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The photos on the left of the banner are how anyone who has known me in the last…12 years has seen me. The two photos on the right are how I look after barely a month of DDP Yoga, and not stuffing my fat, cow-like mouth with shit as often I used too. Being from a film background I’m fully aware of creative camera angles and all that, but I deliberately did not suck in my gut, nor did I try and ms-represent the results.

Before I go any further I want to re-re-re-iterate that I’m not trying to sell you anything, I’m not in the affiliate marketing program, and generally speaking I think 99 percent of anything labeled a ‘miracle’ is 100% bullshit. 

My friend is so far the only die-hard convert. I’ve done a workout with
my sister and her boyfriend, but due to the low cielings in my house
it’s a little tricky to find the room to spread out and do the workout
properly. Thus I’ve been tackling it mostly at work during my ‘break’
where I turn the computer room in my own personal DDP Dojo.

Thus I am still singing the praises of DDP Yoga to anyone who will listen. I’ve suggested it to coworkers, friends, relatives, and often I get a tepid response or a “well I need the space” kind of thing.

Caveats
 
I’m still on the “Energy” portion of the workout, which is a 21 minute
athletic coup d’état on your body. By the halfway point you’re stunned
by how much you’re sweating and how much you’ve sworn at DDP Yoga as you
drive to get your leg just a little higher in the air, or finally, for
real, attempt and succeed at your first real man push up…ever. 

It also seems the “Energy” portion of the workout focuses on balance quite a lot – and I’m bad at that. getting me in a true runners lunge where I’m only on the heel of my back foot is an incredible disaster every time I try. A lot of the upper body stuff like push ups or holding yourself a few inches off the ground via your upper body is so hard it’s embarrassing. Also toss in the fact that anything that requires me to bend or stretch my foot via my ankle is a pain as I have absolutely zero flexibility there, but I’m working on it.

Regardless of the pitfalls of a given workout, it does get a little easier every time as long as I stick with it. If I skip two days then come back it’s a little harder. A day on / day off cycle seems to work the best, as you get the full day of “WOW I FEEL AWESOME” results.

But here’s the strange thing – I’m not quite sold on myself yet. I feel wonderful, I stand up straighter, I’m eating mostly better, I make eye contact with hot women and don’t feel like Ducky in from “Pretty in Pink”, and the reaction has been pretty incredible. In fact I’m grabbing a hold of the shirt I’m wearing right now and the amount of fabric I can pull away from my body is insane.

But in my head I still have a chip on my shoulder, like all the people saying nice things to me are just doing it to be nice, and all the good things I’m feeling / noticing / experiencing are also all in my head because that’s how I’m supposed to feel. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt this isn’t true, but from my eyes looking outward, I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Some kind of bad news or dark cloud or “Oh well yeah Yoga may be good but did you know it’s actually bad for penis length” or some other kind of crap that tends to happen when stumbling upon something that appears to be too good to be true.

Things like “my clothes are always baggy, my pants are always loose, so maybe I’m just noticing things that aren’t there because I want to notice them” run through my head – as if I’m looking for excuses to NOT believe the very obvious results everyone is seeing. I’ll cheat on the proverbial diet, get a bag of chips, and find myself instantly depressed until I realize I can just make an extra 20 minutes in my day tomorrow and the next day and get back up on the horse.

The Future Soon

When they say 90 percent of the game is half mental, they mean it. For all intents and purposes I am a far healthier person now than I was a month ago, and the results were so damn quick and apparent that my mind hasn’t caught up yet. After 20 years of being fully aware of my fat-load-ness and four weeks or working to change it, and seeing how much better I feel and look and it simply doesn’t quite compute.

And I guess the way to make it compute is to keep fuckin’ that chicken, as they say. More veggies, less fast food, more yoga, more confidence, pushing myself to reach higher and stretch longer,and spreading the word because I simply cannot get over it.

All my life I’ve really, really, really, really, really hated telling people when I was on a diet, because it meant that when and if I failed on that diet they’d likely ask that demoralizing “I thought you were on a diet?” question that shatters confidence like nobodies business.

But this isn’t a diet. I even have a hard time calling it a workout because it comes so naturally and the benefits are so immediate I’m half wondering if they slipped crack cocaine into the heart monitor. As time goes on I imagine the INSANE results will start to die down and it will be replaced by marginal gains over time, which is fine. The point is that of all the things I’ve tried, this is the one thing that’s taken in a way I never expected. I’ve also deliberately avoided weighing myself since I started – I was hovering at 301 pounds without shoes or pants, and I’ll have a new number for you this time next month. 

