Hampton Ryan profile picture

Hampton Ryan

I am here for Friends

About Me


Myspace Layouts
Born in the foothills of North Georgia in the town of Gainesville. Grew up in Leesburg, FL. Moved around a bit from Orlando to the Lower Keys and up to Atlanta, then Athens, then back to Atlanta. I am currently residing in Nashville, TN with my lovely wife of ten years, Jennifer (Gigi), our two feline roommates, Truman and Anya, and our two betta fish, Rohan and Gosha.
Well, anything else you may want to know is probably elsewhere on this page. So thanks for stopping by and please toss a fish to my little penguin friend Capote.

adopt your own virtual pet!

My Space or Yours? Myspace Layouts and more at myspaceoryours.net!

My Interests



Visit Vegetarian / Vegan Exchange

Spending time with my wife Jennifer (Gigi), hiking, music, writing, books, vegetarian cooking, theology, cats, antiques, hockey, Bushmills, Guinness, Southern folk pottery and art, and the art of Terry Turrell, Rev. Howard Finster, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

I'd like to meet:

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." - Kierkegaard
"The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange." - GK Chesterton
"In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. " -Thomas Merton
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."—Franz Kafka
"Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought." - Emily Dickinson

Music:

REM, Chet Baker, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, The Smiths, Django, Velvet Underground, Mindy Smith, Otis Redding, New York Dolls, Chatham County Line, Wilco, Neutral Milk Hotel, Leonard Cohen, Dropkick Murphys, Willie Nelson, Curtis Mayfield, The Decemberists, Azure Ray, David Bowie, Grateful Dead, Coldplay, Tilly and the Wall, Arcade Fire,Miles Davis, Galaxie 500, The Cure, Nickel Creek, Paris Combo, Sly & the Family Stone, the Allman Brothers, Black Sabbath, Pulp, Old Crow Medicine Show, Hank Sr., Leigh Nash, Massive Attack, Cash/Carter, David Gray, Love & Rockets, the Catholic Latin classics and much more.

Movies:

I prefer the classics: Bringing Up Baby, Breakfast at Tiffany's, To Kill a Mockingbird and African Queen are the absolute favorites. More recent films: You Can Count on Me, Miss Potter, Pieces of April, Beautiful Girls, In America, Heavenly Creatures, River's Edge, Bend it like Beckham, Pan's Labyrinth, and the Straight Story. I'll watch anything over 2 1/2 hours as long as it isn't cinema verite, which gives me a headache.

Television:

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and Angel are my all-time favorites....The Buffyverse is my Star Trek. I like Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock, Gossip Girl, and Heroes a whole lot as well.

Books:

All-time favorite: Voltaire's "Candide," which just seems to be perfect in every way.
Others: The Tao Te Ching, Thomas Merton, Jon Krakauer, Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Flannery O'Connor, Tony Horwitz, Chuck Klosterman, Sarah Vowell, Philip Gourevitch, Truman Capote, G.K. Chesterton, Nick Hornby, Harper Lee, Howard Bahr, Byron Herbert Reece, and Paul Hemphill to name a few.

Heroes:

Atticus Finch

My Blog

Tagged: 10 Things about me

Once you've been tagged, you have to write a blog w/10 weird, random things, facts, habits, or goals about yourself. At the end, you choose 10 people to be tagged, list their names, and why you chose ...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:33:00 PST

Now where did I put that mic?

About two and a half years ago I had what I thought was brilliant idea. I decided that I would never record any of my songs again. Why would I make such a declaration? Easy&most of my life is spent ma...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:37:00 PST

Introducing Some MySpace Bands...

Okay my friend Rani has come up with a game worth playing. Here are my top 8 my space bands that I really think that you should hear. Please click on the links and check them out. You may no...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Thu, 03 Aug 2006 04:32:00 PST

A letter from the D/FW Airport

Hey all, I'm at the airport early and thought I'd muse a bit until my laptop battery goes dead.Well, you know that I don't like to write negative, but metropolitan Dallas is ugly. Downtown, architectu...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:07:00 PST

Random Musings...

Okay, usually I don't like these surveys that much. However, this one has moxie. So I am going to do it. Thanks to My Space friend "I killed the giving tree" for passing it along.1. What one song play...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Sat, 22 Jul 2006 01:22:00 PST

Time goes by like hurricanes...

Today I was driving home from work and I saw about seven or eight birds in the middle of the road and, as I drove by, they all flew up into the air...except for one. It was sitting in the road with it...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Wed, 17 May 2006 02:30:00 PST

Why Full Sail...why?

Recently, a fellow MySpacer emailed me to ask whether I thought Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts (or, "Real World Education," as it is called now) was a worthwhile investment. Now, I could ratt...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Sat, 01 Apr 2006 11:01:00 PST

The 10 perfect albums of my lifetime.

Okay everyone, lets get interactive. I have received more notes asking for new blogs than I have subscribed readers (which, if you dont mind my saying, makes no sense). Anyway, I have a real job now...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:39:00 PST

Jesus, Patrick and Joseph

Patrick Ryan is my step dad. However, as he is the man who raised me, I think of him as dad. I even took his last name. So, anyway, he is a strange bird. He ran screaming from the pre-Vatican II Catho...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Thu, 13 Oct 2005 07:45:00 PST

REM: just a thought...

You know, it is pretty damn easy to pick on REM these days. Michael Stipe is running around with a blue stripe on his face, Busheye Bill Berry is gone and pops greatest rhythm section left with him...
Posted by Hampton Ryan on Wed, 12 Oct 2005 08:10:00 PST