The Roommate

When I lived in Chicago, the apartment on Burling went through more tenants than Henry VIII went through wives. It was ridiculous, someone would see a steam room, a pool table a 3 story greystone on the border of old town and Lincoln Park and think, my god this place is incredible. And the rent is under a grand! Deal. Then he got to know his roommates and their behaviors (as well as their friends Dante and Sami) and after about 6 months, he had enough and bailed...only for another sad sack to come along and do the exact same thing. Eventually I moved out, no change. Some people just don't think it's an acceptable lifestyle choice to stay up until 6am every Thursday-Saturday.

I digress.

I have a roommate moving out March 1st "to be closer to work" but I secretly think it's because I have figured out how to steal the Airtunes from his control and replace Phantagram with Skrillex. Thus I'm in a familiar situation, I need a new roommate. In the past I had never dealt with this, I made one of the other roommates do it. This time the task fell to me. As someone who has house hunted via Craigslist before, I know there are a lot of weirdos out there and also a lot of people that aren't quite like me. Some of the postings you will find on CL are fucking ridiculous, "I work from home, so I would prefer someone that is rarely around. No partying, no drinking, definitely no smoking." I mean if that is the case why in the fuck would anyone want to move in, isn't that the point of being in LA. In any event, I know we have a pretty ridiculous deal in Venice. I'd say average rent is around 1200 we pay 875, so I knew a thousand people would respond, so in order to screen the people that I would surely instantly ding, I wrote the following ad:

What's up? Our 3rd roommate is moving out at the end of the month and we need to fill his room. Let's get this out of the way if you do not like to drink heavily on the weekends, this is probably not for you (However we are fairly civilized during the week.) Best to have full disclosure now than cause a problem down the road. We are 25 work in entertainment and went to IU. Email if you want to come check the place out and if you can chug a beer in under 10 seconds you will move onto the second round of interviews. Rent is 875, I'm still not quite sure what utilities we pay and don't. You'll have to give the outgoing guy some sort of security deposit reimbursement too. 4 units in the building, all the neighbors are pretty cool. We have a dishwasher and shit, I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to tell you. Everything looks newish. Must have an affinity for HBO Sunday night shows. 6th and Westminster.

I didn't think the ad was that ridiculous, the point I was trying to get across was, my roommate and I are bros. We are basically not only recruiting a roommate but a homie. We want someone to party with and not lock themselves in their room all day. Fair enough right? I thought there was a fairly good chance I would wind up on the internet under the headline World's biggest douche. But alas, I was wrong, and within moments a flood of emails came in...and the best part, each responder was selling me on them.

The things these people said were so hilarious. It ranged from "Bro I can chug a beer in 4 seconds!" "I can find you the best acid/cocaine/ketomine/molly in LA" I don't even know what the fuck Ketamine is, but what I really loved was people that were like, "I have a 80 inch tv we can put in the family room" or "I'll pay $1000 a month, just pick me."

Thus a contest was born. I mean I have to right? I have something desirable, they want it, there is extremely high demand and almost 0 supply, it's simple economics, I have to leverage my favor in this deal.

What I have decided to do...and I'm serious. I have scheduled an open house for next Saturday. Every contestant has 5 minutes to impress me (Jack is out of town so it's ALL me) be that with awesome personality, party tricks, sexual favors gifts or whatever. Maybe I'll dress like the joker with a broken pool cue and say "we're gonna have...tryouts." Then I will make a LeBron-esque decision the following Tuesday, and in order not to hurt everyone else's feelings I'll just that one of my fraternity brothers moved to LA at the last minute and he's moving in. I was pondering first and second round interviews but I don't want to get too attached to multiple of these suitors, especially the girls (yes a handful of raver girls want to move in) in fact I'm considering pitching this as a reality show or web series or something. I would need a new title because of that awful Blair Waldorf movie, but still I think it would be great, it's basically like the bachelor except they are competing for a room instead of my heart.

Anyway, I am willing to hear any and all suggestions or challenges any of you can think of. I might quiz them on 90's pop culture. See how well they do while intoxicated, make me show a facebook picture of the last girl they fucked...or I could just go by who is going to bring the dopest shit. So far we've got people from all over the country (actually world there is a Frenchie and a Russian in the running) ranging from 22-28 years old. I may have to set up my iPad in the room to live stream it or at least live blog.

I guess this also an official announcement if any of you have any mutual friends looking for a place in LA let me know and with sadness I'll cancel the show, because it's probably better to live with a friend of a friend than a guy who puts on a good bro game but is actually a serial killer a la Nico on The Following.

Let the games begin!