Ryan's Journal

Here’s a big wrap-up from the last couple of weeks:

Last weekend I flew home, having negotiated with the boss for a day off on Monday (the incident with the painters and a Friday night shift that lasted until 3:15 in the morning were solid negotiating points for me). Nadia’s birthday wish was that I attend her party and “not be able to drive home”, and I happily obliged. The Bay Bridge closed for repairs at 1:00 AM, so sadly the night ended a bit earlier than I would have liked, but it was a fun evening and Aaron managed to get me, Chi, and my rented Ford Escape home without incident. Saturday and Sunday weren’t particularly noteworthy with the exception of the best dinner ever at Chow, some Balderdash stupidity (“…about a French squid and his companion, a whale…”), and the lamentations of the third member of the buddy triad, re-dubbed “the Dot” for his missing-in-action hijinks.

I flew out under perfect skies on Monday afternoon, only to hear a warning from the captain halfway to LA that everyone should “hold on” as we steered through storms and watched lightning blaze just outside of the plane’s windows. After landing a rainstorm of biblical proportions greeted me, apparently brought here by an unknowing rain god who was visiting from New York. The evening out was highlighted by Audrey’s apt description of someone who doesn’t own a car in LA (“*censored*”) and Josh’s confirmation that my original guess at the definition of “agro” wasn’t a sign of brain damage.

After navigating through downtown amidst streets closed due a Mission Impossible 3 shooting I again managed to meet up with Josh on Wednesday, and along with Audrey and a rotating cast of music industry folks we spent far too long at the Rainbow. I stumbled home around 2:00, making for an interesting day at work six hours later. Last night’s excitement was a dinner-and-a-movie showing of Lemony Snicket’s, during which I planned to refrain from drinking and failed miserably.

And because it is completely unrelated to anything mentioned above, here’s a nice iceberg picture:

Audrey took me to my first opera performance last night, a recital by Cecilia Bartoli, who is apparently the top dog of the opera world. For a guy who likes his bars with sawdust on the floor opera is a bit highbrow, but I’ll give anything a chance. That said, whether this lady was that good, or whether the music just worked for me, it was pretty much off the hook. I’m not a particularly sentimental guy — on a manliness scale ranging from Richard Simmons to Samuel L. Jackson I’d be in the Liam Neeson range — but during one particularly amazing song there was an actual danger of moist eyes. I’m not saying tears, but there was at least the beginnings of emotion. The lady had talent.

The new roommate has been demonstrating amazing tolerance by putting up with me on various excursions around LA. Unlike past times where I’ve lived in this city, this time it’s actually been fun. A couple of weeks ago we hit the Rainbow, a metal bar on Sunset. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about metal, but Audrey was pointing out the various folks who were roaming about. Last night’s entertainment was the Foxfire Room, followed up with a trip to the Wine Bistro on Ventura, somewhere where she claims to have not only danced on the bar, but been reduced to a state where the owner had to drive her home on multiple occasions. JB, the owner, did not deny these stories.

Upcoming events include a visit to one of her more famous client’s house to install a recording studio, and a concert on Monday by Cecilia Bartoli — I know nothing about opera, but in addition to being a metal-head Audrey’s got three years of training in classical opera. I still am and will always be a northern California boy, but at least for the moment the city of angels isn’t looking quite so bad.

The reason I’m back at Warner Brothers is to upgrade software on several of their servers. Over the past six weeks I’ve done numerous trial runs on development servers, created a step-by-step plan for the upgrade of the production servers, and in general tried to set things up so that the upgrade would happen without incident. All of the supporting software was loaded onto my PC and ready to go, my notes were detailed, and I felt good about the whole operation.

Yesterday, after coordinating with teams around the world, the upgrade was set to start at 11:00 AM. I arrived at the building about ten minutes early, and as I was walking to my office noticed a chair that looked really familiar sitting in the hallway, followed by a monitor that looked really familiar, followed by a lot of papers that looked a lot like the notes I had organized on my desk. Upon entering my office I was greeted by two Hispanic guys in painter outfits, and an office in utter disarray; apparently this weekend I was not the only one working. Mildly flustered, I scrambled to get my notes back in order and to set up to work in my boss’ office down the hall. Shifting back and forth between the two offices I finally managed to get the bare minimum necessary copied from my office PC to my laptop, and after about fifteen minutes I was feeling more-or-less ready to go.

