ByronCrawford.com

Mother of the Year: Tammy Skinner

The Year in Review 2006
Long time readers of this site will know that I've been an advocate for state-funded abortions for the unfit for some time now. If a poor woman knows good and well she doesn't need any kids, she should have just as much opportunity as a rich woman to have said kids done away with.

However, it's a little known fact that if you can't afford to have your twat professionally vacuumed out, it's legal to give yourself what's come to be known as a DIY abortion. I've done stories on a few of these over the past few years, but Tammy Skinner's might be my favorite one yet.

The thing is, a DIY abortion has to be truly do-it-yourself to be considered legal. In Texas, a kid named Gerardo Flores was sentenced to life in prison for jumping up and down on his girlfriend's stomach to (purposely) cause her to miscarry.

Presumably, if his girlfriend was gully enough to cause herself to miscarry, he'd be off somewhere kicking it instead of in prison awaiting his next visit from "the pumper."

Most likely, whatever jig knocked up Tammy Skinner had long since skipped town by the time she realized she didn't need anymore kids. So what did she do? She drove herself to some car dealer's parking lot and shot herself in the stomach.

The prosecutor in the case tried to have her sent up on murder charges, not unlike our good friend Gerardo Flores; but, as it turns out, the state of Virginia doesn't have any particular law against DIY abortions. As they used to say in Creve Coeur, bonus!

The Chili Cheese Thickburger

Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood
I used to work for Hardees back in the days when you could get foot-long hot dogs, fried chicken, roast beef sandwiches and probably a buncha other shit I've long since forgotten. Some of that shit was gone by the time I left (which was still back in the 1990s), and most of the rest of it was gone as well once they switched to this Thickburger menu.

One thing that I've noticed though in the past year or so is that Hardees keeps piling more and more weird shit onto these damn Thickburgers. This year I had my share of Six Dollar Burgers and Monster Thickburgers, but I avoided messing around with any Jalapeno Thickburgers or (God forbid) Philly Cheesesteak Thickburgers.

Presumably, the novelty of eating one sandwich with over a thousand calories is beginning to wear off and so Hardees is introducing all of this bizarre shit to boost sales. If so, that's obviously a bad sign. What's so wrong with just a plain Six Dollar Burger? In fact, that's what I was planning to pick up when I stopped by Hardees last night.

When I pulled in the lot, I saw a sign for some shit called the Chili Cheese Thickburger and thought to myself, "Wow, that's gotta be awful." But then the broad running the drive-thru asked me if I wanted one and I was like, "Fuck it, I'll take one." They're putting chili and cheese on the fries too, so I got that as well.

How was it? Surprisingly awesome, if you're into that sort of thing. As you can see in the picture, the Chili Cheese Thickburger comes with not only just chili and cheese, but also mustard, onion, and the kind of big-ass pickles your mom might buy. The pickles I'm not completely sold on, but the mustard seemed surprisingly appropriate.

About a year ago, I wrote a restaurant review for Applebees that you might want to check out. I meant to write more about food in 2006, but I never really got around to it. Maybe 2007 will be my year.

RIP mad old people

You d-bags will have to forgive me for taking three days off this week, even if one of those days was Christmas. The thing is, I would've been right back at it the day after Christmas, but I was tired as shit from working like a Hebrew slave at the BGM this holiday season. I needed a break.

Of course it's just my luck that all types of shit has happened in the past three days. Since when has so much news ever taken place on Christmas and the two days immediately following? I suppose it's too late to do separate posts on any of these, but I'd remiss if I didn't at least mention them.

JAMES BROWN DIES AT 73

In retrospect, it seems obvious that James Brown was gonna die at some point and probably sooner than later. Who would've guessed though that he'd decide to check out on Christmas Day at the ripe old age of 73? Being the hardest smoking working man in show business obviously took its toll.

GERALD FORD DIES AT 93

The Gerald Ford presidency only lasted about two years and was long since over by the time I was born. In fact, the only thing I remember about Gerald Ford are the Chevy Chase skits from the first season of Saturday Night Live where he's always falling down.

The fact that so many of the obits on him are focusing on his prowess on the football field probably tells you something. His Wikipedia entry is a pretty interesting read though.

