the photo

newyorkmug.jpg

the info

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.

Calendar


November 2008
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30

Categories

The Counter

the world

Locations of visitors to this page

Search


the library

The Words

the shots

www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from dan_carlson. Make your own badge here.

the city

the politics

The Alumni

« "Contemplate what the floods of |Main| Conservative Christians: Still Kind of Stupid »

September 14, 2005

Just minutes after Satan issued

By Dan Carlson
Just minutes after Satan issued a press release saying he was feeling a little chilly, President Bush issued an apology and took full responsibility for the government's inept handling and slow response to the catastrophe in Ira-- sorry, the catastrophe in the Gulf States following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. "To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," Bush said the other day.Stepping in for the president to fulfill the Republican party's requisite daily serving of double-speak and b.s., Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., spoke at the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts by issuing a call for Americans to put away partisan politics. Coburn even got a little misty when he was talking, which people agreed didn't so much help his credibility as make him look a little bit like a tool. "When I ponder our country and its greatness, its weakness, its potential, my heart aches for less divisiveness, less polarization, less finger-pointing, less bitterness, less mindless partisanship," Coburn said.Other Coburn chestnuts from past speaking appearances include:"Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"And from the spring of 2004: "The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power. ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda." [Emphasis mine, crazy-ass statement his.]When reached for comment, leaders of the gay community said their current agenda only has items along the lines of picking up the dry cleaning, maybe some chicken for dinner, but to check back later. Acting as the greatest threat to Americans' freedom, however, doesn't look likely to make the list. Upon hearing that apparently the gay community was now the No. 1 threat to Americans' safety, both Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il decided to call it quits.

--------

Comments: 0

Post a comment

the post

Questions? Comments? Complaints?

Drop 'em in the mailbag.

homefeed.png

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

Current Reading

In Rotation















the humor

the screens

the tube

the sounds

The Plugs

Recent Posts

Subscribe to this blog's feed
[What is this?]

Archives

Powered by
Movable Type 3.33

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