The Luna Park Gazette

I got a spam e-mail the other day that asked a simple, but important question: Joyous neuroses, Culpepper?‏ I don’t know who Culpepper is, but I often suffer from joyous neuroses at this time of the year. The email was an offer for Viagra, the gift that keeps on giving. But with the way my love life has been going, I have no use for Viagra, unless I need a place to hang candy canes. Joyous neuroses seems to be spreading as 2008 draws to a close. I noticed that I was the only customer in my local card store on Tuesday afternoon, which is just not normal. “How’s business?” I asked the owner, hoping he'd have some happy news. “Not good. There should be 20 people in the store at this time of the day.” He then delivered a lengthy diatribe about the alleged Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff and $50 billion scam. I went to a supermarket to get food for the dinner and the place seemed pretty sparsely populated. While I was waiting on line at the checkout counter, one of the other cashiers—a you...

A year ago at this time I was healthy, happy, and in Hawaii. Now I’m sick, cranky and freezing in Brooklyn. This is progress? I am really trying to get some Christmas spirit going now, honest I am. My sister and I got the Christmas tree (a mere 75 bucks), dug the decorations out of the basement—all the lights work, praise Jesus—and brought out the best china in preparation for our family Christmas dinner on Thursday. Even as I write this, I’m listening to Christmas music, trying to get the yuletide feeling again. But it’s not happening. I’ve had a cold for the last 10 days and it’s not just any cold. This is the Blagojevich of colds: vile, debilitating, and it won’t go the hell away. I was coughing so much last week I sounded like Tiny Tim about to kick the crutch. This blows. One of my neighbors has an elaborate holiday light display, which features the word “JOY” crucified to the front of his home. It seems like an order or a curse instead of a proclamation. I’m tempted to put up an ...

I had this dream not long ago where I was meeting with my parents in the living room of our house. They were both alive and elderly, which is my most recent memory of them. My mother was sitting next to a walker, which she used in real life when her health began to fail. My father was standing next to her, not saying a word. This is probably the best indicator that I was dreaming. My mother was telling me that she and my father appreciated how I helped take care of my mother and they wanted to give me something. “We’re going to give you ten dollars ,” she said with great emphasis. I laughed and explained that they didn’t have to give me a reward, that it was my pleasure to help her and that 10 bucks really didn’t go far in today’s economy. Apparently the stock market meltdown hadn’t occurred in this dream world. I’m trying to think what happened during the day to spark that dream. One thing in particular was learning this woman I was interested in had a boyfriend. Even though I laughed...

In my sophomore year of high school, I was doing so poorly in several subjects that I decided only a miracle would keep me out of summer school. So I was pretty shocked when I walked into my home room class on the last day of school and found that I had passed all my classes—not by much, of course—but I was officially a free man until September. “It’s enough to make you go back to church,” I said, marveling at my narrow escape. Of course I didn’t mean that. I had no intention of going back to church. I was a smart aleck teenager who was much too cool for church. And I had suffered 8 years of abuse at Catholic school that would have had the Blackwater torture team screaming for their mommies. No, I was just making a lame joke in a desperate bid to make people laugh. My luck ran out a few years later when I failed math for real this time and had to take it over again in summer school. I had been going to lunch time services at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan for almost a year. It was c...

All right, people, listen up: the long wait is over. The 2009 full-color calendar, based on writer/photographer Brenda Becker's astonishing blog “ Prospect: A Year in the Park ”, has arrived. Yes, Brenda has knocked this one right out of the park--and straight into your life. Brenda, of course, is the multi-talented individual who also cranks out those other great gifts to the blogosphere, CrazyStable and, of course, Prospect: A Year in the Park. Ye gods, is there no stopping this woman? Let’s hope not. “Designed by the photographer and produced right here in Brooklyn,” Brenda tells us, “it is a perfect gift for anyone who is a Brooklynite by birth, adoption, or desire. Buy an extra one to send to those out-of-town relatives who always ask ‘why you live in Brooklyn’!" Chart the days of your life with the beautiful images of Brooklyn’s special wonderland, Prospect Park. "The calendar is a season-by-season reflection on the fathomless beauty and variety of Prospect Park: ...

We didn't get to see the Macy's parade floats being inflated this year, but we did see a guy on stilts scratching his ass, so it wasn't a total loss. My sister and I went up to 79th Street on Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve, in hopes of seeing the floats being brought to life. It was an intimate little affair, with just us and several million other people who had the same idea. We got close to the floats, we really did. But the crowd that circled around the Museum of Natural History was so big and so thick with humanity that the two of us, who share a deathly fear of being trampled, decided to skip this particular ritual. I seem to recall that at one time this event wasn't so incredibly popular, that only a handful of people actually knew about it. That has definitely changed. We tried to get in the perimeter from every possible angle and as we came down one of the avenues, we saw some of the members of Cirque Du Soleil setting up shop on the sidewalk. This group included ...

