I’ll tell you one thing, being a super isn’t that bad. You know how it goes – wash the floor once a week, clean out a few backed-up showers, unlock a few doors – and everyone in the building’s really great. Totally nice people – I feel really blessed. Just really, totally blessed. Except for Mark in 3A. That motherfucker is this close to getting his stupid video game box thrown out of the window.

You know, when that kid moved in, I thought he was gonna be a perfectly nice tenant. Didn’t look like Linda in 6B, who fills up the recycling bin with 3 Buck Chuck bottles then locks herself out once a week, or like Ira in 4E, who I think was masturbating when I came to fix his refrigerator. But I should have known what I was in for from this motherfucker when I saw him moving his Rock Band drums in.

I had never even heard of Rock Band. If you had told me, “Oh, yeah, it’s a videogame where you pretend to play the drums to songs,” I would have laughed at you. But how innocent I was. Turns out that was wrong, though. Rock Band is a videogame where at 2 in the morning, someone decides they want to try to play Metallica just by stomping their foot on the ground of the room right above your bedroom. And failing. Seven or eight times in a row.

This is an old building – we have thin walls, wooden floors, everything. If I drilled a nail through my bathroom wall, there are only about 2 inches of plaster before I could see right up Julie in 2B’s bathroom habits. Not that I would. But I could. But the problem with those thin walls – well, besides the voyeurism – is that I can hear everything that anyone else in this building does.

And, you know, I can sleep through a lot of shit, so I didn’t say anything at first. But that was just Rock Band – I didn’t realize that that was only the beginning. Then, before I even knew it, it was Beatles Rock Band, and in the middle of the night, he’d have three friends over, all of them drunk as hell, shouting “Octopus’s Garden” at the top of their lungs. At the top of their lungs! They’d do it over and over and over until they got it perfect, I guess, but by the time they were done I was ready to go up there and put my fist through their door.

But now, I heard about the worst thing of all. There’s this game that’s called DJ Hero. My nephew says that if they get it, these guys are going to be mashing up songs all night. Do you know what it’s like to hear “Hollaback Girl” seven times in one night? No? Well, do you know what it’s like to hear “Hollaback Girl” mashed up with “The Ghostbusters Theme” twenty times in one night? It’s just going to be this drunk asshole who’s never touched a turntable in his life, blaring these horrible songs over and over, driving me up a fucking wall.

I guess it’s going to be another one of those years where I have to steal a tenant’s mail. Ah, well. That’ll show that little bastard. Him and his DJ Hero.