Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
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Happy Birthday, AKMA!
Me, AKMA and Si at BloggerCon, October 2003, Harvard Law School.
I’d like to wish Reverend A.K.M. Adam — known on the ‘Net as “AKMA” — a happy 50th birthday!
I Owe AKMA Big-Time
I’d known AKMA for over a year when I met him in person at a cocktail party at the first BloggerCon conference back in October 2003. The cocktail party was restricted to only those people who had ponied up the US$500 for the paid portion of the conference; I was there to catch the free-of-charge sessions the following day. Since the cocktail party was filled with some serious bigwigs with whom I wanted to schmooze, I decided to use a tried-and-true trick for getting into places where I wasn’t allowed: wearing a dark suit, bringing the accordion and pretending to be the entertainment.
Armed with an accordion and a little white lie told to the guy minding the door at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, I got into the cocktail party without any fuss. The first person I ran into was AKMA. We had a good conversation during which time he performed a great number of introductions.
At one point in the conversation, he saw Wendy working her way through the crowd.
“Wendy!” he called out. “Over here!”
This was not good. Wendy was the coordinator for the conference and was probably the one person in the entire room who would know that I wasn’t supposed to be there. She made her way over to us, and it was too late to weasel out.
“Wendy, I’d like you to meet Joey. Joey, this is Wendy.”
“The Redhead Wore Crimson, I said, reciting the name of her blog at the time. I like your blog; it’s a good read.”
Luckily for me, she was in a good mood and decided not to kick me out of the party. The next night, I invited her to join a group of us for dinner, and the rest is history.
Simply put, AKMA introduced me to my wife, and for that I will be forever grateful. Thanks, Padre!
It was only fitting that AKMA should take part in our wedding ceremony. He gave what I believe to be the best homily I’ve ever heard at a wedding. The transcript is here, and I plan on posting the video in the next couple of weeks.
Once again, happy birthday, AKMA!
Like me, my friend Nick was an “8-year-man” at De La Salle College Oaklands, a Catholic high school located just north of downtown Accordion City. We spent grades 6 through 13 there, during which time the school hosted its most famous student, Keanu Reeves, who spent a year there and was notable for:
- Having a oddball name
- Having an oddbal nickname: “The Wall”, for his skill as a defenceman on our hockey team. He still bears this nickname today, but now it’s for his acting ability.
Ever since Keanu’s rise to fame, editions of Acorn — our yearbook — containing the Master Thespian are in great demand. Copies of the yearbook from his brief time with us have since gone missing for the school library, and no, you can’t have mine.
“Del”, as the school was affectionately known, was an all-boys school when we were there. Students from grades 6 through 8 wore the middle-school green blazers while students in grade 9 and up wore blue blazers. Since I’ve graduated, Del has gone co-ed and everybody wears green blazers.
Nick recently posted a photo of an informal group called the De La Salle Country Club, of which I was a member. The Country Club had no real structured activities: we were just a bunch of friends who brought our own lawnchairs to school to hang out during our breaks when we weren’t annoying the staff at the nearby McDonald’s or the now defunct Cafe Marika, whose motto could’ve been “Serving alcohol to Toronto’s youth since they were 16”.
Here’s the photo, which was taken in the winter, probably late 1985 or early 1986. Pictured in the photo from left to right are: Steve, Greg (above Steve), Nick and Yours Truly:
This is what a marvelously misspent youth looks like. Steve, Greg, Nick and me at 18.
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Your Gordon Ramsay Fix
For the past little while, Monday has meant a good evening of Gordon Ramsay on TV. First, the American edition of Hell’s Kitchen, which has become a little too cartoonish, followed by the British edition of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which gives you a better idea of Ramsay’s skill as both a chef and a restaurateur. The latest season of Hell’s Kitchen ended a couple of weeks ago, and so few Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares have been made that I’ve seen them all already.
Until the American edition of Kitchen Nightmares airs (it premieres on Wednesday, September 19th at 9pm on Fox), here’s a little Ramsay fix for you in the form of YouTube videos…
Sublime Scrambled Eggs
These are pretty rich scrambled eggs (he stirs in some creme fraiche), but they do look tasty. A pity my wife hates scrambled eggs…
Broccoli Soup
This soup looks pretty good, considering it has only two ingredients: broccoli and water.
Teaching Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson How to Cook a Lobster Lunch
This is from an episode of his cooking show The F Word in which he teaches one of the hosts of Top Gear (probably the best TV show about cars and driving out there) how to cook a lobster lunch. Gordon and family visit Jeremy and his family at Jeremy’s “decidedly penis-shaped house” on the Isle of Man.
Gordon Ramsay’s Real Kitchen Nightmares
What are Ramsay’s real nightmares like? The people at the BBC sketch comedy show Dead Ringers take a stab at it.
For reference, see the bat’leth entry at Memory Alpha, the wiki for all things Star Trek.
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I’m Back…
…and I’m getting a few things set up here on a new server. It’ll be a day or two before I load all the articles and images back into the blog. Until then, things are going to be a bit sparse until then.
My thanks to John Keegan and the fine folks at PressHarbor for giving me a new won’t-flake-out home for the blog!
I couldn’t resist checking out a picture with a name like that, could I?
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.