captain childish (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sailed) wrote,@ 2008-01-04 16:42:00 |
 |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sample AIM Log - Bam Margera & Ryan Dunn
thewoofcafe (As Ryan Dunn): Now was a hell of a time for Ryan to be reminded of why he had been avoiding Pennsylvania, in the first place. For the last decade of his life, Bam's home had been his home, too, no matter where he was living. They only 'officially' lived together while filming a series, sure, but Ryan was there like a dirty shirt, which was to say, always present. In fact, checking the drawers in the room he and Angie would be sharing (his old room, which had only been dubbed 'his' as a formality), he found a few of his own, old dirty shirts. None of which he missed, of course, until he realized he had been missing them all this time. Suddenly, it made him feel bitter and disappointed in Bam for not having sending them along sooner.
When he had taken his extended vacation from West Chester, he had been careful to make sure Bam had all of his stuff back. The box of which, coincidentally, was also hiding in his old room.
The guest room. He was just a guest. A guest with his girlfriend. (He was angry at her, too, he decided. She had immediately run off with Missy, as soon as they arrived, to do girl things. Wedding things. Whatever chicks did for that.)
The bed was made far too neatly. It was a nice illusion if you were staying in the house for the first time, but Ryan suspected trickery. There was no way in Hell that he'd believe this was Bam's doing; the whole thing - the dust-free surfaces, ironed sheets, mints on the fucking pillows - reeked of April. Ryan loved her, of course, and even this offense couldn't ruin her position as his surrogate mother, but the state of the room bothered him. His own room had to be tidied up for his arrival. This was his home and, no matter how many invitations and pleas he received from its current residents, he was no longer welcome in it. If it was clean, that meant he was obligated to leave it the way he found it. When he left, again. In only two more days.
Exhausted, he collapsed back onto the mattress. The force of his bounce sent a mint flying onto the floor, where it settled after an audible crack. Yeah, he thought. That was sort of how he felt, too. Maybe he should have come earlier, for the bachelor party, instead of the actual event. At least there, no one would blame him for drinking himself into a stupor.
Me (As Bam Margera: Much to his surprise, one of the things Bam had learned about weddings in the past few weeks was that weddings equaled a unequivocal absence of time with the bride. In the last year, he'd seen a lot of Missy. Much more of her, in a condensed amount of time, than he had in their entire friendship preceding it. In the past month, not so much. They were only alone at night, in his room that Missy and April had seen fit to gut and clean every inch of, one day when he was out. (It was only just starting to return to its former state of messiness. They had thrown out a lot of his "junk," most of which really was junk, but it was the principle. The room didn't seem the same without his random notes and matchbooks from bars all over the tristate area.)
The rest of the time, there was always someone around. It almost reminded Bam of something old-fashioned - a need to chaperone the bride and groom and make sure they didn't get up to anything. When they were together, the togetherness included one or more members of one or more family. When they were out, it was always with an overabundance of friends. It seemed like everyone either one of them had ever known had rolled into West Chester at some point in the last month. Even when they appeared to be alone during the day, there was a camera crew lurking barely out of sight, capturing whatever it could for the show that was keeping Bam sane.
And then, when they weren't on film, with friends, or in the company of their blood relations, they were separated. Bam had too much editing to do, but Missy's plate seemed even more full with the parts of the wedding that didn't include him. They kissed and said good morning for the camera, they kissed and said good morning for each other, and then, most days, they came to a fork in the road.
Today was like most days, the time between the good mornings and the separation punctuated by Ryan's arrival, sub-punctuated by April's gleeful explosion at the sight of him, and the subsequent tour of what little had changed since he was last at the castle. In the meantime, Bam and Missy changed their greetings to goodbyes, and she left with Ryan's girl in tow, to meet her sister, have lunch, and otherwise vacate the premises for the rest of the day. An hour ago, April had poked her head into Bam's editing room to let him know she was leaving to rendezvous with them, and five minutes ago, Bam had glanced at the clock and realized, somehow, an entire three hours had passed since his mother ushered Ryan off to the upstairs.
