Dan Kenning, 1973-2009

Some of you knew faithful Joey reader, commenter, and dear friend Dan Kenning. He passed away on Monday, August 10, after a short battle with cancer. He turned 36 last month.

Mrs. Joey and I met Dan in 1992, when we began our studies at Red River College. We both knew quickly that Dan would be a good friend for a long time. In our wedding party, we each picked the bridesmaids and groomsmen, but Dan was a mutual choice, as he was a friend that knew us both from the very beginning.

In our two years at the College, it’s fair to say that Dan was liked by everyone. I refer to him as a “glue” guy. He was the person who remembered your birthday every year. He was the guy in the lab who picked up people’s spirits at 12:30am as we tried to get a project finished on deadline.

On one of those marathon all-nighters, Dan led us in a game he called “Deger-isms”. We took the last name of our classmate Linda and put it into movies, tv shows, and other pop culture titles with the word “danger”. “Degerous Liaisons” was the winner, and then it sort of petered out awkwardly once someone suggested “Mother May I Sleep With Deger?” Not a hugely sophisticated game, granted, but the mind doesn’t need much to distract it in the middle of the night. We appreciated his effort.

Dan was a good student, though not necessarily a contender for highest GPA. His time to excel arrived when the theory was put into practice. He demonstrated a rare versatility, by working in radio, print, and television. Throughout his career he was the consummate professional, respected and liked by everyone he met.

Any encounter with Dan, be it a lunch, a party, a two-minute chat while crossing paths on the way to work, made you walk away with a bit of bounce in your step. Effortlessly and sincerely, Dan made you feel good about yourself. He considered his friends to be exceptional, and told them often.

My last contact with him was an e-mail exchange on April 27, to commiserate over the passing of Bea Arthur, the subject of many inside jokes that showcased Dan’s wicked sense of humour. Around that same time, he received his cancer diagnosis. He didn’t share it beyond a small circle of family and friends, and so for me life carried on obliviously, with the assumption that I would speak to Dan again at some point, and finally set up that lunch we had been putting off for way too long.

I learned of his passing in a truly unexpected way. I visited the blog of a tv critic, expecting to get some juicy anecdotes about the upcoming tv season. Instead I saw a post titled “Remembering Dan Kenning”. The critic knew Dan from his days as a publicist for Global TV. He liked him both professionally and personally, so he noted his passing with a very gracious and kind remembrance.

We have considered setting up a scholarship in Dan’s name. While it might bring us some comfort, I know Dan would hate the idea, for a few reasons. He was way too modest to put his name out there like that, and what he liked about school had little to do with the classroom, and everything to do with the people. He told me the diploma was a nice thing to have, but the friends were far more valuable.

Dan will be laid to rest next Monday evening.

* * *

I know for certain that Dan would not want any Joey! posting to end on a sombre note, so I'm going to introduce a new contest for my loyal readers, something that would have been right in Dan's wheelhouse.

I'm going to put up an old New Yorker cartoon for captioning. More precisely, anti-captioning. You need to create the most unsuitable caption you can think of, something that could never win the New Yorker's contest. And it has to be really funny.

Anti-captioning thrived for years at a blog that's shutting down later this month, so I'll pick up the idea and run with it. Here is your first cartoon, along with the anti-captions that merited special notice on that other blog:



Winner
"This may explain the enormous, dead hooker we saw yesterday."

Finalist
"Can we f*ck it?"

Honorable Mention
"Honey, I shrunk the kids. And blew up this gun. And sent us thousands of years into the future. Not necessarily in that order. And f*cked your sister."