Toner Low starts a fabulous new job in about two weeks, and it’s in a neighborhood where there are far better places to eat lunch. Because, really, these are the only things that count in the world of publishing: the neighborhood eateries and whether you get summer hours or not.
Band Camp wishes to bestow a hearty congratulations to Toner Low on this auspicious occasion. Rock on, dude! (And whip out that corporate card! La Gringa is in the mood for sushi.)
Categories: Friendship · exuberance
So… if all goes well… and Crazy Bastard Landlord hasn’t put out an APB with my name on it to all the landlords in Astoria… I will be signing a lease this afternoon.
So, let’s review.
The Big Good News (public forum requires crypticism.)
The Second Big Good News (ditto).
New apartment, rent-stabilized, which no one can kick me out of ha ha ha.
Mona’s tumor is coming up through her skin, but she’s not in any pain and is eating cheerfully.
This being May 1st, I tried on a wifebeater. Yeah. Project Look Good In A Wifebeater By May, not to put too fine or egotistical a point on it, is an unqualified success.
So…
I don’t know that the world’s major religions, my own included, would follow my logic on this…
…but do you think Horace feels guilty?
The Year O’ Crazy Shit is breathing its last brimstoney, tubercular breath. ALLELUIA.
Categories: exuberance
TWO bits of extremely good news!!!!
Thing The First: VanillaFlava’s space invader is as benign as benign can be. Huzzah!
Thing The Second (less important, but containing pictures): The new Girlyman CD has arrived!
It’s fantastic; "St. Peter’s Bones", "Reva Thereafter" and "Right Here" are serious standouts. I sort of vaguely remember hearing them at the last concert, but I was too busy wiping drool off my chin to really have absorbed them all that well.
Speaking of drool, yet another picture of my Future Bride:
Seriously, friends and neighbors, the existence of women like this is surely rock-solid proof of a merciful God in the heavens?
Categories: exuberance
As always, Ms. Nola has the soul of a poet and the energy of a tiny little girl on her first waterslide. Her most recent post really touched me; it reminded me of my annual springtime out-of-the-doldrums joyride, but she’s been through so much this year (as have all the folks Katrina bitch-slapped) that her courage is particularly remarkable. Anyway, she’s better at this sort of thing than I am so I will just quote.
"At heart, I have been living inside my flooded out house for the past two years and I’m ready to get out. I’m ready to write about NOLA, pre and post Katrina, but I’m also ready to let go just a little bit. It hurts me to say that, but what with everything that’s been happening to me and my friends and family, we all need to put those feelings on the shelf for a while. We’ve all been trying to balance these New York lives and careers with one foot soggy in Lake Ponchartrain and the other hopping onto the Q train crossing Manhattan Bridge. It’s been a tough high wire act. Nothing like what the brave people in NOLA and all over the Gulf Coast have been experiencing, but for a pack of natives who lost everything and then some, it’s been one heartbreak after the next. No comparison’s necessary. I raise a glass to all of us.
Last week, I finally gave up and got a new cell phone, a new cell plan. After having the same plan for almost four years, my first cell phone, it was so hard to break away. Silly, huh? And it hit me that it really shouldn’t be this hard. It’s just a phone. Not every little thing has to mean everything, imbued with meaning of connection. Another day, another bump in the road. I can do this. I’ve learned so much and I’m my parent’s daughter, my friend’s confidant, reckless companion or grounded voice of reason all at once. My boyfriend’s girlfriend, my brother’s sister, a child of the Sacred Heart, a former ballerina, a Mawrtyr, an extreme bicyclist, a baby born in Baptist hospital, a Katrina survivor, a product of publishing, a writer, a correspondent, an admirer, a passionate advocate, a girl lost in the crowd, the one who won’t be left behind.
I’m all these things, but most of all, I want to be the one rolling the dice. It’s time to carve out a new path. The next year and a half will pass by like the blink of an eye and I’ll welcome my thirties. It’s time to take more in stride. It’s time to hold everything close to my heart with the other hand out the window catching the wind and taking note of the changes in temperature and temperament. It’s time for something new. I’m looking for a more complex sort of joy."
