ByronCrawford.com

I told you don't touch daddy's Xbox

I'm not gonna lie, I've had instances where I was playing a video game, and some thoughtless sack of shit walked past the TV and kicked out the cord, and the first thought that came to my mind was: Where's that sharp knife we used to have?

I suppose the fact that I've never gone looking for it could be viewed as either a) proof of just how fucking lazy I am, or b) the difference between myself and the likes of this guy Tyrone Spellman, pictured above. Perhaps both.

The other day, Tyrone Spellman was convicted of pummeling his baby daughter to death after she had the sheer balls to screw with daddy's Xbox.

No, really:

A man who played video games for hours each day has been convicted of killing his 17-month-old daughter when she pulled out his Xbox console.

[...]

Prosecutors in Philadelphia believe he pummelled Alayiah Turman, cracking her skull several times, while her pregnant mother slept in another room on September 7, 2006.

Damn.

That's so disgusting I almost can't see the humor in it.

Almost.

Checkit: Father Kills Daughter Over Xbox Console [Sky News]

The Slap is back!

Bol, years ago:

I was going to find a clip of the infamous Slap Heard 'Round the World on YouTube, but I couldn't find one. Does anyone else find that amazing? Not the fact that I wasn't able to find the shit (I'm sure it's not there), but the fact that YouTube has six gozillion videos on it and no one thought to upload arguably the greatest video clip in history.

Amazingly, as many videos as there are on YouTube, there's still no Slap Heard 'Round the World, years after the fact.

It could be the case that it was there at some point but it's since been removed, but I doubt it, since I've checked several times over the years, going all the way back to when YouTube began, i.e. ancient history. (Not that that's the kind of shit I spend my time doing.)

And I'd check the MTV website, because I know they've got that Overdrive shit now, but I doubt it's on there. If there was any classic Real World shit on there at all, something tells me I would have heard about it by now. In fact, I'm pretty sure they sold those pre-Hawaii seasons off into syndication a long time ago. I haven't even heard them mentioned on MTV in ages.

Also, there's the matter of Irene going around after the fact claiming that The Slap constituted serious abuse, and yet MTV was trying to profit off of it; and claiming that the real reason she left was because she realized how bullshit the show was, and the ridonkulous level of product placement that was going on, as revealed on one of those Jello Biafra spoken word albums from the late '90s/early '00s. I forget which one.

Fortunately, the fruits over at Gawker Media, who supposedly recently made a mint running that Tom Cruise video, have seen fit to finally dig up a copy. In particular, a copy of it was posted on Jezebel the other day - which I imagine might suggest that I have roughly the same interests as the kind of woman who reads Jezebel. But come on. I'm sure this is purely a matter of coincidence.

The clip that they dug up isn't actually from the episode itself, but rather from some sort of reunion episode, so the footage (which is what you actually want to see) is intercut with shots of Stephen and some broad (perhaps one of his beards) analyzing it. It distracts from the real action, but not to the point where it ruins what could very well have been the most entertaining thing ever aired on TV. Evar.

Checkit: Vintage Real World: Seattle's Stephen & Irene In "The Slap Heard 'Round The World" [Jezebel]

The Fall of the Abbot

Looks like Raekwon really is gonna go through with his plan to put out a Wu-Tang Clan album without the RZA.

http://www.shaolinvswutang.com/

Or is this just some BS one of you fruits put together to play with my emotions? (Nullus.)

Previously:

• Putting the RZA out to pasture
• Wu-Tang Recording Album Without RZA?
• Wu-Tang Clan touring without the RZA
  

Niggas done brought back Buhweet

http://buckwheatshot.ytmnd.com/

Last year, I figured the minstrel rap movement might have been over. While there was no shortage of shitty ringtone rap records (Soulja Boy, anyone?), at least there weren't any that specifically mentioned chicken.

I suppose I should have known better.

Just now, I came across the video for some shit called "I Gotta Dollar" by a fellow named LV (note: not the fat guy from Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise," for my mid '90s heads). And wouldn't you know, its title is a reference to the old Buckwheat routine. Its chorus actually goes, "I got a dollar, hey hey hey hey."

