The Birth of Joshrico

A lot of people ask me how Josh and I got to be BFFs. Did we meet at a Kelly Clarkson concert? Did we cross paths while stumbling around NYC, hoping someone would buy us lunch?! Well I'm here to tell you guys the story. Josh and I met through one of our shared loves... No, not Steven the Beautiful! Poetry.

Here's what went down.

My freshman year of college I was part of a club called The Siren. The Siren published a literary magazine every fall featuring only the best creative writing from TCNJ students. Most of the meetings went like this:

Most of the poems we got were pretty bad! But every now and then, an awesome poem made it through the cracks and the club decided to publish it in our esteemed magazine. One of those poems was called "Reproduction" and I loved it!

It was about some dude sitting in his bedroom, thinking about how he would never have children because he wasn't attracted to women. Well, this poem spoke to me and I fell in love with it and demanded it be printed. Everyone else agreed and we published the poem. The Fall '07 issue of The Siren came out feat. "Reproduction" (and a poem by yours truly!) and the world spun madly on.

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The following semester (Spring '08) I helped plan events called Student Reading Series. At these events, my club ink (yes, I love joining clubs!) asks three writers to read their work out loud for an audience of peers/teachers/homeless people who stumble into the library. Well, we chose two random kids, and for our third reader we chose.... yes, Josh Page. So I saw Josh for the first time ever as he went up to the podium and read his poetry. And my life was forever changed!

I couldn't believe it! Even though I read "Reproduction" prox. 1,000 times and saw the name "Josh Page" in The Siren over and over, I didn't even notice that it was the same Josh Page that was reading at the Student Reading Series.

After the reading, I quickly rushed out to the reception to meet the poet.

Well, Josh actually had real friends and needed to sign a lot of autographs so he didn't have much time to talk to me at the reception.

Luckily for us both, one of my fave hobbies is stalking! So I found Mr. Page on Facebook and sent him a message (CLICK TO ENLARGE!)

And the rest is history! And by history I mean we watched American Idol together and I screamed for joy whenever Brooke White came on and Josh and his roommates rolled their eyes at me. But we screamed for joy together when Syesha came out to amaze us with her red dress and amazing vocals! Then we were friends, etc. etc. Then I introduced him to the blogosphere and made him famous and people started asking how we met. So there you go.

Josh, can you believe we met on March 27th 2008?! I thought we've known each other our whole lives?!

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.

Hatez Us: NYC Blogger Meet-Up

One (sweet) day (ft. Boyz II Men), I was thinking about all my blogger friends. I realized that it was about time that I met all of them. So I asked everyone to meet up one day for some karaoke!

And last Saturday, it finally happened!

I hopped on a bus (at Port Authority with a dream and my cardigan?) and headed to one of my favorite places: New York City aka Nueva Nueva.

Oh, and Josh came with me too!

When we arrived in the city, we texted some of the others to get directions to the karaoke joint. Oddly enough, nobody answered us.... So we just walked around (in the wrong direction) and then FINALLY found the place!

As soon as we entered the room, the others began talking.

This is what I overheard:

Jere: Ugh. I was hoping they'd get lost.
Dave S.: Who invited them?
Jere: Right? Now we can't even go to a bar cause that short one is like 15 years old.

Josh and I ignored those harsh words and turned our attention to Craig, who said he was dedicating his next song to us.

He then sang the classic pop song "Leave (Get Out)" by JoJo.

When Josh y yo refused to leave, everyone beat us up. Chris grabbed the camera to record the brutal attack.

Then everyone watched the video over and over and laughed louder and louder.

We were totez over it so Josh y yo jumped on the train and hoped to find happiness somewhere else.

But everyone followed us. We thought that if we got everyone drunk, they'd be nicer to us, so we recommended going to a bar!

Polt turned his head in disgust. FDot said that we were speaking too fast. Dave S. posed, knowing that I was about to take a picture.

Jere looked out the window and pretended he wasn't in our group. Chris laughed at me and Josh as we tried to go under the train (and get dragged to hell).

Craig rolled his eyes and David asked, "What are you looking at?" Then they punched us.

But no one could resist the alcohol and we ended up going to a glamorous bar!

Josh and I knew it was a long way to happy, so we drank our troubles away while the rest of the gang talked merrily about all things NOT pop culture.

Then David said that since we both had kissed someone before, we were dirrrty (feat. Redman) whores and kicked us out of the bar.

We huddled against a dirty wall.

We both cried (feat Abigail's lost innocence).

Caption This! 65th and Broadway

Last Saturday, I headed to my favorite city for some TOP SECRET business.... While I will reveal in a future blog entry why I was in New York, something unexpected happened while I was there that I can blog about.

I met fellow blogger Jere Keys!

