Ryan Joens-Poulton

Inside Jokes

This is just a place where I'm putting some of my favorite inside jokes I had with Ryan.

"That's an answer..." Ryan had a habit of sardonically responding to bad ideas with deliberately simple acknowledgement rather than an honest reaction to what was clearly a bad idea. Instead of saying something was a 'good idea', it was simply 'an idea...'. This bled over into many different conversations and usages, and I still say this to myself at work when I encounter an idea that is so underbaked or stupid and have to bite my tongue.

"L'in your B-L" aka Living Your Best Life This phrase would show up frequently in the 'coroporate culture' videos that Ryan was forced to edit at The Muse. It felt dirty and trite, and I was deep in my 'turn everything into an acronym phase', thus this phrase was born. It perfectly wrapped it in a weird little package and we started to use this way too often in way too many unrelated contexts. Long live the B-L.

Sean Penn, the little vape pen that could. We needed a covert stress release at some of the company outings and retreats. This came in the form of a vape pen that we affectionately named Sean Pen(n) - which led us in all directions of roles and popular references to Penn. Spicloi in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, his cameo in Team America, etc. The pen went through a lot that weekend - barely surviving a drop into the cold waters of the swimming hole, being lost overnight around the company bonfire, crunched in a jacket pocket. The thing I love about an inside joke is that it doesn't have to make any sense, but this one provides me a chuckle everytime I see either a vape pen or Sean onscreen.

Da-cheeks aka DeCiccos. I was the stereotypical Italian in our group - a deep love for those foods, accents, The Sopranos, the list goes on. The market DeCiccos somehow just stuck with Ryan and Meseret after shopping there one weekend. Fictional characters spawned from this bastardization of the name, and I still crack up hearing Ryan and Mes use the term in conjuction with some backward mafia or roman reference.

Redneck Bonfire Almost every hangout would eventually devolve to us showing each other absurd videos and stories we'd stumbled across. One video that would almost always come around every few months was a famous bonfire explosion video of a redneck over-doing it with gasoline and attempting to light his bonfire. We would quote this video reguarly, either by just a simple countdown or the imfamous 'don't try this at home' line. I think of how hard we laughed at this video every time I watch it.