Something was off, on more than one level. For one, why wasn't Ryan banging around somewhere? There could be an easy explanation. Someone else milling around the house could have accosted him. He could have had a narcoleptic moment, and fallen asleep. Or, there could be the harder explanation, the one Bam was most suspicious of, which said Ryan was being Weird. And why had it taken him three hours to get out of his little hole, and go see the other man? Again, there could be simple answers. He did easily lose track of time in front of his computer. He could have been waiting for Ryan to find him first. But Bam was suspicious of himself, as well. He was pretty sure he was being Weird, too, and in a house constantly trekked through by this many people, he couldn't afford to seem that way.
That was the mentality that brought him up to Ryan's room to open the door without knocking, and stick his torso in. "Aw, dude." So this was what Missy and April had gotten up to, in here. It looked like a hotel suite. "They fucked your room up, too?"
thewoofcafe: If he could have, Ryan would have taken the narcoleptic route and passed out, then and there. Angie had offered to bring some sleeping pills, citing all the times in the last week that she had, upon getting up to pee at three in the morning, found him glued to the TV, with wide, bloodshot eyes. He let her, even though pills weren't his style, only to find that what she meant by 'sleeping pills' was Tylenol PM. Not exactly prescription strength stuff. Whatever, if he couldn't sleep here, at least there were plenty of things he knew he could do. And one thing he knew that he could absolutely not, under any circumstances. But it was only a few nights, so if he tried his best, maybe he wouldn't think about that one thing. It was only one thing, after all.
If he wanted to, he could play pool at midnight. He could probably play video games with Brandon. He could drink enough beers to make getting into a fist fight with Novak seem like a really good time-waster. All in all, he could stay occupied. Keep busy. Distracted.
Oh. Or his one and only off-limits activity could peek its head into the room, thereby erasing all the activities he had only just committed to memory. "Yeah." He sent his answer towards the ceiling. His voice was hoarse. Had it really been that long since he was talking to someone? More likely, he had just finished a cigarette, but upon a self-inspecting pat down, he couldn't find even so much as a matchbox on him.
For a split second, he panicked and sat up very fast. Somehow, he had managed to make himself forget about the regular media circus at Bam's heels, earlier that day. They were probably tagging along, now, to get some raw, best-friends-renunited shit on film. Something personal and touching for the MTV generation to ooh and ahh over. Goddammit. He was going to have to say something witty, now, wasn't he? Any reality show, granted, was staged, but even in his brief encounter with the film crew, he could tell that there was something so much more forced about this one. Besides the obvious, anyway. "What happened to my old sheets?" Not exactly tagline or catch phrase worthy, but he didn't care. They - maybe even Bam - would probably just edit him out, later.
Me: "April chucked 'em." The door swung open the rest of the way, to reveal an empty hallway behind Bam. And then it swung closed on the same empty hallway, with only Bam on the inside. Unless the crew had recently discovered a way to be not only invisible, but silent, they were alone, and Bam was relieved that he had made it from his editing room to this one, without anyone stopping him.
With the exception of the low thump of the bass from a very loud stereo somewhere outside, the house was pretty quiet. Where Bam was concerned, the TV part of the day was already over. They would follow Missy and April around for most of...whichever thing they were doing now (Bam had a hard time keeping most of the wedding planning steps straight), and then they were done. There was definitely some truth in the perception that this piece was more staged than usual. A lot of the "pre-wedding" footage was shot yesterday. A complete farce.
"She threw out a whole buncha shit. The whole house's gonna be gone when Missy and me get back." From their honeymoon, which they wouldn't embark on for a few days. Bam had wondered, a couple of times, if it wasn't strange to spend your wedding night, and the next night, and maybe even the next night, still in the company of everyone in town. Every time, the thought had been fleeting. He liked it here, he liked these people. Missy had gotten a lot of what she wanted, so if he wanted to delay the trip for a couple days, that was what they were doing.
thewoofcafe: "Eh." Ryan shrugged and dropped onto his side, this time with less of a violent bounce. He wasn't going to act, if he didn't have to. "You still gotta few days to bolt it down." Well. Overact, anyway, which is what he would have had to do for the camera. Yeah, it had been nice to see Bam, a couple hours ago, but with a lense thrust in his face, it had to be a much bigger event than he was hoping for. Back when the idea to do a wedding show was first conceived, he had promised to be around, here and there. He didn't feel guilty for lying. Sometimes, he thought it would be okay if everyone forgot about him. Bam could always get another sidekick. When Novak wore out his welcome, there would be Missy.