There’s also the diet element that I’m actually enjoying quite a lot. Carrots, Steamed broccoli, mixed veggies, a little hot sauce, and Almond milk have become my go-to non-special occasion snacks. At first you may find them a little meh, but after a bit – and I’m not just saying this – you’ll find yourself looking forward to eating vegatables as a snack. And again, I’m not perfect. I still get Ice Coffee (with sugar) on my way to work, but go with skim milk. If I absolutely NEED that fried chippy goodness, I’ll get Pop Chips, where you can down an entire bag and only be out 300-400 calories depending on the falvor.

Some of this stuff is more expensive than others, sure, but you’d be surprised how much longer a bag of baby carrots with a little A1 on them goes compared to a 99 cent bag of Sour Cream & Onion Chips or a bag of M&Ms.   

I cannot stress ENOUGH to people who look like me (Kids in school have asked you more than once, to do the truffle shuffle), and have felt like me (namely hopeless), to give this a try and to KEEP trying it. It’s 20 minutes a day. That’s it. It’s one less sojurn into the world of porno, one less cigarette break, one less episode of “Scrubs” or “Trophy Wife” and I SWEAR TO GOD by the end of your second workout you’ll be hooked enough to keep at it.

But for now, try some fucking yoga:

I just caught the one and only Diamond Dallas Page on Shark Tank this past week and….he kinda made a dork of himself, saying “BANG” and doing the diamond cutter symbol roughly 7 dozen times in about 2 minutes.

I shook my head, this is why we can’t have nice things, IWC.Though it worked, my moms bought DDP Yoga that night.

Thus:

What is the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever seen a pro wrestler do on a non-wrestling show? What about the best?

I’m sure we’ve all read about “The Weakest Link” and a couple of other examples, but I think my favorite non-wrestling related appearance was either Vader on Boy Meets World, or when The Rock hosted SNL and Big Show, Foley, and I think Triple H(?) tagged along for the ride. That stop smoking sketch was funny.

As a kid I *really* loved the Mad TV / Bret Hart angle they ran and promptly forgot about. 

What say you, Otters?

My arch nemesis / next door neighbor is calling the house during a Patriots game while I’m on an astral plane with friends. “Ugh I just hate being bothered” says Mom, oblivious to my personal polyphonic spree. Mom picks up the phone and invites her over. I chime in with a little rhetorical rhetoric.

“Then why would you invite the most bothersome person we *know* over?”

I am in rare form.

My neighbor’s a boozer, a mess, and an excuse maker, and constantly looking for validation from subservient people who would rather placate her, than challenge anything she says or does – when they do she sours, says your mean, and changes the subject. Picture Fran Dreschers voice combined with a life of cigarettes, divorce, and disappointment, and you’ll have a mind’s eye picture.

Now she was coming over, again, to watch a game she didn’t care about, again, to distract the entire family from the most important part of the game, again, while drunk, again, and would very likely seek advice from me, again, that she would completely brush off when I told her, again, the truth.

What’s the most bizarre day of your *life*? Stressful, luckiest, strangest, craziest, it’s all fair game. What’s been your biggest blow up due in part to a stressful / bizarre day? (Read on to hear about mine – be warned it’s long (like my Johnson).)

What
she didn’t know, and I haven’t told *you* yet, is that  I woke up at
9am that day, got lost in Boston for an hour after google’s GPS confused
the Boston Globe with the stupid Omni theater dome on the Museum of
Science, had a job interview, may have accidentally parked in Tony Mazz’s
spot at The Boston Globe when I found it, was suckered into working from
home on an off day, then because no one *told* anyone I was working
from home, had to keep like three fellow employees from going home on
time to assist with networking stuff.  I was so stressed out that by the time the game rolled around I simply had no shits in my tummy left to give, and by the end of halftime my tummy was filled with sunshine.

But first, some background on my neighbor: One time she spent 45 minutes drunkenly quizzing me about all the various things her high-school aged flunkee of a son could do in the media.

“He likes sports! Like, sports!” she said.

I listed about half a dozen things her son could do with an interest in sports, from retail to volunteering at the local cable station to cover college basketball games, to saying he could help coach stuff for the YMCA or youth leagues.

