DIARY ENTRY (April 26, 2008):
11:45 p.m. -- There are worse things to be doing on a Friday night than sitting in a crappy New York City apartment, watching three grown men sleeping while police sirens go off in the background. I can’t think of any at the moment, but I know there have to be some. Earlier in the day, Michael and Dwight had decided to drive up to New York City and meet Ryan at a nightclub. Actually, “meet” probably isn’t they right word. They called Ryan’s secretary to find out where he would be and kind of just showed up. Despite the fact that he hadn't invited them, Ryan seemed thrilled to see both Michael and Dwight. There were awkward hugs all around and then Ryan introduced them to his friend, Troy. Troy, I might point out, is very short. While most people would have been polite enough not to say anything about Troy's height, Dwight immediately began referring to him as a “hobbit.” Despite the fact that hobbits are fictional creatures, Dwight continued to talk to Troy as if he were one of the characters from The Lord of the Rings.
Surprisingly enough, Dwight wasn't the only one acting strangely. As the evening wore on, I began to notice that Ryan was bouncing off the walls. He couldn’t keep still, he was WAY too interested in Dwight’s beet farm and he kept running off to the bathroom. Dwight and Michael were oblivious to what was going on, but I followed Ryan into the bathroom on one of his trips. I don’t get paid enough to talk about what I saw Ryan doing, but it’s safe to say he was not in his right mind. In an interview later, Troy basically admitted that he was Ryan’s drug dealer. I don’t think Gandalf would have approved.
Meanwhile, Michael and Dwight were getting drastically different reactions from women at the club. Dwight had no problem finding a hot girl to make out with, which Michael (of course!) took a picture of with his phone and sent to all his employees. But for Michael, the guy who had driven all this way just to find a woman, nothing seemed to be going his way. He had plenty of chances; he just could never quite follow through. Ryan had given him some pointers on how to talk to women and had I not been bound by my professional duty not to interact with the scene, I might have told Michael he was taking advice from a drugged out loser whose best friend was a hobbit. However, Michael took Ryan’s advice and started claiming he worked in finance. Each time he hit on a woman, he would come up with a different profession. First, he was an accountant. Then, a bank security guard. With one girl, he said he was a financial wizard. She looked confused and asked if he worked in a magic shop.
After dozens of rejections, it finally looked like he might have landed one. She was cute and even looked impressed when Michael said he was a bank teller. Unfortunately, she excused herself to the bathroom and next time we saw her, she was flirting with some other guy. I felt bad for Michael, especially when him mom called him to see how the night was going. There is nothing more embarrassing than a grown man having to tell his mom that nobody wants to have sex with him. Only slightly more embarrassing would be a grown man getting beating up by girls...which is just what happened to Ryan. He was so strung out that he got a little too rambunctious with some of the women at the club and they started wailing on him. It was pretty funny, until security threatened to throw him out. Eventually, Michael and Dwight were able to drag Ryan out of the club and get him to a taxi.
Before I continue, let me just say that Ryan is a real pain in the ass to interview. He’ll go on and on about himself, about how great his life in the city is, blah, blah, blah. On many occasions, he has talked about his fabulous penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side. I learned tonight that not only is Ryan long-winded and full of himself, he’s also a liar. After we got to his dumpy little studio apartment in a less-than-reputable area of the city, Ryan passed out on his bed. While Ryan slept, Dwight did a little snooping through his apartment. He shrewdly observed that Ryan eats too much Chinese food, owns an alarming number of hair products and has forgotten to pay his cell phone bill. Michael’s only observation was that Ryan didn’t have any Gatorade in his fridge.
While Dwight and Michael were looking through Ryan's stuff, Joe called me to say that he had only just gotten home from Dunder Mifflin. Apparently everyone at the office had decided to work late so they wouldn’t have to come in on a Saturday. It sounded like a good plan, except no one had told the security guard and when the staff got outside, they realized they were locked in the parking lot. They had to wait several hours until the cleaning crew showed up and let them out. Everyone had driven off before Joe realized that the satellite parking lot was also locked so he couldn’t get to his car. He eventually was able to get a ride home from the security guard, Hank. I didn’t ask what Hank was doing there so late (or why if he had been there hadn't he just let everyone out of the parking lot) because Joe sounded exhausted. I told him I see him in the morning, where hopefully we would get some good footage of Michael arriving at the office, only to find that no one else had showed up.
Eventually, Dwight went to sleep on the bed with Ryan and Michael took the couch. I lucked out and got the kitchen floor. I was about to go to sleep myself, when Dwight’s phone rang. Since I was nearest to it, I answered it. This was a big mistake. It was Dwight’s cousin, Mose, and he wanted to be read a bedtime story. Not wanting to wake Dwight, I read Mose an article from Ryan’s TV Guide. Then, I had to explain what a TV was. Twenty minutes later, I finally got a sleepy Mose off the phone. Just as I thought I might be able to catch a few hours sleep myself, I heard Michael muttering something. I realized he was talking in his sleep and it sounded like he was dreaming of the things he SHOULD have said to the ladies at the club. He had the standard pick up lines, like “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” and “I can see myself in your pants.” I suppose those might have worked on some of the girls. I don't know how well “I can get you a discount on paper products” would have gone over though.
