Dancing Monkey High

The other night, Josh came over so we could spend the night gossiping and discussing summer twilights that took forever to get rid of. While we were searching my bookshelf for Anne Sexton's Collected Poems, we uncovered the Dancing Monkey High School 2009 Yearbook!!!!

I've scanned some of the pics for you guys to enjoy!

Check out the cool kids who stayed after school for extra-curricular activities!

It's the ice hockey team feat. Kristen, Tam, and Nathan!

Look at those nerds smart kids! Adam, FDot, Precious, and Mel helped take the DMH Chess Club to nationals!

Look at the marching band go! Björk, Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton, Jere Keys, and Michelle/Goblin Box bravely marched onto the football field during each football game and played the national anthem while avoiding all the food that got thrown at them.

Hey look! It's the awesome Yearbook Club featuring Syesha Mercado, Jennifer Hudson, Enrico, Josh, Brooke White, and Kelly Clarkson! These guys helped create the yearbook and I think they did an awesome job!

Give me a P! Give me an O! Give me an L! Give me a T! Look at head cheerleader of the Cheerioz Polt strike a pose with fellow cheerleaders Tatiana DelToro and Kris Allen. What a great-looking group!

Senior Superlative Time!

Here are the men who were voted Most Athletic: Dave S. and P!nk

Cha-ching! Chris was voted Most Likely to be a Millionaire... Looks like this prediction came true!

Since Josh and I were too fashionable to dress up in this clown costume for a yearbook picture, Ryan was named Class Clown! That high school used to be our funhouse....

Can you handle the beauty of the Best Dressed couple, M. Nico and Victoria?! I remember Victoria always dressed herself in all brand names. And when she couldn't afford it, I guess she had to steal it. And if M. Nico needed clothes? It was cool. She had tons of them!

Resident drama queen VUBOQ won the superlative for Most Dramatic. When he found out he won, he cried and cheered joyously at the same time. What talent!

I guess showing all that teef finally paid off for my sister Talita, who was nominated for Cheesiest Nicest Smile.

Somehow, I was elected Class Gossip.... Don't know how that happened....

Look at John, sucking up to his teacher just so he can get a good grade. John was voted Teacher's Pet and it came as no surprise to the other students at DMHS. After all, he always let Ms. Foster rub his belly.

While most of the students at DMHS cried themselves to sleep and rubbed their barren ring fingers sadly, Josh and David proudly strutted around the school looking cute and in lurve. So they won Cutest Couple and everyone rolled their eyes and made voodoo dolls of the couple. But really, aren't they cute?

Look who won the highest honor of all!

Yup, Michelle and Harry beat out all the competition and were crowned Homecoming King and Queen. While winning this most sought after award was pretty great, that's not the 'highest honor' I was talking about.... Nothing could prepare Michelle and Harry for the honor that was bestowed upon them when they were driven in the Homecoming parade by none other than Rhonetta Johnson.

Oh, and here's some nerd we found.

Odd Jobs

The other day, I prepared an author profile for young poet Matthew Dickman. I liked his poem about love and decided to present him to my Writing Communities class. Our class is in charge of bringing writers to campus, so I pitched Mr. Dickman.
Anyway, the point of telling you this is that I discovered that although Dickman has published a book of poetry and was featured in The New Yorker, he still works at Whole Foods.

This got me thinking about jobs: more specifically, the jobs you have when you're young. And THIS got me thinking about my past jobs. So now I'm blogging about them.

Tennis Courts

My first real job was working at the tennis courts near my house. And by near my house, I mean literally ONE block away.

Seriously, if I had work at 2, I'd leave my house at 1:59. It was great!
But this job was a SNOOZEFEST. Basically, I had to make sure the rich people who came to play were members, and if they weren't, I made them pay some ridiculous fee. I think it was like $50 an hour or something but you know I charged them $60 an hour cause I needed lunch money!

After the rich people played tennis and talked about how rich they were, they would demand that I sweep the court. As I reluctantly dragged this huge broom thing behind me, they would whip me and make me work faster.

Anyway, the best thing about this job was that usually no one came. So I got A LOT of summer reading done at this job! But after two years of alternating between boredom and being tired of being brave dragging that broom thing around, I quit that job and started my next job.

Subway


I worked at Subway because I wanted an iPod. All day long I dreamed of constant Maria Mena/Britney Spears/Mya/Brooke Allison flowing into my ears while I walked around town, rode my bike, pretended to pay attention in class, etc. I needed an iPod.

So I got a job at Subway thinking that I would make lots of money and buy myself that iPod. Well working at Subway is lame, so please, if you don't work there already, don't fill out an application.

I spent my days as a 'Sandwich Artist' listening to people say, "I hope I'm not being annoying, but could you _______?" Fill in that blank with any obnoxious request you can think of. Now, I guess I can't complain cause I can be picky, but some of these requests were pretty dumb. Even though I've worked in a real restaurant for the past two summers, I've never had terrible customers like I did at Subway.

And if I had to hear one more joke about 6 vs. 12 inches, I might have pulled a Plath with the bread oven.

Once I got enough money to get my iPod, I bounced from that joint!

Eckerd/Rite Aid

I got a job at Eckerd cause one of my BFFs Shanique worked there and referred me. I then referred my BFF Cindy, and she got a job. So I got to work with two of my best friends!
Honestly, this was the best pre-college job I had. It was pretty easy, I got a 20% discount, and it was really close to my house.