And even if that didn't work out (which, out of spite, Ryan was sure that it would), they were all still pretty young. There were still places to go, people to meet.
"Tell Ape she's on my shit list," he warned his friend, who was spending a suspicious amount of time lingering at the door. If things were normal - and like hell they were - Bam would be lying down next to him, hours ago. "It was fine the way it was, prob'ly like...a day ago before you told her I was coming." That's what he hoped, anyway. His stomach was in for a sickening flop if he knew this wasn't the first time his room had been offered to company.
Me: Furthering the abnormality of the situation, a weird role reversal had taken place: Ryan couldn't find his cigarettes anywhere, but Bam produced both a lighter and a lose smoke from his back pocket, and lit it. If Ryan asked, he wouldn't be the first person to utter something along the lines of, Since when do you smoke? Hearing that was pretty commonplace, now. Again, in the last month.
Between the cigarette that remained fixed tight between Bam's lips for a second, as he scowled discerningly out the window, to see if he could see who had the stereo out, and the way he was seemingly glued to the door, things were definitely not right. He should have been happier, he thought, but his head was a mess. He needed to know if he would have time to finish the editing that needed to get done by tomorrow. He needed to know if someone would pick up the slack, or if he had to assign someone to it. He needed to know when the women were coming back, how long Ryan was staying, if Ryan planned to be strange tomorrow, if he planned to be strange tomorrow...He needed to know a lot of things.
But even for the answers Ryan might have been able to give him, he didn't ask. "I dunno, she's up in here all the time. She sorta took the place over again."
- end of excerpt -
thewoofcafe (As Ryan Dunn): Now was a hell of a time for Ryan to be reminded of why he had been avoiding Pennsylvania, in the first place. For the last decade of his life, Bam's home had been his home, too, no matter where he was living. They only 'officially' lived together while filming a series, sure, but Ryan was there like a dirty shirt, which was to say, always present. In fact, checking the drawers in the room he and Angie would be sharing (his old room, which had only been dubbed 'his' as a formality), he found a few of his own, old dirty shirts. None of which he missed, of course, until he realized he had been missing them all this time. Suddenly, it made him feel bitter and disappointed in Bam for not having sending them along sooner.When he had taken his extended vacation from West Chester, he had been careful to make sure Bam had all of his stuff back. The box of which, coincidentally, was also hiding in his old room.
The guest room. He was just a guest. A guest with his girlfriend. (He was angry at her, too, he decided. She had immediately run off with Missy, as soon as they arrived, to do girl things. Wedding things. Whatever chicks did for that.)
The bed was made far too neatly. It was a nice illusion if you were staying in the house for the first time, but Ryan suspected trickery. There was no way in Hell that he'd believe this was Bam's doing; the whole thing - the dust-free surfaces, ironed sheets, mints on the fucking pillows - reeked of April. Ryan loved her, of course, and even this offense couldn't ruin her position as his surrogate mother, but the state of the room bothered him. His own room had to be tidied up for his arrival. This was his home and, no matter how many invitations and pleas he received from its current residents, he was no longer welcome in it. If it was clean, that meant he was obligated to leave it the way he found it. When he left, again. In only two more days.
Exhausted, he collapsed back onto the mattress. The force of his bounce sent a mint flying onto the floor, where it settled after an audible crack. Yeah, he thought. That was sort of how he felt, too. Maybe he should have come earlier, for the bachelor party, instead of the actual event. At least there, no one would blame him for drinking himself into a stupor.
