Johnny Allina

The Dryden Arms (House of Despair, a Comedy) Johnny Allina

Bored with his job as a copywriter at a major hotel chain and living in a noisy apartment in Hollywood teeming with would-be actors and unsavory characters, aspiring novelist Rupert is laid off and seizes the opportunity to move to a serene dwelling in order to live in the peace and quiet he needs to go on a Bukowski-like writing bender. Instead, he ends up at The Dryden Arms in Glendale, California, where he takes the job as Resident Manager and encounters, in an absurdist reality, tenants who make him think he has become the warden of an asylum. We trail behind him, laughing all the way, as he deals with tenant-on-tenant attempted murder, race relations, a ghost, an uneasy romance with a bitchy lit agent, a smug cat, Eastern philosophies, invisible roommates, a porn star, a foul-mouthed solipsist with undiagnosed allergies, and a lawn-obsessed polymath. Then there's the elderly Don, whom Rupert alternately fantasizes about offing to get his fabulous apartment or rescuing from the impending oblivion of old age. Follow the imaginative POV of Rupert as he navigates The Dryden Arms, bringing out both his suspicious and compassionate nature in a riotous non-stop ride.