Ryan's Journal

Back in Los Angeles, and almost on cue the hills went up in flames to greet me. Or at least I hope it was a fire, ’cause if that wasn’t twenty miles of smoke that I drove through then the smog here has gotten about ten thousand times worse. And if it wasn’t enough that a natural disaster was here to welcome me, the hotel I’m staying in is not only surrounded by high walls topped with razor wire, but there are parking spots clearly marked as “Reserved for police”. As always the home of the movie industry finds all manner of ways to entertain.

I’ve been keeping this journal for just over three years now. Cra-zy. What started as an attempt to avoid having to write lots of email while I was traveling in Alaska has now turned into just a general attempt at avoiding having to write email.

In a completely unrelated note, a while back Lynn decided to post some of her favorite and most recently read books online, in the hopes that other people would do the same, and the result was a pretty nice reading list. Not sure if it will work here, but I’ll give it a shot. To post your own recently-read/favorites list, click on the comments link at the top of this entry, then click on the “Reply to this message” link to enter a comment.

• The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. Just finished this one, recommended by Nish. A great story about a man who dies and his experiences upon arriving in heaven. The author also wrote Tuesdays With Morrie, and while that wasn’t a bad book I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much.
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. A great story about an architect who takes on the world. Guaranteed to make you feel at least a little bit cocky, so keep reminding yourself of all the stupid things you’ve done in life while reading it.
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. An even better story than The Fountainhead, with the exception of the hundred page rant by John Galt near the end. Guaranteed to make you feel even cockier than The Fountainhead.
• Into Thin Air Into the Wild (sorry, goofed up the title) by John Krakauer. A great (true) story about a guy who says the hell with society and takes off to live life like some of us would like to do, but few of us have the nerve to do.
• Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat. Based on Mowat’s experience as a field biologist in Canada studying wolves, a hilarious take on beauracracy that also includes recipes for preparing cream-of-mouse.
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. The closest Hemingway ever got to writing a story that doesn’t depress the hell out of you, and one of my all time favorites. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the book, it’s about this old man, and the sea.
• Contact by Carl Sagan. I just started this one, but thus far I’m liking it even more than the movie (which I enjoyed). Also, Ellie is a hottie.
• Shogun by James Clavell. The Asia Saga (starting with Shogun, and spanning four hundred years of East-Asian history) is a great read. Clavell writes stories filled with mystery, adventure, romance and intrigue, but adds enough historical context to remove that “kind of trashy” feeling you might get from similar books.

That’s my contribution. Anyone else want to add to the list?

Wedding Crashers is seriously funny. And Scrabble is now my least favorite game ever – 84 points for “tarsals”? C’mon now.

The word from Burbank is that I’m back to work on August 15. The nights of bar hopping in Walnut Creek, driving Nish crazy in the Marina, and failing to be a contender in basketball (both mini and standard) are temporarily coming to an end. The positives: cool co-workers, a nice income, and access to the studio lot and its many beautiful actresses (who will pay me no attention whatsoever). Negatives: office space is at a premium, so it’s back to the cold, dark, window-less storage room that I sometimes slept in throughout 2003, and the horror that comes with living in a town where police helicopters fly by at all hours and traffic barely slows when vehicles randomly burst into flames on the side of the interstate. Ah well, it’s only 153 days until Antarctica.

In the past couple of months there have been a (tiny) handful of requests to use some of my photos for commercial projects, and since I’ve got no illusions about being an artist I was thrilled to have the chance of seeing some of the stuff in print. The first one, which was used in an advertisement for an Italian consulting firm, went to the printer today, and I think it actually looks kind of cool:

And in case anyone is wondering, Google translates the caption as “WE ARE AGAINST THE HUNTING, BUT WE WANT YOUR HEAD!”. It’s not quite “All your base are belong to us”, but it’s still catchy.

For unknown reasons the sleep schedule has inverted lately, and for the past two nights things have gotten so ridiculous that I’ve been able to watch the sunrise prior to going to bed. It’s a bit like being in college again, only now I get to take naps in a futon rather than trying to get comfortable in the goofy chairs with tray tables that they used in the engineering classrooms.