“No, no, not like that – like, if you name a player, he can tell you what team they were on, like, where they went to school, what position they play, right away”.

“Maybe he’ll grow up to be a wikipedia page, then?” 

“What’s a wikipedia?” Came the response before she goes on to ask me about how ‘online dating’ works because she ‘needs a man’. When I started to explain, she became bored with the complexities of writing about oneself – asked if I’d do it for her, and then changed the subject to how she intends to sue the guy who sold a car to her ‘as is’ because it didn’t work, and yelled at her son for stealing cigarettes from her.  You should never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. This woman’s shoes are filled with enough dried bullshit to start bon fires for every pioneer on the Oregon trail.
 
She stumbled over, brought pretty good mini pumpkin pies then proceeded to force everyone to eat one. “You’ll LOVE it, come on! Eat them! Before they get cold!” 

She proceeded to ask me about a stupid freaking router she has that literally three people in my family have told her how to use. I refuse to do tech support for anyone I know personally because if something doesn’t work at any point in the future, it’s obviously going to be on me to fix it. 

“So my sister has a router,” This was not new information.

“The one you said you had two weeks ago?”

“Yeah,”

“Did that work out?”

“I don’t have it yet,”

“So you don’t remember anything I told you?”

(Note: explaining tech support, that thing I do for a living, during my free time, on drugs, is not fun)

“Can’t you just come over tomorrow and do it?”

“I have to work from 11am to Midnight,”

“Well I can’t do it, my kids won’t,”

I briefly explain. 

“So, there’s this thing called google…”

“Yeah but I don’t know how to google stuff, come on, I’m old,”

“I’m telling you how. You go to google, which is a website on the internet…”

“Yeah but I’m computer illiterate…”

“THEN GET LITERATE AND STOP ASKING ME TO HELP YOU! It’s 2013! Computers aren’t HARD anymore,” I bellow in a high-voiced faux outage that cracked crystal in China. I can’t remember what I exactly said, but for about a minute and a half I rambled about how I may not know the most about about cars but if I have a problem I look into it. If I need to make something, I learn how to make it.

“Hey, whatever happened to that girlfriend you had, that you brought over once? How’d that turn out?”

I don’t know *what* she was thinking asking me that. When I posted about Great White Buffalos, I opted not to tell the story of one girl I had known simply because it was so convoluted, and messy, and awkward, that I couldn’t possibly put it into words. But, safe to say, my neighbor had a hand in confirming my suspicion it would never happen.

“Oh, you mean the girl who had a boyfriend, that stayed here in Boston with me, and then during the course of the Superbowl you proceeded to ask over and over and over again why she wasn’t dating me WHILE she was fighting with her BOYFRIEND over the phone? Yeah, we don’t talk much anymore after you made her cry and feel like a terrible person,”

My neighbor slapped my arm.

“THAT’S MEAN”

Mom chirps in “What, you and <girl’s name> don’t chat anymore?”

Pzzzzzzt.

Text message. A girl I’d been talking to online is in the area and taking me up on an invite. An invite that was, apparently, news to me.But there it was, sent about an hour ago with my address and everything. I texted back, asking how long she was going to be.

Im in ur driveway. Come outside. 

Well, shit. At this point any tangible sense of time and space and reality vanished. I now had to answer questions of why me and my ‘best friend’ didn’t really talk anymore – a scabbed over wound I barely think about, explain that there was a different girl I had never met, and didn’t really intend to invite over in the driveway, and The Patriots were about to mount a 4th quarter comeback drive.

 “Hey guys I gotta go outside and meet this girl I’m just meeting,”

“Why don’t we know about her?!” said my nemesis.

“Who is she?” said Mom.

“Well she’s…”

“How come we never heard of her?!” came the neighbor.

“What’s she like?” came Mom.

“How long have you known her?” came Dad.

It
was an insane series of questions that I had absolutely zero chance of
responding too, so I simply left. I go outside and meet this girl I had only seen in pictures. These situations are always awkward, awkwarder still when you didn’t intend for them to happen, and are on drugs. She was cute. She wore a turquoise scarf, and a green shirt and coat.

I said she reminded me of the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz. Smoooooove.

I invite her inside and following a clusterfuck of an introduction where every single person in the house talked over me while I tried to introduce this totally flabberghasted girl to my world.

