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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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« Transcript Of A Conversation About The Oscar Nominations, Specifically Re: The Omission of Walk the Line And The Inclusion of Crash |Main| I've already written in other »

February 2, 2006

Dear Mr. President,So.I know it's

By Dan Carlson
Dear Mr. President,So.I know it's been a while since I've written, and even longer since we hung out (thanks for that "fishing" trip in Wyoming, by the way, it was awesome), so I know this letter must come as something of a surprise. The last time I wrote to you, I admit, I was upset. I give, and I give, and I give, and this is what happens. I need something in return, you know? Relationships work both ways. I told myself after my last letter that I wouldn't contact you again — well, maybe a call on your birthday, but that's just the menschy thing to do no matter what — but I just couldn't help myself.I watched your State of the Union address the other night, and was about as underwhelmed as you'd expect. What, you want points for saying "America is addicted to oil"? Welcome to 1970. You don't get a nod for honesty or credibility just for stating a fact that everyone knows. We're aware of the problem; now tell me what we're going to do about it.And sure, I could go on about your ridiculously over-positive predictions of our future, like how we can reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil by 75% in 20 years, and how you failed to acknowledge the inevitable belt-tightening and compromises that significant economic changes will require. But I break our mutual silence to highlight a much more disturbing portion of your speech:Human-animal hybrids.Yes, to anyone reading this who may have missed the president's aimless speech a few days ago, that's a direct quote: "human-animal hybrids." The phrase is buried in your one paragraph about medical ethics (thanks for using three sentences out of an hour-plus speech on the topic; I'm sure you covered the big stuff), and I have to admit, it's even got me confused, and I'm a pretty smart guy.Human-animal hybrids? Human-animal hybrids? Seriously? Human-animal hybrids? I don't even know where to begin.I guess I should just come right out and say it: Thank you for finally mentioning the most important topic in medicine today. When I started at my current job last fall, I wouldn't sign up for any kind of benefits package until I was assured by several members of the human resources department that our health care provider didn't participate in human-animal hybrid experimentation. I believe that it's a grievous sin and a signpost of our nation's moral decay. Thank you, sir, for coming out against these abominations of nature.In conclusion, sir, thanks again for pointing our country in the right direction, and using your annual forum to address the nation about our most pressing concerns.Sincerely,Daniel CarlsonP.S. Have you thought about keeping the human-animal hybrid technology under wraps and using it for military purposes? Personally, I can think of no better way to spread the righteous fire of freedom and democracy and apple pie and porn and baseball and automatic transmissions to the unwashed Iraqi masses than on the wings of flying monkey-men. Let me know what you think. —DC

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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