Aaron is back in town, and calling upon his uncanny ability to gather large groups he pulled together a pack of seven for some bar hopping in Walnut Creek last night. Crogan’s was (thankfully) avoided, yet we still managed to discover a joint with a rubber-kneed techno DJ, a bar offering $2 Coronas, a Kenny-friendly establishment, and some place that served us an embarrassingly large and fruity bowl of cherries, rock candy, and alcohol.

I didn’t end up going to sleep until nearly 5:00 AM last night, and possibly as a result of sleep deprivation my dreams were all over the place. In one I was JFK, and not just some actor playing JFK, but the actual, bonafide JFK. And I knew that I was gonna invade Cuba and get assassinated and everything, but mostly I was just enjoying being President during the 60’s. How cool must that have been?

In another dream I was back in Los Angeles, and for some reason was working for Warner Brothers but my desk was in the gardens at the Getty Museum. Just as I was getting ready to go home for the day a female friend came by and asked me the truly evil question “Do you notice anything different about me?” (Note to women: don’t ever do that. Just tell us what you want us to notice and then we’ll compliment you on it). Following exactly how the scenario would play out in real life, I got absolutely reamed for failing to answer the question correctly.

The magic dream marathon ended abrubtly at 8:15 when the phone rang, so sadly I never got to send a man to the moon or find out what crazy scheme I would have concocted to get out of the doghouse with my LA friend. It’s a shame; it would have been pretty cool to meet Marilyn Monroe.

More than two-thirds of the photos from the 1999 Galapagos trip never got scanned in, so the project during the past couple of days has been getting those online. They’re now mostly all scanned in. In other news, Warner Brothers called and Godfather-like made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, so the retirement may be (briefly) ending sometime in the next couple of weeks.

The inaugural meeting of the Brother-Sister Club last night ended up being a surprisingly fun night out. Despite a lost car, shuffleboard addictions, wayward disco ball reflections, and confusion over the actual identity of the man/woman known only as “Lindsay”, I’m very much looking forward to the next meeting. There isn’t much else of note going on — I broke down and applied for a job a few weeks ago, but luckily the position was apparently filled before they got my resume. There may be a short road trip in the future, although the possibility of facing July 4th traffic leads me to believe it won’t start until at least the 5th.

By way of Matt, some really amazing photos from Africa.

Occasionally an image from the site or a link to the site shows up in an odd place. Here’s this month’s winner of the “how did it end up there?” award.

Hint: scroll 3/4 of the way down the page and look for a picture with “©2004 W. Ryan Holliday” in the bottom right corner.

It’s raining today, as it has done at least once during nearly every week going back to October. Until this year I can’t recall ever seeing rain in California except between October and April; I sort of assumed that the man upstairs just kind of turned a shut-off valve somewhere and made it so that you never had to think about what to do this weekend in case of rain or where to hold the event in case of rain. It sort of became like an instinct, and now that the weather instinct is failing I’m finding myself glued to the window, looking at the astounding sight of water falling out of the sky and thinking “this is just weird.”

One can only wonder if some of the other California-isms that I’ve taken as gospel might be disproved. Perhaps I’ll someday be able to afford real-estate, people will come pouring out of Jamba Juice and demand some Dunkin’ Donuts, and in the next election the current politicians will be tossed out in favor of a bunch of old, white, religious Republicans who ride to power on a platform of stomping out medical marijuana and gay marriage…

Went to the Giants game with Aaron and seven other folks and watched the Indians trounce the home team, including a five run outburst in the ninth inning, all with two outs. Afterwards, on the long walk from the stadium to Sam Wo’s, we passed a homeless guy holding up a cardboard sign:

“Family kidnapped by ninjas. Need $$$ for karate lessons.”

Also worth remembering was Miner’s rant about the guy sitting in his seat (which went on for at least a half hour and scared several people out of the stadium bathroom), Nish’s infatuation with the smell of laundry, the waitress at Sam Wo’s refusing to take orders until she’d gotten a round of high-five’s, the round-trippers, and Kenny’s baffling inability to operate the BART entry gate. A classic evening.