ByronCrawford.com

Obama and Al Sharpton eating fried chicken

It looks real, but obviously it isn't. (via)

Now I know how Pimp C felt

As I mentioned before, I'm not allowed to drive until I'm cleared by a doctor. I haven't so much as left the house since Sunday. Yesterday, I ran out of coffee, and I called my little brother at work and told him to bring me some. He said he was on his way to his other job, which is near a Whole Foods, and that he'd bring me some. Nullus on drinking coffee from Whole Foods.

So he gets home, and he's got a bag with some coffee and some other shit in it. Turns out the other shit was Drank. I was surprised he found Drank at a Whole Foods, but he said he had to stop at a gas station on the way home.

In case you're not familiar with Drank, it's a sort of anti-energy drink. It's meant to simulate the effects of sizzurp, the shit that killed Pimp C. I already threw away the can, but as I recall, it contains some shit called Rose Hips, Valerian Root, and Melatonin. I'm not sure what any of that stuff reallly is, or what it's supposed to do. There's a warning on the can that you probably shouldn't drink more than two servings, i.e. one can, every 24 hours. Which I thought was impressive.

I would have tried it with alcohol, but all I had was beer, and I've been taking these Vicodin, and I don't want to fuck around and have to go back to the hospital on some ol' bullshit. Imagine trying to explain that to the people in the ER. So, that'll have to wait until some other time. Without any alcohol in it, it basically tastes like a grape soda that's been watered, but then they added some extra sugar. In other words, it tastes like shit.

But you aren't really drinking it for the taste anyway. The effect is the key, and this shit definitely did make me feel lazy and ignorant almost right away. It wasn't like being drunk. I just didn't feel like doing anything other than kicking back and checking out some tunes. It's too bad I didn't have any UGK handy. I deleted that most recent album of theirs after I reviewed. I'll have to remember to have some on hand when I try Drank with alcohol, as I think the booze will help simulate the effects of real cough syrup.

[Photographic evidence, courtesy of Twitpic]

It's so cold in the STL

St. Louis should win some kind of award.

In the last month, we've had two separate incidents involving mofos getting shot and killed over some fast food. They may have even both involved Rally's, though I can't remember for certain which restaurant was involved in the first incident, and I'm too lazy to go and look it up at this point.

This most recent incident definitely involved Rally's, though.

Who knew Rally's was that big in the hood? The only one I'm familiar with is in kind of a white trash area. It just goes to show how much more familiar I am with white trash areas than I am with the hood. Chalk it up to five years spent in college out in Chicken Switch, MO.

But even the commercials you see for Rally's on TV make it seem like the kind of place hoosiers might go on a Friday night and do laps around the parking lot in their pickup trucks. They're always advertising some shit like a key lime pie milkshake with actual bits of key lime pie in it. What kind of black person do you know who would eat some shit like that?

It's hard to tell, based on the report in the Post-Dispatch, what happened in this most recent incident.

It sounds like a young brother may have taken one of his jumpoffs to Rally's to get a double cheeseburger, and her aging layabout of an aunt decided to tag along, too, thinking she might also get a double cheeseburger. Then, when she realized she didn't, she tried to shoot the young brother, but instead ended up hitting the jumpoff. (Whew!)

Check the report in the Post-Dispatch:

[18 year-old Decora] Jenkins, her boyfriend, 20, and Erika Wherry, 28, returned to Jenkins' home after ordering food from a fast-food restaurant.

Wherry and Jenkins' boyfriend began wrestling over the food, police said. Wherry then picked up a gun and fired it toward the boyfriend but instead hit Jenkins, who was standing behind her boyfriend, police said. The boyfriend was unhurt except for minor gunpowder burns. Neighbors said Wherry is Jenkins' aunt.
[...]
[Neighbor LaJoy] Andrews, 34, said Jenkins lived with Wherry, her father and younger brother, and had just earned her high school equivalency certificate last month. Andrews said Jenkins had planned to go to beauty school. Andrews described Jenkins as a "high-spirited" and "positive" person who rarely let anything bother her.

Hmm...

Reading in between the lines, you have to think, given the fact that this woman Wherry is 28 years old and had been living with her brother and his two kids, that she's a disgusting beast of a woman, and her laying waste to her 20 year-old beauty school matriculatin' niece may have had as much to do with her being jealous of the fact that the niece had someone to take her to Rally's to get a double cheeseburger as it did with the cheeseburger itself.

Though I'm sure she really was hungry as hell. The story in the Post-Dispatch suggest that she may have subsequently eaten both of the double cheeseburgers. Damn.

