Dan Johnson > Quotes

“It must be nice to sit back in your study and look at your Thomas Jefferson biographies and think to yourself, 'thank God we're finally killing this big government leviathan" without having to reconcile the fact that the kill off isn't elevating you, the common man, to new autonomy. It's facilitating the enshrinement of extremely wealthy jerk off ideologues who see the world as something to be sold off to the highest bidder. Big gub'ment in the hands of presumptuous elites? No thanks. The world turned into a regulation free marketplace with no avenue for recourse against the profit-at-any-cost set? Double no thanks.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“We are morally adrift, spiritually bankrupt, enamored with the ever-growing catalog of false idols that is consumerism, politically gullible, rage-drunk, media fattened, and ripe for a culling at the hands of one tragedy or another that will no doubt rip the golden dome of American life off its rotten foundations.”
― Dan Johnson

“You cling to culture like an orphan drags her rag doll from foster home to foster home. It is your last soiled reminder of what you think you were. You'd rather die at the stake than adapt or evolve because change is scary. So you guard the same tired shit as if it's a precious, sacrosanct relic from the holy crusades of your ancestors when, in fact, it is a withered turn wrapped in butcher paper.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Donald Trump is magnificently terrifying to reasonable Americans because his popularity, win or lose, illuminates a massive stratum of voting, gun-toting Americans who want desperately to be told that their binary values are valid. They want someone to enunciate for them what they know in their heart of hearts: that they and their prejudices and their lust for violence and their stalwart refusal to take part in a complex world of political moving parts puts them in league with the men who waited for the British, guns in hand at Concord Bridge.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Now personally I stand for the National Anthem. But that a man refusing to stand for the Star-Spangled Banner is a greater affront to your sense of American honor than a stacked roster of flag-waving hypocrites using Old Glory as a symbolic excuse to commit untold atrocities at home and abroad is probably a good sign that you've lost all reference.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“The carnival is in full swing around us. Unspeakable depravities are occurring in the shadows behind the tent. Sinister cabals of dark wizards make blood pacts with the mutants on stage. The paranoid hear voices rich with ominous foreboding. Somewhere, someone is getting raped and it may as well be all of us. We're trying to rationalize our way out of a situation where we've been made to believe a moral stand is all that separates us from destruction. But we're fundamentally immoral people. Our morality can be summed up as such: 'I have to get mine.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Let the record reflect that the supposedly robust American Democracy was no match for the twin assault of nineteen Arabs with box cutters and an African-American man who made everyone buy health insurance.”
― Dan Johnson

