Excerpt #1

This first one is entitled: "You Can't Compete."
For this story, we enter Big Jon's life in 1979. Being a dedicated punk rock guitarist, Jon had spent the prior evening playing a gig in Hollywood. Their equipment was finally loaded into the van at about 3:00AM. With the subsequent drive to the South Bay of Los Angeles and various methods of "unwinding," Jon crawled into bed some hours later.
At 8:00AM, our hero's peaceful slumber is pierced with the sounds of a video game at a loud volume. A few seconds later, it becomes clear that the three young ladies who live in the apartment under Jon are playing the new Pretenders album at high volume, and the video game sounds are from the song "Space Invaders." Jon enjoys the Pretenders as much as anyone. However, not so much at this hour of the morning. This has been an ongoing problem, with every Saturday morning disturbed by loud stereo music. Today, Jon walks to the porch and looks down to the first floor patio. He sees the three young lovelies who live below him sunning themselves outside their apartment, with their door open so as to better blare their music. Jon leans over and politely asks them to turn down their music, explaining that he had worked late the night before.
They do not deign to even acknowledge him, and do not adjust the volume of their music. He asks once again to please turn it down. They do not. They play Side A and Side B over and over, flipping from one side to the other. As he lays in bed, visions of throwing ice water down upon them, or perhaps running into their apartment and doing a samurai John Belushi to their stereo, and other such thoughts come to mind, but all could result in a trip downtown to jail. He seizes upon one that will be effective, yet not entirely illegal.
Since having had much of his band equipment stolen over the years, Jon now carries all his equipment up to his apartment, no matter how tired he is or how late the hour. So, he has a front room full of gear. He hooks up his amplifier and the PA system, with as much power as he can. He turns everything up to 10, lays two PA speaker cabinets down to face the floor, and the other guitar speaker cabinet he puts in the front doorway.
Jon walks onto the patio balcony in his tightey-whitey underpants with his guitar, and proceeds to do some Pete Townshend-esque arm windmills, then some high-pitched leads, all at maximum volume.
The next thing he sees is one of the young lovelies running up to him, with her mouth open wide in an unheard scream. Jon stops playing, and gently pushes her aside to yell off the balcony, "You want to make noise in the morning? Go ahead! 'Cause you can't COMPETE!"
With that accomplished, he went back inside his apartment, laid down to the wonderful, blissful silence that followed.