Blogging: It's How the Coooool Kids Cope With Tragedy

We all heard the news, and if you haven't, I'll be brief: Giant Bomb lost founding member and all-around amazing duder Ryan Davis. I don't have a lot to add to the discussion, others who knew him better are doing a FAR better job, but I do have two very specific, very personal memories from what were two of the happiest months of my life as a Whiskey Media intern:

Memory 1: at the end of my first day, Mat Rorie (who I actually knew prior to the internship) suggested we retire to the bar for a couple of celebratory drinks. Somehow the entire staff caught wind of this, and I kid you not, over the next hour, an honest-to-God party broke out. I won't even say they were celebrating me being there, I think there was just something right in the air and I got caught in the middle of it (in the best way possible). When it started out, I figured as a dilligent intern, it was my duty to tend bar and LORDY was I making a mess of it, serving half-foam abominations from the WM kegs. Ryan Davis advised me on how, PRECISELY, to tilt the glass so that it not only didn't great the massive head, but wouldn't disrupt the pour nor clink against the metal. It's a technique that has served me well in my amateur bartending at parties. He also used to, on occasion, drink from a large, glass boot.

Memory 2: This was a different, much more staid, time in the bar, but somehow the notion of our favorite Indiana Jones movies got brought up (with Crystal Skull not even needing to be on the list). Everyone went down their list, mine was Raiders, Crusade, Doom, and Ryan pointed out that Doom is his absolute favorite Indiana Jones movie. I scoffed, literally, and DEMANDED to know how the movie with the annoying lady, the annoying kid, and the silly cult could possibly be best. After advising I "shut my mouth" as I had "No idea what I was talking about" (both true), he dropped the knowledge on me that the kid and the woman were the ACTUAL antagonists of the movie, the cult was just window dressing. He expounded at GREAT lengths on this, but I barely heard it as my mind was BLOWN.

Ryan and I didn't interact over much during my internship (my sometimes goofy and WINNING, sometimes legitimately awful gaffes notwithstanding) because I was mostly into the writing (which I still am, thanks to Comic Vine) side of the sites, but I was always amazed to see him work with the more video-inclined interns. As someone who still consumes Giant Bomb media multiple times a day, this loss has me finding difficulty expressing myself, so hey, thanks for listening. And, of course, Ryan Davis will live forever through the internet and through this site, so may he rest well.

Thanks for sharing! It's always to hear more Ryan stories. He was such an asshole and such a great guy at the same time.

Goddamn. Drinking from a big glass boot makes me wish I HAD sent my Beer Nuts mug to them. I imagine he would've obliterated that muthafucker...and it holds an entire six pack...of longnecks!

Great words, sir. Great words indeed.

To party with them would've been an undoubtedly good time. Thanks for sharing.

I'd like to hear his Temple of Doom theory.

@cooljammer00 said:

I can't remember ALL the details, and of course it sounded better coming from the man himself, but it essentially boiled down to: the kid and the woman do SO MUCH MORE to impede Indie's progress and place him in danger than the cult does, and they're SUCH burdens rather than allies, that they're the secret badguys of the whole thing. I couldn't tell if he believed this was intended or accidental, but I BELIEVE he thought it was on purpose.

I am not a party guy in the LEAST, but every time with them was golden. You could BE a wallflower and still feel like you were part of the overall celebration. Hell I got to see the birth of "Scoops" in person, but now I'm just name/event dropping.

He WAS a true enigma. He'd insult you to your face and you'd laugh with him about it.

There could be NO other outcome!