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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of certain TV shows — for starters, "The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April Is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," "Look Who's Stalking," "The Garage Door," "Charlie Gets Crippled," "Wind Sprints," and "Corner Boys" — you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings, or at any rate a heartfelt attempt to interpret them. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« Behold, Yet Ten More Films You Should See, Etc. |Main| Part 3 »

December 29, 2004

Some Ideas, Or Resolutions, To Be Carried Out In The New Year

By Dan Carlson
1. Shave less. No one at work cares.

2. Stop washing my hands after I go to the bathroom. No one can tell. (Unless of course it's one of those disaster/emergency situations, in which case I'll be scrubbing thoroughly. Maybe.)

3. Kill co-worker Joyce, approx. 57(?), and quietly dispose of body beneath floor of cubicle. Refuse to acknowledge beating of subsequent tell-tale heart.

4. Go wild with credit card.

5. Arrange fictional death to solve problems caused by #4 above.

6. Punch the first person I hear talking during a movie. The rest of the audience will cower in silent fear.

7. Shoes with no socks: making a comeback.

8. Similarly, socks with no shoes: makes the office feel like home.

9. Bolster courage and ask boss, Jennifer, what's up with her extremely lazy/possibly genetically messed up right eye. (Pretty sure it's the right one. Hard to get direct look.)

10. Buy dog and let him crap anywhere, city ordinances be damned.

11. Assign unusual/slightly derogatory nicknames for colleagues: Ashes McGee, Betty Boozehound, etc. Refuse to acknowledge inevitable looks of confusion from targets of said mockery.

12. Refer to Orthodox co-worker Kyle's workspace as his "Jewbicle."

13. Ask HR to hire Jewish guy named Kyle so I can actually do #12 above.

14. Ask Mormon boss Scott what the "deal" is with his people.

15. Tell Scott the idea for #14 above came from annoying co-worker Amanda. Co-opt Amanda's nicer computer.

16. Go to the grocery store in my bathrobe. Alternately cite laziness or mental illness when asked by employees why I'm barely dressed. Propose marriage to donut rack if it looks like mental illness excuse isn't working.

17. Figure out some way to continue to mooch off parents and loved ones (possibly through sister as middleman).

18. Take up guitar "for the chicks"; abandon around March when I realize it isn't working.

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The Lines

The Quotes

"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael

"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut

"I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army."
Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04

"Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these."
— Ovid

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the wisdom

Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
— Me, Fall 2003

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
— Stephen King

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.
Ask the Dust, John Fante