While at first I scolded Jeremiah for his poor aim (his generation missed out on learning the correct way to take self-portraits for [omg!] MySpace photos!), I realized this works in my favor.

Cause now we can play a fun game!!!!
I am assigning my readers with the task of captioning this photo in the following way:

Here are some random examples:

Easy, right?

Give it a shot!
(And if you aren't feeling creative or have no idea who the bald dude is, you can just comment on how cute we look together!)

Pride and Perspectology

This past weekend was Gay Pride weekend in Asbury Park. The last time I went to Pride festivities was when I was like 10. My mother has gone for years and when I was young, she took her children with her.

I live about 1 minute from Asbury Park and the restaurant I work in is located in Asbury. I worked Sunday night and my restaurant was flooded with the gays!

So while I was working, I met a lot of interesting people. Many customers sang along to all the Madonna songs we played throughout the day. One guy called me a "sexy motherf*cker" (is that supposed to flatter me? I don't like being cursed at!). One guy asked if I needed help bringing the food out, and he didn't even work there! So random.

But of all the people I met, one was obviously the coolest.

Hotel Tuesday reader, dancing monkey of Puntabuland and blogger Chris stopped by my little restaurant and not only did I get to meet him, but I ended up waiting on his table!
Chris was super sweet, a good tipper and he didn't curse at me! And I loved his cowboy hat.
Thanks for stopping by Chris. Now that you've been to my restaurant, I expect to serve you a lot more Napa sandwiches in the future!

Animal City

Last Friday I hopped a train to New York City.

I was going to NYC to meet Tam, one of my faithful blog readers and kindest ladies I know and her daughter Kristen.

I walked from Penn Station to Central Park (really wasn't that bad) and texted Tam, telling her I was at the fountain. She told me she was too.

But I didn't see her..... So she said "Come to the Apple elevator." So I crossed the street and looked all around the Apple elevator.

But I still didn't see her.... Well, finally we found each other and headed into the park. We were going to visit the Central Park Zoo!

But Tam saw the long line and wasn't having any of that. So we got lunch at this cafe, where Tam and I bonded over our love of Snapple and gossiped about the other Dancing Monkeys of Puntabuland.

After lunch, we headed back to the zoo and the line was much shorter. There were so many kids going into the park! Like this cute one:

Is it creepy that I took a picture of a stranger?

So we eventually got into the zoo. First, we went to the Tropic Zone.

There were a lot of birds in this section.

There was also a tortoise

and some snakes

and some other kind of reptile

and a sleeping lemur!

and best of all, MONKEYS!

Here's a sweet shot of a monkey teleporting to the branch.

It was feeding time in the monkey cage.

It was VERY HOT in the Tropic Zone, and at first I thought that the zoo people decided to make it hot so that we could feel what it's like in the tropics. So I complained to Tam, "Why did they make this room so hot?? Who wants to sit around in a hot room? What an awful idea!!" And she was like, "Umm... I think the animals need it to be this temperature...." and wondered how I got into college.

After leaving the Tropic Zone, we walked around outside and saw some swimming birds.

and pigeons

and turtles, all lined up on a log.

We also saw a duck

and we tried to see the Red Pandas, but they were sleeping in the trees and it was hard to see them.

The snow monkeys were also sleeping

as were the polar bears.

What lazy zoo animals!!

We did see a sea lion

who was obviously a camera whore as he snuck into every picture I tried to take of this bird.

Then we went to the penguin house!

It was also feeding time here.

We also saw some puffins.

and a duck was randomly swimming with the puffins.

Outside, we saw the snow monkeys that weren't sleeping: a baby monkey and its guardian.

Tam and I sat on a bench because we were tired of walking around for a photo op.

We then went to the petting zoo!
The entrance to the petting zoo has this carving above it of a young boy being attacked by the animals.

We saw some birds again (including a peacock)

and bunnies (and some kid who was sticking his arm in their habitat, trying to touch them).

This is how I look with bunny ears.

Then we went to see the animals we could actually pet!

I don't know what kind of animal is in the above picture, but I thought it looked really cool.

I fed a cow!

And in another pen, we saw some goats.

I think this last one is pretty and wise looking. Tam doesn't.

Then we saw one of my favorite animals: pigs!!

We finished our zoo tour and sat on a rock in Central Park.

And finally, we walked around Central Park

and took pictures of strangers.... It was great!

I had a great time in NYC and I thought seeing all the animals was really cool! Tam and Kristen are wonderful and I hope I see them again soon.

And did I mention that Tam got me gifts?

She got me a shirt (in the right size and my favorite color!) and soft maple sugar. Mmmm.
(and note that I still haven't changed my Puntabulous calendar to April! OK, just did it.)

Thanks for meeting with me Tam!
Now who do I meet next....