Categories: exuberance
Once upon a time there was born a skinny little tow-headed girl. She had knobby knees, big elbows, a really bad overbite, an even worse disposition and a propensity for playing with worms and toads. (She would also one day inherit her father’s spectacular unibrow, but this is a tale for another day.) As she grew older, she stayed comically skinny. Her legs resembled nothing so much as bell clappers sticking out of her shorts. By the time she reached 7th grade, the little girl – who stood about five feet and three inches tall – weighed only 97 pounds.
Then puberty hit. Hair began appearing in inconvenient places. (See unibrow comment above.) Cute boys – and cute girls – started to make the little girl blush and her hands sweat. Then the little girl sprouted up an additional four inches. She also expanded four inches in every other direction, gaining nearly fifty pounds in one summer. She chose not to see that she had gained fifty pounds; rather, she was firmly convinced that a troupe of magically evil monkeys had sneaked into her closet one evening and shrunk all her clothing.
As she got older, she got heavier. Then, for a while, she discovered the joys of cocaine and crystal meth, and she got smaller again. REALLY SMALL. Luckily, she decided she did not much enjoy looking like a victim of Birkenau, so she stopped chemically enhancing herself, and thusly began to balloon back up to an even bigger size.
The girl rode her bike everywhere, so she did get some exercise. (She also counted having sex in the attic of the movie theater where she worked as regular exercise.)
But despite the sex and the bike riding, the girl continued to gain weight. (It is entirely possible that Haagen-Daz chocolate chocalate chip ice-ccream had something to do with this, but we can’t be certain.) And as she continued to gain weight, she continued to lose her self-esteem. (She was also clinically depressed, but she didn’t figure that out until she was twenty-nine.)
By the time the girl was a woman, and had moved to New York City – without the sex or the bike, but carting along an ugly sofa and an ornery feline – she’d reached her maximum size and weight, and her self-esteem was in cold storage in a warehouse in New Jersey.
Her joints hurt all the time. She had no energy. (She had no sex.) It was hard to breathe. She developed asthma and high-blood pressure and high-cholesterol. She was still depressed a alot the time. And mostly, she was tired of being a forty-year-old in an eighty-year-old’s body.
So, one day, she walked into a gym. It was REALLY SCARY. There were machines and weights and Spandex shorts and cute blonde chicks on treadmills.
"Wait…there are cute blonde chicks on treadmills!" she said to herself gleefully.
Suddenly the gym wasn’t so scary anymore. She hired a little tiny Bosnian ex-Army lieutenant as her personal trainer, and this person KICKED her ASS. But at the end of the year, a funny thing happened: the woman lost nearly seventy pounds. She stopped having asthma attacks. Her cholesterol went down to normal. And her blood pressure was almost normal again, too!
"Hey, maybe there’s something to this exercise thing the kids are all so worked up about!" she cried.
She was pretty darned happy. Then she moved to an apartment much further away from the gym, and she got lazy again. And then she got laid off and got even lazier. And she gained back about twenty-five pounds. Needless to say, she became very annoyed with herself.
So this year, she decided to take back her life again. She start going back to the gym. (A different gym that was closer to her apartment. Still a lot of scary machines and weights, but sadly, not as many cute blonde chicks on treadmills. Alas!) She started eating healthy again (except for that awesome chunk of homemade chocolate cake that Book Stud brought her this afternoon). And she started feeling really fucking awesome about herself again.
This afternoon she spent two hours going through her closet and weeding out the fat pants. You see, when the formerly-skinny, formerly-tow-headed girl started this odyssey of trying to change her life, about two years ago, she was a size 26. Now she is a size 18. And today she twirled around her apartment, dancing with her rather alarmed cats, wearing her ridiculously fabulous brand-new size 18 black jeans – a pair of black jeans that she’d purchased two years ago and kept on her shelf as a way of motivating herself to keep going – and she looked AWESOME! (And she didn’t even care that she got white cat hair all over the goddamned pants!)
