I "met" Josh back in 1998 when I crowd surfed into his arms during Sick Boy at a Social D show. I said to him "Boy am I glad you're here to catch me!" My what arms he had. He said to me "Me too, but I'd rather not see you up here again. Let's keep both feet on the floor from here on out." He had such a good demeanor about him.
We didn't become friends until a few years later, but like most of you that I know through the board, I was only starting to become friends with him when I left for SF. Josh always kept in touch though - sometimes needing legal advice, sometimes letting me know he was heading out west, or just letting me know that he's up for hanging out when I was coming back into town. He came to my going away party, my east coast wedding gathering and was always up for chatting when I made it back to the club.
One 72 hour stretch in particular will always stick out for me though, and the Director and I were on the phone reminiscing about this yesterday.
I made a triumphant return to DC in the fall of 2007 and was excited to see the old crew again. After watching a United match with Brennser, I met up at Duffy's with GGW for pre-drinks before we were to go see Kings of Leon and BRMC. The Director crashes the party at Duffy's and after sizing us up, decides he's going to join us for the show. He spends about 20 minutes trying to scalp a ticket, then Josh calls him over and ends his misery sending him on his way to join us in the VIP section. The rest of the details can be found in another thread, but me and the Director are six years into an endless party that started that night thanks to the generosity of Josh.
Fast forward 48 hours and Halo 3 comes out. A number of the club staff and a few boardies had been holding game night once a week, where we would all get together online no matter where we lived to play some Halo - and by this point we were all over the country. For a number of months it was Halo 2. I had been invited to Microsoft's Halo 3 launch party and invited Josh but he turned me down as he didn't like the corporate stuff, but said that we could meet up afterwards to play. He picked me up, we stopped at 7-11 for some caffeine and sugar and proceeded to play Halo 3 for a ridiculous number of hours at his place. By around 4:30-5AM we had to call it a night (morning?), so I was going to call a cab. Josh would have none of it and he drove me back into the city as the sun was coming up. He was always going that extra mile for people.
We kept playing Halo a few times a month for a couple of years until I dropped out, as mentioned earlier. Damn it, what I'd give for one more game night, one more show, one last email asking for help with his intellectual property.
And thank you all for sharing your stories - I'm known for being a-motional about stuff like this, but this one hurts more than just about anything I've faced in my life - they're all helping me cope.