Checkit: St. Louis woman dies in another fast-food dispute [STLtoday]

Back on my fast food shit

One of the good things about writing so often is that it helps you get more in tune with yourself. Which can be useful for recognizing when dangerous patterns begin to emerge.

For example, when I ran my post the other day about Burger King's new Loaded Steakhouse Burger, where I mentioned how I haven't been eating as much fast food as I used to, it helped me realize just how off of my game I've been.

In the past week, I've taken steps to rectify this issue. What follows is my take on several new fast food items I've tried recently.

Burger King's Loaded Steakhouse Burger

I go to Burger King so infrequently these days, it's a wonder I even managed to try this one before they stopped serving it. In fact, I only ended up going to Burger King the other day because both of the other fast food places on the same black had lines of cars out of the parking lot, while Burger King only had one car. And then I was like, "Oh yeah, I can try that new burger with mashed potatoes on it!"

If the Loaded Steakhouse Burger I had the other day had any "potato topping," on it at all, I could hardly tell. There did seem to be something on it besides just the cheese and the crispy onion strips and the A1 sauce, but it didn't have much of a distinct flavor one way or the other. The one thing I did really like on the Loaded Steakhouse Burger were the crispy onion strips. The hamburger patty that comes on the LSB is fucking huge (like the size of a human foot), but it tastes like crap.

Long John Silver's Buttered Lobster Bites

I know what you must be thinking. "Bol, you already read in the comments section here last week that Long John Silver's lobster bites aren't made out of actual lobster, but rather motherfucking hermit crab. How in the fuck does a man bring himself to even pay for some shit like that, let alone eat it, knowing good and well what it is?"

Let's just say I'm dedicated like that. Plus, you never really know until you try something. Nullus. Proud black man that I am, I've tried a number of things over the years that didn't seem like they'd be a good idea, but they turned out to be incredible. Most organ meats, for example = fucking fantastic. Arguably even better than regular muscle meat. Alas, the hermit crab at Long John Silver's isn't very good. It says in the wiki that it tastes more like shrimp than lobster, but the serving I had didn't taste like shit to me. It tasted more like breading than anything else, and it could be that the actual bites of hermit crab are so tiny, even though I'm sure that shit costs way less than lobster.

Hardees' Prime Rib Thickburger

First of all, RIP to Wilber Hardee, the guy who founded Hardees. According to an obit I read the other day, he was only involved with Hardees for like three years back in the 1950s. Which reminds me of an episode of A&E's Biography I once saw on the Colonel, from KFC. That guy came off like a fucking idiot. He sold the secret recipe of KFC (herbs and spices + salt peter) to the TIs who run KFC for $1 million. Then the next day, the company was worth like $400. Yeah, this guy was no Fiddy Cent.

As I mentioned in my post the other day, my little brother kept going on and on about how good Hardees' new Prime Rib Thickburger is. So I was like, "Fine, I'll try it." I don't know what he was talking about. I tried that shit the other day, and I wasn't that impressed. Not unlike the Philly Cheesesteak, the Prime Rib Thickburger is basically a burger with some roast beef on top of it. Which is not as awesome as it sounds. It's not nearly as good an idea, for example, as a burger with bacon on it. Otherwise, I'm sure McDonalds would have come up with it a long time ago. It's also on a cibatta-style bun, with horseradish and chopped onions on it, which is just... weird.

KFC's Chipotle Crispy Chicken

Finally, speaking of the Colonel, I didn't even know I was going to get this shit, but it ended up being the best new shit I've tried in a fast food restaurant since forever. As far as fast food culinary invention is concerned, I'd put it right up there with the seven-layer burrito, with the caveat that I don't know if this counts as an actual invention. While it has chipotle in its title, there's nothing about it that struck me as being particularly chipotle-ish. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just their regular recipe for crispy, but with more red pepper. It's basically like Popeye's, except you don't have to drive down to the ghetto to get it.

The one thing about it is, it's got this weird, radioactive glow. It's much more orange than it is brown. I wonder if this was to make it seem more authentically hispanic (is fried chicken in Mexico orange?) or so that the help at KFC can differentiate it from the regular crispy. Maybe both. At any rate, I wonder what they did to it to make so orange. Hopefully, it's just some kind of dye.

Ignorant beeyotch arrested at McDonald's

Back when I used to work at White Castle, every once in a while one of these assholes would come in wanting a sack of 10 White Castles with no salt on them. Or sometimes even as few as four that way.

