Tag: comparison

White people can’t admit that kimchi is just good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Inquirer: US government includes kimchi to America’s list of gut health-friendly foods

Seeing as how I’m the only person in my household that actually likes and eats kimchi, sometimes it’s a struggle to eat all the kimchi in the amounts that they’re sold in.  For most of my life, kimchi was a dish served solely with Korean foods, rices, stews, bbq or anything that would constitute as a ‘Korean meal.’

But one day, I had this idea of just adding some of this aging kimchi to a sandwich.  I didn’t have any mustard, I was out of pepperjack cheese, and my house is generally pretty sparse when it comes to condiments, and turkey, I saw this great meme about how it’s the meat that is the equivalent of a human being who doesn’t drink enough water even though they know they should, and I had this idea of adding kimchi to my sandwich to help elevate a mundane turkey sandwich.

I felt like I had just invented fire, based on the sheer life that it had injected into my entrée.  And then I had one of those moments where I had to stop what I was doing and process the door I had just unlocked and opened up, realizing that I could add kimchi to a whole new world of foods out there to try and enhance them.

Kimchi in sandwiches.  Kimchi in curries.  Kimchi in very specific tacos.  Kimchi on burgers, hot dogs.  Kimchi as a side to steak or chops or fried chicken.  Kimchi no longer needed to be restricted to accompanying solely Korean food, it was a revelation that I had way too late in my life.

The point is, kimchi is a wonderful food, and it’s cringeworthingly bittersweet that the United States government is recognizing it on a federal level.  And it’s clear that it’s a very white people tactic of trying to push kimchi to the American people, by instead of just letting people come to their own conclusions about the food, they wrap it in a cornucopia of science in declaring it a gut health food, so that people might eat it out of health conscientious instead of branching out their tastebuds into food other than chicken tenders or bougie doughnuts.

All the scientific jargon seems legit to me, but aside from it all, kimchi is just a food that tastes great.  And the thing is, like most of the Korean language, the term kimchi is so broad and subjective, and encapsulates a lot varieties other than the napa cabbage version that whitey is probably thinking is the only form of kimchi that exists.

Whatever though, as critical as I may be by the tactic, I always do like when Korean things get recognized on a more global scale.  Except if through its exposure, it causes all of the greedy merchants of the world to see justification to raise their prices and make it less economical for me to get my motherland’s staple.

Xaivian Lee’s parents must be so disappointed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: Xaivian Lee’s late three-pointer secure’s Florida’s upset against #10 Vanderbilt

In other news, I learned of Xaivian Lee’s existence and upon a cursory fact check, yes he is Korean.  Which means that there is a Korean hooper out there outside of Korea, that is actively playing for a North American D-I program.

Color me surprised and fascinated.

Granted, according to his wiki, boy is from Toronto, and is about as white-washed as I am, especially based on the fact that his name is “Xaivian,” and based on his general physical appearance and the fact that he cleared 6’0, I’d really be curious to what his 23 and Me looks like, but for all intents and purposes, he’s of enough Korean descent for this post to manifest.

My knee-jerk reaction to seeing that he had transferred out of Princeton to go to UF was that his parents must have been apoplectic at the notion of him leaving an Ivy to go to an SEC school, but I saw that he was at Princeton for four years, which leads to the assumption that he had to have graduated, which is the absolute bare minimum of acceptance for Korean parents.  I’d guess that they let him chase his dream of moar hooping contingent of graduation from an Ivy League school although they probably would have preferred if he went to Harvard or Yale instead of Princeton.

Initially, I was ready to make all the bad jokes in the world about own disappointed his parents must’ve been that he went from Princeton to Florida.  But the more I read and learn about his general bio, the more my thoughts and opinions alter, since I’m kind of writing this off the cuff and learning while I write as opposed to doing my research in advance and coming up with a general basis before writing out.

Seeing as how ol’ Xaivian finished his time at Princeton, and his numbers scream out, nowhere close to good enough for the NBA much less should he even want to go considering the absolute racist gate he would be inevitable to slam into, he’s a perfect case for the college player to bilk as much eligibility and NIL money as humanly possible, and a move to UF was probably a great idea. 

And therein lies some of the effects of the NIL pendulum swung so hard to the opposite end of the spectrum, where fringe and no-chance-at-pro caliber players are clinging to dear life at college eligibility and are looking like a bunch of Van Wilders staying at school at 24+ years of age.  But for every Asian athlete that literally has no shot at North American pros, there are probably like 3-4 non-Asians who might be, but know they can still bilk more from NIL versus being a practice squad or development prospect at the pro level, and these guys can eat dicks and gtfo out of the NCAA.