::: big cheesy grin :::
Categories: General Silliness · exuberance
Once upon a time there was born a skinny little tow-headed girl. She had knobby knees, big elbows, a really bad overbite, an even worse disposition and a propensity for playing with worms and toads. (She would also one day inherit her father’s spectacular unibrow, but this is a tale for another day.) As she grew older, she stayed comically skinny. Her legs resembled nothing so much as bell clappers sticking out of her shorts. By the time she reached 7th grade, the little girl – who stood about five feet and three inches tall – weighed only 97 pounds.
Then puberty hit. Hair began appearing in inconvenient places. (See unibrow comment above.) Cute boys – and cute girls – started to make the little girl blush and her hands sweat. Then the little girl sprouted up an additional four inches. She also expanded four inches in every other direction, gaining nearly fifty pounds in one summer. She chose not to see that she had gained fifty pounds; rather, she was firmly convinced that a troupe of magically evil monkeys had sneaked into her closet one evening and shrunk all her clothing.
As she got older, she got heavier. Then, for a while, she discovered the joys of cocaine and crystal meth, and she got smaller again. REALLY SMALL. Luckily, she decided she did not much enjoy looking like a victim of Birkenau, so she stopped chemically enhancing herself, and thusly began to balloon back up to an even bigger size.
The girl rode her bike everywhere, so she did get some exercise. (She also counted having sex in the attic of the movie theater where she worked as regular exercise.)
But despite the sex and the bike riding, the girl continued to gain weight. (It is entirely possible that Haagen-Daz chocolate chocalate chip ice-ccream had something to do with this, but we can’t be certain.) And as she continued to gain weight, she continued to lose her self-esteem. (She was also clinically depressed, but she didn’t figure that out until she was twenty-nine.)
By the time the girl was a woman, and had moved to New York City – without the sex or the bike, but carting along an ugly sofa and an ornery feline – she’d reached her maximum size and weight, and her self-esteem was in cold storage in a warehouse in New Jersey.
Her joints hurt all the time. She had no energy. (She had no sex.) It was hard to breathe. She developed asthma and high-blood pressure and high-cholesterol. She was still depressed a alot the time. And mostly, she was tired of being a forty-year-old in an eighty-year-old’s body.
So, one day, she walked into a gym. It was REALLY SCARY. There were machines and weights and Spandex shorts and cute blonde chicks on treadmills.
"Wait…there are cute blonde chicks on treadmills!" she said to herself gleefully.
Suddenly the gym wasn’t so scary anymore. She hired a little tiny Bosnian ex-Army lieutenant as her personal trainer, and this person KICKED her ASS. But at the end of the year, a funny thing happened: the woman lost nearly seventy pounds. She stopped having asthma attacks. Her cholesterol went down to normal. And her blood pressure was almost normal again, too!
"Hey, maybe there’s something to this exercise thing the kids are all so worked up about!" she cried.
She was pretty darned happy. Then she moved to an apartment much further away from the gym, and she got lazy again. And then she got laid off and got even lazier. And she gained back about twenty-five pounds. Needless to say, she became very annoyed with herself.
So this year, she decided to take back her life again. She start going back to the gym. (A different gym that was closer to her apartment. Still a lot of scary machines and weights, but sadly, not as many cute blonde chicks on treadmills. Alas!) She started eating healthy again (except for that awesome chunk of homemade chocolate cake that Book Stud brought her this afternoon). And she started feeling really fucking awesome about herself again.
This afternoon she spent two hours going through her closet and weeding out the fat pants. You see, when the formerly-skinny, formerly-tow-headed girl started this odyssey of trying to change her life, about two years ago, she was a size 26. Now she is a size 18. And today she twirled around her apartment, dancing with her rather alarmed cats, wearing her ridiculously fabulous brand-new size 18 black jeans – a pair of black jeans that she’d purchased two years ago and kept on her shelf as a way of motivating herself to keep going – and she looked AWESOME! (And she didn’t even care that she got white cat hair all over the goddamned pants!)
::: big cheesy grin :::
Categories: General Silliness · exuberance
We here at La Gringa & Co. have a Very Important Announcement to make: One of us is having a baby! No, it is not La Gringa, and it is not Book Stud.