In its video, LV does a dance that's apparently called the Buckwheat. It looks like some shit right out of the movie Bamboozled. (ATL people, is that what's popping in the streets these days?) I'm not sure if that's the official video or what. They might want to keep it this half-assed though, in keeping with the laziness theme.

It was produced by Polow Da Don aka The King of the White Girls, the guy who brought us Rich Boy (the thinking man's Soulja Boy) and that song "London Bridge" by Fergie.

Check the video after the jump. (via)

Smart people don't read black books

That's the only conclusion I'm left to draw from a study, put together by a grad student at Caltech, that seeks to determine how "smart" books are using data about college students gleaned from Facebook.

The way it works is, he downloaded the top 10 most popular books at every college on the social networking site. Then he cross-referenced them with the average SAT score at each school and threw it all on a big chart. So essentially, what you end up with is a list of the 100 most popular books amongst college students, sorted by average SAT score.

And wouldn't you know, the far left end of the chart is made up almost entirely of books by black authors. (And also The Bible. Hmm...)

A few thoughts on the chart:

• Since I first saw this the other day, I'm pretty sure they reclassified some of the black books on the chart as erotica, so that it didn't seem like the black books were the absolute dumbest books on the chart.
• Unfortunately, it's not like they could classify all of the more... um, ghetto-oriented black books as erotica. So there's still some crime-related garbage grouped in with some of the presumably more high brow black literature.
• Then again, both True to the Game and B More Careful fall somewhat further along the intelligence spectrum than The Color Purple. Hmm...
• And even our smartest book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, manages to be somewhat dumber than the likes of Tuesdays with Morrie, The Devil Wears Prada, and He's Just Not That Into You.
• What gives? Is it because the SAT is culturally biased against black people (as it says in Boyz in the Hood), and so it just seems like black people (er, people who enjoy books by black authors) aren't very smart?
• I suppose, for what it's worth, we don't know for a fact that it's all black people reading black books. This certainly could be a matter of black kids who fall towards the opposite end of the intelligence spectrum (such as, erm, myself) not being interested in their "own" literature.
• And then it's the ol' Tyler Perry conundrum: One of us smart kids could write our own book, but it almost certainly wouldn't be popular enough to rank in the top 100 books on college campuses a la the likes of The Color Purple and True to the Game.

What do you fruits think? No one's suggesting that correlation necessarily equals causation. But you have to wonder when all of the black books are showing up at the dumb end of the chart. Would kids in inner city schools be better off if they read Ayn Rand? Also, what do you think about this study? Does it seem about right, or is it pretty deeply flawed? I wouldn't know, because I'm not a scientist. Also, I'm black. It's a wonder I manage to get out of bed each morning!

Checkit: Booksthatmakeyoudumb

And I've posted a smaller version of the chart, which is a lot more user friendly, after the jump. Check out the site though, because there's a list of the books, a list of the schools, and some further discussion of the results.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend: Album Review

Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (XL, 2008)
Vampire Weekend are a group of pasty Ivy League kids who combine traditional African rhythms with their... you know, cracka-ass cracka-ness. The buzz on them is such that I've actually heard this album compared favorably to Paul Simon's Graceland. I'm assuming that isn't the case, but I figured I'd better look into it anyway.

• Vampire Weekend @ MySpace

"I loved him like he was my father"

Scientology: Wackier than Christianity

According to Last Week's Poll
First of all, I'd just like to say that, since I created this poll, a week or so ago, I see someone else had a similar idea. Or, at the very least, was thinking along the same lines as I was thinking. Not that I'm accusing anyone of stealing my ideas or anything. I'm just saying.

If anything, it's nice to know that I'm not the only one with some sense around here. When I saw that leaked video the other day with Tom Cruise talking about himself being a Scientologist and what have you, it occurred to me: OK, so Tom Cruise is clearly batshit, but is Scientology really so much wackier than Christianity?

Hence last week's poll.

The results:

Wackier religion?

1. Scientology (236 votes)
2. Christianity (87 votes)

Damn it if this isn't yet another case of most people disagreeing with me. It makes me wonder whether I'm the one who's crazy, or if it's everyone else. Of course I'm gonna have to assume the latter.