I saw some shit recently about how there were like over 3,000 players currently in the transfer portal currently; that’s almost like 60-70 entire teams’ worth of players.  This is what’s making college sports so crazy right now, is that the entire collegiate level is jam packed full of all these kids bouncing around all over the place trying to sniff out as much NIL money as they can.  And among them are all these 23+ year old graduates enrolling in patsy graduate programs in order to keep playing college sports against other Van Wilders or literal teenagers.

But I’m straying off topic here, the point of this post was to acknowledge the existence of Xaivian Lee, an actual Korean hooper playing for a noteworthy NCAA program, and being good enough to be hitting game winning threes and getting a little bit of spotlight from North American sport media.  He may have already graduated from Princeton and is doing a little bit of Van Wilder-ing because he knows he has no shot at the NBA, but there’s no doubt in my mind that his parents are probably still disappointed in him, even if he is pulling in a million bucks in NIL.  They probably think he could’ve already been making four times that had he traded up to Harvard or Yale and become a doctor or lawyer instead.

A microcosm of what’s wrong with the airline industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting at the gate, awaiting my flight.  I’m going to DCA, so I can go help my dad out with some stuff that I really shouldn’t have to help out with except for the fact that my dad isn’t a very capable individual and has increasingly just been chalking everything up to aging and doing his best to live out The Korean Story™.

I don’t often disclose my personal expenses, but in this case, this round trip to and from Washington DC is running me $570.  Way back, when AirTran still existed, I could get this exact RT for $159 if I played my cards right.  Full fare, and not when I had the ability to fly standby on a moment’s notice.  Obviously, inflation is a very real and unfortunate thing, and it’s been nearly 20 years since I used to be able to get those reasonable and cost-efficient fares, but the fact that it’s gone up 350% seems outlandish and reeks of white people greed.

The gate I’m sitting in is relatively deserted.  Flying on a Wednesday night is great in that regard.  The aircraft will more than likely have upwards of 140 seats all in all, but if I had to guess, maybe barely 50% of the aircraft will be full.  If I were still doing the standby thing, I’d be doing a dance at the gate because I would have a 100% chance of getting on this flight.

That said, there’s absolutely little reason why this fare should have been remotely close to $570.  There used to be a time when flight fares would fluctuate somewhat on account of the demand of a particular flight, and a flight like this should probably have been cheaper than what I was forced to pay just so I could help out a family member, because clearly there was not a heavy demand for the flight.  I’d hate to imagine what it might have cost to go Friday through Sunday.

I used to be salty when this route had gone up to like $379 from all carriers, but now I’d be doing cartwheels if I could get a RT for under $400 these days.

A few weeks ago, there was an article where Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian was quoted, saying shit along the lines of blaming low-cost carriers AKA Spirit and Frontier, for the degradation of airline passenger behavior throughout the country.  My knee-jerk reaction at hearing this was, sure, yeah, a lot of unruly people do fly Spirit and Frontier, that’s not entirely wrong, my own criticism has ol’ Ed Bastian in the crosshairs, because man is clearly so out of touch with the people that he probably doesn’t seem to realize that most people are probably unruly because they’ve been given no choice in life but to pay egregious fares in order to travel, and whether they take a low-cost carrier along with all the other unruly poors, or they shell out money they probably can’t afford in order to travel, they’re going to be bitter and pissed off about it in the end all the same.

I know that I’m feeling quite salty and full of piss at having to shell out $570 to make a routine flight to a destination not even two hours of airtime away.  I just happen to have a little more restraint and keep my vitriol and venom encased in harmless text on a brog that nobody on the planet reads except for me, as opposed to feeling entitled to dress like a 2000’s-era NBA player, and act about as much of a shithead as one.

Ed doesn’t seem to grasp that if Delta would ease off the gas on their price gauging and make flying a little more accessible to the people, not only would everyone flock to Delta if they’re the first ones to cut costs, it would then force all the other carriers to follow suit in order to keep up, and if the royal everyone, is just a little bit happier about not going as broke in order to travel, the civility of airline passengers would inevitably improve.

And then Ed’s completely out-of-touch analysis of the masses would begin to improve, traveling would stop feeling like such a colossally insufferable experience, and call me crazy, everyone would probably make more money in the end, because that’s often just what happens when consumers are actually made happy sometimes.  There’s enough empirical evidence to show the sheer profitability of people not being shitheads to the masses, and hopefully the airlines will rediscover this and the skies may become a little friendlier when they come to that revelation.

