The Luna Park Gazette

It was on a late summer night in the East Village that I first saw the Machine. I was out with friends one Friday evening and after drinks, snacks, and talk at a funky saloon, they decided they wanted to get something to eat. We walked a few blocks to a Dominican restaurant and managed to get a table. It was late, I wasn't that hungry and the menu wasn't doing it for me. So I ordered a bowl of chicken soup. I happened to look over to a corner table and I saw this young man, heavyset with a porkpie hat and sun glasses--even though it was 10 o'clock at night. He looked like a character from a seventies cop show, the kind of guy who knows what's going on in the hood and feeds the detective tips. He had two Cuban sandwiches on his plate surrounded by french fries, which were adrift in ketchup, and he was showing his meal who was the boss. Slowly but deliberately, he polished one sandwich, then the other, and knocked off the french fries along the way. After cleaning off his...

So all I have to do is dream...if I want to get Alzheimer's. A recent study finds a link between daydreaming and Alzheimer's Disease, which attacks the very parts of the brain that we use to create waking fantasies. Alzheimer's has taken on a new dimension ever since my father was diagnosed with the disease. Now every time I forget or misplace something or struggle to recall a name or movie title, I ask myself is this how it starts? It seems that daydreaming may be having the same effect as idling a car. You're using up energy and wearing down the engine, but you're not going one inch forward. Gosh, that sounds familiar. Oh, spiffy. Something else to worry about. If this is true, this is quite serious: all I do is daydream for God's sake. Ever since I was a kid I've dreamed about being famous, loved, strong, fearless, I even saw myself as a talented singer. Now I don't think I'm the only doing this. Daydreaming has been a plot devise in countless mov...

Maybe I should join a monastary. Clearly meeting women is not my forte. I either don't have the nerve to approach them, they're not in the places I go, or the ones I do find are psychotic. I went down to Shore Road today to enjoy the last days of summer. It feels like autumn already, damn it. I saw the usual handful of babes in bikinis and I ran into--can you believe it?--Angelica (she of the black bikini and pierced navel), just finishing a run. We chatted a little and I went my way, which happened to be the men's room. I remembered that this was the day I had planned to stake out the park so I could ask her for a date. But we know that she had actually shot me down yesterday, thus proving I was right to ask her out at the earliest possible opportunity. Had a similar experience today with yet another bikini-clad lady. Similar in that I couldn't get up the nerve to speak to her. I still find the park approach difficult, being all exposed. I'm focusing on the rejecti...

Oh, goodness do I feel happy. Why? Well, a beautiful, sexy, lovely woman told me she doesn't want to go out with me. It makes no sense, of course, but I'll tell you all I know. When we last left yours truly I was all bent out of shape because I kept letting women get away from me, even though I had struck up some very nice conversations with them. One of them, my favorite, actually, was Angelica--she of the black bikini and pierced navel. I finally got up the nerve to talk to her whilst she was sunbathing down by Shore Road after lusting for her in the shadows for weeks. But once again, I had let her walk away from here, promising I'd see her around. And I had planned to--I'd adjusted my Saturday schedule to make sure I'd be on Shore Road when she--hopefully--would be there. However, just this very morning I'm doing my errands and I see this woman in shorts and a camouflage t-shirt coming toward me on Fifth Avenue. I'm thinking I recognize her, s...

Betsy: We met Monday night on the R train to Brooklyn. You had just moved from L.A. and got off at Union Street. I was too shy/dumb/whatever to ask for your contact info. Let's keep the conversation going--I learned a lot in just a few stops. I posted my first "Missed Connection" notice on craigslist today. I know, I know. Dream on, you pathetic loser. If you get any response at all in the next seven days it won't be from the cute girl you can't stop thinking about, but some degenerate ex-convict ratcatcher with a speargun for a hand and a rusty water spigot growing out of his forehead. But what else can I do? I don't know any psychics, I can't read tea leaves and obviously I don't have the brains or the cajones to actually ask a woman for her number. Betsy was the third strike out in two days. The first one, Angelica--she of the black bikini and pierced navel--I think I can find, as she hangs out in the same spot along Shore Road (in her black bikin...

On my first day as a student at Brooklyn Technical High School, I was so frightened I couldn’t enter the building. I was terrified by this huge, forbidding structure that looked like a state prison and seemed to be inhaling students off the streets by the hundreds. I was scared of the Fort Greene neighborhood, so different in every possible way from my little enclave in Bay Ridge. My father had given me a lift in his car that morning and he quickly sensed my anxiety—there was no way to miss it. Instead of getting angry or shouting “Be a man!” and kicking me out of the moving car, he took me for a spin around the block. As other students went inside, we cruised in the vicinity of this massive fortress like a four-wheeled sputnik orbiting a distant planet. My father told jokes and stories to calm me down while I gripped the armrest to keep from jumping out the window and running all the way home. People who live in this up and coming area today wouldn't recognize the place it was in ...

My computer crashed last week and I damn near joined it. After endless hours on hold, I finally got through to the Bombay Brigade, who promptly put me on hold. This went on for days , I stayed up till 3 a.m. three nights running, cursing, screaming, and getting nowhere. During the day, I ran to a local internet cafe, one of many Arabic businesses in this neighborhood, to check my e-mails and look for jobs that I couldn't apply to. And then I was back on the phone to India at sundown. I had to deal with people who could barely speak English, who knew virtually nothing about computers--it was a nightmare. (Although I did get an idea for a short film from it. What the hell? What else was I going to do?) Somewhere in all this, the Dell (oops! did I mention their name??) Center got hit by a flood. I thought this was a pipe busting in the can, but it turned out to be a real, honest-to-God flood, that hit the India offices. It killed hundreds of people, but I was so twisted by then all I ...