The Luna Park Gazette

I'm trying to remember the name of the nun who used to torture me during my lunch period at Our Lady of Angels cafeteria. She was so horrible, so repulsive, that I guess I can't be faulted from blocking her name from my memory. Her face, of course, is another matter. She was fat and seriously ugly, like a brahma bull in a nun's habit, and when she came lumbering into the cafeteria my stomach would tumble. Sister Mary...? No. Sister Agnes...? No, can't get the name. Well, whatever her name was, if there's any justice in this world, she's rotting in hell right now and will continue to do so for all eternity. The Play's The Thing I recently saw the play "Doubt" by John Patrick Shanley, and while it was fantastic, it also brought back some toxically unpleasant memories. The story takes place in a Catholic school in the Bronx during the 60's and except for a different borough, and a slightly different style of nuns' habit, everythin...

I was so sorry to learn of the death this week of veteran ABC newsman Bill Beutel at age 75. He was the network's London correspondent for many years and he hosted an early version of ABC's morning TV show that became "Good Morning, America," but I remember him best as co-anchor of the local "Eyewitness News" team that I used to watch religously when I was a kid. His death brought back so many memories of growing up in New York during the Seventies. It's been a long time since I've had anything nice to say about local TV news. Maybe all these years as a newspaperman has built up a deep and unbreakable prejudice; or maybe I've seen one useless, pandering, dim-witted "news" story too many, but I find it a struggle watching these clowns on a daily basis. But back in the 70's, when I first started watching "Eyewitness News" it was all so different. Film At 11 Arguably, the informal, sometimes jokey approach to TV news, which w...

So we're coming up to third anniversary of the war that was supposed to have ended in three weeks. So shock and awe has turned into blood and guts. So U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians are being killed and maimed on pretty much a daily basis. So what? At least we've still got George Bush in the White House. And may God help us all. I can still remember the day when The Chimp in Chief first pitched the Iraq war lie to the American people. We were still hurting from the fresh and terrible wounds of 9/11, our soldiers were fighting and dying in Afghanistan, and Little Georgie took to the tube to talk about the threat from... Iraq? I stared at the T.V. in disbelief. What was this schmuck talking about? Iraq had not attacked us on 9/11, the people responsible for the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center were in Afghanistan. Then the chatter started, the lies, the distortions, the half-truths, all aimed at selling this war. Weapons of mass destruction, smoking guns and mushr...

I arise today, Through the strength of heaven: Light of sun, Radiance of moon, Splendor of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of wind, Depth of sea, Stability of earth,Firmness of rock. -- St.Patrick's Breastplate. You could tell it was St. Patrick's Day just by the godawful weather. It was cold as a bastard last night, but that's a given with St. Patrick's Day. The Irish wouldn't know what to do if they had warm, sunny weather on their most important day. I'm half Irish (the other half is Italian) so I celebrate on March 17. I wear green and listen to the Clancy Brothers--I love the old Irish tunes--and I used to make a point of watching The Quiet Man , but I haven't done that in a while. I take it easy on the alcohol since there's got to be more to this day than drinking yourself into a stupor, but I'm certainly in the minority on that score. My father had a stock line he used to say every year at this time: The St. Patrick's Day parade marche...

Sometimes I wonder why I bother. All right, that's a lie. Of course I know why I bother, but I need to toss a little self-pity around first, the way a sumo wrestler throws around a handful of sand before a match. My latest crisis du jour started off innocently enough last week when I had what I thought was a four-alarm genius idea for a screenplay. I get ideas or pieces of ideas all the time but rarely do they slide into my head with the ease and simplicity of this particular gem. I was riding the No. 3 train back to Brooklyn listening to the various lines of thought rattle and criss-cross through my skull when this idea came to me, and, I'm telling you, it was a beaut. I told my shrink about it and he is an aspiring writer, too, and he liked it so much he promised not to steal it. I'm not going to relate the idea here, but, trust me, it was sweet. Or so I thought. Okay, a few days go by, it's Wednesday and I'm working from home because Mary, my dad's aid, is si...

My Uncle Mike died this week and we still haven't told my father. He was the youngest child in my dad's family--just as I am the youngest in my family, but the similarity ends there, or at least I hope it does. Mike died in a V.A. hospital in Californina. I knew things were bad when my Aunt Margaret told me last week that she was flying out to visit him. Margaret never flies, always chosing an ocean liner through the Panama Canal rather than getting on board a jet. My Uncle Joe in L.A. called me Saturday morning to tell me the news. He said Mike seemed to be alert when they first to see him this week, but was kind out of it when they went to see him again. Joe suspected Mike was lit--drunk--in his hospital bed, meaning someone was sneaking him booze. I thought this was a little outlandish until I spoke to my brother in San Francisco, who told me he stopped visiting Mike in the hospital for that very reason: Mike kept bugging him to bring in a bottle. Mike was the closest thing ...