WTF is NJPW doing #082

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the other things that happened at Wrestle Kingdom 20 aside from Hiroshi Tanahashi’s final match everrrr, was IWGP Global champion Yota Tsuji defeating AEW’s Konosuke Takeshita for the IWGP World Heavyweight championship, thus creating a scenario where there is a unification of titles.

The thing is, it hasn’t been that long since the current winged design IWGP World Heavyweight championship came into fruition, barely five years prior, when Kota Ibushi won a winner-take-all match and decided to unify the WHC with the IWGP Intercontinental championship, and the winged blet was created, much to the dismay of fans and industry folk alike.

Sure, New Japan Pro Wrestling has been in a bit of churn over the last few years, with their rosters having been gutted a few times, a little bit of scandal, and just questionable management at times.  And chaos tends to lead to reactionary changes, but five years seems like a really short amount of time before the championship array of a promotion needs to come into play; it’s like late 1999 WCW and current AEW kind of scrambling if they’re deciding to start unifying off titles that have barely existed, in the grand spectrum of the industry.

To make matters more complicated, Tsuji exorcised his right as a new World champion by declaring the winged IWGP WHC now defunct, and immediately brought back the universally beloved V4 of the IWGP World title, to which then opened up the question on if he would be willing to break the unification, and allow for NJPW to reinstate the also-beloved IWGP Intercontinental championship.

Tsuji said no, and we’re left in this fuzzy situation where NJPW has a number of championships with questionable lineages and little direction on what lies ahead for the company as a whole.  I’m trying to wrap my brain around their title hierarchy, and writing all this shit down might help gain some clarity.

  • IWGP World Heavyweight Championship (the ugly-ass winged blet) – Dead. Not merged with the IWGP Global championship.  Amalgamation of the old V4 and the IWGP Intercontinental championship.
  • IWGP World Heavyweight Championship (the V4) – NJPW’s current World Championship, held by Yota Tsuji. Was deactivated in 2021 by Kota Ibushi when it was merged with the IWGP Intercontinental championship.
  • IWGP Intercontinental Championship – Dead. Yota Tsuji had the opportunity to bring the much beloved 1B title back, but declined to.
  • IWGP Global Championship – Active, also held by Yota Tsuji. The spiritual successor to the IWGP United States/United Kingdom championship, the theory is that this blet will be the de facto championship that is up for grabs whenever non-NJPW talent wants to challenge NJPW.  The company has been trying to really sell this as a true WHC equivalent, but much like AEW’s struggles with their litany of secondary blets, it’s just not catching.

And as if NJPW needed any more titles in spite of their proportionately small roster, they still have:

  • NEVER Openweight Championship
  • NJPW Television Championship
  • IWGP Tag Team Championship
  • IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship
  • IWGP Jr. Tag Team Championship
  • NEVER Six-Man Tag Openweight Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Tag Team Championship
  • IWGP Women’s Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Women’s Championship

So for those keeping count, NJPW has 18 titles in circulation, which is pretty high considering their roster is like, 25 full-timers, about as many in their dojo system, and heavy reliance on outside collaborations.

The bottom line is that it was a good thing that the Tanahashi farewell really took center stage at Wrestle Kingdom, and has all of the NJPW Universe occupied with tributes, because once all the emotion and sentiment have died down, the reality is that the company is kind of in this churning clusterfuck, and for blet buffs like myself, wondering just wtf they’re doing to do to justify all these blets and unifications and rebrands. 

They’ve clearly been taking notes from AEW on how to really devalue championships, and it sucks for a company as renown as NJPW, and all the history they have behind some of their own championships.

WTF is AEW doing #466

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know that I’m pretty critical of a lot of the things that AEW does, but I’ll be the first to admit that I kind of like the Continental Classic tournament they’ve been doing on an annual basis.  You have a lot of main event talent, intermixed with some talented guys from the mid card, and you have them wrestling in a bunch of matches that don’t really have any storyline behind them, and most importantly, have results that aren’t just the main eventers running roughshod over the mid card guys.

Speedball Mike Bailey picked up an impressive win over Kyle Fletcher, Jungle Boy Jack Perry got a win against Pac, and the most shocking outcome was when Kevin Knight picked up a clean win against Kazuchika Okada.  They really did a good job of selling that anyone could beat anyone, regardless of their standing in the company, and it led to a lot of pretty pure wrestling.

