This is from Matt Groening’s Life in Hell (just the text, though*):
I used to draw this cartoon in a dinky third-floor apartment in Hollywood (Will I be drawing these damn rabbits forever?). When I moved in, the other tenants warned me that the building was haunted by the ghost of Mary Pickford. “She’s real, man.” “If you scoff she’ll get ya.” When she was a young, struggling actress, the story went, Pickford had lived in the apartment directly below mine. Whoever lived there now had the loudest record player I’d ever heard in my life. I’d lie in bed at 2 A.M., listening to the music that vibrated my bed. It got annoying after awhile. Being the nonconfrontational type that I am, I just turned up my own music. But the ghost responded by turning up hers. So I pushed my speakers face-down on the floor, put on some bass-heavy reggae, and skanked in pride. The ghost was not intimidated. She merely cranked up her own music. This went on for weeks. Finally one night I flipped out. I couldn’t stand listening to “Take Me Down To Funkytown” one more time, even if I was the one who was playing it. I grabbed a cinder block from my bookshelf, raised it above my head, and dropped it rather harshly on the floor. The music below suddenly went off. All was quiet, too quiet. Suddenly I heard ferocious pounding on my door. “What the Hell are you doing in there??” The ghost’s voice was surprisingly husky. “The light fixture in my ceiling just crashed on the floor!!!” I just cringed, listening to the heavy breathing in the hall. Eventually, the breathing went away. And the ghost of Mary Pickford never bothered me again.
*I thought I’d posted this here before, and/or actually saved the comic somewhere convenient, but guess not.
