The Luna Park Gazette

David Letterman likes to do this mock-nasty face he calls the skunk eye. He twists his mug up to one side until he's glaring at you with one squinting eyeball. It's a classic dirty look and I think it's funnier than hell. But in real life, dirty looks aren't so funny. This week an amatuer boxer was shot to death in Brooklyn after he and his killers exchanged dirty looks. That's all they needed to start shooting: a hostile variation on the skunk eye. The victim's nickname was "Squint" because of his poor vision and there is a theory that this habit led to his death. The shooters interpreted his squinting as a challenge and naturally the only rational response was to gun him down. A dirty look is the flashpoint for violence. For years I've heard people say if you look at people the wrong way in this city and you'll get shot. And they're right. So many fights start with the loaded question, what are you looking at? I was in a martial arts clas...

Had he lived Bruce Lee would have been 65 years old today. It's hard to imagine the star of "Enter the Dragon" dealing with the all-too-mortal issues of aging. If you've ever seen any of his movies, you'd swear this incredible being, this force, could never grow old. And, of course, he didn't. I remember seeing "Enter the Dragon" in high school and, yes, plot wise, it's an abomination, but you knew that going in. It's all about the fighting, Bruce Lee taking on whole divisions of thugs, doing sommersaults into his enemy's face and harpooning that homicidal old geezer in the hall of mirrors. He was all the rage back in the Seventies. Back then when people said "Bruce" they weren't talking about Springsteen. And then one day he was dead. I remember going back to school after summer vacation and spotting a Chinese kid in my class. He was a martial arts student and a huge Bruce Lee fan. When he saw me on the first day of school,...

And so another Thanksgiving goes into the record books. I'm sitting in front of my computer, stuffed to the gills and listening to "Porgy and Bess" (?) on NPR. All the guests have gone and my Aunt Margaret just called to thank me and my sister for a wonderful time. Most of the cleaning is done, I put out the trash, left some food for Flash, my alley cat amigo, and, praise the Lord, I don't have to work tomorrow. Can't remember the last time I had the Friday after Thanksgiving off and I am truly thankful for this, I can tell you. This is the first holiday celebration we've had at home since my mother died three years ago. Prior to tonight we always went to restaurants for the holiday meals because my sister and I couldn't bear the thought of sitting at the dinner table and looking at my mother's empty chair. But some time has passed, and to be honest, my father really isn't in good shape to go out. He's looking frail lately and with the problem ...

I hate covering trials. I've been a reporter for, ye gods, something close to 20 years and I've only covered a handful of trials and preliminary hearings. And I've pretty much hated them all. Time loses all meaning in court. Things that in the real world would be done in no time grind down to extreme slow motion as soon as you add a judge and some lawyers. You sit there and wonder when the hell you're going to get out of there. You watch the sun go down, the shadows grow long and the stars come out and you're still in this goddamn courthouse. And then you start taking it personally, as in, could you bastards just reach a verdict of some kind, just or unjust, logical or insane, and let me go the hell home? You swear you're going to quit this nonsense, going to find another job, break down and become a PR man like some many other ex-reporters and start pulling down some real money for a change. It's like being punch drunk without climbing into the ring. Fasten...

And now, live from Planet Freak Show, we bring you the Case of the Purloined Parrot. I usually hate to preface a story with the words "this is true" but a recent case out of Florida makes this little disclaimer mandatory. It seems this woman down there was so enamored with a classic car that she swiped an exotic parrot from her employer, stuffed the bird down her bra (!?) and tried to swap the little bugger for the vintage vehicle. The deal went south, however, when the car's owner turned out to be a good friend of the parrot-napper's boss. It really is a small world after all. "The circumstances of the case are the most bizarre I've ever encountered," said veteran wildlife investigator Lenny Barshinger. Where's Long John Silver when you need him? I recall an old Monty Python bit about a bogus news program that focused only on the news for parrots. So there would be stories like "No parrots were involved in a 5-car pile-up on the M-5 today....

Oh, the irony... For years I have tortured my sister with my degrading, hateful comments about cats. Rancid fleabags was my expression of choice, but I made full use of the language in describing my loathing for felines. Now, I was just kidding, of course. I was trying to torment my sister by ragging on her cats. I don't have anything against them--nor anything for them, come to think of it. I was just playing around. She always threatened to get me a cat as a punishment and I always swore I'd donate it to the nearest Chinese restaurant. So it went on over the years. She'd put her cats on the phone so I could hear them purr(?!?) and describe what they were doing while she was talking to me. Hey, who cares about them stupid cats? I got better things to do then waste time on those obnoxious, lazy, overfed trouble makers. Or then again, maybe I don't. It seems now I am in need of cats, or at least one, to scare away the mice (or worse) that have gotten into this house. I p...

You never know where you'll meet a decent human being. Most days they can be awful hard to find and if I went searching for one, a huge corporation would be the last place I'd look. But that's what happened last week when I called my father's insurance carrier to find out what I could about his IRA. My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and he's never been one for keeping records, a trait that I unfortunately inherited. My mother was always the one that did the finacial paperwork for them, although my father always maintained he was the brains of the outfit, despite the acute lack of evidence. Since my mom's death three years ago, his financial records have pretty much gone to hell. I've done my best to keep up, but my hatred off all things financial and my stunning lack of apptitude in these matters has resulted in some rather sizeable gaps in my dad's portfolio. I had to call the insurance company to see what was going on wi...