trying to use CURL in PHP block

I'm trying to set a PHP to display an image from a Gallery. I know I could use an embedded gallery, but that isn't what I want to do :)

I get a 530 "Service Temporarily Unavailable" response. I don't get an error in my logs. I also don't get a watchdog message. The code runs fine if it put it in it's own php page.

I don't get an error if I take out the curl_exec, curl_close, and echo $file_content lines.

I'm hosted at Dreamhost.

$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5; // set to zero for no timeout
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=imageblock.External&g2_blocks=randomImage&g2_show=none');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
$file_contents = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $file_contents;