La Cucaracha

It is with no small amount of pleasure that I bask in the knowledge that soon I will be out of this infested hive of an apartment in three days' time.  I have killed two roaches in The Room That Formally Was Neil's, both disturbingly close to where my mattress is resting on the floor.  The first one was tiny, likely a tiny roach baby.  That makes me Aaron, the roach baby-killer.  Perhaps Roach O'Reilly will invoke the lunatic roach right-wing to assassinate me... but their window of opportunity draws to an end.  The second was an adult and left an adult-sized smear of goo on the floor from where I stomped its head and its stomach into gooey roach paste.  More than likely, I am a roach-baby-mama-killer as well.

In three days, I will be moving to Van Nuys to share David's studio until I can get an income and properly support my own damn self.  I visited last weekend and was very pleasantly surprised.  The living space will be roughly equal to when we shared Conquest's supposed "one-bedroom" in Tropicana, but with an infinitely superior location and more closet space to boot.  I was even surprised that I enjoyed the Valley, which is tantamount to sacrilege, I know.  But I'm still a suburban midwesterner deep inside, and that means that on some deep dark dirty psychological level, I find large strip malls and open wide parking lots -- the So Cal prairie lands -- comforting.  That of course is with the full knowledge that the full urban culture experience is only a half-hour drive away, should I so choose to escape the inanity of it all.

I've got an interview at the Arclight after years of swearing that I would never work again in a movie theater.  Granted, there's a large difference between the cheap theater in an Ohio suburb overrun with over-caffeinated pre-teens and the Arclight, but its not exactly the halcyon days of my youth we're talking about here.  Still, in an economy this shitty, a job is a job, and I'm sure I won't mind taking full advantage of the employee discount.  Hopefully, if I do start working there, it won't be too long before Amotz and Echo Lake can find something more substantial (or something good happens on the writing front, but finding a good job is more likely to happen first, I would imagine).  And if the Arclight doesn't work, I still have the possibility of joining the hipsters at Amoeba.  And other jobs worthy of my brand-spanking-new $160,000 degree.

The night is dark and hot as hell.  It is no doubt warmer in Van Nuys, and yet it in no way deters my desire to get out of the proverbial Dodge.  Three days.  A few more to possibly landing a job.  And if more roaches get in my way, I may give Hans Landa a run for his money as the most vicious mass-murder this summer.

La cucaracha, la cucaracha,

ya no puede caminar

porque no tiene, porque le falta

las dos patitas de atrás.