She is then, literally, verbally, assaulted with tsnuami questions and comments and remarks from everyone in the house 

here’s an artist’s interpretation:

hihowareyou?doyouwantachair?howlonghaveyouguysknowneachother?whereareyoufrom?doyouwantachair?ohyouhaveakidthatscooltheresomethingspecialaboutamotherandhersonright?
doyouwantachair?ohshesnothinglikethatothergirlyoubroughtover.doyouwantachair?doyouwantadrink?sowhatifyouredrivingjustonewontkillyoudoyoulikethepatriots?nowellifyouwannadatepaulyouhavetolovethepatriots.wereapatriotshousewelovethepatriots.  youshouldkeepcomingoverwelikeyouithinkyoutwomakeacutecouple.soyouonlinedatehowdoidothatineedaman.

Finally after all that, it was quiet, and I was finally able to talk to her.

“So…you like to read?”
“I do!” She said.

and there they went again

OHilovetoread.paulsagreatreaderhewritesaboutstuffthatidontreallyunderstandbutitsgood.doyoulovehistory?ilovehistory.welostareyouapatsfan?ireallylovedthelastgirlpaulbroughtoverfromchicago.doyouwantachair?

“I SWEAR, NO ONE STANDING IN THIS ROOM WANTS A CHAIR, <Drunk Neighbor’s Name>!”

Silence. For a fleeting moment I did a cost/benefit analysis of a murder suicide pact.

But instead, I invited the cute girl outside for a chat. She was actually really cool. friendly, smart, interested in education and childhood development, lived all over the world, had a big family, and was freaked out, but not upset.

I liked her. Eventually my two friends who were there (they were a couple), came out, and never in my life have I been so happy to have friends laugh at me. It was a most warm laugh. The kind of laugh you give to someone after they fell in a lake while trying to retrieve a football, or get brutually rejected by a hot girl.

They were laughing at me, but I was with them. We all chatted for a few, eventually my neighbor stumbled out onto the back porch and we all agreed to disperse. She either puked or spilled her drink as I walked the cute girl to her car, and my friends packed up their stuff. There was chaos I didn’t see and only heard.

Walking the girl back to her car, coming down from my 0 miles traveled journey, and just casually apologizing and making light of the situation, She mentioned it was *not* her worst first meeting with an interested fellow, ever. I said I was offended and she laughed a genuine laugh for the first time that night. It wasn’t nervous or trying to be nice – she just found that shit funny. I kissed her goodnight thanks in part to a general lack of shits to give, she kissed back (which upon sober reflection of our text messages she likely assumed was to be a hook up), and waved goodbye.

There’s a sense of serenity that comes with the tail end of these sorts of nights. I took to my work computer, made some follow up calls to people all over the world, including India, Canada, and California, and found a peace in performing the jobly duties I typically hated. The entire day seemed like a disaster and being able to do something so mundane was welcome.

Getting lost on my way to a job interview, fighting with networking equipment, the Pats losing a game, inviting over a girl and forgetting she was coming, and a drunk neighbor I can’t stand stressed me out so much where I was so beyond caring about anything, that everything was wonderful, I had that Jimmy Stewart smirk of “Oh gosh, well, whatever’.

Then I checked my e-mail at exactly 12:18am. The house was empty. The neighbor had left, my parents were sleeping, and I was alone, literally 18 minutes into a brand new day an 9 hours before I had to go into work for a 13 hour shift.

“Welcome aboard / Team Meeting” was the first e-mail in my inbox. This had been a wild day of opportunity, frustration, bad
choices, good comebacks, embarrassing moments, good friends, terrible
drunks, and a pretty girl I may very much like, and will hopefully see
again roughly…4 hours after this post, but here was the highlight.

I had completely forgotten about a 5pm call I took. I got the job.

I’m now the managing editor of an actual website on the actual internet that makes actual money. Is it enough to quit the job I have now? The one I’m loyal too, but not passionate about? No. But it’s money, it’s creative, it’s cool as shit, and I can’t wait to work my fingers to the bone, just like I was two years and two months ago when I volunteered to work at Ebert Presents and was hired on full time about a month later.

I’d never had a day like this in my life. If this is how they turns out, I suppose a few more wouldn’t hurt either. 
 

Name a wrestling match, television show, movie, food, song, or band that you fully expected to hate, but surprised you with its quality, entertainment value, taste, catchiness, or talent. 

