Periods & Erexclamation points

You know, us human beings are pretty funny.

I've always found it so strange how women behave during "that time of the month".  Now, I'm not talking about being bitchy, or cranky, or the usual stereotypes that go along with menstruation.  I'm talking about the lengths women will go to hide the fact they are using a tampon.

Before we go any further, "tampon" is and has always been a funny word.  Go ahead.  Say it out loud a few times.  I can wait.

Finished?  Good.  Let's keep this flowing.

There's a commercial on TV right now that shows a girl taking her purse to the bathroom and suggesting that she needs her debit card in there.  That's a lot of stumbling of words when she could just say, "my cooch is bleeding and the tampon needs changing."

The Majestic Lady Missile

Okay, that might be a bit too straightforward for most people, but I've never bled out of my penis, and if I started today I'd probably call CNN about it. 

And that's the difference between men and women right there.  Or is it?

I would suggest that an erection for a man is along the same lines as a period is for a woman.  No, really, when we have a boner we don't let the rest of the room know about it.  We try to cover it up and hide the fact that someone might find out about it.  Or heaven forbid they see it!  And they realize it's much smaller than we tell everyone it is.

However, when a man is alone with a woman and has an erection he has no problem telling her about it.  Similarly, when that man pulls his package out of the wrapping to do something with it, the woman has no hesitation with telling the man that she's on the rag... errr, on her "monthly friend".  Sorry ladies, I'll try to be more sensitive.  Don't worry, I know I'll fail too.

Of course this whole bleeding thing really does separate the women from the boys.  Once again, if I woke up this morning and Le Canard (the name of my junk, all guys do it) was quacking out blood I wouldn't leave the house.  No debate.

So why is it we can spew out all kinds of information that nobody cares about all through the day (and if you wanna argue this, just read some of your friends' Facebook pages) yet we can't share what's going on with our special areas.  Is it really that embarrassing to be bleeding from your vagina when it happens to every other woman too?  Chances are 1 in 4 women in the room are on their period right now. 

And any man in the room could have an erection at any time.  Big deal... errr, that wasn't supposed to be a pun.  But I'm not about to edit it out either.

So the next time you're menstruating, tell someone.  Share that wonderful, healthy, natural news with them.  Unless they're eating.  Hungry bellies and bloody cunts don't mix.

- Ryan

RRFC (Retro Ryan Fan Club) #7 - Jam Packed... or Pack Jammed!



Newsletter #10  July 1999

Ryan Fan Club Newsletter #10 was the biggest newsletter I had done yet.  It was two pages long, and was stuffed with more writing than I had ever done in any newsletter previously.

And yet it was one of the easiest ones to produce, because 90% of it was memories that had been sent in by Fan Club Members who were trying to win a VHS of 1987: The Ryan Fan Club Motion Picture.  The victory went to "Cheeks" (read the newsletter to find out who Cheeks is).

The spring of 1999 was wasted in my friend Adam's basement.  We thought we were wrestlers and did our best to copy the WWF moves in his basement.  I was a huge Bret Hart fan and often applied the Sharpshooter to my friend James DeMoss.  Crofton took a bad knee to the chin once that nearly knocked him out.  Adam had a jug full of water spit in his face.  And Chris would show up randomly at times and kick us in the balls, just so he could shout "STUNNER!"

page 2!

Basement wrestling was a lot of fun, and I'm surprized nobody ever got seriously hurt from it.  I took a big suplex from Crofton once onto Adam's bed (tell that doesn't sound gay), and the wrestling move made the bed collapse to the floor.  So Adam put some large coffee cans underneath to hold it back up.  Next week, another match with the superstars of wrestling, another big suplex, and the coffee cans were crushed too.

I invented my own submission move called The Shotgun.  You pretty much bent the guy down, sat on his head, and pulled his arms up from behind.  It pulled at the chest muscles and caused a lot of pain.  Well, I was wrestling Adam for the championship and managed to put him in the Shotgun, but he just wouldn't give up.  He was super-determined to be the champ.  If we really were wrestlers, he would've gotten a huge pop from the crowd.  No doubt about it.

Now, I don't know what caused this next part to happen.  I can't remember what I ate that day, or what beer I had been drinking... but I had to fart and couldn't hold it in.

So I farted on Adam's head while he was in the Shotgun.

And it didn't smell nice.

So he tapped out in a hurry, not from the pain but from the stench, and I (known as Ambush) was still the heavyweight champion of the basement wrestling federation... or whatever we used to call it.