Printing up one last item, I returned to the boss’ office only to discover that a third, unseen painter had gone around and shut and locked all office doors. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hi, can you open that office back up? You guys are painting in my office, so I’m trying to work in the boss’ office and I don’t have the key.”

Him: “Yes, I see you working there.”

Me: “Uh, yeah, that’s where I’m working. Can you unlock the door?”

Him: “Yeah, you can work there, no problem. We’re painting. They want us to shut all the doors.”

Me: “Right. But can you open this door?”

Him: “Yeah, I don’t have that key. I’m just the painter.”

Much fun and one building security guard later I was madly scrambling to get the upgrade back on track. The scheduled checkpoints where I was supposed to give status reports to everyone were particularly entertaining, and made even more fun when the painters showed up with several buckets of turpentine and sent me on a high that I’ve still not come down from. But in the end everything seemed to be working, and the roommate humored me when I returned home and demanded we get margaritas. Several drinks and one DVD rental later I was sleeping on the living room couch, with evil dreams of painters and software dancing through my head.

The top photo is one I discovered back in 2003, taken from the World Beard and Moustache Championships. The bottom photo is from this year’s incarnation. I’m not sure if it’s more disturbing that Sgt. Pepper and the Monopoly Guy are still parading around looking exactly the same or that I recognized them immediately two years later.

Last weekend’s excitement was the North Beach Pub Crawl. Very fun, but… ouch. What I do remember of the evening includes Marina Ho serving us drinks, a heated debate with LSU chick about Boston accents, and the walk to Wo’s. A voice mail from Chi’s co-worker the next day (“Hey, thanks for stopping by last night. Just checking to see if you and your friends are OK.”) confirms the fact that even at our best behaviour we weren’t in an ideal state of mind.

Too much working during the past week, although the problems I’ve been chasing have been interesting. Also, as a random aside, has anyone else noticed that when a hurricane or any other weather phenomenom shows up that requires some meteorogical knowledge to discuss, the good-looking female weather reporters that normally give the TV weather reports are suddenly replaced by crusty old men?

Nothing new, but it’s halfway through September with no pictures, so here’s my favorite shot from the Alaska trip in 2002.

While I was coming back from lunch today, the power went out, an event which is usually not worth writing about. Like most other people, I sat around outside, ate my tostada, and waited to see if I’d be lucky enough to be able to head home and make up for the sleep lost to insomnia last night. Then it hit me – my car keys were still in my cubicle, twelve floors up. As usual, God was playing games with me. After an hour of waiting for the power to return I figured the boss could no longer complain if I left, so after borrowing a flashlight (all of the emergency lights failed and the stairwells were pitch black), I trekked up twelve hot and stuffy flights of stairs, providing entertainment to those folks still coming down, each of whom felt it necessary to laugh like a jolly fat man when told that I had left my keys in the office during lunch. Little did I realize that the gods wouldn’t think humiliation was enough, and that only by turning the power on literally seconds after I opened the door from the twelfth floor staircase would they be satisfied.

It’s not easy being amusement for the gods, but I suppose someone has to do it.

Matt shows up again in this week’s King Kong Production Diary. His role in the movie world seems vastly more interesting (and important) than mine.

A sequel to Buddypalooza fell through but was replaced with a night of a few pieces of sushi and an unhealthy number of bottles of sake. Tonight’s excitement has sadly been limited to updating the journal a bit, per Adeline’s suggestion that it’s not completely obvious where to find the comments link.

The job continues on, and remains pretty decent. No new excitement on the lot, although I did discover the “morgue” room next to the Poseiden Adventure set the other day — the bodies are disturbingly life-like, and my first thought was that it was just a bunch of extras in make-up taking a rest between shots. It was only when the same extras were in the exact same positions the next day that my tiny brain grasped the concept.

