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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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September 4, 2008

Plus There Were Typewriters: An Online Transcript

By Dan Carlson

me: there's one of these next to my office on the sidewalk:
(sends link)
Sis: nice
me: yeah
kind of a cool jab at, you know, change
i mean, the business sucks right now, completely
still, nice to see someone keep swinging
Sis: seriously
me: like, watching Wire 5 makes me want to be a reporter, but an old one 30 years ago
some old guy who won't even use a fax machine
Sis: right, totally
it makes you sad that you missed the boat
me: yeah
work some small-town rag, know everyone at the hall, flirt with secretaries, where's my hat janet i've got a meeting
Sis: :)
me: "you tell the mayor he can put an egg in his shoe and beat it! we've got the exclusive!"
[goes maybe a little overboard]
Sis: hehe
i want to work at your newsroom
me: we don't have a lot of dolls, but if you're thick skinned enough, we could use you
Sis: ok
i promise i won't get my skirt in a knot
me: do it and you're out on your keyster

Comments: 3

Chaarley

I want to work in that newsroom, too. Maybe we can lobby for it after the next round of layoffs. Like, "In order to boost morale, we propose getting rid of all this technology, changing the dress code to reflect a more quaint era and mandatory lingo lessons for everyone."

And one correction: There USED TO BE one of those next to your office on the sidewalk.

Sep 5, 2008 11:05 AM

Rob

You want to work in the set of Madmen, in other words.

I imagined you saying that quoted line in a Chappellian 1940s voice.

Sep 5, 2008 3:11 PM

Kester

Nice. Great ad. Reminds me of a college prof who insisted that those of us looking at print media get out asap. "Print is dying," he said, "in 10 years we'll all read our books online."

I politely disagreed and he snidely said, "of course you do. May I ask why?"

"Because," I answered, turning a page in one of my books, "that feels good."

Sep 8, 2008 3:34 PM

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The Lines

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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