The Luna Park Gazette

I made history on Saturday when I went from civilian to sainthood in under two minutes. It all started when I walked into my local Chase branch to do my weekly banking chores and saw a brand new Nokia cell phone sitting on the lobby table. I turned to ask the two people on the ATM's if either one of them owned the cell phones and got a pair of negative responses. I'm looking at this phone, and it was a beaut, all flat and shiny and much nicer than mine, and I'm thinking do I leave it there in hopes the owner realizes it's missing and returns? Do I call one of the numbers on the memory list and relay the news of the missing phone to a total stranger--from a total stranger? "Maybe you should turn it in to the bank," suggested an elderly lady at one of the ATM's. Ring-A-Ding-Ding Well, there's that. I scooped up the phone and went into the bank, where a young man with a hairdo just like mine buzzed me into the back office. I handed over the phone and he s...

Less than an hour left to my 49th birthday and I'm feeling pretty good. It was a quiet affair--just me, my dad, and my sister. Mary, my dad's aide, made a delicious pasta dinner, my sister got the cake and sang "Happy Birthday"--my dad didn't seem able to join in--and then we watched "Derailed" on DVD. And my brother from San Francisco called just as the movie ended and I got to talk with him, my sister-in-law and Victoria, my crazy, beautiful niece. Yes it was a real wild night on the town. Well, perhaps not, but it was just what I needed. I couldn't help but think of my mom when I looked at the cake's candles flickering in front of me, I could almost hear her singing to me. And my dad used to wave his arms like a conductor as everyone joined in. God, such a long time ago and yet it's still so fresh in my mind. Let me pause here to thank God for letting me get this far. A lot of people haven't, so I consider myself very lucky. I want to ...

Like they say in Florida, I want a recount. This Wednesday, I will turn 49. Forty-nine Oh-sweet-Jesus-tell-me-I'm-dreaming years old. Where is the justice in that? How could I, of all people, be one year short of being five decades old? I'm so young and full of life, I can't be heading into the AARP corral. There must be some mistake. I'm not sure how I feel about this. My life is nowhere near where I wanted it to be, where I dreamed it would be, but I go though that routine most days of the week. I getting tired of hearing this myself. All my idols are over the hill or retired. Handsome young actors of my youth are now playing somebody's dad on TV. And I see Paul McCartney has gone from adorable young Beatle to foolish old man, losing his much-too-young wife in front of the whole world. Oh, I believe in yesterday. It's just today that's causing me fits. In grammar school, the whole class used to sing "Happy Birthday" to you on your special day, on...

There's a sign leaning up against a tree near my mother's grave that reads: "If tears could build a stairway, a nd memories could build a lane, I would walk all the way to heaven. And bring you home again." I see it every time I go to the cemetery and every time I cry. The logical side of me says it's just some mawkish bit of poetry, but the emotional side, which calls the shots in my psyche, doesn't want to hear it, because that's exactly how I feel. I saw that sign again today when my sister and I went to the cemetery to pay our respects on Mother's Day, and again I cried. I've got an ocean full of tears and a stack of memories 100 stories high, but I haven't quite figured out how to make that trip to Heaven. I Remember When Rock Was Young This is the fourth Mother's Day that we've gone out to Resurrection Cememtery, way at the end of Staten Island. It's a long trip and since my brother wasn't in town to give us a ride, we ha...

It's late, almost midnight; I should be in bed, but I've got one more wash to hang. I can hear the washing machine, down in the basement, going through its cycles. My father had another one of his accidents today, and I thought I had washed all the stained clothes, until I looked into the bathtub and found a soiled t-shirt that could not wait until tomorrow. So, once more, into the wash. I see now that it's a Shania Twain t-shirt and I should probably resist the urge to make a joke about not knowing shit from Shania, but what the hell? It's late and I'm tired. It turns out that my father may have cancer after all. Apparently I didn't quiet grasp what his doctor told me about the MRI. I thought that test had given my father a clean bill of health, but all it did was show there was no cancer outside of his colon. Today Dr. Pearlman tells me that there is a 70% chance my father has colon cancer. How did I get that one wrong? Maybe I was too desperate for good news ...

They seemed like nice people. But then they always do, don't they? A little more than a year ago, we rented the upstairs apartment of our two-family house to what we thought was a decent family. We needed the money to pay for my father's homecare aide and renting the apartment was the only way to do it. The wife loved the apartment; it was so big and homey. The husband (boyfriend, sperm donator, I honestly don't know) works for the MTA and seemed like a hard-working family man. Oh, Jesus, we sure called that one wrong. The first day they moved in, the wife (mistress, whore, psychopath, I honestly don't know) asked if they could pay the rent in two monthly installments instead one payment the way normal people do. Since they were all moved in, my sister and I thought, what the hell? Meet The Anti-Christs It turns out "hell" is the operative word for this bunch, as in "living hell." Within the first month, the wife's mother shows up at the house, ...

I am happy to report that my father does not have colon cancer. I found out this morning after I got out of the shower and found my father's doctor had left me a message. He said the MRI that my father had on Saturday came out negative--no cancer. I can't say how relieved I was to hear that message. I had been sweating this out since last week when Dr. Pearlman first expressed his concerns about my father's health. I told my family to brace themselves for some bad news--I told everyone but my father, actually--so this morning I made the same round of phone calls to pass on the good news. And I want to thank my blogging buddies for their kindess and support in this scary couple of days. It is most appreciated, my friends, more than I can ever say. I came home tonight and found my dad had another "accident" in the bathroom and, to make matters worse, he tried to clean it up himself. I found myself cursing and complaining about having to put up with too much shit--li...

It's three years today since "Mission Accomplished".... How many American soldiers have died, have many have been wounded, maimed, and crippled for life? How many innocent Iraqis have died for this "War on Terror"? I remember when President Top Gun came strutting across the deck of that aircraft carrier, the infamous sign high above his head. It was all fake, all a lie, and the American people lapped it up. If there is anyone who still believes this monkey told us the truth about weapons of mass destruction, they are in dire need of electro-shock therapy. The Bush loyalists are really a cult, who will believe anything their lord and master tells them and turn on anyone who tells them otherwise. It is a sick, sick age in which we live. I tell people that my America is dead, that the neocons and the Christian fundamentalist psychos have taken over, but I'm feeling more aggressive lately. I'm thinking it's time we took our country back from these bastar...