pro)

155 calories, 11.5 grams of protein.  Total cost: $0.55

True Total
1,538 calories minus 414 calories burned from jogging
1,124 calories, 186 grams of protein.
Total cost: $11.31