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Dan Carlson
Houston, Texas

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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« Let's Drive Left For Four Hours |Main| Review: Standing Still »

April 25, 2006

I Have Unusual Hobbies

By Dan Carlson

I've been in the bathroom, and have actually made some new discoveries.

The Spitter

This guy fascinates me. While standing before the urinal, he'll lean forward slightly and spit into the porcelain, never pausing his flow. Why does he spit? Is he the kind of guy that spits all the time regardless of surrounding or circumstance, and was going to spit anyway, so he decided to do it in the urinal while he's peeing? Or is it some Pavlovian thing, where he started spitting while peeing a long time ago and now couldn't break the habit if he tried? Or does he just like the challenge of the thing, trying to lean and spit without making a mess? Weird.

The Bather

This is the guy who uses the office restroom for all-encompassing general hygiene. You'll almost never see him at a urinal because he's at the long row of sinks brushing his teeth or changing shirts. This is unacceptable.

The Zorro

This is the guy who stands at the urinal with one hand uiding the stream and the other hand clenched in a fist and planted firmly on his waist, as if he's been transported into a swashbuckler epic from the '40s. Not quite as confident as the Freehander, but more arrogant, as if peeing in a urinal is a task worthy of superheroes. Sometimes he whistles.

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Comments: 1

SAMMM

I THINK THIS IS A SEXY DIRTY HABBIT THAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEEEEE. GET AT ME.

Nov 24, 2008 10:56 AM

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Random Quotes

Words of Wisdom

"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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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