Wandering Brooklyn through the day with Yulia, Jeanne, & Avigail looking at apartments.

A no show landlord at Parkside, followed by a nice apartment in an abysmal location near East New York - followed by seeing an abysmal apartment in an excellent location (Bedford in the heart of Williamsburgh) - mediated by a bus ride through Bed-Stuy (generally not referred to as an up and coming area), the location of a (since canceled) appointment-to-be on Sunday to look at a place purportedly in Clinton Hill (generally considered to be an up and coming area).

For some reason, the bus driver said "last stop" at the outskirts of Williamsburgh well before the actual end of the bus route. Our walk through Williamsburgh, though considerable, was lightened by the walk through the block which contains strong whiffs of the nearby Peter Lugers.

That and posters in authentically Chasidic Brooklyn, full of writing in Hebrew and Yiddish, and a two paneled poster that showed first a concentration camp oven, and secondly various pieces of technology, including cell phones and (IMHO) a 1994 era Mac Centris. The caption (as translated to me) implied that both led to the destruction of Jewry...

Oy.

Dinner (with Bill & Katie, and sans Avigail) was at a Thai place in Bedford called See, which is apparently the restaurant that was used to film the early crappy asian restaurant scene in Garden State. See has great atmosphere, and rather mediocre food.

In lieu of going out, we decided to be lame and stay in. PBS won out this evening, with renditions of The Candidate (not only with Robert Redford, but also a much younger incarnation of Peter Boyle, of Everybody Loves Raymond) and Stardust Memories.

Fantastic Fantastic Earlier Allen.

Tomorrow, the Search continues, in Roosevelt Island, Long Island City (props to Bill for that recommendation) and further along in Queens.

Also, the Onion's AV Club this week has a really nice interview with newbie scifi director ___. There's this great little bit about the role of science fiction in culture today that was really nice:

O: Science-fiction movies are usually big-budget action films set in space. Was Primer intended as a corrective to that? Does science fiction in film need to be redefined?

SC: I wasn't trying to change the industry or anything, that's for sure. It does seem like there's the aesthetic of science fiction, with the aliens and chrome and neon and explosions in space, and then there's science fiction that's used as a literary device. That's the kind I'm interested in. The Greeks had their mythology, and they had a great shorthand. They could assign a human trait to a god and suddenly be able to talk about all sorts of things. I feel like we've got science fiction, which is an even better shorthand, because if you do it right, it's not a matter of "What if this happens?" It's "When this happens..." What will be the reaction, how will we cope with it, and what does it mean for who we are? People complain about I, Robot not being about ideas, and then it makes a ton of money. It's weird. I know I'm not doing anything that's going to change that.