Me (As Bam Margera: Much to his surprise, one of the things Bam had learned about weddings in the past few weeks was that weddings equaled a unequivocal absence of time with the bride. In the last year, he'd seen a lot of Missy. Much more of her, in a condensed amount of time, than he had in their entire friendship preceding it. In the past month, not so much. They were only alone at night, in his room that Missy and April had seen fit to gut and clean every inch of, one day when he was out. (It was only just starting to return to its former state of messiness. They had thrown out a lot of his "junk," most of which really was junk, but it was the principle. The room didn't seem the same without his random notes and matchbooks from bars all over the tristate area.)
The rest of the time, there was always someone around. It almost reminded Bam of something old-fashioned - a need to chaperone the bride and groom and make sure they didn't get up to anything. When they were together, the togetherness included one or more members of one or more family. When they were out, it was always with an overabundance of friends. It seemed like everyone either one of them had ever known had rolled into West Chester at some point in the last month. Even when they appeared to be alone during the day, there was a camera crew lurking barely out of sight, capturing whatever it could for the show that was keeping Bam sane.
And then, when they weren't on film, with friends, or in the company of their blood relations, they were separated. Bam had too much editing to do, but Missy's plate seemed even more full with the parts of the wedding that didn't include him. They kissed and said good morning for the camera, they kissed and said good morning for each other, and then, most days, they came to a fork in the road.
Today was like most days, the time between the good mornings and the separation punctuated by Ryan's arrival, sub-punctuated by April's gleeful explosion at the sight of him, and the subsequent tour of what little had changed since he was last at the castle. In the meantime, Bam and Missy changed their greetings to goodbyes, and she left with Ryan's girl in tow, to meet her sister, have lunch, and otherwise vacate the premises for the rest of the day. An hour ago, April had poked her head into Bam's editing room to let him know she was leaving to rendezvous with them, and five minutes ago, Bam had glanced at the clock and realized, somehow, an entire three hours had passed since his mother ushered Ryan off to the upstairs.
Something was off, on more than one level. For one, why wasn't Ryan banging around somewhere? There could be an easy explanation. Someone else milling around the house could have accosted him. He could have had a narcoleptic moment, and fallen asleep. Or, there could be the harder explanation, the one Bam was most suspicious of, which said Ryan was being Weird. And why had it taken him three hours to get out of his little hole, and go see the other man? Again, there could be simple answers. He did easily lose track of time in front of his computer. He could have been waiting for Ryan to find him first. But Bam was suspicious of himself, as well. He was pretty sure he was being Weird, too, and in a house constantly trekked through by this many people, he couldn't afford to seem that way.
That was the mentality that brought him up to Ryan's room to open the door without knocking, and stick his torso in. "Aw, dude." So this was what Missy and April had gotten up to, in here. It looked like a hotel suite. "They fucked your room up, too?"
thewoofcafe: If he could have, Ryan would have taken the narcoleptic route and passed out, then and there. Angie had offered to bring some sleeping pills, citing all the times in the last week that she had, upon getting up to pee at three in the morning, found him glued to the TV, with wide, bloodshot eyes. He let her, even though pills weren't his style, only to find that what she meant by 'sleeping pills' was Tylenol PM. Not exactly prescription strength stuff. Whatever, if he couldn't sleep here, at least there were plenty of things he knew he could do. And one thing he knew that he could absolutely not, under any circumstances. But it was only a few nights, so if he tried his best, maybe he wouldn't think about that one thing. It was only one thing, after all. If he wanted to, he could play pool at midnight. He could probably play video games with Brandon. He could drink enough beers to make getting into a fist fight with Novak seem like a really good time-waster. All in all, he could stay occupied. Keep busy. Distracted.
Oh. Or his one and only off-limits activity could peek its head into the room, thereby erasing all the activities he had only just committed to memory. "Yeah." He sent his answer towards the ceiling. His voice was hoarse. Had it really been that long since he was talking to someone? More likely, he had just finished a cigarette, but upon a self-inspecting pat down, he couldn't find even so much as a matchbox on him.
