As the primary author of the Young & Hungry blog, I release a lot of gas into the ether. Sometimes you readers find it noxious enough to disperse with your own counterattack. It can make for an engaging round of online gasbagging. Just take a look at the four examples that Editor Andrew and I cobbled together for this week's Y&H column.

You readers are frickin' vicious. Thank your stars you aren't Barton Seaver — or Y&H for that matter.

Just for the fun of it, I also rounded up 22 other blog items that generated a lot of commentary last year. You can see them after the jump.

1. Five Guys' Supporters Rush to the Defense of the Chain Burger
2. Saigon Bistro: A Best of D.C. Contender or Just a Pretender?
3. Michel Richard Plans to Move His Home Base to Tysons Corner
4. The Latest on Roberto Donna and the Resurrection of Galileo
5. Orange Juice Should Never Include Ice Cubes
6. Former Used-Car Lot in Trinidad to Get a New Ride — a Diner Car
7. Are All Beer Taxes Bad?
8. D.C.'s a Great Beer City, Chapter 1
9. My Top 5 Desert Island Beers. What Are Yours?
10. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
11. Your Last Beer on Earth: What Do the Pros Say?
12. Does D.C. Have a Signature Dish or Not?
13. Minibar Would Be the Toughest Reservation in America, if D.C. Were a Foodie Town
14. Obama's Beer Meeting: Let the Lobbying Begin!
15. Beer Geeks vs. Beer Snobs
16. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
17. Top 5 Beer Menus in Columbia Heights
18. Not So Fast: There's No Deal for a Ray's Hell Burger in Adams Morgan
19. Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Restaurants
20. Seeking Nominees for City Paper's Inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame
21. When Should a Critic Just Trash a Place?
22. When Should a Beer Critic Trash a Brew?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

All together now: It's pronounced "A-beets."

This is a random category, yes, and I'm not sure what it says other than that some putz kept this page open on his browser for hours, presumably while doing other things, like typing out TPS reports or surfing for porn.

But, hey, it's amusing to speculate who kept each page open for so long. Please join the fun.

1. The Woodmont Grill's $17 "Famous" French Dip Sandwich: Time spent on one page: 7 hours, 40 minutes, 47 seconds. Potential reason: Subway executives wondering if they could raise the price on their $5 foot long.

2. One Method to Save Money in a Recession? Encourage the Staff Not to Break the Stemware. Time spent on one page: 7 hours, 30 minutes, 50 seconds. Potential reason: Representatives from Riedel hatch a plan to offer larger rewards to employees who continue breaking stemware.

3. Young & Hungry Dining Guide by the Day: Pete's Apizza. Time spent on one page: 5 hours, 14 minutes, 29 seconds. Potential reason: Administration staffers trying to figure out how to pronounce "apizza."

4. Spike Mendelsohn Evicted from His Capitol Hill Rental House. Time spent on one page: 4 hours, 55 minutes, 16 seconds. Potential reason: Mendelsohn can't get over how many spatulas he lost to looters.

5. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle? Time spent on one page: 4 hours, 33 minutes, 40 seconds. Potential reason: Taste of Georgetown organizers wonder if they can charge $10 for nothing.

6. The Latest on Roberto Donna and the Resurrection of Galileo. Time spent on one page: 4 hours, 10 minutes, 50 seconds.  Potential reason: Donna's new landlord wondering if it's too late to back out.

7. Don't Ever Piss Off a Sushi Chef in Traffic. Time spent on one page: 3 hours, 43 minutes, 55 seconds. Potential reason: Local cooking school tries to track down chef to teach knife skills class.

8. Hopped Up on Beer: Notes From the IPA Tasting.  Time spent on one page: 3 hours, 21 minutes, 50 seconds. Potential reason: The Beerspotter savoring his own stuff again.

9. A Lighter Look at Mad Cow Disease. Time spent on one page: 3 hours, 21 minutes, 29 seconds.  Potential reason: The USDA doing research.

10. Porkslap: A Pale Ale for the Common Pig in All of Us. Time spent on one page: 3 hours, 16 minutes, 40 seconds. Potential reason: Drunk fell asleep at his computer.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

It's a short work week, and we at Young & Hungry Central have just the thing you need: beer and dining recommendations for the Fourth. We also have something for your reading pleasure:

The top blog posts of the week.

1. Obama Ate Here: The Working Map (with apologies and gratitude to BrightestYoungThings)
2. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
3. On July 4th Weekend, Buy American Beer
4. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
5. Dairy Godmother's Owner Doesn't Want the Obama Bump That Ray's Hell Burger Got

Photo by cristinabe via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

The organizers of the event sent me two tickets in the mail. Had I paid for them, like almost everyone else at this outdoor meat fest, they would have cost me $10 each. I used one and went solo to the massive event, which stretched five blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue NW. I didn't bring much money with me and, since I had lost my check card recently, didn't have access to any cash from the portable ATMs on site.

I almost starved to death.

I have to admit that I was startled by the fact that my ticket got me next to nothing to eat. I had, perhaps foolishly, expected that the contestants in the barbecue battle would be, at the very least, offering samples to the public. That was not the case — at least when I was there on Sunday afternoon. Most of the samples available were products that Safeway, the sponsor, was pimping.

Regardless, I decided early on that I was not going to pay Famous Dave's or Old Glory any money for their crappy barbecue. I was going to eat freebies only — or I wasn't going to eat at all. I wasn't here for the music, after all. I was here to eat.

Here's what I ate:

1. A sample of Rancher's Reserve flatiron steak (Safeway tie-in)
2. A sample of dry-rubbed pork loin (Safeway tie-in)
3. A piece of bread slathered in Stubb's barbecue sauce
4. A two-bite chopped brisket sandwich and two slivers of sausage, courtesy of Stubb's Feed the World campaign (nice peppery kick in the sausage)
5. A small plastic cup of diced watermelon (not much sweetness)
6. A small plastic cup of Gold Peak lemon-flavored tea (very sweet)
7. A piece of bread dusted with Todd's Dirt (which tastes of oregano and garlic and something sweet)
8. A sample of the "orange whirl" SunnyD smoothie (which tastes like a liquid orange creamsicle)
9. A Luna bar with lemon zest
10. A small bag of sliced red apples

I opted not to stand in the long, long cattle line at the Safeway Sampling Pavilion. I had no desire to wait 30 minutes for a bite of Perdue chicken, Oscar Mayer weiners, or Lay's potato chips.

So by the time I left the event, I had eaten exactly one small sample of barbecue, thanks to Stubb's generosity. I'm sorry but Luna bars and sliced apples do not make a barbecue battle.