Giuseppe Pino Bonetti

I rarely get personal on Grateful Grapefruit, but when I do, it is only for very special people in my life.

They say that blood is thicker than water, meaning that family is the only people who you can relentlessly rely on. Well I will stop those “they” tight there. Friends and I have something, which you could call True Blood connection. Just like the drink in the TV show friendship has all the good sides of family connection and is cruelty free. I can call only 3 people in my life really good friends.

The show True Blood was actually one of the latest bonding rituals I developed with Pino. Monday evening after going to the gym, the routine included making pizza and visiting Bon Temps.

However, let me rewind a bit for you: Pino and I met back in November 2009. Few months before that we followed each other on Twitter. Well, actually he followed me after I said something degrading about Nokia (we’re both social media whores, another bond) MTV organized a free U2 concert at the Brandenburg Gate and everyone was crazy tweeting about it, because the sale of the free tickets went online Thursday morning and the eventim servers were crashing. I have to admit, I’m not really the biggest U2 fan ever, but out of curiosity as in “Let’s see if I can do that?” I ordered 2 tickets. It turned out that Pino, who is the biggest U2 fan I’ve ever met in my life, didn’t get the chance to purchase tickets. After playing around with the thought of getting some good ol’ cash for the free tickets from Mr. Bonetti I just told him we’ll go together (I sometimes like to play social games) the concert was actually short and nice and after that we walked to Alexanderplatz and he invited me to his house warming party the next evening.

What follows is a lot of good times, dorking out over different things, Lifetime-like drama (and I don’t mean watching Drop Dead Diva on Monday evening, too) and many little and big bonding moments till today, when I can call Pino my first and best male friend. You see, mom, I have male friends! I know I can always rely on him just as he knows he can always call me up at 4 in the night and I’ll be there for him.

4 facts you have to know about Pino

Don’t fucking mistake his name, this is a total deal breaker: It’s Giuseppe, not Guiseppe. His name has nothing to do with GUI.
He hates parmigiano (yes, he is Italian)
He doesn’t drink coffee (yes, he is Italian)
He rocks Singstar Dance (yes, he is Italian)

Thank you, Pino! Happy birthday! And kiss Margaret Cho from me.