NAS SELLS 300,000 CDS

Honestly, this one kinda caught me by surprise. 300,000 copies sold is no huge accomplishment by anything other than 2006 standards, but it's still kinda impressive given this album's lead single was that will.i.am-produced "Thief's Theme" retread.

My guess: Sales of Hip-Hop Is Dead fall way the fuck off after the first week to the point where people wonder whether or not Def Jam purchased a buncha copies of the album for itself, not unlike they did with the Jay album.

The Real World: Denver - Episode 7: Episode Summary

This week's episode focuses on Brooke, who's been spending some time out bonding with Davis. I guess since Tyrie, Alex and Stephen have formed the Frat, he's been left with no other choice than to hang out with the girls.

Lately, the two groups have been going out to separate clubs, perhaps to avoid the kind of incident that took place last week when it looked like Tyrie, who's yet to really "go in" as they say, might have to go harbody on that drunk slut Jenn.

After what must have been a particularly dedicated night of substance abuse, Colie wakes up with what sounds like bacterial meningitis, but is probably just a bad (half an hour late to work, tops) hangover.

She thinks it might be strep though, and so she checks into a hospital. Come to find out, it's actually mono, which she may have gotten from drinking from the same bottle as someone, but my guess is that it was sexually transmitted.

Which would of course suck for everyone else living in the house. Who would want to run the risk of catching mono just to be on the Real World? I'm actually reminded of the early episodes of the Real World San Francisco when people worried about catching AIDS (as if it was, um, mono) from Pedro.

Brooke, who might be a bit of a hypochondriac, decides to take off walking around dowtown Denver (decidedly softbatch as far as ghettos are concerned) looking for a place to get her nails done. She doesn't find it, but she does get whistled at by a couple of long tail street entrepreneurs.

So she heads back home, nails still fucked up, and runs into Colie and Tyrie, who must be trying to score points with Colie while she's sick. She mentions her bad experience in the ghetto, which might have set Tyrie off had she not beat him to the point with her own little mini bitch-fit.

Her little phone call with her mom is easily some of the funniest shit I've seen on the Real World in a minute, right up there with the Davis and Tyrie run-in. I'd describe it, but I doubt I could really do it justice. You kinda have to see it.

Afterwards, her and Jenn go out to have pizza and comiserate. Jenn suggests she shouldn't worry as much about what other people think, which hardly seems to be her main issue. Then her and Tyrie have a little talk about what he needs to do to make her feel more welcome in the house.

NEXT WEEK: The roomies get two new jeeps, plus a job climbing mountains or some such.

Video: The Killers - A Great Big Sled

Merry Christmas, bitches.

Sandwich of the Year: BK Stackers

The Year in Review 2006
You would've been wrong to think that the fast food arms race was over when Hardee's introduced the Monster Thickburger in 2004. In 2005, Burger King struck back hard with the Enormous Omelet Sandwich, which comes with not one, but two different kinds of breakfast meat, but who wakes up early enough to eat breakfast at Burger King anyway?

Hence 2006 saw the introduction of a new line of sandwiches at Burger King called the BK Stackers. Ingredients: layer upon layer of meat and cheese, topped with bacon and some sort of special sauce. Nullus. The biggest one you can get comes with four pieces of meat, four pieces of cheese, eight strips of bacon, and more calories than two Big Macs.

Though, in an age when sandwich fixins have been known to kill, the BK Stacker eschews vegetables altogether. The BK Stackers press release sayeth:

"The BK Stacker is simple and built with the very ingredients our restaurant guests love best—meat, cheese and bacon. We're satisfying the serious meat lovers by leaving off the produce and letting them decide exactly how much meat and cheese they can handle."

So, in a sense, the BK Stacker is actually one of the healthiest fast food items around.

Of course I had to try one, and I did this summer. I'd read somewhere that the meat patties used on the BK Stacker weren't actually the quarter-pound patties used on the Whopper, but the smaller ones used on the Jr. Whopper. I wouldn't know because of course I'd never bother with a Jr. Whopper.

Having tried one, I'd say this is probably true. The Quad Stacker is a huge sandwich, but it's not one full pound of beef. If I had to guess, I'd say it's three-fourths of a pound. Still, it's a bit bigger than the Monster Thickburger and probably bigger than the triple quarter pound sandwich at Wendy's.