However, it wasn’t until the tournament concluded did I realize that there was an actual prize at the end of the whole thing; in previous years, AEW had a, surprise, title blet for the winner of the Continental Classic, which was the [don’t call me Intercontinental] Continental championship, which was originally won by of all people, Eddie Kingston.  He would then lose it to Okada, who would successfully defend the title by winning the 2025 Continental Classic, and continue to hold the title until it was merged in July 2025 with the International Championship in a completely nerfed version of Okada vs. Omega.

But for all intents and purposes, the Continental championship was deactivated, along with the International championship, and Okada began carting around a, surprise, new blet, christened the AEW Unified Championship, which they tried like hell to sell it as a World title equivalent, since Okada is very much a World title caliber performer, but unsurprisingly, it didn’t catch.

Getting back to the present, without any real explanation, going into the conclusion of the 2026 Continental Classic, the Unified Championship was already scrapped, and it was decided that the winner of the tournament would become the new Continental champion.  Conveniently, Okada would also advance to the finals, hoping to defend the title in the finals regardless of the fact that the title is up for grabs at any other point in the year, storylines notwithstanding.

Spoiler-alert, Jon Moxley won the tournament by defeating Kazuchika Okada, thus becoming the new Continental champion.

However, conveniently, Okada would still have a blet to cart around, because when they scrapped the Unified Championship after six historic months, they reactivated the International Championship, which was by default, Kazuchika Okada.

It should also be pointed out that when the Continental and International were merged into the Unified, it took one blet off the table, but AEW responded quickly by creating a, surprise, new blet, in the AEW National Championship, which was won by, and is currently held by Ricochet (which I’m actually okay with).

But for a promotion that has taken a lot of flack for its Oprah-like EVERYONE GETS A BLET number of titles, it’s just hilarious that they tried to pare down, couldn’t, and when they retconned one of their attempts to pare down, ultimately they end up with more blets in which they started with.  So to recap, AEW currently has:

  • AEW World Championship
  • AEW Women’s Championship
  • AEW Tag Team Championship
  • AEW Women’s Tag Team Championship
  • AEW TNT Championship
  • AEW TBS Championship
  • AEW Trios Championship
  • AEW Continental Championship
  • AEW International Championship
  • AEW National Championship

For those keeping count, that’s a total of 14 physical blets with the AEW name on them.  This doesn’t account for the revolving door of Ring of Honor, CMLL, RevPro, or any of the backyard promotions’ blets that Mercedes Moné is carting around.  Like, there have been literal shows where every single segment has had someone walking around carrying a blet.

There’s clearly no such thing as permanence in AEW.  Titles get merged, deactivated, retconned and then reactivated at a moment’s notice, without any genuine or logical explanations.  This isn’t even the first time that this has happened too, because it maybe hasn’t even been an entire calendar year since AEW merged their Trios with the ROH Six-Man titles, which resulted in at one point the Bang Bang Gang of Jay White, Austin and Colton Gunn carrying nine straps collectively, but then a few months later, Ring of Honor decided to just break off and crown new Six-Man champions without any real explanation.

Either way, the point remains, AEW still operates in head-scratching manners on the regular, and as much as I want to like them more than I do, I’m more often too busy scratching my head trying to piece together all of their weird operational decisions to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Dad Brog (#160): overstimulated is another way to say burnt [the fuck] out

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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George Carlin once did a routine where he talked about how society has a tendency to try to rename harsh things to sound less severe and more generally acceptable to society.  His primary example was how the term shell shock was renamed to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Shell shock was at some point deemed to be too shocking for sensitive people to hear, and therefore PTSD came into vernacular, and yes it probably helped at making it slightly less scary to talk about, I get this impression that PTSD itself is climbing to that stature where shell shock was, and soon we’ll probably get another, softer, replacement term to replace it but I’m straying off topic here.

Whenever I get into one of my moods where all I see is red, I’m mad at the world, I hate everything and everyone and want nothing more than to be able to stop time all around me and take a deep breath and relax in complete isolation, like that movie from 20 years ago (Cashback), the only phrase that comes into my mind is: burnt [the fuck] out.  Everything pisses me off, just about nothing is capable of bringing me back, and the only thing that comes close to helping is going to sleep and hoping it’s not still around when I wake up.

Over the last few years, I’ve been spoon-fed a whole lot of content that definitely caters to the fact that I am married with children, and I’ve noticed that in that time, a phrase I’ve seen a lot of, is overstimulated.  Most of the time it pertains to all the mommy content creators who really love to declare themselves or hypothetical stressed out other mommies as being overstimulated, but because I can relate to overstimulated mommies way more than I’d like to admit to, I get it.  However, I also recognize that most of the time, the symptoms of a mom that’s overstimulated it is, seeing red, being mad at the world, hating everything and everyone, and probably wanting nothing more than to be able to stop time all around them and take a deep breath and relax in complete isolation like that movie from 20 years ago (Cashback).

