Author: Joey deVilla

I met Deenster a little over five years ago when we were both working

at OpenCola during those heady dot-com years. A bit later — four years

ago today, Deenster started her own blog, pony, which has been going

strong ever since. I — and a number of other pony readers — are

taking this day to congratulate Deenster on four years of pony by

writing Four Things About Deenster. Here are mine:

1. Deenster is a very good cook; it is always a joy and privilege to be invited to her place for dinner parties.

2. I think she tried to set me up with her mom. I warned her of the

terrible consequences, the worst being a scenario in which she would be

staying at her mom’s place one night. I would emerge from her mom’s

room wearing naught but a towel and smile, look at her and say “who’s

your daddy now?”

3. She once asked me: if had to have sex with one of the OpenCola

founders — Grad Conn, John Henson or Cory Doctorow — which would

would it be and why? I believe my answer, humourous as it was, has

scarred her for life.

4. She is a warm, kind and open-minded person and will not judge you for your bad dental hygiene. or hillbilly demeanor.

Happy anniversary, Deenster!

A couple of Fridays ago, after doing the opening stand-up act for Peril from Beyond Space,

I joined Scott Watkins and company at a restaurant/bar across the

street. There, I noticed something unusual about the label on the

bottle of Heinz ketchup that was sitting on the table…

“Hides grill marks?” Since when were grill marks unsightly?

In the past few days, I’ve run into a couple of friends — either directly or indirectly — whom I haven’t seen in a while:

• George Justus

  found me while Googling for our high school alma mater, De La Salle

  College “Oaklands”. He and I were part of a small group, the “Eight

  Year Men”, who attended school at “Del” for the complete span of grades

  it offered: from sixth grade to grade 13 (yes, back then, there were

  five years of high school, 9 through 13). He dropped me a line via

  email last week — Hi, George, and expect an email from me later today!

• I ran into Anthony Famularo

  yesterday at Easter Brunch at the Boulevard Club. Anthony is also a

  classmate of mine from De La Salle, and he plays a role in the Best Date Ever story, which I shall continue soon.

  Anthony’s got a blog. I knew it was his the moment I stumbled across

  the phrase “my asshole lawyer friend Nick”. I too am a friend of that

  asshole lawyer.

  (Some of you may say that “asshole lawyer” is redundant. Seeing as the CEO of my company,

  my department-mate Darryl Green, my future father-in-law and several

  blood relatives are lawyers or have law degrees, I’m going to do some

  hand-waving and say that not every L.L.B. is an asshole. However, if it

  were a crime to be an asshole, there’d be enough evidence to execute

  Nick twice.)

  Anthony told me that a mutual friend of ours, Nadine Lacalamita, who also happens to have been a classmate of my sister’s at her high school, Havergal College, owns and runs the 2 Cats

  lounge on King Street West, which happens to be stumbling distance from

  my house. He goes there every couple of weeks, and I’m hoping to join

  him and catch up with him and Nadine.

• Cliff, the original owner of my first accordion, found my Why Accordion? article and wrote back to me in the comments. Good to hear from you!
• Like Cliff, Sean Silcoff

  was a fellow member of Crazy Go Nuts University’s “Media Mafia”. Sean’s

  now Montreal Bureau Chief for the Financial Post and his current series

  of articles (part one / part two) is on Embraer, the little Brazilian aircraft company that

  could. Ever since flying down to Boston to see Wendy became a regular ritual

  for me, I’ve become rather familiar with the ERJ — the Embraer

  Regional Jet, the “commuter plane” which acts as the workhorse for

  regional airlines such as American Eagle.