Coworker: Walk the Line is better than Crash.
Me: Getting punched in the face every day by a hobo is better than Crash.
|
|
||||
|
The Photo
the info
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. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. 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 a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day" for starters), 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. I guess I was made to be a film critic. This Month
Login
the counter
the world
the ratings
Search
the library
The Words
the shots
www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from dan_carlson. Make your own badge here.
the politics
The Alumni
The Clock
|
Wednesday, February 1
Transcript Of A Conversation About The Oscar Nominations, Specifically Re: The Omission of Walk the Line And The Inclusion of Crash
by
Dan Carlson
on Wed 01 Feb 2006 05:16 PM PST
Please Don't Talk To Me Right Now. Not Here.
by
Dan Carlson
on Wed 01 Feb 2006 04:34 PM PST
 I have the good fortune to work with some fairly laid-back people, and though some of them can come unglued pretty quickly in stressful situations, for the most part it's smooth sailing. Unfortunately, this attitude of general pleasantness carries over with some of the men whenever they go the bathroom, which is down the hall. I, it should be pointed out, don't like to talk that much, or at all, when I'm in the bathroom, even when I'm washing my hands, but especially, especially, when I'm actually emptying my bladder. (I haven't yet had the misfortune of someone trying to talk to me while we're sitting in adjacent stalls, since this is an office and not a dorm bathroom, but I'm not ruling the sick possibility out just yet.) As I walked into the bathroom one day I knew I was being closely followed, and as I sidled up to the stall, sure enough, my boss took the urinal next to me. Then he starts going, and he starts talking to me, as well, and all I can think about is (1) how much I don't like making small talk while my pants are unzipped, (2) how I really have a hard time going around other people, especially when they're trying to engage me in conversation, (3) how now I'm not going, since I'm gun-shy and trying to talk and having a difficult time squeezing out drop one, (4) now that I can't go, I wonder if my boss can tell I'm not going, and if he's wondering why I can't go, so now maybe he's just continuing our meager conversation on a superficial level while most of his thoughts are actively trained on just why I seem to be standing in front of a urinal doing exactly nothing, (5) what does it say about me that I allow myself to function daily with this level of neurosis, (6) [fill in the blank with some general doubt about my personality]. But he finished, and I managed to go, and that was that. I even managed to act like talking in the bathroom was something I enjoyed, or at least felt comfortable with. But as I washed my hands at the sink farthest from my boss, I realized that next time I had to go, I'd check the crowd first. The men's room one floor down is almost always empty. |
the post
the quotes
"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising." "Film lovers are sick people." "I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army." "Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these." current reading
in rotation
the humor
the screens
Pajiba
HSX IMDb MovieWeb Box Office Mojo Dark Horizons BFI RT New York Magazine Cinema Treasures Metaphilm Onion A.V. Club Film Comment Criterion Empire Drew's Script-O-Rama MCN Greatest Films Second Spin AFI The Hollywood Reporter Metacritic Defamer Dave Poland Dave Kehr AllMovie Movie City Indie Austin Movie Blog The Screengrab GreenCine Daily FirstShowing Fimoculous Chicago Reader: On Film Sunset Gun Bordwell and Thompson the tube
The Plugs
The Sis
The Oldest Guy I Know Creatum This Guy Borrowed My Dave Shirt Historian Emeritus Never Met This Guy Tucker Tucker Mother [Uh-Oh] Steve Holt Peter-Wecker Man vs. Clown! Susan the Canadian Halbey RozieD J. Scott Kendall-Ball Geoff Klock Bells On A Special Way of Being Afraid Down in Texas One More Curious Mile Jennifer, Who's From Weatherford, And Now Lives In Virginia They Call The Wind Jehiah Bad Movie Club Girish That Little Round-Headed Boy Tom The Dog's You Know What I Like? Hoyden's Kibitzing Brady Lane My Best Friend's Girl Mimi in NY No More Marriages! My Experiments Miles To Go ... litelysalted Recent Entries
Month Archive
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. — August Van Zorn 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 |
||