The Photo
the info
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. 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.
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The Clock
View Article  Too Many People With Nothing Better To Do
I started using ClustrMaps at the end of last month, and the results have been startling.

dancarlson.eponym.com-world

Here's a closer look:

maphalf1

maphalf2

Seriously, Brazil? And Europe? And most of the Pacific Rim? I had no idea. Plus, South Africa. Honestly, I'm speechless. I had no idea this many people stumbled across my blog by Googling "balding + insecurity" and clicking "I"m Feeling Lucky."

Also, all apologies to Mr. Peterson, my 9th-grade geography teacher, but I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me what that little dot way out in the Atlantic is. Unless it's a guy on a raft using a wireless connection.

View Article  Keeping The Office Lively
Tip #136: Start unfastening your belt in the hallway outside the bathroom. It also helps to mutter, "It's coming, it's coming," as you do so.

Tip #7: Answer questions/comments with Elton John lyrics.

Example:
"My mom just went back in for more chemo."
"Well, I guess that's why they call it the blues."


"You know, sometimes it's worth it, taking all the pies in the face. Sometimes you come through it feeling good."

"Yes."

"And how was your day?"

"Sometimes you just stand there, hip-deep in pie."

the post
Questions? Comments? Complaints?

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the quotes

"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.
— 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