Friday’s Quizzlet: Tie Domi Let Me Eat Cake.

Appetizer: What was your first “real” job?
I assume by “real” quizzlet that you mean salaried. My first job was a paperboy, but my first “real” job was as a junior web developer for a now defunct Internet incubator. It was a low-paying, entry level job but the competition for it was still fierce. After I got home from the interview, (this was 1999) I fired up a strange program I’d found called “Flash” or something – and redid their entire website on my own web space. When the CEO of the company saw the site (I eventually forwarded the link to the underling who had interviewed me) he said two things. The first was “Jesus, that’s not our new site, is it?” The second was “Hire that kid”.

Soup: Where would you go if you wanted to spark your creativity?
My roofdeck. A few years ago I went up there with a pen and a notebook for the afternoon and mapped out my first retail website. The logo, the design, the site map, most of the content – everything. My creativity was also probably enhanced by the strange tea my roomate had given me earlier, and the fact that I thought I was on Pluto.

Salad: Complete this sentence: I am embarrassed when…
…people tell me they’re embarrassed to be American.

Main Course: What values did your parents instill in you?
My mother is an all around good soul. She kept me on a short leash and gave me an even mix of discipline and support for which I’ll forever be grateful. My father, on the other hand, was more like the Tie Domi of the household, enforcing my mother’s will whenever I got a little too fucking cheeky. He’d skate onto the ice and goon me whenever I started crowding the crease. But he did have his memorable parental moments, and I’ll share one with you now. When I was about 6, my mother had a birthday party at which people from the neighborhood came over and did the usual. The next night my mother, who was doing home fashion parties at the time, went out leaving me alone with Gordo – and an enormous leftover chocolate cake which stood unguarded in the dining room. I couldn’t stop thinking about that damn cake, but I knew that in order to get to it I’d have to sneak past my father who was watching hockey in the living room. He’d have his back to me, so I decided to risk it. Unfortunately, I risked it about seven too many times. During my umpteenth sortie to sneak in, get a fingerful of icing and then scoot back to my bedroom, something went horribly wrong. A split second after I looked over my shoulder to make sure my father was facing the other way, he quietly ran up behind me. As I returned my attention to the cake, he grabbed both my ears and rammed my face firmly into the choclately goodness. “Nobody likes a thief. You want the fucking cake? Have the fucking cake”. There was a similar incident weeks later with chocolate pudding and the two messages reverberate through time to me even now – I am still incapable of stealing. Although in all fairness I haven’t been confronted with Jell-O pudding in a long while.

Dessert: Name 3 fads from your teenage years.
I was less susceptible to fads by my teens. I think a better question would have been to ask me about fads from my childhood. One thing I do remember from Grade 9 at Lorne Park Secondary School in Mississauga, 1988 and my first foray into the teen years, was that my clique wore nothing but clothing from Mark’s Work Wearhouse. We all had the same green workpants with the ends rolled up, the same fleece MountainGear tops and the same bad 1/2 buzzed on one side, 1/2 long on the other haircuts. We were far too young to be drinking, having relations, running from police – and we definitely way overshot the section of the eighties when it was cool to emulate Flock of Seagulls. So there you have it. If I were to wind back a little further into childhood, I’d have to discuss my unhealthy fascination with SeaMonkeys. That’s not a joke. Ask Janet.