Either way, it was a huge pain in the ass to have to do, since, in order to make a few White Castles without salt, you had to clean off an entire grill, wipe it down, reanimate some new cabbage, and wait the 10 minutes or however long it took for them to cook.

The first couple of times this happened, I went ahead and did it, because I didn't know any better. The manager was like, "You know you gotta clean that shit off, right?" So I went ahead and did it.

But after a while, I was just like, fuck it. Best case scenario, I might just not sprinkle any salt on them while I was putting them on. But it would still be the same "onions" and everything. But if I already had some made, I might just give 'em them and say they were no salt. Especially if the person was in the drive-thru.

So one day this ignorant beeyotch comes through the drive-thru wanting a few White Castles with no salt. I already had some made, so I just threw 'em in a bag and said they were no salt.

She paid for them and pulled off, so I figured I had gotten away with it. But apparently she had pulled over into a parking spot to test her Whites to make sure there was no salt on them.

Next thing you know, here she comes barging through the door, raising all types of hell, talking about how she ordered White Castles without salt, and how I purposely gave her White Castles with salt, and how she has high blood pressure, and how I could have killed her giving her a bag of White Castles with salt on them

The manager was like, "Byron, did you know this woman's White Castles were not supposed to have any salt on them?" So of course I had to play it off. I was like, "Oh, wow, I didn't see that." Which seems like a likely enough story if you work in fast food. Half the people there probably couldn't read the little screen anyway.

So then I had to go through the entire hassle of making this woman a few White Castles with no salt. Altogether, it must have been something like an hour-long ordeal.

(Because I'm sure many of you are interested: Yes, this was a black woman.)

I was reminded of it just now, when I came across the story of this ignorant old woman who got arrested at a McDonald's for refusing to pull her car forward.

This was down in Clearwater, FL. 75 year-old Jean Merola, pictured above, pulled into the drive-thru at a McDonald's down there and ordered perhaps the most asinine order in the history of fast food: a decaf coffee and an order of salt-free fries. I would have dropped it on the floor on GP.

The crew at the McDonald's told her to pull forward and wait, probably because they had no idea about how to go about making an order of salt-free fries. Because probably no one had ever ordered such a thing.

And you know a lot of these McDonald's have those machines that will drop your fries for you. It's not like at some of these other places, where you have to drop a huge brick of ice-laden fries into a fryer by yourself and hope none of that grease jumps up and bites you. I'm getting a little PTSD just thinking about it.

I'm assuming what happened was, they just said, fuck it, we can't make an order of fries with no salt, and told the lady to leave. But then the lady refused to leave: she ordered her vaseline fries and she was going to get 'em, even if it meant she would have to put McDonald's out of business.

You know how mofos get all entitled when they go into a restaurant.

So the police had to get involved. The cop showed up and told the woman to move her car. She got ignorant with him, so he put the cuffs on her and put her in the back seat of his cruiser. Then another cop showed up and drove her to the station, where she was held for 90 minutes before she was released on her own recognizance.

She claims she received an apology from the officers' supervisor, because they said she was crazy, and to this day she maintains that she was in the right. But I'm pretty he just said that shit for PR purposes. No one likes the idea of having to throw someone's grandma in jail just because she's old and senile, but I think we can all agree that this woman deserved much worse.

I would've just given her the fries, but there may have been a little fromunda cheese on them.

Checkit: Police: Grandmother Arrested At McDonald's Drive-Thru For Not Pulling Car Forward [Local 6 via The Consumerist]

Chinese people have gone too far

Not to let you in on more than you need to know about me, but every once in a while I'll go to get lunch or dinner at this Chinese buffet around the corner from the shit hole where I live.

They usually give me that thing where they stand over me while I fill up my plate - as if I'm about to steal some shit I already paid for. (Upwards of $10, if it's dinnertime!) I usually don't sweat it that much though: it just inspires me to make sure that I get my money's worth, gotdamnit.

Shit, I won't even bother going to a Chinese buffet unless I'm confident I can eat more than three plates.

This Chinese buffet down in Louisiana, however, had the sheer balls to try to charge a man double just because he ate too much.

No, really:

Ricky Labit, a disabled offshore worker, said he had been a regular for eight months at the Manchuria Restaurant in Houma, eating there as often as three times a week.

On his most recent visit, he said, a waitress gave him and his wife's cousin, 44-year-old Michael Borrelli, a bill for $46.40, roughly double the buffet price for two adults.

"She says, 'Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much,'" Labit said. (via)

So not only did she try to rob the guy, but she insulted him as well? Damn.