Here’s a belated recap of Buddypalooza:

Friday

After sleeping far too little on Thursday night, getting to work early on Friday, and eating far too much at an all-you-can-eat sushi bar in Glendale (Todai, not bad for $13), I escaped the clutches of the corporate world at 3:30 and started the 375 mile slog to the Bay Area. Fine Irish music and an ongoing news story about a beached whale carcass in Half Moon Bay were entertainment enough to keep me from losing my mind. Upon arrival the triad headed off to Pyramid’s for pizza, oddly-shaped calamari, and a few pitchers of apricot ale (aka the happy beer). That was followed by a trip to dirty Dan’s, highlighted by Paul Will’s philosophising about the advantages of small women, and the Goob’s conversation with a girl in line outside:

Her: “So is there a band inside?” (music is blaring)

Aaron: “No. Actually, it’s usually dead silent in there. But, you know, that’s cool, ’cause they have books you can borrow and stuff. And sometimes on Tuesdays they do Shakespeare readings.”

Saturday

The day of unending fun. Both Chi and Aaron took it upon themselves to call me relatively early in the day, thus ensuring I wouldn’t catch up on sleep. Chi and I headed to Chow’s for lunch, feasting on the delightful cuisine and enjoying the aesthetically pleasing restaurant staff. A quick trip to the happiness store to visit the dog, fish, and action figures was followed by a commandment from God to purchase and consume McDonald’s sundays. That finished with, we grabbed tri-tip sandwiches and lotto scratchers and headed home to meet Aaron. Following a Scrabble debacle (“ja”, I won) we caught a matinee showing of the 40 Year Old Virgin, then met the tall guy at Mudville for mini-basketball and more food. The options thereafter were a party full of girls getting ready to head back to college or else Scrabble and Karate Kid 2. Miyagi and Sato were not to be denied.

Sunday

The plan for Sunday was to meet everyone at Sam Wo’s for lunch and then enjoy a leisurely drive back to LA. I should have known better. Wo’s was followed by a trip to the Nish Bar in Berkeley, where conversation ranged from a missing belt loop to a dog named Chicken to the member of the gourd family most suited to be crammed into an orifice. Surprisingly we weren’t kicked out. The stroll through Berkeley that followed led us to Jaime Hill, where Jaime demonstrated the proper technique for executing a drunken forward roll downhill, across a sidewalk, and into traffic. When finally I got on the road the sun was sinking, but news of the impending hurricane kept me awake for the drive home.

It’s mildly disturbing how easy it was to slip back into the work routine, in the same way that someone who was on a diet for ten months and then consumed a pint of ice cream at one sitting would be disturbed; like there is something inside of me that was meant to do this sort of thing. I hope that’s not the case, as I would much rather have something inside of me that is meant to roam the earth like Kane from Kung Fu.

In news that might be vaguely interesting, the report from the lot is that the Poseidon Adventure, most of the TV shows, and a movie whose name I can’t remember are all in full swing. One of the backlot sets was in use yesterday with at least a hundred extras and twenty vehicles filming some sort of downtown scene, but sadly not only can I not remember this movie’s title, but I wasn’t daring enough to even figure out who the lead actors were. I must be getting old.

And for no reason other than that I was looking at this photo today and it made me happy, here’s a bunch (herd? flock?) of penguins to enjoy:

Some quick notes:

• I’m settled down in a house in Studio City with two female roommates. I know. One of them has been a musician for years, jammed with Motley Crue, and wows me with her other stories. Two and a half bottles of wine last night brought out a lot of stories. The other is Canadian and is making a pilgrimmage to Vancouver this weekend.
• While shopping today I actually heard someone utter the phrase “that really chapped my ass”. I was floored.
• In addition to the (flawed) debate over Intelligent Design, the Onion offers a look into the next battle over an alternate view of the theory of gravitation, Intelligent Falling.
• The transition back to working after a nearly eleven month retirement hasn’t been as bad as I feared it would be. More traumatic was the search for a gym membership and the accompanying realization that a former collegiate runner is having trouble holding seven minute mile pace for more than a few miles. It’s embarrassing.

“Look at me! I’m playing tennis! Ace! Ace!”. And for those whose sobriety level might prevent them from remembering that moment, there is video available.