Hola Otters (for the record Otters is a bad phonetic spelling of Blog O’ Doomers). Anyway, sorry for the last posting this lovely afternoon but I actually was at the doc’s getting some fancy info about my brain-parts, after concerns and questions about my ability to work properly finally came to a head. I got some answers, and a Monkey the size of Yokozuna has been lifted off my shoulders.

On that subject, here’s today’s question:

What’s something you’ve done in life, that, despite tepid reaction from friends and family, you followed through with and are proud of? 






Mine are obviously gaming and writing and wrestling, with maybe a dash of recent Baseball fandom. I can elaborate in the comments, but I actually need to go watch a “Cutco” demo my mom set up with my sister’s ex-boyfriend. Why? Because I’m not allowed a Friday to myself, that’s why.
————–
Blog Otter Award: OfficerFarva for probably reading one-too-many Tucker Max stories growing up, and making the most of it by pulling a reverse Clooney, by way of going to a fancy casino and doing everything exactly the opposite of how George Clooney would for the delight of wrestling fans on the internet. Thank you sir.

It’s like a Solid Snake / Liquid snake kind of thing.

1. Poker Night of Champions updates: 4 sign ups plus myself. So we have a four person game. Feel free to signup at [email protected] to sign up. I’ll send a round-up to all the e-mails by noon est on Saturday.

Howdy Blog Oders (Blog Otters), I know most of us are probably watching American Football today, but in case you’re bored during halftime, or a Browns fan, I figured I’d post the QOTD and spark a little discussion. Feel free to talk NFL here, too!

Yesterday’s “Best Comeback” thread eventually turned into a heated discussion about whether or not Robert Downey Jr. was sort of a punchline, then morphed into the fact we’re kind of celebrities over at another internet forum that hates us all, and it got me thinking about something:

What are your completely irrational pet peeves?

In much the same way many Blog Oders don’t like tainting the mighty name of Robert Downey Jr., what little things piss you off to no end, to the point that you’ll defend them, or rail against them to the death, regardless of objectivity, rationality, or sanity?

I have a few:

They’re, Their, There – Self explanatory. Not that I don’t make this mistake myself all the time, but when other people do it I go a little crazy.

That’s just like, your opinion, man – Be as passionate about something as you want, and think everyone is wrong, but when something is fundamentally accepted as wonderful, or profound, or great or terrible, realize you are in the minority and be prepared to explain *why* or be accepting of the fact the problem is with you, and not the other people.

For example I cannot stand the movie “The Amazing Spider-Man” I’m fully aware that in actuality that flick is a pretty accurate depiction of how Spidey is in the comics, namely miserable, but I just personally disliked the dour tone for a super-hero that I always thought of at least a little optimistic, with the movie ultimately culminating in Spidey getting almost everyone he cared for killed. But I am fully aware I’m kind of alone in this assessment.

The inaccurate portrayal of folks playing video games on my television. I think we’ve all seen this one before, where some characters on a TV show or commercial are playing a video game using only the shoulder buttons, or moving the controller around like an idiot. The worst offender I’ve seen in awhile was the movie “You Again” where the kid in the movie’s Grandma buys him “Fall Out 5”, or something like that, for his PSP. This baffled me to no end, simply because they spent the time to figure out that “Fall Out” was a game, but didn’t bother telling the director, props guy, or producers that a “Fall Out” game would never be on a PSP.

On the flip side, “Roseanne” of all things nailed the experience of adults playing with a video game console for the first time, with the adults thinking it’s stupid, then finding a way to get enthralled in the action anyway.

Talking to me while I’m watching a movie, then getting upset when I pause it. It’s okay, I only want to hear SOME of the dialog, and only pay a little attention to the movie. No big thing. This goes for PPVs, too.

If Pet Peeve were an actual pet, it’d be this dude.

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Blog Otter Award:  CultStatus for posting over 10,000 times on this here blog, way to go, ya big nerd.  His award can be found here.

Homework assignment: Go watch “Batman” on Netflix, the 1966 version, and tell me it is not the most bizarre, charming, campy, creative, silly, fun, flat out enjoyable flick you’ve seen in awhile.

Working late tonight, plus some extracurricular wackiness in the neighborhood means I'm not going to get a chance to review the HISTORIC RAW 1000 until tomorrow night sometime, so don't wait up constantly refreshing the website.  Unless, you know, that's the kind of thing you want to do.  Although I've had a bunch of e-mails already giving me a rough idea of what I'm in for.