And how does it taste? Good like a mofo! I'm still a fan of sandwiches with lettuce and pickles and what have you, but there's something to be said for a sandwich with so much meat on it you couldn't even fit anything else. There's something uniquely satisfying about the idea of that, let alone the actual consumption.

God bless America.

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After the jump is a Dallas Penn-style video of some young champion ordering, and eating, an Octo Stacker. Your going to want to check this out.

Work Wear for Less Winter

My little brother's latest TV commercial.

Baby of the Year: Lil' Chinaman

The Year in Review 2006
More so than ever, babies in the US are a buncha pussies - throwing tantrums in the BGM, being driven around in minivans to so-called play dates with other babies, dying from eating undercooked hamburgers, and what have you.

Babies in China? Not so much.

The hilarious thing about these pictures to me is not so much the fact that a baby is smoking, but that he appears to taking a smoke break from his job, selling bottle rockets or whatever.

Check the pictures after the jump.

Man of the Year: Michael Noer

The Year in Review 2006
If the fight for a man's rights has a Ghandi-like figure (other than myself, natch), it's Forbes.com business writer Michael Noer. This summer, he had the Internets going nuts with an article he wrote warning men against marrying career women.

As it turns out, you're much better off marrying the kind of woman who can operate a dishwasher than the kind of woman who can operate a fax machine. Not only are men happier in relationships where they're the primary breadwinner, but so are the women in these relationships.

Women with jobs, meanwhile? Downright miserable.

While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it.

Which of course makes sense. A family where the woman is the primary breadwinner is just plain not natural. Hence the rampant disfucntion in the black community. It's too bad, then, that it's getting harder and harder for a man to earn a decent living.

Other Michael Noer gulliness

From his story on the economics of prostitution:

But the implication remains that wives and whores are--if not exactly like Coke and Pepsi--something akin to champagne and beer. The same sort of thing.

And what did Michael Noer do before he was writing about these hoes for the Forbes website?

In 1993, he became a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, and spent 15 months traveling in Europe and the Middle East studying the history of Santa Claus.

The history of Santa Claus! This guy is a genius!

The Real World: Denver - Episode 6: Episode Summary

Jenn: "I like Tyrie, but he reminds me so much of my ex-boyfriend."

Which I took to mean that Jenn's old bf may have put the shoe on her on occasion, so she's a bit on edge living with a big, crazy black mofo. At any rate, the two of them are going to bump heads before this episode is over.

The three guys in the house have formed their own little clique, which they're calling the Frat. They aren't getting along very well with the girls in the house, which I guess plays into whatever happens later on in the episode.

One of (I think) Alex's friends calls and tells him about some shit called the Party Bus, which essentially involves what cracka-ass crackas here in the Midwest call "40 tippin'," except it's not as dangerous and hence fun.

Basically, it's a chartered senior citizen van that takes them around to clubs where they get drunk and grind up against shit. After what looks like the first stop, Jenn gets a bit too lit and ends up starting some shit with Tyrie.

My take on the issue: Tyrie, who's still pretty backed up, scoped Jenn rubbing those boobs of hers up against anyone and everyone whose name isn't Tyrie and went into Incredible Hulk mode. Also, she was mocking his name, calling him Tyrese and shit.

Tyrie, as is his wont, erupts all of a sudden, which causes Jenn to erupt right back at him. It looks for a minute like she might attack him, which may have lead to Tyrie getting all OJ on that ass, but fortunately Stephen steps between the two of them.

So Jenn just got off the bus and walked home or whatever. Alex tried to talk her out of it, but no way was he about to ruin her big scene. When they get back to the house, she's in the kitchen angrily eating trail mix or some such. Watch out!

The next day, like clockwork, Jenn is on the phone with her sister talking about how she needs to work on her drinking. I mean, it's almost like she saw the incident with Tyrie and Davis and tried to do the exact same shit, just to get her own episode.

Later, Jenn tells Brooke she goes out every night because all her friends are in relationships and she's single. (Clearly, she's been doing some reflecting.) So I guess this means her new thing will be not so much to stop drinking, but to find a bf.

What this seems to mean: more dancing on tables when she goes out. Admittedly, there's worse ways (lots of them) to attract a guy. But you have to think there's better ways to work on a drinking problem - assuming there is one in the first place.

NEXT WEEK: Brooke takes a rather traumatic trip to the ghetto.