magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

This evening I took the L a couple of stops further out into Bushwick to see the apartment that I bailed on looking at last night in order to trek all the way up to Inwood and be disappointed. The Bushwick apartment is right on the Brooklyn/Queens border. It's the second floor of a little brick house on a street of little brick houses with tiny little front yards.

The space is beautiful. Two large rooms. A good-sized full bathroom, with a tub and a window. A smallish, but usable kitchen, with new appliances. Gorgeous hardwood floors throughout. Lots of closets. Who could possibly need this many closets?

But. The first floor is occupied by the little old lady who owns the house. Her son has renovated the second floor and is showing the apartment. I'm not sure I'm at the point in my life where this sort of living is entirely appropriate. Renting from the cute little old lady downstairs who may not speak very much English, if any. On the a street of two story houses with rose garden yards. It's a little too residential. It's a little too suburban. It's a little too domestic.

Listening to cLOUDDEAD on the way to Ellen's to watch the end of The Man Who Fell to Earth I wondered how I'm going to practise my feedback noise guitar living anywhere that's not an artsy-hipster loft building. It certainly wouldn't fly living above the little old lady, unless she has a hearing aid that she takes out at night, but still, the neighbours would complain. And so would the neighbours in a 10-20 unit art deco apartment building in Inwood.

But I think that I've pretty much convinced myself that I want to try living alone, something I haven't done since the first six months of 1995, as a fresh-faced, 19 year old, college dropout. And there's just no way that I can afford to live in a loft by myself. The cheapest lofts are half again what I can realistically afford to spend on rent. The cheapest nice lofts are twice what I can pay.

How do people in this city do it?

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The last third of The Man Who Fell to Earth did not disappoint. Some of the film is very much dated to the mid-seventies, in which it was made, but because the passage of time in the film is treated so abstractly that doesn't really detract. And it's just so different from most of what you can see today. With the possible exception of David Lynch, I'm not sure there are any filmmakers working today who could get a film like this made and released into mainstream theatres.

Afterwards, Ellen scanned her shelves. 'Have you seen Down By Law?'

'I haven't. It's one of the few movies that my mom owns. Almost every time I'm at her house I think about watching it. But I never have.'

'I love it. And I haven't watched it in a long time.' And so we did. And it's a fun film. Not moving in the way that Stranger Than Paradise is, but also not as heavy-handed as Jim Jarmusch's later films, Dead Man and Ghost Dog.