This is not fun… this looking for an affordable apartment in LA -- “affordable” being a relative term -- is not unlike prehistoric man hunting the wooly mammoth. It’s fraught with danger, hardship, and you sometimes have to wield a spear fashioned out of a long wooden stick, stone arrowhead, and twine of some sort. It’s a primitive, violent, horrible thing that I’d thought mankind had evolved beyond.

This is the first and only rule of Hell A apartment hunting: DON’T FUCKING DO IT. IDIOT! Unless, of course, you have no choice. My roommate and I, being that our building has been sold to new owners who are remodeling it and want all of the old school tenants out by a quickly approaching date, fall under this dreaded “no choice” category. It’s not like our apartment is some glorious personal haven filled with enriching wonders, good feelings, majestic space, and hardwood floors. No, it’s just a decently sized, dependable, carpeted place to keep our shit. A very overpriced in what one would think of as “reality” but shockingly cheap in terms of “Hell A” place in which to keep our shit.

This is my humble column, so I won’t presume to speak for my esteemed roommate, but, honestly, LA apartment hunting -- my freaking third time in four years -- has been very trying. The most trying yet for me, in point of fact. It seems that the already outrageous prices that pollute the City of Angels have increased even more outrageously over the years! I have a decent job, work nearly fifty hours a week at said decent job, sell various body fluids on the side, help oversee the vast the footnote empire, and I still can’t find a decent apartment to share? Not to live in as my own but to share?!? I’m thirty years old, and I’m having trouble affording an apartment in which I have a roommate that pays for half of the rent and bills???

This is not how I pictured things going. D.J. at age thirty was not supposed to be like this. Three movies (first breakout critical darling, sophomore slump soon to be discovered as ahead of its time genius, and huge blockbuster hit), a beautiful wife (who fell in love with me BEFORE all of my success so that I know it’s for reals), and homes in Hell A, New York, Ohio (to see the fam), and some cool European country? Yeah. That sounds a little closer to the plan. The plan! What happened to the plan? Life happened, bitches. Life coupled with reality. You know it, and you know what it smells like. We all do. Builds character.

This is how things go for many of us, which is fine, I guess. You graduate school, decide to live at home for a year working two part time jobs you have no interest in instead of getting right down to pursuing your dreams, talk more about being a writer than doing actual, you know, writing, and, BAM! Suddenly it’s ten years later, and you’re in a roommate situation, afraid of whether or not you can even fulfill your financial and spiritual end of that, let alone buy a yacht and keep a nice, hip flat in London. And forget about the jetpack. Those aren’t even being sold at department stores yet. Okay, maybe a lot of that is just me, but still…

This is distressing me a great deal, this apartment hunting. It has been dragging on for a while now. Such a painfully long while that I’ve been taking serious stock in what I’ve done these past thirty years in hopes I can figure out how to do better for the next, oh, ten or twelve I have left. (My heart’s going to rebel against all of these burritos soon, you see.) I don’t want to have to decide between a nice crib and neighborhood safety. Why do I have to trade ample space, two decent sized bedrooms, off-street parking, and hardwood floors for the privilege of not getting carjacked or mugged by a kid ten years younger than me who is going to have an even more ridiculous apartment market to deal with when he’s my age?

This is not fair. It’s life, sure, and there’s no point in whining about, I get it… but I have a column to write. Anyway, things have to be done. Concessions made. DVDs not bought. Lunches packed instead of bought at restaurants. Books checked out of the library instead of purchased. Pants acquired cheaply due to an irregular inseam. Overtime hours worked.

This is just how it goes in Los Angeles America (and everywhere else, really) for us folks without trust funds or marketable work skills. Simply put and back to the supposed point: an apartment must be found, and it must be accepted that, yes, it will be a step down from the current one, yet it will more expensive.

This is a crock of bullshit!

This is not as bad is it could be, though. I know, okay? I know it. My belly is still full of burritos that I don’t have to risk my life hunting for with a crude spear while wearing fur undies in an ice cold tundra for the survival of not only myself, but my village -- so it could certainly be worse. Much worse. Fur undies in the snow worse.