- Ryan

If I Ruled The World

This isn't something I think about overly often.  Sure, we've all seen something and said to ourselves, If I ruled the world, I'd do that differently.

So here's what I'd do differently.

I would make bacon a staple in everyone's diet.
Bacon is awesome.  It's just plain wonderful.  Imagine how happy you would be if you just had a little bacon every day.  Just one slice of bacon.  Just for the taste of it, first thing in the morning.  Everyone would be that much happier.  And vegans, sorry, but you're going to have to just fucking take one for the team.  It's important to note that because of bacon's prestige here, the pig would be considered a revered animal across the world.  We would worship and respect it for providing us with such wonderful bacon.

I would legalize prostitution.
Yes I would.  There are many people out there who do not get to have wild lovin'.  Some are because they are far too unattractive to ever get it.  Don't go calling me insensitive, you know you've seen someone on the street before and thought, there is nobody on this planet to love him.  Well, that person should be allowed to pay for sex.  And it should be regulated, safe (both the act and the environment), and consentful.  And my government (realistically it would be an empire) would take a tax from it to ensure the safety.  And then I would drink coffee out of an elaborately decorated gold cup.
And that tax brings us to...

The tax from the people would go towards necessities.
Ladies, imagine if you didn't have to buy tampons because your government (or sexy empire in my case) provided them for you.  And not the shitty kind either.  I'm talking the good Tampax Pearl stuff. 
Fellas, you don't bleed from your penis so I have the next best thing for you. An unlimited supply of unsweetened almonds.  This way, you can always have access to the almond joy you so deserve.

I would lock Coldplay in a box and hide the key.
This one's pretty self explanatory, n'est-ce pas?

I would change the name of Planet Earth to Planet Houston.
In honor of General Zod, the first sole ruler of our planet for a short period of time back in 1981, I would re-name our world to Planet Houston.  And if someone made me a really great deal, I'd let them have Australia.

And just like that, the world would be a better place.
Just think of all that bacon!

- Ryan

RRFC (Retro Ryan Fan Club) #6 - 1987: The Ryan Fan Club Motion Picture

RFC Newsletter #9, June 1999

Long before I made my epic Behind The Fan Club DVD, I tried to make a little home movie for all my fans.  It was something they had been asking for.  Well, they actually suggested I have a public access cable television show, but I figured a little home movie would give me an idea about whether or not I'd enjoy doing that sort of thing.

Ryan Fan Club Newsletter #9 was all about the movie, announcing it was finally finished, and even offering a free copy of the movie in a contest!  Fans could buy the VHS tape for a whopping $8.  Seriously, this movie is now a huge collector's item.  I think only about forty or fifty copies even exist.

Unlike my more recent DVD, 1987:The Ryan Fan Club Motion Picture had very little editing, and isn't available for viewing online.
(You can see some clips from it here and some of it is strung throughout "Behind The Fan Club")

The movie was a labor of love.  It was filmed over three days, and I pretty much borrowed a JVC camcorder from my high school and showed up at the front door of RFC Members' houses to get interviews with them.  The point of the movie was to try and be as random as the RFC Newsletter was. 

I was often asked why I named the movie "1987".  Some fans thought it was an homage to "1984" and how I was getting bigger than Big Brother.  But nope, I named it "1987" because that's what I consider to be the greatest year in history.  It's when Appetite For Destruction and The Princess Bride came out, when Aerosmith made their comeback, and Ronnie was still president of the U.S. of A.

1987: The Ryan Fan Club Motion Picture

The whole movie was pretty long.  Even I had a hard time sitting through it in it's entirety.  But it was so much fun to make!

Paired up with my good buddy Crofton, we piled into his mom's car (named The NeoGeo), and filmed whatever we thought was a good idea at the time.  The wrestling sequence was excellent.

There's some really great interviews with RFC Members Brendon Smith, Adam Thom, Rob Trentadue, Sarah Hutchison, and Ashleigh Forsyth.

There's also some really boring footage of Toxika rolling around on a bed for 2 or 3 minutes while the phone rings in the background.

The movie was further proof that I really had no shame in approaching any random person on the street to get their answer or opinion on any random thought that was going through my head. 

One of the highlights of the entire movie is my interview with some university students down by the water.  The look on their faces when I ask, "So what was your favorite memory from Full House?" was just priceless.

VHS back cover

All in all, the movie was a good learning experience more than anything else.  I can think of at least two people who told me they turned it off within the first ten minutes because it felt like it was taking forever.