It occurred to me that what’s probably happened over the last few years is that the phrase “burnt [the fuck] out” has been used so much and so hard, and that peoples’ eyes have begun glazing over upon hearing it, is that society has basically invented a replacement term for it, in order for it to get people to listen and be curious and think about it, and that term is obviously, overstimulated.

It sounds less harsh than burnt [the fuck] out, and because there’s no optional profanity to attach to it (inherently), it’s like there’s a ceiling to how piercing it can be used with some venom behind it.  Overstimulated, is a gentler and less severe word on the auditory senses of weak people, but I think I’ve unlocked the bullshit spin behind the word, and refuse to see the phrase for something other than what it really is, a descriptor for people who are feeling burnt [the fuck] out.

But it’s good that I’ve realized the truth behind it the bullshit.  It gives my own personal vernacular a softer and less scary option to use if I feel like I’m speaking with some particularly pussy people, and surmise that telling them that I’m burnt [the fuck] out won’t scare them off entirely.

Hopefully the next time I write a dad brog, it won’t be about some overstimulated subject matter.

Not sure what OP was expecting from Ric Flair

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

People: woman who purchased personalized Cameo video message from Ric Flair for her brother’s wedding disappointed when Flair cuts scathing promo about the perils of marriage

If the circumstances were any ordinary business doing wrong to a customer, I’d say probably 70% of the time I tend to side with customers.  Fuck businesses, most of the time.

But in the context of this story, you have Cameo, in which customers are consensually agreeing to give celebrities an open mic to say whatever they want, regardless of any direction or talking points they’re given, and then you also add fucking Ric Flair into the equation, and as history and culture have shown, nobody tells Ric Flair what to do or say.

I know OP turned to the internet to try and farm sympathy and gain support for her belief that Ric Flair did her and her newlywed brother dirty by cutting a vintage Ric Flair promo, completely against the concept of marriage, contrary to her intentions.  As stated, nobody tells Ric Flair what to say; man has been unscripted for the better part of his entire, legendary wrestling career, and Cameo wasn’t going to be any different than reporting to Vince McMahon, Ted Turner or Jim Crockett.

Her first mistake was not knowing enough about Ric Flair before agreeing to a Cameo arrangement; because in addition to the fact that nobody can tell him what to say, the man is 76 years old and lives in bars these days, daytime drinking and existing in a state of constant inebriation.

Furthermore, to anyone who might want to do some cursory research about Ric Flair before dropping a grand to have him film a video for them, they’d quickly see shit like “16-time world champion” and “Hall of Famer,” but also the fact that the guy has been married like 5-6 times with as many divorces.

Man is doing shit like Cameo and getting drunk off his ass 25-8, because he clearly is over  marriage and probably owes a boatload of money to a number of ex-wives, and if there were any worse of a person to have film a Cameo for you to put marriage over, it’s Ric Flair.

The funny thing is that, and I’m too lazy and not caring enough to follow up, if I’m the brother who received this Ric Flair promo, I’d still probably think it was the greatest thing in the world, even in spite of ol’ Ric telling me I’m making the greatest mistake of my life.  And if the new missus were someone worth keeping around, she probably would too.

If anything at all, Ric Flair, deliberate or most likely not, made this whole thing one of the most memorable and legendary wedding gift stories her brother would ever have.  If Ric cut a white meat babyface promo about how he’s so lucky and marriage is beautiful and wonderful, and how gives his blessings, ain’t nobody going to remember it in a month, a year, or at their 10th or 20th anniversaries. 

But Ric cutting a scathing heel promo, that’s something everyone would remember until the end of time.  It’s what the bride and groom will talk about for years.  OP, in spite of her current disapproval and dissatisfaction with it, will remember it all the same.  Any friends, family, guests or anyone who’s ever seen it, they’ll remember it and make references to it.

In fact, it’s a scenario where all parties win in the end, because it’s also probably going to do wonders for Ric’s Cameo demand, with people with loose pockets and too much money will be more inclined to take a chance on Space Mountain and hire Ric to do some personalized messages for them.

But even if takes some time before OP realizes that she will get a W out of this whole scenario, as far as tryna farm sympathy and support because she regretted acquiring the services of Ric Flair, ain’t going to happen.  This is her turd, and until she starts to understand the resounding success of her efforts, she’s got to accept that it’s an L until she does.

Owned. WOOOOOOOO