Rather it is the lone XY member of this here collective, the elusive Toner Low, who is soon to be a Daddy!!! Mrs. Toner Low is expecting, and soon there will be a little Toner Low, Jr. running around. (And we should point out to Toner Low that even though Book Stud claims she does NOT like children, she secretly yearns to be a professional babysitter. Just ask Baby Crumpet!)
We were waiting for Toner Low to actually make this announcement himself, but he hasn’t gotten his ass in gear yet so we felt compelled to share this news with our readers on our own. (In fact, we here at La Gringa & Co. had to find out about the delightful spawning of Toner Low through a third party, our mutual friend the esteemed Miss Fuck Puddle, who drunken-dialed La Gringa from a burlesque show last week to break the happy news.)
Congratulations,
Toner Low!!!
Categories: Dangerous Animal Stunts · Friendship · exuberance
Hey, God? Remember when I was bemoaning this year’s karma?
You’re coming through with flying colors, GodDude. Really. Thanks. 
Categories: exuberance
Those of you who have been reading La Gringa & Book Stud’s online adventures for the past year or so may remember our pointing out a rather hilarious blog called Going Jesus, the irreverent daily natterings of a Bay Area Episcopalian church secretary named Sara.
In early October, Sara gave birth to very-premature baby boy named Isaac (three pounds!!!) and since then she’s been writing some wonderful stuff about the experience of being a first-time mother as well as being a mother to a baby who’s had some real problems coming into this world. Her writing – while always funny – is also thoughtful and poignant.
Well, we have good news – after two months, Isaac has finally been allowed to come home! Go read about his first night at home (and how his mom stepped on Ginger the Cat’s wet food bowl with her bare foot – yuck). Send some positive thoughts their way. Isaac still needs the good karma, folks!
(And we’ve re-added Going Jesus back to our Favorite Daily Clicks – apologies to anyone who was looking for it – we somehow never transferred that link from our old Blogger version of La Gringa & Co. and Book Stud reminded us that we should be reading this site regularly.)
Categories: Good Karma · exuberance
An afternoon of friends and really good beer today as La Gringa & pals celebrated the birthday of Viking Warrior Princess at the Brooklyn Brewery over in overly-hipstery Williamsburg. (Really, La Gringa is simpy not trendy enough to even get off the L train at Bedford Avenue; she is so very un-hip.)
We also dragged along our "houseguest" Trevor to the festivities. The word "houseguest" is in quotes because um, even though our visiting Aussie was supposed to be camped out at La Casa de La Gringa for the past week, a bout of food poisoning laid him low somewhere in Washington Heights. Today was his first day out in the world again, and what did La Gringa do? Yes, she plied him with liquor, pizza and cupcakes, and made him perform magic tricks for all and sundry. (We are most assuredly going to hell.)
In any case, happy birthday to Viking Warrior Princess!
Categories: Friendship · exuberance
Word has come from on high that congratulations are in order to La Gringa & Co. pals Hike Ender and CosmoGrrl, who became officially engaged this past weekend! Mr. Hike Ender apparently proposed to her on the ice at Rockefeller Center. (How totally cute is that? Straight boys these days, I tell ya! They’ve been taking lessons!)
Okay, everybody, all together now:
Awwwwwww!!!
Categories: Friendship · exuberance
Those four or five of you left that are actually reading this blog everyday may well remember that last month Book Stud and La Gringa ventured into deepest darkest Brooklyn to attend the wedding of our friends Kgaard and Super Organized Gal. Afterward, they went to Greece and did a lot of fun stuff and ate a lot of food and conquered the Athenian public transit system. Book Stud and La Gringa did none of those things, by the way. (Although Book Stud assures me that the Athenian public transit system is next on her to-do list.)
Well, now Kgaard and Super Organized Gal have returned, and Kgaard has graciously allowed yours truly to post a couple of awesome photos from their honeymoon. (Click on the images to see full-size.) Check out the shiny rings!
All together now: AWWWWWWWW!!!
Categories: Friendship · exuberance
