ByronCrawford.com

Internet Commenter Wkly makes its triumphant return

All jokes aside, the Chinese fap the same way as normal people, right?

(via)

New XXL to include blogs list?

Thoughts on the cover of the Dec/Jan issue of XXL:

1) If these sites are ranked, I wonder what number mine will be. Higher than 29th (my spot on the Vibe list)? Higher than RapRadar? Nah, right?

2) Look at that list of non-Fiddy features: Gucci Mane, OJ da Juiceman, Drake, Nicki Minaj, Soulja Boy, B.O.B. All that's missing is Waka Flocka.

3) Of all of the advertised features, I'm most interested in which two video hoes won Eye Candy of the Year. My guess/hope: Rosa Acosta and Shakur.

4) A few more rappers might need to die, for XXL to have fodder for their patented tribute features.

5) That can't be a Non Phixion reference, can it?

50 Cent Graces the Cover of XXL’s Dec/Jan Year-End Double Issue [XXL]

Oh shit, it was Carl!

Just received a followup email from the guy who emailed me yesterday saying Drake's video ho Shakur gave him genital warts, He said she was dating someone from XXL named Charles. I don't know anyone there named Charles (not that I know hardly anyone who works there), but I thought it might be this guy Carl I used to work with.

And I quote:

Yes you are right his name is Carl not Charles the person who told me he was the guy just text me and said it was Carl. I don't know the guy personally I just remember seeing his name in Shakur's text messages and it started with a C and he worked for XXL magazine.

I should have known something was up when they gave a video ho her own guest blog.

You'll recall that, earlier this year, I laid out my plan to score with one of the girls from XXL's Eye Candy section, in one of the very few columns I wrote for the dead tree version of the magazine. Then, a while later, I read where some guy had been caught tricking women into having sex with him by claiming he worked for XXL.

Carl has since left XXL for BET. Hmm...

Previously: If you will it, it is no dream

The 10 most beautiful women in the world, according to Maxim magazine

I wouldn't kick any of these hoo-ers out of my bed for crackers, but I'm not particularly crazy about any of them. Numbers 1, 2 and 6 are my favorite of the bunch.

1 Olivia Wilde
2 Megan Fox
3 Bar Rafaeli
4 Malin Akerman
5 Mila Kunis
6 Eliza Dushku
7 Adriana Lima
8 Rihanna
9 Jordana Brewster
10 Jennifer Love Hewitt

Jessica Biel just barely failed to crack the top 10, and Chan Marshall aka Cat Power made the top 20. The rest of the list is a seemingly random collection of women I really do like, and women who obviously don't have any business being on such a list.

2009 Hot 100 [Maxim]

And after the jump is Olivia Wilde on MTV talking about be named the hottest woman alive.

Sadly, this isn't a real magazine

Tits for Men > Internet Commenter Wkly?

Raymond Leon Roker is just mad his magazine went out of business

Upset that there's no longer a business case for URB magazine, URB publisher Raymond Leon Roker took to the Huffington Post today to take shots at yours truly. (He would have done so on the URB site, but then who would have read it?)

And I quote:

While many have quickly lamented URB's changes or reminisced about our long legacy, there is also an unfortunate feeding frenzy on even the hint of print's presumed, imminent demise. News of defunct magazines and newspapers seems to come as often as celebrity deaths this year. And admittedly, in the publishing game, a hiatus is as convincing as a Jay-Z retirement promise. Gawker simply ran the headline: "URB Suspends Print Edition," while at least one "shock blogger" seemed to be gleeful. Another magazine biting the proverbial dust was the translation, no matter how we tried to spin it.

Aww dang...

Now is usually the time when I would point out that Raymond Leon Roker just went from being one of the most important people in print hip-hop journalism (I know) to being my inferior colleague, just like my old boss Elliott Wilson, but I'm not even gonna go there.

Sometimes it's important to be the bigger man.

