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#Ferguson


Got a lil note from a reader that I’d like to share if you’re feeling like you want to complain to people with actual influence during a time when they are ACTUALLY AVAILABLE TO YOU:

Through September 7th, the House of Representatives is on break, and many reps are in their home districts, and have time set aside specifically to meet with their constituents. In many districts, it can be quite easy to email a representative’s office and set up a brief meeting (either with them or their relevant aide), and not many people are aware of this. The Minneapolis Toast meetup group is trying to set up an appointment with our representative here to ask for federal legislation/committee investigation/anything to destroy the culture of violence and racism in police forces.


Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? So grateful to say that Mallory and I can provide absolutely no additional information about this event, it is Buzzfeed’s baby, we are just showing up to talk and smile and become hyper and then crash wanly after our brief, orchid-like blossoming. You can touch my belly if you want, though, we’re family. We’re not planning on doing an additional NYC meetup this time (flying in the night before, leaving the morning after, like supermodels), but you can do ANYTHING YOU WANT, you don’t need us! Okay, let’s do this:

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I have been politely rejecting all pieces by white people about the events in Ferguson, just because we have limited space for topical pieces and want to amplify POC voices right now, but I thought that Matt Zoller Seitz did a great job here.


Ooof.


A glorious celebration of gay rugby in NYC:

Prejudice may not exist between the lines, but Gotham players say opposing teams have occasionally responded tepidly to socializing off the field. As social chair, Carlino’s job is to organize post-game “drink-ups,” a rugby tradition during which both teams imbibe together. Gotham hosts its drink-ups at Boxers NYC, a Hell’s Kitchen establishment that touts itself as New York City’s “premier gay sports bar.”

“There would be maybe a team or two where only a few guys would show up, but it’s not a huge issue,” says Carlino.

Some of Gotham’s players didn’t even realize they were on a gay rugby team until they arrived at their first drink-up, according to Rob Mesika, twenty-four, Gotham’s communications director and one of the team’s straight players.

An interview with the Fug Girls.


Mo’ne Davis is just the beginning:

The narrative of the gimmick girl in sports is doubly damaging. Not only does it foster a lower expectation of women’s abilities — in both genders — it also creates an assumption that women aren’t earning their spots when in reality they are almost certainly facing even higher standards than the men they compete against.If the sports world is truly going to house gender equality, we need to give girls the freedom to choose their sports. We need to stop pressuring them to take the path of least gender resistance. And we need to stop holding them to a higher standard when everything else is already working against them.

Making fun of Anthropologie furniture.


So, this is a little funny/terrifying/misandrist heart-warming story that my teacher YES MY SPIRITUAL TEACHER told me yesterday (it was in the context of a discussion about how people change, but that’s not important, sometimes stories do not serve a Zen purpose, they merely entertain and delight.) So, backstory, when she was in her twenties she was a very famous and notoriously fear-immune pro athlete and HEARTSTOPPINGLY gorgeous (she is nearly fifty now and still difficult to look at directly, lest the sun hit her face in such a way that yours shatters in reflexive awe) and many men had posters of her on their wall. But she was a MONK, basically, bc all she cared about was training and competing and finding her $100 a month to pay her rent in her no-fridge-having hovel. So she had one of many, many accidents, was in a hip-to-ankle cast, and her surgeon said “look, you cannot train for six months, this is a big one, you need to cool it.” And she was super bummed out, and went to this mogul competition to watch anyway, and then went to the afterparty and was propped up with her leg on a couch, like “my life sucks.”

And then it occurred to her: “I should get a boyfriend.”

So she slowly pans her head and scopes out the room, and sees the dude who came in third in the competition. He had done a 720 with like half a foot of air, he was super-hot. Their eyes meet. She points at him. He does that points-at-himself-questioningly gesture. She beckons him with her forefinger. He comes over.

“Hey, I’m [Nicole’s Spiritual Teacher.] You’re [Name of Dude], right?”

“Yes.”

“I need a boyfriend. Where do you live?”

“Squaw Valley.”

“I live in Salt Lake City. I am very sexually attracted to you, and I cannot train for six months. You should move to Salt Lake City and live with me and be my boyfriend, I think it would be fun. Would you like to move to Salt Lake City and be my boyfriend?”

“…yes.”

So he drove home, told his girlfriend of SIX YEARS (he never once mentioned her existence to my teacher): “I have to move to Salt Lake City and become Nicole’s Spiritual Teacher’s boyfriend” and then moved to Salt Lake City. And they had SO much fun, they had a great time, it was awesome, and then six months later her doctor gave her the go-ahead to train again, and she came home and was all “hey, this has been so much fun, see you,” and he was all “what?” and she said “I can train again, so I no longer need a boyfriend” and he went back from whence he came.

And they are still friends. She is also friends with the woman he had been dating, who approached her at a competition one day, introduced herself, and said “hey, you know, I was upset for a little while, but it wound up being really great, we had been in a rut.”

So, um, there is no point to this story, other than that my teacher is a very charismatic person, and also that you might want to try asking people to be your boyfriend and then releasing them back into the wild when you are done with them.

Also, people change, but it can be wonderful to look back on the person you used to be with a slightly terrified air of respect for your older self.


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