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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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« Let's All Learn Some Basic Typography |Main| C. of C.'s, CCM, And A Whole Lotta NCMO: The Youth Group Flashback — 4 »

July 23, 2007

Summertime Verse

By Dan Carlson

Oh Purple Jenny!

Always lying by the pool
in your purple two-piece.
That's how we named you.

Sure, the pool isn't always clean
or even safe. And no one knows
what to do about the algae.
We've checked.

But that doesn't stop you from
dragging out the big white plastic chair and
getting some sun. Stretched out, baking,
swimming in the valley's own heat.
And then halfway through you flip over
and untie your top and
just lie there.

Thanks for that.

Oh Purple Jenny!
Why do you live in our apartment complex of elderly citizens?
Do you have a cat? Or are you just cheap like us?
The only other younger people I've seen here
are the Armenian family.
Jenny, you're not Armenian.

Oh Purple Jenny!
What do you do all day?
Sometimes you're out there at like
2 p.m. on a Friday. Don't you work?
I don't work Fridays.
Maybe you're a barista, or another
waitress waiting to be discovered.
Not exactly novel, but then, that's L.A.

Oh Purple Jenny!
Where are you from? I guess it doesn't matter.
Enjoy the pool.

P.S. My roommate thinks you're hot.

Comments: 3

Kevin Longrie

The curse of the name Jenny: I had to read this like Forrest Gump.

Jul 23, 2007 8:03 PM

JMW

"Jenny, you're not Armenian." Classic.

Jul 24, 2007 8:33 AM

Tracy

This gave me a mad case of the giggles -- nice work :D

Jul 25, 2007 9:19 AM

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"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