A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

The racket outside is a musical figure, part of a larger work. A hammer pings until its nail is flush. Then it makes a deeper, more painful sound. From another source: the crunch of wood. Destruction.

A house gets a dormer, while the one beside it -- a better example of its kind -- is razed. In its place, two larger houses with a front lawn the size of a doormat.

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Renovation Conversation

FRIDGE: What do you make of the reno?

STOVE: What does it matter, they're getting new appliances.

FRDIGE: Fom an aesthetic point of view.

STOVE: As opposed to what, a personal point of view? A stove's opinion?

FRIDGE: The ceiling came out well. 

STOVE: The ceiling can go to hell for all I'm concerned.

ESPRESSO POT: I'm staying. 

STOVE: No one's talking to you.

ESPRESSO POT: Yes, but I'm staying. They said.

STOVE: The only consolation in all this is that what they once did in the kitchen, they are now doing in the bathroom.

FRIDGE: When your bathroom becomes your kitchen, is it a "kathroom" or a "bitchen"?

ESPRESSO POT: It's a bitchen!

"Everything included, no contra[c]t"

From eBay Classifieds comes this bedsit in Hialeah, Florida, a densely-populated, largely Cuban municipality within Miami-Dade County. Here is the description:

PROMOTIONAL RATE: Deposit- $55-$65 Daily Rent- $55-$65 Weekly Rent- $195- $295 Monthly- $645-$795 We have 3 locations: 100 E 17 St Hialeah, FL 33010 903 W 1 Avenue Hialeah, FL 33010 508 W 1 Avenue Hialeah, FL 33010 PLEASE CALL: 786-370-3394 786-370-5074 786-355-2817 Stay as long as you like, no contracts, everything included. Please call 786-344-2546 or 786-370-3394 or 786-370-5074

"You Just Gotta Listen"

From the bedroom to the boardroom. Or in this case, command control. Tom Cruise busting a move in Tropic Thunder (2008).

"Look At My Shit"

In this instance of actor improvisation, James Franco bursts from a feature-film with his bedside poem about violence, accumulation and "looking":

This is my fuckin' dream, y'all.

All this shit.

Look at my shit.

I got -- I got shorts. Ev'ry fuckin' colour.

I got designer t-shirts.

I got gold bullets.

Motherfuckin' vampires.

I got Scarface on repeat.

Scarface on repeat -- constant, y'all.

I got "Escape". Clavin Klein "Escape".

Mix that shit up with Calvin Klein "Be" -- smell nice. I smell nice.

And a fuckin' bed that's a fuckin' art piece.

My fuckin' space ship. U.S.S. Enterprise on this shit. I go to different planets on this motherfucker.

Me and my fuckin' Franklins here -- we take off. Fuckin' take off.

Look at my shit. Look at my shit.

I got my Blue Kube.

I got my fuckin' nunchuka.

I got shurikens.

I got different flavours.

I got them -- I got them scythes.

Gimme that shit -- I got scythes, I got blades.

Look at my shit. This ain't nothin'. I got -- I got rooms of this shit.

I got my dark tanning oil. Lay out by the pool, put on my dark tanning oil.

Machine guns.

Look at this, look at this motherfucker here. Look at this motherfucker, huh?

A fuckin' army up in this shit.

"I pose in loving memory"

Between 1940 and 1980 (roughly the life span of John Lennon), Quentin Crisp (1908-1999) lived in a bedsit at 129 Beaufort Street, London, after which he moved to New York City, where he lived until his death in 1999.

Crisp was amongst a growing legion of effeminate men who appeared in the popular media when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, a group that included Truman Capote and Andy Warhol, both of whom came to attention through their artistic accomplishments.

But apart from a popular memoir, Crisp spent most of his working life as an artist's model, until his arrival in New York City, where he performed one-man shows and made himself available to whomever wanted to buy him dinner.

Crisp's Wikipedia entry is a good one, and if you click here, you will come upon observations like this:

I always thought Diana was such trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana so she knew the racket. She knew that royal marriages have nothing to do with love. You marry a man and you stand beside him on public occasions and you wave and for that you never have a financial worry until the day you die.

And then upon word of her death:

She could have been Queen of England – and she was swanning about Paris with Arabs. What disgraceful behaviour! Going about saying she wanted to be the queen of hearts. The vulgarity of it is so overpowering.