For a split second, he panicked and sat up very fast. Somehow, he had managed to make himself forget about the regular media circus at Bam's heels, earlier that day. They were probably tagging along, now, to get some raw, best-friends-renunited shit on film. Something personal and touching for the MTV generation to ooh and ahh over. Goddammit. He was going to have to say something witty, now, wasn't he? Any reality show, granted, was staged, but even in his brief encounter with the film crew, he could tell that there was something so much more forced about this one. Besides the obvious, anyway. "What happened to my old sheets?" Not exactly tagline or catch phrase worthy, but he didn't care. They - maybe even Bam - would probably just edit him out, later.
Me: "April chucked 'em." The door swung open the rest of the way, to reveal an empty hallway behind Bam. And then it swung closed on the same empty hallway, with only Bam on the inside. Unless the crew had recently discovered a way to be not only invisible, but silent, they were alone, and Bam was relieved that he had made it from his editing room to this one, without anyone stopping him.
With the exception of the low thump of the bass from a very loud stereo somewhere outside, the house was pretty quiet. Where Bam was concerned, the TV part of the day was already over. They would follow Missy and April around for most of...whichever thing they were doing now (Bam had a hard time keeping most of the wedding planning steps straight), and then they were done. There was definitely some truth in the perception that this piece was more staged than usual. A lot of the "pre-wedding" footage was shot yesterday. A complete farce.
"She threw out a whole buncha shit. The whole house's gonna be gone when Missy and me get back." From their honeymoon, which they wouldn't embark on for a few days. Bam had wondered, a couple of times, if it wasn't strange to spend your wedding night, and the next night, and maybe even the next night, still in the company of everyone in town. Every time, the thought had been fleeting. He liked it here, he liked these people. Missy had gotten a lot of what she wanted, so if he wanted to delay the trip for a couple days, that was what they were doing.
thewoofcafe: "Eh." Ryan shrugged and dropped onto his side, this time with less of a violent bounce. He wasn't going to act, if he didn't have to. "You still gotta few days to bolt it down." Well. Overact, anyway, which is what he would have had to do for the camera. Yeah, it had been nice to see Bam, a couple hours ago, but with a lense thrust in his face, it had to be a much bigger event than he was hoping for. Back when the idea to do a wedding show was first conceived, he had promised to be around, here and there. He didn't feel guilty for lying. Sometimes, he thought it would be okay if everyone forgot about him. Bam could always get another sidekick. When Novak wore out his welcome, there would be Missy. And even if that didn't work out (which, out of spite, Ryan was sure that it would), they were all still pretty young. There were still places to go, people to meet.
"Tell Ape she's on my shit list," he warned his friend, who was spending a suspicious amount of time lingering at the door. If things were normal - and like hell they were - Bam would be lying down next to him, hours ago. "It was fine the way it was, prob'ly like...a day ago before you told her I was coming." That's what he hoped, anyway. His stomach was in for a sickening flop if he knew this wasn't the first time his room had been offered to company.
Me: Furthering the abnormality of the situation, a weird role reversal had taken place: Ryan couldn't find his cigarettes anywhere, but Bam produced both a lighter and a lose smoke from his back pocket, and lit it. If Ryan asked, he wouldn't be the first person to utter something along the lines of, Since when do you smoke? Hearing that was pretty commonplace, now. Again, in the last month.
Between the cigarette that remained fixed tight between Bam's lips for a second, as he scowled discerningly out the window, to see if he could see who had the stereo out, and the way he was seemingly glued to the door, things were definitely not right. He should have been happier, he thought, but his head was a mess. He needed to know if he would have time to finish the editing that needed to get done by tomorrow. He needed to know if someone would pick up the slack, or if he had to assign someone to it. He needed to know when the women were coming back, how long Ryan was staying, if Ryan planned to be strange tomorrow, if he planned to be strange tomorrow...He needed to know a lot of things.
But even for the answers Ryan might have been able to give him, he didn't ask. "I dunno, she's up in here all the time. She sorta took the place over again."
- end of excerpt -