And the best thing about my job was that I loved my co-workers and thought we all made an interesting dynamic. There was the one weird girl everyone talked about, the one girl who stole, the nice, gay manager, the grumpy thieving manager, the sexy co-worker everyone wanted (that was me!), the old woman who made up stories about her life (she was almost in the Olympics, she wrote "Born To Run" with Springsteen but didn't want songwriting credit...), and an assortment of other types of people. And there were even some office romances! I think one of the most important parts of a job is the crew, and we were a great crew!

That's me and my BFF Cindy in the photo department. Yup! I worked in the photo department. And yes, I have interesting stories (can I squeeze another blog entry out of this?!)

Halfway through my time there we switched over to Rite Aid and a lot of the main crew went off to college. While working at Rite Aid was not the best job of all time, I still think of it fondly...

(Oh, and it was Rite Aid that inspired my first ever blog!)

SO, what jobs did you have during middle/high school? Which was the worst?

In Reality I'm Shy Shy Shy

Why hasn't anyone told me about Lykke Li?!

OK, well my friend Stevenson did play the fantastic remix of her song "Little Bit" featuring Jimmy from Degrassi Drake.

And Delisa did play the wonderful "Dance Dance Dance." So I guess I did have some clue as to how amazing she is. But I actually listened to her whole CD the other day. And now I'm a huge fan.

Although I don't really love the title (Youth Novels) I love the CD. Seriously, I like every single track on it. I would describe her music, but I'm terrible at that, so I'll quote my bff AllMusic:
"[her music is] hard to pigeonhole but refreshingly easy to enjoy."

Here's one of my favorites, Breaking It Up:



Even if you don't like that song, you should still check her out!

Everybody Get Random

It's Monday, I don't have a specific blog entry in mind, so here's a random mix of music stuff for a Monday Music Moment.

I. First off, this performance is currently blowing my mind.



If you're a dummy (if don't nobody want you, don't nobody need you) and don't wanna watch the whole thing, just fast-forward to around 5:00.
DIDN'T WE x 3 = AMAZING!

II. Brooke Hogan, I'm happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but Adam Lambert has the worst album cover of all time.


OF ALL TIME. (Is this joke played out yet?)
Even though Jeremiah likes to bother me and defend Glambert by saying that the cover is purposely over-the-top or whatevz, it's still ugly. You can have aims to be 'purposely (fill in the blank)' and still come out with something good. Drag Me To Hell is a horror movie that is purposely campy and it works out perfectly. Rhonetta is purposely ghetto fab and we love her for it. This album cover just sucks.

III. I think music videos are snoozefests lately, and I rarely find myself watching a video more than once. But I actually really like the video for Shakira's new single, "Did It Again." Based on this video and her last video for "She Wolf," I think Shaki is one of the few contemporary musical artists who is making interesting videos.

IV. Here's the thing I would change about Glee.

I really wish the show incorporated more music that actually had something to do with the storyline. Rachel singing "Take A Bow" (1,000x better than Rihanna) was one of my favorite moments of the series, even though I hated that song before it appeared on the show. Another of my favorite moments was when Mercedes sang "Bust Your Windows."
Know what those songs have in common? They were related to the storyline and were performed in a more traditonal 'musical' fashion. I like some of the songs that are performed just... for fun (?), but overall, I think the show has too many of these songs. Mr. Schuster is cool, but I don't need to see five solos of him dancing around the room awkwardly. Also, I'm still waiting for "Papa Don't Preach."

Ghosts in the Attic: Childhood Optimism

For the second time in my 1st grade journal, I wrote about a family gathering. It's funny that in 1996 I met with my father's side of the family in the same month that I went with my mother's side of the family because I currently don't ever see either side of the family!

But this entry is noticeably darker in tone...

Click to enlarge.

Entry dated April 15th, 1996

"On Saturday and Sunday I wen't
to my Grandpop's birthday. We
had cake played outside ALL
people were there even people
I did'ent now. Neses Uncles Aunts
Babys grannies and poppops
And three suprisesis A goodtar
from verginya presents. And
my Aunt is having a baby."

Notice that I was into hyperbole at the time. ALL people were there. I also love that I said that 'grannies' were there (lol!), since I'm pretty sure only one grandmother was at this family gathering. And I actually remember that guitar that my grandfather gave us (from Virginia). But of course my brother and I didn't understand how amazing that gift was, so we just ignored it and play with cheap Power Rangers toys.

"But I do hope the baby don't
die as soon as it comes out.
because my cusins girlfriends
had a baby like that and he ran
away."

OK, first, I must say: those cloud drawings are terrible!
So this page troubles me a little. It's one of those instances where I wonder if I shared too much information with my teacher. It might also be a testament to how morbid I was in 1st grade... This explains my love of Anne Sexton!
But on a lighter note, isn't my quote bubble genius?

"We found 900000000000
pitures from when evry-
one was small.
The End"

Yay! Photos! And mas hyperbole! I remember finding those 900 billion pictures. I love looking at old family pictures... And I was obviously a budding storyteller at the time, with the way I added that note of finality (The End). Although it looks kinda like the last frame in a horror movie about murderous little kids.