Man, just about the time I was penning my NM guidebook and adding a great big shout-out to Gwyneth Doland, food editor at Albuquerque’s actually-really-good alterna-weekly, it turns out she was getting fired! Who would’ve guessed that the column that made me laugh hardest most recently — the one that began “I think buying bottled water is completely retarded. (Well, not retarded because using retarded in that context is totally gay.)”–would be her last? That girl can turn a mean phrase, and she loves bacon. (I believe “allbaconallthetime” is her email handle. Am I stalking her? Why, nooooo.)

But like she needs my props–she already singlehandedly ran La Cocinita, a great print mag about NM food, and now she’s writing a column called “Total Pig” for the Santa Fe Reporter*. Here’s hoping she somehow gets Chuck Klosterman-ed into the national limelight, assuming she wants that. Because if I got paid to eat enchiladas and know everybody’s back-of-house business with 300 days of sun a year, I might be pretty happy… Oh wait–but then I wouldn’t be in Astoria, so maybe not.

*Click on the cached version of the page if you search for the columns in Google.