Not to get several different types of wrong at once, but if a Chinese broad tried to pull some shit like that on me, I'd be tempted to put my shoe on her, just on GP.

What I want to know is: What's being done to make sure something like this never happens again? Never mind the Jena 6, we need to put this place out of business!

'Hearty eater' says buffet banned him [Yahoo! News]

VIP night at Hooters

My Life's Crowning Achievement Thus Far
I spend enough money in Hooters to put a kid through college. Hence I wasn't that surprised the other day when one of the waitresses slipped me an invite to their annual anniversary party for their regulars (known as VIPs), which sort of doubles as a Halloween party, since it takes place a week or so before Halloween and all of the waitresses dress up in costumes.

On the one hand, I figured the fact that I was invited to such an event might be a sign my life is headed in the wrong direction. On the other hand, free beer and chicken wings is free beer and chicken wings. And I'm not gonna lie; I was kinda interested to see what these costumes were gonna be about, though I've always maintained that I go there for the chicken first and the titties second.

Cool shit that happened at this party, bullet point-steez:

Like I said, free beer. They gave me two tickets that were supposedly good for one large draft beer each, but then after I finished those off, they just started comping me, maybe because my waitress was looking for a five dollar tip (which I gave her) or maybe that was the plan all along. I hope in revealing this fact that I haven't gotten anyone in trouble or dis-invited myself from next year's party.

Also, free food. In addition to chicken wings, there was buffalo shrimp, chicken quesadillas, mozzarella cheese sticks, and fried pickles. Of course there was a run on the buffalo shrimp every time some was brought out, and there was way more chicken wings than anything else. They were letting people take home go boxes full of them.

Proof PNH is gully. There were hardly any guys there under the age of 40, but one of the other two guys there was a friend of mine from high school, who's in there more often than I am. The other guy lives in the Red Roof Inn directly behind Hooters and showed up in a toga made out of a bed sheet. No, really.

Cans in costumes. Several of the waitresses in the main restaurant had on costumes as well (we were off in a separate, enclosed patio area), but there were only three or four actually assigned to the party. One was dressed as the girl in Flashdance, with a headband and some leg warmers and shit. One had on an FBI uniform that she struggled to keep her boobs in. (Yay!) And this other one, I'm not sure who she was supposed to be, but she kept making it a point to lift up her skirt and show people her underwear, which, she explained, were hardly different from the short shorts she usually wears. Amen, sister.

VIP swag. A lot of guys were buying calendars which the girls would then autograph, but I could give a rat's ass about a calendar. I did get a free shirt though that says Hooters V.I.P. across the front. On the back it says You Know You're A Regular When... and then there's a list of things such as "You know which girl works which shift," and "You know what time Maryland Yards [a place around the corner] has its last call." I thought about bringing my camera, but then I figured that would just be weird. A few people did though. Next year I guess I'll have to.

Bol > The Country Breakfast Burrito

A Special Report
I just so happened to be up this morning at like 9:30. Even though I used to work at Hardee's, I wasn't sure if they'd still be selling breakfast at that point. But then I figured, what the fuck. Worst case scenario, I'll just get lunch. I like lunch food better than breakfast food anyway.

But I did want to try Hardee's new Country Breakfast Burrito, both because I genuinely wanted to see what it's like and because I figured I'd cover it here. So I was glad to see that Hardee's serves breakfast until at least like 9:50, when I got there. And come to think of it, I think they stopped serving breakfast at 10:00 when I was there. So I probably made it just in time.

On the menu, there was a big-ass picture of a Country Breakfast Burrito, and the chick working the drive thru asked me if I wanted one, so they must be pushing these things pretty hard. I ended up getting one in a combo with a small coffee and an order of hash rounds, which I enjoy as if they were a milkshake. It ran me like $4.50, which is a pretty decent amount for a fast food breakfast.

The first thing I noticed when the chick handed the bag to me was how light it was. I think I picked this skill up going to Taco Bell so much in high school and college. Sometimes you could spend $7 and hardly get much actual food, but other times you could spend the same amount and get a bag that felt like it had a brick in it. Which is odd, considering all of that shit is made out of the same three or four ingredients.

Come to find out, the Country Breakfast Burrito isn't nearly as big as you'd think it would be, having read all of the news reports about how it contains half as many calories as you should consume in any given week. Maybe I'm just spoiled from eating at Chipotle so often these days, but the Country Breakfast Burrito might not be half as big around as a burrito there, though it's roughly similar in length. Nullus.

