Carl Manning

Echo Park

In the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, everybody is somebody else. May, a single mother who delivers strip-O-grams, dreams of being an actress. She rents one of her rooms out to a pizza-man cum songwriter named Jonathan. Meanwhile, in the next apartment, August, an Austrian bodybuilder, fancies himself the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. As the pressures of everyday life in LA mount, Jonathan and August vie for May's love.

Utilities

One of Bob Hunt's neighbours' electricity is cut off because she cannot pay the bill. She is assisted by contributions, and the bill is paid entirely in pennies, though the clerk is belatedly told that payment is not accepted in such a large quantity of coins. Unfortunately, the electric company fails to reconnect the power due to a communications snafu, and the elderly woman is taken to hospital suffering hypothermia. Hunt sets off on a vendetta of revenge, sabotaging assorted support systems.