And it was.

That was when I learned the importance of editing.  While the RFC Newsletter could be super-random and face every-which-way and seem like there's always something new from any angle, a movie can really only go from start to finish.

You can set an RFC Newsletter down and glance at it later to see it from a fresh perspective.  Once you hit the stop button on your VCR, you forgot all about 1987: The Ryan Fan Club Motion Picture.

- Ryan

"Nin Nin Nin"

So here's something brand new, I know it's small, but so is she right now.  It's the first new poem I've written in over a year.  It's pretty much leading to some new lyrics... so without further adieu...

"Nin Nin Nin" by Ryan Matthew Ewing

I can't speak a thousand languages

I've talked enough in tongues

I have so many messages

My songs haven't all been sung

The smile you give, the joy you wish

When I'm down, I just think of you

Then you laugh and say some gibberish

Does "Nin Nin Nin" mean "I love you"?

I hope you liked it.

RRFC (Retro Ryan Fan Club) #5 - Spring 1999... outta my hands.



RFC Newsletter #7 (April 1999)

Let me be the first to say that it's never a good idea to give me a good idea.
Fuck, a bad idea that sorta sounds good at the time isn't too smart either.

I was gearing up to finish high school in Spring 1999... and I was starting to think I might be able to actually get away with being "Ryan Fan Club" for the rest of my life.  Wait, you mean forgo the idea of going off to college and being creative instead?  Ohhhh shit!

It was right about this time that the Ryan Fan Club really started taking off.  I mean, really, it kinda got out of hand.

There's a great anecdote I used to tell about a girl named Chelsea who worked at HMV.  I was looking to purchase the Labyrinth soundtrack there and asked her if I could get a discount for being famous for doing nothing.  She looked at me like I was a retard, and probably rightfully so, and then asked why I had my own fan club.

There were a lot of people back then who used to ask me that.  "Uh... why do you have your own fan club...?"

Chelsea turned down my request for a discount.  But she did take an RFC Application form from my friend Crofton, probably just to shut us up and get us to leave.  A half hour or so later we bumped into some Ryan-Fans in the mall, so I asked them if they had their membership cards with them.  They said 'yes', so I asked them to go to HMV to try and get a discount with them.

When I got home and checked my e-mail, Chelsea had joined the Ryan Fan Club.

RFC Newsletter announced the movie I was filming, promoted the newly-for-sale RFC Yearbook 1999 (if you ask me nicely enough I'll post it online too), and hinted at titles for a forthcoming Autobiography.  I was surrounding myself with awesome friends and collaborators who would say things like, "you know what would be stupid?  If you wrote your autobiography!  And if people read it!"

So I wrote it.  And people friggin' read it.  I love this planet.  I think I'll stay here a while.

This newsletter also featured the results of the 1st Annual RFC Awards.

And then Newsletter #8 came with even more craziness!  Fans started sending in questions for me to answer... holy sexy butter!  That's fan mail!  Fans started submitting their own poetry for me to share with the rest of the club too!  This newsletter had a great little poem by Quinn Cousineau.  Everything really was turning up cherries for me.

Life was good.

Until next time,

- Ryan



Guns N' Aero - The Greatest Super Group EVER!

I was chatting with my buddy Nick Dewolfe the other day about the usual things... rock n' roll, coffee, beautiful ladies we'd love to love... and we pondered what it would be like if Aerosmith and Guns N' Roses did more than tour together...

Imagine, if you will, a parallel universe.
One in which Steven Tyler never saw Joe Perry making french fries and formed Aerosmith.
Where L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose didn't combine forces to rule the late 80s and early 90s.
An alternate reality with the greatest super-group ever - Guns N' Aero!

And this is what their set list would look like:

1. Nightrain Kept A-Rollin'

2. So F.I.N.E.*

3. Sweet Last Child O' Mine

4. Back Off Bitch's Brew

5. Garden Of Adam's Apple

6. Kings And Rocket Queens

7. Let The Music Do The Knockin' On Heaven's Door

8. Movin' Out To The City

9. Get A Grip In The Ring

ENCORE!

10. Mama Kin

11. Lovin' My Michellevator

12. Chip Away At The Mr. Brownstone

Realistically, this band would do more drugs than possibly exist, start the show four hours late (if at all), and pretty much rule the world.

- Ryan

p.s. - if you can think of any other awesome song title mash-ups for these two, post 'em below.