In terms of ingredients, mine didn't have nearly as much white gravy as the one in the picture, which is probably a good thing. And I didn't bother actually opening it, but it seemed like the potatoes in mine were plain shredded potatoes rather than actual hash rounds. At any rate, the bulk of the burrito was made out of egg and cheese, with relatively tiny bits of what could have been up to three different types of pork.

As much as I enjoy a good burrito, I never have been a big fan of the breakfast burrito. I don't know if they actually serve them in Mexico or not, but rolling up eggs and sausage in a tortilla seems like the kind of shit McDonald's would do in order to appeal to the hispanic demographic. I'd much rather just get a sausage biscuit or something and then get a real burrito for lunch.

That said, I would have enjoyed Hardee's Country Breakfast Burrito that much more if it had actually been as gully as the advertisements and the media hype made it out to be. When I get one of their 2/3 lb. double thickburgers, I get that warm feeling in my chest, like when you eat a really good steak. When I was eating the Country Breakfast Burrito, it occurred to me that I could easily take down two or three of them.

Weak, Hardee's. Weak.

Sylvia's: Don't bother

It's Not Ghetto Enough
First of all, some bad news: It doesn't look like there's gonna be a rerun of last night's episode of the Real World today. So that might have to wait until next week. If you notice, these days, when you turn on MTV during the day, they're always showing America's Next Top Model. Um, why? That isn't even kinda music-related, is it? Well, I suppose NEXT and Parental Control aren't either, but still.

Also, there's this audio clip someone sent in of Bill O'Reilly claiming he went to the legendary soul food restaurant Sylvia's in New York and he was dissapointed because it wasn't ghetto enough. There wasn't even anyone shouting, "I need some more ice tea, motherfucker!" or anything like that.

And, to be honest with you, I'd be kinda disappointed, too. I haven't been there, so it's hard for me to say, but if there isn't some sort of ghetto milieu to the place, then what's there to separate it from any other chicken restaurant. Is there at least some nasty R&B music on the Muzak?

I ate at P Diddy's restaurant in New York, Justin's, once when I was up there, and there wasn't anything about it that struck me as particularly hip-hop other than the fact that there were several menu items that featured shrimp (admittedly, I had the fried shrimp myself) and the Incredible Hulk was an actual selection on the drink menu (I had it, too - it was the only time I've ever had it).

Of course Bill O'Reilly was attempting to make some sort of point about how black people being able to behave themselves in a restaurant might be a sign of the black community at large moving away from Jesse Jackson-style ambulance chaser politics. The sad thing is: he might have a point. These days, it would kinda take being the kind of person who shouts motherfucker in a restaurant to take the likes of Al and Jesse seriously, no?

O'Reilly surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurant and other New York restaurants [Media Matters]

A lamentable trend at Taco Bell

Other Than... You Know, The Smell
For most of my life, Taco Bell has been the only game in town when it comes to Mexican food here in St. Louis. Er, at least as far as fast food-type places are concerned. There's always been sitdown places like El Maguey (like the Kennedy Fried Chicken of Mexican joints here in Missouri), but why the fuck would I need to sit down to eat a burrito anyway?

Back when I was in high school, they opened up a couple of Tomatillos (I'm not sure if this is a national chain or not) and a place called Flaco's Tacos, but they all folded in a matter of a few years despite my best efforts to keep them in business.

[Back when it was announced that Flaco's Tacos might go out of business, there was a story on the news about how mad people were going in there and buying empty soda cups in order to help boost profits. I thought about doing it myself, but I was roughly as broke then as I am today. I couldn't just part with a dollar like that.]

I wasn't sweating it that much though anyway, because Taco Bell is the shit. I don't care if it's real Mexican food or not. If actual Mexicans had come up with brilliant ideas like putting sour cream and shredded cheese on a plain-ass taco (not to mention the almighty Fire sauce) maybe mad people wouldn't be risking life and limb trying to break into the US. No, that's called American Ingenuity, my friends.

But recently, i.e. in the past several months they've put in a Chipotle and some shit called Moes and a La Salsa and Qdoba. I'm not sure what the hell is going on. It's not like Creve Coeur is suddenly overrun with anything other than it's usual assortment of Asians and Jews. My guess is that at least half of them will eventually go the way of Tomatillo and Flaco's Tacos. I've mostly been hitting up Chipotle myself, so hopefully it manages to stay in business.

Unfortunately, this has meant that I've been to Taco Bell less times this year than probably any year since I was a baby. When I went the other day, I don't think I'd been there in a good month and a half. And even then, it was more a matter of I just happened to drive by and figured what the fuck.