ByronCrawford.com

Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth: Album Review

Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth (Interscope, 2005)
It's been going on 6 years since the last Nine Inch Nails album, which nobody bought, came out, which basically makes it like 10 years since Nine Inch Nails was really a going concern. Wanna know something else that's pretty wild to think about? Trent Reznor is now 40 years old, which actually makes him a lot closer in age to my parents than myself. You wonder how much longer he'll continue to make this music for angry teenage girls.

Deport Eddy Zheng

So the other day I was checking out this new blog that O-Dub started up with another of his fellow Chinamen called wehateniggers.com or some such. On it, there's this story about a fellow by the name of Eddy Zheng, who's in danger of being sent back to China after having spent the last 19 years in a California prison.

The post over at WHN conveniently doesn't bother to mention what this individual was put into jail for in the first place, but the fact that he was held there for almost as long as I've been alive kinda made me wonder. The way his situation is described in the post at WHN and a few other places I read, you would think he was in there for traffic violations or some shit. After all, his people aren't exactly known for their driving skills.

Turns out this chink is a sick motherfucking sociopath. Peep this description of the crime that I found in the Sacramento Bee:

In January 1986, Zheng and two other young men robbed a San Francisco family in their home.

Zheng and his accomplices pistol-whipped the father, locked the two children in a bathroom and terrorized the mother by tying her up, stripping her and pretending to take pictures of her.

After allowing the mother to dress, they took her to the family business, where they stole jewelry, money and other items.

I mean, look at the dude's picture. It's obvious that if he were actually released, he'd just commit some nasty sex crime and get locked right back up. Why should we waste any more of tax payer's money than we already have dealing with this perv, let alone put innocent women and children at risk by letting this sicko run free?

Speaking of which, one of the main reasons his supporters are suggesting he be allowed to remain in the US (in addition to his mail order degree in heating and cooling) is that he wants to work with at risk youth. Seriously, isn't there some kind of law against people like him (read that crime description again) working with children? Would you let someboy like that work with your children?

Furthermore, allowing this piece of human waste to remain in our country would only send out a message to the millions of other illegal and semi-legal immigrants that it's OK to come over here and fuck up. If Eddy Zheng is really intent on helping wayward Asian American youth, he should just bite the bullet and take his punk ass back to China where he belongs.

Scenes from the Big Gay Mart

It's been a while since I last posted about the Big Gay Mart, and I want to make sure I get all of this shit on the record before I retire from there and begin blogging full time. Eventually, I'd like to compile all of my Big Gay Mart-related posts on one page, for posterity, but that'll have to wait until one day when I'm not having as many issues with work and The Champagne. One of the few bright sides to any shitty, customer service-oriented job is the opportunity to people watch.

While The Asshole, where I used to work (no homo) was mostly frequented by hard hat construction worker types during the day and young stoner types during the evening, working at the Big Gay Mart (again, no homo) has provided me the opportunity to witness several different types that I may never have become familiar with otherwise.

Types of assholes you see at the Big Gay Mart (no homo):

Old cracka-ass crackas with young children
I think I was always kind of aware of this phenomenon from having heard about it on Dateline NBC or some such, but it never really hits you until you see that shit up close: These cracka-ass cracka women are having babies when they're like 50. What the fuck is up with that bullshit? If there's an upside to this, and you know there had to be, it's that infant mortality rates are actually up now for the first time since 1958. Way to go, you dumb cracka bitches! Also, I'm noticing that a lot of the ones who were (un) fortunate enough to survive are looking kinda "slow" in the face. Between this and the huge, ridonkulous influx of Mexicans into our country, this really is the end of the white race.

Indian people
I already kinda went there before on Indian folk at the Big Gay Mart, but I think it's still worth noting that these assholes really are second to poor cracka-ass crackas as far as the, um, general ethnic make-up of the Big Gay Mart clientele. Which is odd, because you know there can't be that many of them in the area; it just goes to show the depths of their sickness. They're also most likely to buy their clothes from the Big Gay Mart and also, despite their supposed intelligence, most likely to return said clothes (which we then can't resell because they smell like an Indian person's house) because they "aren't very high quality."

