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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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August 29, 2007

Do You Wanna Mess Around? Do You Wanna Spend The Night?

By Dan Carlson

mystery1.jpg

"The Pickup Artist" is completely nuts, and my roommate and I set our DVR to record every episode. Good grief. I mean, Mystery's weird fuzzy hat alone could be the subject of an entire book. Who dresses like that? You're just gonna hook up with very drunk chicks who hate themselves enough to sleep with men in funny hats, and man, that's nothing to wake up to.

Click here for the column.

P.S. The headline of the review, for those unaware, is a nod to Magnolia.

Comments: 3

litelysalted

Aw, crap. You just made me realized I missed this week's ep. OH CRAP, you just made me realize I am officially a regular viewer of The Pick Up Artist. Never have I both equally loved and loathed anything so much since I discovered tequila in college.

Oh, and to quote Sister Patterson, Mystery is totally an "Undercover Gay."

Aug 29, 2007 9:13 AM

Julie

Did you see him being interviewed on Conan O'Brien? (it's on YouTube) Classic. He spent the entire interview mocking Mystery's mind blowing tips to get a woman to fuck you, i.e. leave the house, wear an eye-catching accessory, establish a location for sex, etc.

Conan: "Look, I'm wearing goggles! Let's go to my sex location!"

Aug 29, 2007 11:44 AM

Constance

In this picture it sort of looks like Mystery is about to do his own very special version of the Humpty Dance. You know, because he's Mystery, pronounced with the 'ystery'.

Aug 31, 2007 4:36 PM

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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

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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

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— Me, Fall 2003

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— Ask the Dust, John Fante