Life After Print: URB Magazine 2.0 [Huffington Post]

RIP URB magazine

I called this back when they reduced their staff down to like two, but URB publisher Roxy Roker or whatever his name is tried to front.

If you will it, it is no dream

In the last column I wrote for the print version of XXL, before the Internet Soldiers put my career on hold, I joked about how I would trick women into having sex with me by telling them I could get them into XXL's Eye Candy section. And by "joked about," I mean "laid out my plans for."

So, I checked xxlmag.com just now, to see if Jay-Z has any new cologne I need to know about, and I saw where they had a news item about how the XXL brand has been a victim of fraud. Apparently, someone has been using XXL's name to promote events XXL isn't really associated with, including casting calls for Eye Candy.

Obviously question: Did some genius perv get laid behind this? You know they at least got to take pictures of women suffering from tank ass syndrome in their underwear, if that. I'm so jealous.

XXL Brand Victim of Fraud [XXL]

Did Bin Laden recommend Confessions of an Economic Hit Man?

So, Bin Laden's got a new mixtape out, in which he reminds us of the real reason we got fucked the fuck up on 9/11.

And I quote:

The reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally Israel, occupying our land in Palestine. (via)

I wonder what that's supposed to mean...

Also, in a move I think he may have borrowed from Hugo Chavez, Bin Laden runs down a list of books to check out the next time you're in a Borders. I already had one of them - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.

The only thing is, we can't say for certain that he recommended the Perkins book, since he fucked up the title on the tape.

To wit:

3. The third book referred to on the tape is called “The Apology of a Hired Killer,” according to the SITE translation. The book is said to have been written by “a former CIA agent who lived in two cultures, whose conscience was awakened in his third decade and decided to say the truth despite threats.” The voice on the tape says that this author is “the best to clarify to you the causes of the eleventh,” apparently meaning the attacks of September 11, 2001.

While there seems to be no book of that title and description, at least one analyst has suggested that Mr. bin Laden may have been reading “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” by John Perkins.

There might not be an exact translation for term hit man in Arab, where they cut your head off just for doing half the shit I do when I wake in the morning, to start the day out right.

I've mentioned Confessions of an Economic Hit Man here on a number of occasions. It's a great book, except for the fact that it's probably mostly bullshit. It's like John Grisham for the blame America first crowd. The State Department actually issued an official rebuttal, in which they pointed out that most of John Perkins' other books are about taking "white people" drugs, and shapeshifters, like in True Blood and/or the work of David Icke.

Bin Laden's Reading List for Americans [The Lede]

And after the jump is a video of Alex Jones, who thinks the new Bin Laden tape is bullshit. Somewhere in the archives here you might be able to find video of John Perkins on Alex Jones. Nullus.

Literary Spotlight: The Denzel Principle

I got an email the other day about jimbrah izrael's new book, the Denzel Principle. I thought it wasn't coming out until the end of next year, but Amazon says it's gonna be out in February. It's available now for pre-order. Bonus!

If it's anything like the posts he did on his blog four or five years ago, detailing his struggles with his babies' mothers, it could be the best book evar. I'd provide links to a few of them, but they've since been removed from the Internets. Now all we've got is the blog he does for the Root, the site edited by Skip Gates, the Harvard Professor arrested for going home while black. Which is fine - but to read it, you'd wonder why they're letting him write a book, and why I'm offering a tentative endorsement of it. It's just not very in-depth.

The other stuff from his blog I enjoyed were his adventures in hip-hop journalism. You might remember the one where he described how tight Danyel Smith's shirts were back in the '90s (when she was still in her 30s), which led to Elliott Wilson taking a shot at him in one of his XXL editorials, in between coming up with lies about how people got on the cover. I wonder if there's gonna be any of that in this book. At the very least, there should be a bit about the woman he forced to quit the Root. That seems like it would be in keeping with the theme.

The Denzel Principle: Why Black Women Can't Find Good Black Men [Amazon]

Previously: Literary Spotlight: Copy, Paste & Bang