Fat white ladies with half jig babies
Finally, this has to be my most favorite thing to see at the Big Gay Mart. Anybody who's ever been to the mall in areas known to be inhabited by black people and poor white people knows that there's been an epidemic of more or less decent looking (no homo) black dudes who date huge, fat white ladies. Not to hate on anybody's choices of women (as if I have too many standards myself), but that shit always made me wonder: What would drive a dude to go there like that? One thing that I never really considered that has now become hilariously obvious to me, is that black dudes have now been dropping off their little unwanted, retarded, illegitimate spawn in the trailer parks of America like they've been in the hood since time immemorial. Way to go, my fellow ninjas!

Handcuffing children

In case you haven't been following the news lately (and why would you?), there was recently an incident where the cops had to be called to a school in Florida to handcuff and arrest a 5-year-old who thought it was acceptable to swing on people and destroy other people's property and generally act a gotdamn fool. This actually happens all of the time in the STL, but I guess this case is special because somebody actually got it on tape.

Now, it's my opinion that if a 5-year-old kid starts acting up like that, it should be aborted, but then I'm a hard liner like that. On the other hand, unlike the Mengele Brothers, George W. and Benedict XVI, I'm open-minded enough to leave that decision up to the parents. Seriously, I don't buy at all this idea that just because somebody's 5 years old, they shouldn't be restrained if they're physically attacking somebody. If a 5-year-old child tried to attack me at the Big Gay Mart, I'm not saying I would kill it, but I would do something to it so that it no longer posed a threat to me.

The other day, I saw something on the news where this gang of monkeys went ape shit (no pun intended) and attacked this old cracka-ass cracka. Then, this other cracka-ass cracka showed up with a shotgun and smoked all 3 of them fools. The point here: A grown chimpanzee, even though it can't speak English, has about the same intelligence as a 4-year-old child. Also, a chimpanzee can contribute to society by acting in films and TV series such as BJ and the Bear, or evening just entertaining patrons at the zoo. If the kid in this case ever contributes anything of value to society, at all, I'll buy you a motherfucking shake of your choice: Chocolate or Vanilla.

Weezer - Make Believe: Album Review

Weezer, Make Believe (Geffen, 2005)
After 2002's Maladroit, Weezer had to take some time off because Rivers Cuomo is motherfucking crazy. I don't know if this was because he was still trying to get his undergrad degree from Harvard, which he started around the same time I started high school, or he had to get his legs fixed again or what. My guess is, he was probably just playing with himself. No homo.

Maggie Gyllenhaal = My new woman

At the Tribeca Film Festival, promoting her new movie "The Great New Wonderful," fine cracka bitch Maggie Gyllenhaal had this to say:

"I think what's good about the movie is that it deals with 9/11 in such a subtle, open way that I think it allows it to be more complicated than just, 'Oh, look at these poor New Yorkers and how hard it was for them,'" Gyllenhaal told the NY1 cable channel.

"Because I think America has done reprehensible things and is responsible in some way and so I think the delicacy with which it's dealt allows that to sort of creep in," she added.

When I hit town, two weeks from this Thursday, I'll definitely be needing somebody to point me to where all of the Hate America First white chicks hang out.

You worthless bitches

How come none of you told me that that new Weezer was out?

There I was, looking for any decent new rap albums that I could review (there aren't any) so that you fruits would quit your motherfucking bitching, when I saw it:

Weezer - Make Believe (2005)

I'm checking it out right now, and damn if it ain't that bad. Holler at your boy if any of you fucking ingrates need a copy.

Don't give these tall Israelis any of your money.

The Mong

A couple of weeks ago, I jumped on the train headed to Manhattan since I had to meet my accountant to take care of some taxes. It was one of those incredible spring days where the weather was just right and the chicks really took advantage by wearing their new low cut jeans to proudly show belly rings, tatoos, hips, ass and thongs. Anyway, the car I'm riding in is fairly crowded and I take my position leaning against one of the sliding doors (anyone familiar with the New York City subway system knows that leaning against the door is prime real estate in a crowded subway car when no seats are available). I have to mention that whenever I'm travelling around in this crazy ass city, I become what you would call a people watcher. I have a knack for noticing all sorts of people in my surroundings along with whatever they're wearing or whatever types of shit they're doing. Anyways, as I'm minding my own business, there's this white fifty-something year old man standing in front of me with his back facing me (no homo). He appears to be in pretty good shape for an older dude (no homo). So after a couple of stops, I look down and realize that dude is wearing a pair of low cut jeans just like the chicks do, then upon further inspection, and when I say no homo, I say it with all conviction, I realize that dude is wearing a man thong!!!