They say there’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway and at these prices I’m not surprised. I went to the theater the other night see in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” and there was so much drama going on that it rolled off the stage and into my life. The production stars John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson and…Katie Holmes. Yes, that Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise’s wife, blah, blah, yak, yak, you know the drill. “All My Sons” opened on Broadway in 1947, back when the average weekly salary was about 46 bucks and theater tickets were about seven. How much did our tickets cost? Why, funny you should ask. They went for a mere…$116 each. Yes, that’s crazy, but we got them right before the stock market collapse, back in that strangely distant yet recent time, when costly theater tickets seemed like a manageable extravagance, rather than a certifiable act of insanity. What a difference a depression makes. The theater was packed on this night, but I suspect there were a lot of people...

I meant to be writing about something else tonight, but thanks to my crappy computer I'm putting that off until I know what the hell is going on. I am on what the Dell tech guy calls "Safe Mode" though I'm not sure what that it is. I guess it means nothing bad can happen now, like being safe at home in baseball. I wish they had safe mode for relationships and careers. Oops, did I say something stupid? That's okay, I said it in safe mode. Screwed up that big assignment? No problem; I was in safe mode at the time. Then again I've been playing it safe for most of my life and it hasn't done me much good. All I know is that I have been on the phone with tech support so often and for so long that I'm thinking of running for mayor of Mumbai. I know just about everybody over there and I think I'm developing an Indian accent. I've got a campaign promise, too. Vote for me and I promise I'll stop calling...as long as you fix my computer. I still can...

Did you ever see someone go by and wonder what his story was? We see God knows how many people in the course of a day and instantly forget the vast majority of them, but every so often someone sticks in your mind. I had that experience the other morning when I was riding the R train to work and I saw a man wearing a cowboy hat and boots. He was an older gentleman, easily in his seventies, wearing a jacket and tie with his cowboy attire. He sat down and took a book to read and I could see it was a western by Louis L’Amour , one of the all-time great cowboy writers. I didn’t think people read westerns any more and the really strange thing is that man’s book itself looked old; like it was printed back when paperbacks cost 60 cents. I confess I haven’t read much of L’Amour’s work, I admired how he strove for accuracy in his stories. He used to say that if he mentioned a spring in one of his books, then you could be sure that the spring really existed “and the water there is good to drink....

It's official--Barack Obama has been elected the next president of the United States. I have never more proud of being an American than I am tonight. Not only did we elected our first African-American president, but we're also pushing those horrible Bush year behind us, flushing them down the sewer of history where they so rightly belong. I still can't believe it. I was so worried that John McCain and that card-carrying freak he chose--or was told to choose--as a running mate, Sarah "Winky" Palin, were actually going to steal the White House and continue the Bush nightmare of war, divisiveness, and lies. I told my sister that if McCain had won, I would be calling her tomorrow from Canada (here I come, Jen!). But it was not to be. Obama overcame the attacks on his family, his religion, his name, for God's sake, and yes, on his race. These neo-clown sleaze bags had to hop through their own asses to keep from saying "don't vote for the black guy," b...

When I was a police reporter in Pennsylvania, whenever I heard the call for “November One” on the scanner, I knew somebody had just died. “November One” was the code for the county coroner so if I heard the code for a car accident (I think it was 10-15) followed by the coroner’s radio handle, I knew that we had a fatal accident—and a most likely a page-one story. Yesterday was Halloween and today—November One-is All Saints Day, so I guess it’s not surprising that I would think about a man who worked so closely with the dead. This is also the Day of the Dead in Mexico, or Dia De Los Muertos , where friends and family come together to honor deceased loved ones. And--my thanks for Flatbush Gardner for reminding me--today is also the 90th anniversary of the Malbone Street Wreck , where nearly 100 people died in the worst transit disaster in New York City history. It happened in Brooklyn, just outside Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. After the accident, the name of the street...

I was sitting in a theater on Friday night when Phillip Seymour Hoffman walked right by me. He didn’t see me, but then I don’t think anyone else did either. I was feeling somewhat invisible on this night. I had been stuck for something to do for the weekend, but I was determined to fight the gravitational pull of Netflix and my living room couch and get out into the alleged real world. I was tempted to see the opening of Charley Kaufman’s movie, Synecdoche, New York , starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which opened on Friday, but sitting in a dark movie theater seemed a bit too similar to sitting on my couch. You don’t meet too many people in the dark, or at least not the kind of people you want to hang around with once the lights come back on. I decided that if I’m going to live in the five-borough asylum that is New York City, I really should do the New Yorky things that I couldn’t do when I was living in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. So I went to the Labyrinth Theater Co.’s free play...

I ran into an acquaintance of mine on the subway Thursday night. Now if only I could remember his name. Actually, it’s not just this man’s name that has escaped me. It’s his entire existence. I have no memory whatsoever of having met the gentleman prior to Thursday, yet he clearly knew me. It was around 8:30 pm and I was minding my business on the Brooklyn-bound R train when a man on crutches got on at 34th Street with a young woman. He looked around the car and then his eyes fixed on me. “Hey, how’s it going?” I was the only person in this section of the car, so I assumed he was speaking to me. But I didn't recognize him at all, so he must have mistaken me for someone else. “Rob, right?” Oh, God—he knows me, but I don’t know him. What do I do now? He told me his name, which I realize now I have since forgotten, and introduced me to his wife, whose name I couldn’t recall if you water-boarded me for three days straight in a bucket of rancid sauerkraut. They sat across from me and w...