“Life is absurd; we must learn to enjoy the beautiful amber that coats the fossils of death strewn all around us.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“You can imagine my horror when my mom parked the car on Grand and opened the door. We were dead. I already imagined the Merlot soaked claws of a thousand bums tearing me limb from limb then tobagganing down Second Street on what remained of my torso.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“Ours isn't a perfect world. It's downtown--a gilded toilet where people defecate in the streets, where untreated crazies run amok, where Business Improvement District dispatchers get stabbed in the back, where residents gleefully attend midnight arson, where cars pin people to walls, where tourists disintegrate in water tanks, where old men get beaten to death outside their apartments.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Despite the many cinematic qualities of life in America, this country is not a film. It lacks the real-time clarity and cohesive story-telling that makes a silver-screen epic so palatable. Instead, it is a muddy, confused, noisy, unwieldy thing that we are forced to come to grips with after the fact and often erroneously.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Here's the reality, guys: you save up for years to go 'Out West' and you spend everything you have in six months living in a roach infested hole in K-town, paying for "casting workshops" so you can meet managers and casting directors who don't give two shits about you. You cut your hair a little bit or grow a moustache and you have to get new headshots because people in Hollywood fundamentally lack imagination and can't even begin to fathom 'who you are as an actor' unless your headshot looks exactly like you do on the day of. And headshots cost $300 to shoot (on the cheap end) and $100 for make-up artists and $100 to retouch and $100 to print. Plus, you need a car to get around because mass transit in Los Angeles is a goddam joke. You need to get into class so you can learn how to unlearn all the shit you learned in college theater. Meanwhile, you're in love with the city because it's new and warm all the time and there are beautiful women everywhere. But you start getting this creeping sensation like everyone is a facade of a human being and beneath every beautiful face is spiritual rot, careerism, graft, nepotism, bull shit, lies, fakery, a need to be seen and an overwhelming whorism. But don't worry, guys, because you can always get a job working as a bartender where you can sneak booze from the well and forget for a few minutes what it's like to be on the bottom of the totem pole. That's a lot of fun, especially when you discover that cocaine means you can drink forever and not get too wasted until later. You'll get a DUI eventually, but fuck it, right? Around this time you start to get bitter. Really bitter, which you'll mistake as an 'evolution of your art.' You start looking for edgy rolls. You get a dumb haircut and try to make yourself look ugly. Maybe you hit the gym or start doing improv. Something to give you an edge. You start seeing young kids coming into town all bright eyed and bushy tailed and you say 'good luck' when you mean 'eat shit and die.' You wake up one day after endless commercial auditions that you really need to make rent but can't seem to book because you 'come off as an asshole' or don't smile enough...”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“But you can't escape from heartache. That's the rub. It always finds a way back.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“Diagnosed ill and off-kilter, poisoners, dreamers, madmen, lunatics, loners, sad ones, bad ones, star pegs in square holes, movers, shakers, mass debaters, tokers, pokers, instigators, conformity haters, subterfuge vessels and assassins of the vassals who lord over free and intelligent men with a dollar held high so that we jump until we die and know not of the pleasures of this life and the freedom of a soul unrestrained from the prison where the only fate is to hang.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“That word again. 'Freedom.' It is the golden tuning fork wielded by pied pipers and charlatans alike to realign a vast demographic of people who fundamentally crave simplicity. Since the birth of the steam engine and the rapid march of industrialism, a ceaseless parade of phony advocacy has tried to wield the hate and frustration of an American underclass that has been zapped and eroded time and time again by future shock. The playbook is simple: play off of differences, vilify anyone who can be made to appear as other, stress moral purity, canonize simplicity, decry any sort of establishment within convenient hating distance, code power with subtle signs of sex, and convert a foundation of fear to its stronger, more virile corollary--military power. When in doubt, capitalize on deeply ambiguous ideological symbols such as 'freedom,' re-appropriate historical moments as examples of conservative triumph, and constantly wave the red, white, and blue.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“One of the prime motivators behind the lock step political organization of evangelical Christians is an idea of a "war on Christianity." It's a testament to the efficacy of that false victim mentality that a country built on the separation of church and state has been co-opted by supposed followers of Christ who peddle the same sort of venal, profane, blasphemous, manipulative, soul-selling, fear-mongering, false idol worshipping bull shit. There's nothing wrong with turning the other cheek and humbling yourself before the idea of a higher power and treating one another as you would be treated--with dignity and respect. Unfortunately, that's not the substance of mega-church, imperial, for-profit Christianity. Instead we've got pestilent little golems sucking the life blood out of Americans with promises of divine grace and eternal salvation that amount to abstract snake oil used to lubricate their own materialism. That's the Christianity that people willfully antagonize. That's the Christianity that alienates anyone whose aversion to false morality is greater than their fear of life without a con man's blessing. That's the sort of vulgar perversion of spirituality that cheapens the symbolic cross and leads a nation away from the yoke of power hungry pastors who preach whatever gospel keeps them in control of the coffers. You want a ministry? Live it. Take off your fancy suit. Give up your mansion. Wash those feet. Crucify your ego. Bless the whores. Forgive the sinners. Live it. Otherwise you're nothing but another leach preying on weakness to aggrandize your own mortal ambitions.