Even when guests come over and one of them puts his feet on the coffee table
you’ll go berserk. “Dude! I just Pledged that shit this afternoon! Get your
stinky foot off of it! It’s only got three legs, you’ll throw off the whole
counterbalance!” And your friend will take one look at your shitty coffee table,
flourished with stains and cigarette burns, and then at the apron tied around
your waist and wonder when the aliens switched your brain with Martha Stewart’s.
The most important investment you will ever make is in your bed and mattress
set. You spend a third of your life sleeping—spend the money. Just limit
yourself to a case of beer a week, and in a month and a half you can splurge on
a mattress with memory foam. Or don’t. Nothing says class like a squeaky bed
frame and egg carton padding sticking out of the mattress cover.
"Anything remotely nice in a good area is overpriced.
Anything moderately nice in a bad area is the same price."
The kitchen is
always hit or miss in your very first apartment. The appliances are
either very new or very old—there is no in between. You’re either
operating with a new fridge with 16 different ways to freeze ice
cubes, or a cauldron over a massive fireplace. And, regardless of
whatever nineteenth or twenty-first century kitchenware you acquire,
you can be sure your dining table will not have a single matching
chair to its name.
The only consistent entity everyone splurges on is the
television/entertainment set. You could be eating cold soup right out of the can
because
instead of purchasing a microwave you opted for TiVO instead. Now you can
eat slightly defrosted mozzarella sticks while watching a recorded episode of
MTV’s Cribs instead of burning your mouth on the cheesy goodness in front
of a new episode of Gilmore Girls. Good for you.
Closet space. Will there ever be enough for women? Never. Never has a home
been built on this entire great earth of ours where a woman has ever uttered the
words, “Wow. This is more than enough closet space to fit every season of
wardrobe.” Never gonna happen. Period. When I moved out my mother turned my
bedroom—my entire bedroom—into her new walk-in closet, and my poor dad
still has to keep all his clothes in the one bureau my mom allotted him at the
beginning of their marriage.
Rent here in Hollywood is ridiculous. Anything remotely nice in a good area
is overpriced. Anything moderately nice in a bad area is the same price. And
then there are your neighbors. Ideally,
you’re shooting for young couples without kids and no intention of having
kids. Ever. The most ideal place to live would be the building in which your
landlord could make you sign a contract forcing an immediate move-out the moment
any tenant’s pregnancy stick turned blue.
Least ideally, you want child actor stars living in the same complex as you.
Two weeks ago this child star that lives in the same complex as the student
housing lit some fireworks on the hill behind the Hollywood sign. As a brushy
dry area, the hill naturally caught on fire and you could see
flames shooting out from behind the Hollywood sign. The entire complex had
to be evacuated and all I could think about was the fact that that ungrateful
brat must have a pinball machine and a coffee table with all four legs. Who gave
that twerp sparklers anyway?
