RRFC (Retro Ryan Fan Club) #8 - Summertime '99 begins!

RFC Newsletter #11 August 1999

In the summer of '99 I was feelin' fine.  (Or is that F.I.N.E.?)
Either way, it was a great time to be a Ryan Fan Club Member because I was about to start doing Newsletters every other week. 

That's right.  High school was just finishing up and the RFC Members wanted to know what was going to happen to me after secondary school had finished up.  Would I be going to college?  University?  On tour as the opening act for Jesse & The Rippers?

I had absolutely no plans of going to college.  I'd seen too many people waste their money with a large debt to repay. 
*Too many = my four or five friends who took radio broadcasting courses in college.

Doing the RFC Newsletters every other week was my way of letting the fans know I'd always be around.  I wasn't about to leave them Ryan-less just because it was summertime.    Fans were delighted to find the Newsletters arriving in their mailboxes.  This was really one of my first lessons in finance.  The newsletters themselves were relatively cheap to produce.  After all, it was a one-sheet 8.5x14 piece of paper (for now anyway).  The shipping is what dug a whole in my pockets.  Believe it or not, I sent so many newsletters through the mail in the summer of 1999 that Canada Post actually sent me a Christmas card that year addressed to "Ryan Fan Club".  When one of the newsletters had a wrong address on it and it was returned, the postman knocked on my door and asked, "Is there a... uh... Ryan Fan Club... living here?"

Newsletter #12, Summer 1999

The whole thing started getting out of town, as opposed to just out of hand, by this point.  Friends of mine were living in Belleville now (don't ask where that is, it's really not important) and they started signing up RFC Members there too.

It was then that I realized I needed to go online.

The Ryan Fan Club needed a website.

But that's getting a little ahead of ourselves.  I know, I know, what's wrong with a little head... but we gotta keep this journey in order.  Or at least some kind of an order that makes sense.

In Newsletter #12 I finally announced what many had been asking - or dreaming - for: I had started writing my autobiography. 

Keep in mind that in the summer of '99 I still didn't own a computer.  All of my communication was done on the phone.  All of my porno was in magazines.  And everything I did for the Fan Club was by hand, with an ink pen, on paper.  So I wrote the autobiography by hand, and enlisted the help of Crofton and Peter Fairley to get it typed up and edited for me.  Those guys are great.  The book, if you can call it that, was about sixteen pages long and was a nice little glimpse into my personal life.  I was never too convinced that people would buy it, but they fucking did - it's been re-drafted twice more since, and the last time was in 2004.  But back in 1999 it was a test to see if the Fan Club members would be interested in just about anything with my name on it.

R. Horny: An Autoryography

The book got pretty personal, talking about the girls I had crushes on who overlooked me, how I felt as an overweight child, and my connection with my cat Toxika.  It was called "R. Horny: An Autoryography" and it was really a lot of fun.

I was often asked if the title was a play on "Oh Henry", but I was actually paying homage to "M. Hohner" who made those wonderful harmonicas I always carried around in my pockets. 

It's hard to believe I ever found the time to write my life story, even if it was just a short version.  I was working full-time that summer, and doing my best to meet as many new girls as possible.  There were a few that had been catching my eye, and one who just kept coming around.  But that's a story for another year... most of 2000 actually.

And we're still in the good times of 1999.  See you soon.