Wacky though it may be, at least we know where Scientology came from. If Tom Cruise wants to believe in a religion created by some nutjob science fiction writer, why shouldn't he be able to? That reeks of religious intolerance to me. I thought religious people were supposed to be against religious intolerance. Or is that only intolerance against your own particular religion?

Meanwhile, we don't really have any way of knowing where Christianity came from - except what God has told the president, with whom he supposedly has a personal relationship. However, we do know that the BS story in the Bible bears a strikingly resemblance to any number of other, earlier BS stories. Which would suggest that Christianity is just a BS story ripped off from a bunch of other BS stories that people came up with back before they knew any better.

So in that sense, Christianity isn't even altogether different from Scientology. If you want to get into the actual text of either of these religions and try to compare the two that way... well, it would be difficult for me to say, since I can't claim to have read either the Bible or Dianetics, or whatever the main book of Scientology is. I will say this though: If I absolutely had to read one or the other, I'd probably go with the Scientology book. It seems like it would be the more interesting read.

Ron Paul: Why bother?

For the past couple of weeks now, Ron Paul's... shall we say, fervent supporters have been pestering me about how I should stop suggesting that he's a racist and how I should consider supporting his run for the presidency.

I wonder though: If Ron Paul is so adamant in his views, why in the world is he running as a Republican in the first place? For all I know, this could all be some intricate plot to turn me into a Republican. Or get me to cut some checks to them anyway. As if.

It's getting to that point now where a lot of people who obviously have no chance at all of winning their party's nomination, let alone being elected president, are beginning to pull out of the race.

I see yesterday, for example, Dennis Kucinich decided to end his bid. From what I understand, he was pretty much out of money, and he might have cause for concern about whether or not he can even be reelected to Congress at this point.

Damn.

I remember when he pulled out of the race back in '04, he threw his support to, I think, John Edwards, or maybe it was John Kerry. At any rate, it was one of these Democratic senators who had voted for the war and who didn't seem to stand for a whole lot, and so his supporters were left feeling like the dumbasses that they were.

This time around, I see he's not gonna bother endorsing anyone. Maybe it's because he has literally no supporters at all left at this point. He only managed to garner something like 0 or maybe 1% of the vote in all of the primaries he was in; and in Michigan, where he was one of the only Democrats who ran, he actually managed to lose to "uncommitted."

Similarly, you have to wonder how long Ron Paul is going to bother stringing the few nutjobs who are still supporting him along.

Never let it be said that your vote doesn't count

Unless you're not an important music critic like I am, in which case, who gives a fuck what you think?

So the results of this year's Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll are out. It was my first year voting. I was invited to vote last year, but I didn't. Actually, I did, but there were some tech issues. They lost my vote, then I was given a short period of time to vote again, but then I got called into work at the BGM, so I couldn't. Fags.

Here's a list of the top 10 albums of the year, according to the 577 most important music critics in the country.

1. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
2. Radiohead - In Rainbows
3. M.I.A. - Kala
4. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
5. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
6. Kanye West - Graduation
7. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
8. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
9. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
10. The National - Boxer

With the exception of the two old people albums at 8 and 9, I probably could have guessed this list in its entirety. And I could have even told you that there'd be at least one token old person album. For what it's worth, I voted for three of them myself, and there's another three of them that I probably would have voted for. (Guess which ones.)

Here's a link to my own ballot. The albums I chose are probably as much a reflection of my Paste magazine-esque listening habits these days as anything else. As it got to be time to fill out my ballot there were a lot of albums I wanted to go back and listen to, because I figured I might want to vote for them, but then I was just like, fuck it.

Sometimes keeping it real is actually less work-intensive.

Also, I didn't bother to vote for any singles, because I've pretty much given up on listening to non-talk radio and because, when I'm at home, it's not like I don't have to listen to an album in its entirety, the way a good album was meant to be heard. All of that making your own playlist shit is for little girls on MySpace. Anyway, here's a link to the winners in the singles category.

Finally, here's a link to all of the ballots, so you can see how all of your other favorite critics voted. Assuming you have any other favorites.