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“I grew up in a day and age where hitting .250 in any given season made you a god. It was a smaller game back then. You had to hit smart and run well. There was mind to it. Then they put in a jackrabbit ball and it became a thing of brawn. You had to pitch the seams off the goddam thing or knock it into the stands every game if you wanted to be anyone. The people want that action and maybe you can give it to them for a time. But your fame will not last. It's how you play the game day in and day out, through cold streaks and shit-hole road trips. You better enjoy every goddam bus and rain delay and asswipe motel and old loud-mouthed manager and drop to the minors. Because that's what this is. It ain't glory. It's a long, ugly haul. And at the end of the day you may be a hero or you may be a washed up never been. That's all.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“The American people have a nasty habit of waiting until it's far too late to start giving a shit. By and large, your average eligible voter tunes in to politics once every two or four years because they have been scared, shocked, bullied, cajoled, stimulated, seduced, suckered, or outright fear fucked by one or more extremities of the hideous mutant that is our electoral process.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“See, all this shit in the Middle East is not really about religion or age-long battles between civilization and barbarism. This whole kit and caboodle is about major powers manipulating a zone of instability to accumulate vast fortunes and consolidate new axes of power. The whole anti-ISIS frenzy is a totally sweet brand, don't get me wrong. But it's not exactly selling justice and peace in the Middle East. More like the idea of justice and peace as a sweet vinyl skin stretched over the promotional SUV that the marketing manager sends out to steal a shitload of oil.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Americans can afford to disregard 'thou shall not kill' and 'thou shall not covet.' We sidestep 'blessed are the meek' and 'blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness.' We dance around the particulars of 'again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God' as we change money in this earthen temple.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Mine will never be things of purity, strictly one or the other. I am multitude and mosaic. I will give of myself to this kindred land where no thing will ever be exclusively one or another. This is the boundary where all things merge in shades of mixture.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“Los Angeles was built as a machine of transformation. it mirrors industrialism and the triumph of progress over recalcitrance. But progress is a mixed bill. It has easily brought as much sorrow as joy. We must try to remember that its greatest success is the tilling of raw materials into a dubious finished product.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Heartache is the life force of my people, the agent that ripples eternity and causes history to arc into big crashing waves. Heartache may pass and disappear. Heartache is still there, it is merely invisible, plotting. Heartache is the constant. Heartache is the through line, the central core on which we all radiate, the agent of change. Heartache can neither be created nor destroyed, only transmuted. Heartache is the score and the game; heartache is our eternal currency.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“Bright eyed, bushy tailed and fresh faced. These kids were Lawrences and Robbies that hadn't been in the league long enough to mature into Larrys and Bobs. They still had that earnest, hopeful glow like someone who cared was watching. Fame and endorsement deals would start flooding in if they could just squeeze out a triple.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“Mostly, we swaddle ourselves in the sacrilege of self-justification and kowtow to a God we have silently rechristened ego. All things are acceptable in the all-seeing eyes of self-interest. Within the walls of our flimsy Jericho, we court ruin.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“Amidst the comfort of flight, we have lost track of its miraculousness. We embark on great journeys spanning many hours and meridians of mercator space. We purchase tickets that guarantee our arrival. For a nominal charge, we are assured that our possessions will appear intact and, if not, someone will be held accountable. Then we proceed through immense palisades of machinery that guarantee our security before sampling terminal cuisine and stepping aboard a tube that will ascend into the stratosphere and descend again. But it's more complex than that isn't it? In all the history of mankind there has never been something as wonderfully utilitarian as flight. We, the heirs of millennia of humanity, are spoiled by this convenience. The vastness of our trek is disarticulated by altitude. We know not the hardships of insurmountable spaces, only the seeming ease of the shortcut. Our trek westward is not that of our forefathers. It is much more insidious. The perils are intangible, but just as lethal. The intense pressure and friction of prolonged human contact. A lack of space despite our seeming mastery of it. The constant rubbing. The back and forth shoves that push us closer to the chasm. These are the realities that sublimate themselves into a vast subterranean tension. Unseen, but surely felt. The unspoken dread. The unacknowledged foreboding. It eats at us. Demands that we come to grips with what we've become. Acknowledgement.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“The hangovers are the price I pay. Each skull-splitting excursion down my personal rabbit hole to hell is a guilt tinged reminder of every little fuckin' thing I've ever done wrong and never made amends for.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“Don't assume your elected officials have your best interest in mind. Read the entire book before you see the movie. Stop Instagramming your goddam twenty-dollar quinoa salad. Don't buy that new pair of pants. Go on a hike instead of watching the game. Don't get your history from the Walt Disney Company. Seek authenticity at whatever cost. Take difficult journeys of body and mind for no reason other than proving to yourself that they are possible. Double check the facts you take for granted. Form your own well-researched opinions. Take great pains not to add any more heartache to the world. Strive to see the impact of your actions as they echo in the universe beyond.”
― Dan Johnson, Catawampusland

“We brats bear the hurt of war. We insulate it and keep it warm. Our bodies and souls are receptacles of an unimaginable heartache. We have a way of looking out at the world from behind the walls of an emotional castle built to protect a lonely treasure.”
― Dan Johnson, Brea or Tar

“If you want to do something today to radically improve the United States of America, walk on the right.”
― Dan Johnson