After a couple of deep breaths to gather myself from the horror of being confronted with this nasty ass scene, I realize that I'm trapped!!! Dude, with ipod on, is listening to some Swing Out Sister or some other tey ghey jams, he's grooving his gay groove on, and I'm praying to the train gods that this train doesn't go into a lurch, causing Elton John's man thonged gay ass to brush up all on me, causing me to shove him away, get into all types of altercation and wind up getting arrested. The funny shit is that, just like in that Austin Powers' flick where Austin meets the agent with the big ass mole on his face and no matter how hard he tries to ignore and take his mind off it, all Austin sees is MOLE, all I'm seeing is dude's MAN THONG and I'm like “who in the world would want to invent some shit like that and what the fuck do you call it?” Now, a chick's thong is, for the most part delicately thin and silky or nylon-ey looking whereas dude's Mong was thicker, more rugged and made out of some tough looking neoprene material. Trust me when I say I wish I wasn't able to share with you all the gory details, but everytime I looked up I had MONG within my eyesight. Now I hope that that's the last time in my life I ever see an effin Mong, but judging by how happy and liberated Kevin Spacey  seemed during that train ride, it looks like an new invasion is about to hit the U.S. and Mong season is headed to a city near you. No homo.

Jay-Z - Fade to Black: DVD Review

I picked this up this weekend on the outside chance that it would be worth checking out. It wasn't, really. I think where I fucked up was watching the awesome The Last Waltz and expecting any other concert film, let alone a motherfucking rap concert film, to compare. Fade to Black even has more or less a similar theme to The Last Waltz. A somewhat talented, going-on-middle-aged performer decides that they've made enough money and that it's time to hang the mic, for good. To mark the occasion, he invites a bunch of his famous friends to come out for one last motherfucker of a concert.

Like The Last Waltz, Fade to Black consists of concert footage interspersed with interviews with the performer and other various individuals. In this case, we get to watch Jay-Z recording some tracks for his upcoming supposed last album, The Black Album, the effect of which is about the equivalent of watching paint dry. I think part of the problem is that you don't actually get to see the producers creating the actual music - they just show up to the studio with the track more or less finished sans vocals, and cue the shit up so that Jay-Z can do his little Jay-Z thing over them. The fact that he can compose an entire song in his head in a half an hour isn't nearly as impressive as his little gang of sycophants thinks it is. Watching Just Blaze produce the beat to "Public Service Announcement" would have been way more interesting than watching Jay-Z come up with the actual rhymes to it.

The actual performance footage is about equally as dull. Jay sounds better on the mic than I remember the two times I saw him (the Hard Knock Life tour and opening for P. Diddy, of all people, in 1997), but he's still not an especially compelling live performer. Also, rather than doing a whole bunch of Jay-Z songs that I'd like to hear, he pretty much insists on doing only his biggest hit singles, some of which haven't aged very well at all, and collaborations with artists (Pharrell, Missy, various State Property weed carriers) that I'm not really at all interested in hearing from. The Roots' band, which backs him for most of the show, really isn't as suited for playing the type of garbage that Jay usually rhymes over.

Rent it or, better yet, bit torrent it if you're interested in seeing Foxy Brown's wardrobe malfunction or the part where Ghostface doesn't even get his own dressing room and has to borrow Slick Rick's chains, but otherwise, I don't really know how much I can recomend this.

Gorillaz - Demon Days: Album Review

Gorillaz, Demon Days (Virgin, 2005)
That first Gorillaz album was something of a runaway success, having sold more than one and a half million copies in the US alone. I'm sure that's way more than any other Damon Albarn-related project other than whatever album it was that had "Song 2" on it. Since then, Dan The Automator and Del (he was in that group too, right?) have gone on to, I don't know, unemployment, and Gorillaz is now basically Albarn and Dangermouse (dude from the Grey Album) plus a buncha random-ass guest stars.