Stephen, Who Lives On A Boat

Tonight, I went to CDR (that's Comedy Death Ray to you, Future Self) with James, Stephen, Jessica and some friend of Stephen's. It was probably one of the funniest shows I've seen there to date. It featured the largest number of black comedians I've ever seen personally in one room (count: two): a vegan named Ian and somebody doing an impression of... Jesse Jackson at a Friar's Roast. Roasting some Jew. Also, alot of Jewish humor tonight. All of this is incidental, the show was really funny because everyone was on point and put together, nobody really wandered out with a piece of paper and excuses as usually happens at least once at CDR. Come to think of it, the first comedian was a bald white guy who seemed a little uncomfortable being lumped in as a white supremacist; where LA is not self conscious about much, I guess it gets uncomfortable on that point. Which is good.

Anyway, so we were standing in line (we're first, because that's the sort of people we are), and this guy asks us if we have extra tickets. Turns out we DO, because Stephens friends flaked. The new guy's name is also Stephen (he didn't give a last name), and evidently he's a comedian by 'trade'. Later we learned he's really unemployed.

He paid up the five bucks for the ticket and said that he does this every week, and that the people waiting in the standby line are chumps. This way he gets in every week AND he gets cutsies.

How do you know that someone will have an extra ticket? I ask. It's LA, he says, it's the flakiest city in the world.

Good point, Stephen.

So we start to talk, and I ask him where he lives. Get this shit: he lives on a boat. What kind of boat, I ask? A house boat? No. A regular boat? Sort of. A yacht? sort of. Stephen tells me that he bought a broken boat for 5,000 (it'd cost 5-7k to fix it), which he just lives on. There's a 400 dollar a month docking fee, but that flat rate includes water, power, and telephone, and internet.

His iPhone rings, and he tells me how proud he is of finding the LA loophole.

He says (to my surprise) that because he lives on a boat, bringing a girl back 'home' inevitably leads to fucking. I was impressed at the time, because i would have expected the opposite. However, it makes a little sense: you tell a woman you live on a yacht and she thinks your a certain kind of man. by the time she's made the call to go home with you, her mind is more or less made up, even if the yacht cost less than a beater car.

A note: his girlfriend broke up with him when he moved onto the boat. That takes a certain kind of man.