The Luna Park Gazette

I’m a little late getting this out, but I just wanted to say that I had a smashing time at Sunday’s Brooklyn Blogade picnic in Prospect Park. We camped out near the Music Pagoda and I realized how little I knew about this beautiful park. When I was growing up the park—and Brooklyn, for that matter—were much different places. Nobody in his right mind would walk through the park at night back then and I doubt if there was much day traffic either. My late father loved the park and I remember him declaring every time we drove through the place that “if I were mayor I’d make this park safe if I had to put a cop behind every goddamn tree!” We drove through Prospect Park one night and some lowlife SOB pelted our car with eggs, which would have smashed into my mother’s face if the window had been rolled down. But now I love the place. On Sunday we had great food, great people, and the great fortune of avoiding the lightning bolts that struck around the city all day long. Big ups to Dave of Dop...

It looks like my house isn’t quite ready for its close up. I thought I had a great idea: I wanted to rent out my family’s house to movie and film crews so we could make some extra cash while rubbing elbows with Hollywood creative types. I had seen this article in the New York Times Real Estate section about allowing filmmakers to put your house in pictures and I thought, why not? The house is huge, I’m the only one here, and we could use the dough. It all adds up. And, since I’m a movie freak and would-be filmmaker who never had the nerve to move to Los Angeles, I thought I might be able to bring the mountain to Mohammad, so to speak. My blogging buddy over at Crazy Stable had the Law & Order bunch in her house and in addition to seeing her home appearing in a hugely popular TV show, she got a load of free bacon. I would gladly skip the bacon just to see a film crew in my ancestral home, to hear cries of “action” and “cut” and “make up!” and whatever else these movie/TV people...

Dear Joanne: You are a moron. Please don’t try to deny this, as we both know it is true. You are an imbecile, a scum-sucking hosebag, a sewer dwelling ass-breath of a fucktard, a prehistoric nuthugger, a defiler of fluffy kittens, a molester of tropical fish, a threat to farm animals the world over and a loser-and-a-half. I don't like you. You ruined my Friday night and, though I can’t prove it, I convinced you were the reason I forgot to buy wax paper the other night, even though I was convinced I had. The fact that you caused all this misery without actually meeting me in person is a testament to your nuthuggerness, which, if you haven’t guessed already, is not something to be proud of. You know what you did, but I’ll do a brief recap anyway for the folks watching at home. This disaster started when you contacted me via the interracial dating web site. Okay? You wrote to me . That's important. I didn't know you from a hole in the ground, I didn't know you from a can ...

I woke up Monday morning hoping the previous day had been a nightmare. It was a nightmare, but it was also too bloody real. Amy, the little girl from up the block, really was gone. I went outside to toss some trash into the garbage can and saw my neighbor, this old Chinese lady I have known for years. She's a wonderful woman and a great person to have living next door. We don't speak our respective languages, but we've done all right with hand gestures for the most part. When I nodded up the street, indicating Amy's house, my neighbor pointed straight up to Heaven. And if there's any justice in this world, that's exactly where Amy is now. Today is the sixth anniversary of my mother's death. I thought I had missed it and I wrote about it in an earlier version of this post--making sure to beat myself up, of course--but I was the victim of faulty intelligence, including my own. And I probably would have forgotten anyway, given the way my head has been behaving...

Her name was Amy, she was nine years old and she was my friend. And I want you to pray for her. I can't believe what happened today in the space of just a few hours, how this beautiful Sunday could have turned so foul and how a lovely little girl could be so incredibly alive one moment and gone a short time later. Amy was a little Chinese girl who recently moved to my block on Senator Street. There are many Chinese families here since the Chinese section of Sunset Park has pretty much run out of room. I met Amy one morning a few weeks ago while I was walking up the street and she was standing on her front stoop. "It's almost summer and it's almost my birthday, which is June 29," she said. It sounded like a speech she had memorized and she was so cute I couldn't help but laugh. The next time I saw her, I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she told me, "a Barbie doll." I saw Amy on the block most weekends and today I saw her and two of her ...

I lost my lunch this week and I wasn’t even sick. It was Monday morning, the first workday after the July Fourth weekend. I was sitting on the R train holding my briefcase and my lunch. Yeah, that's right; I pack my lunch. If that makes me a cheapskate, so be it. A decent sandwich in Manhattan can cost 7 to 8 bucks, so you do that five days a week, 50-odd weeks a year, well, it adds up. This lunch was a beauty, if I do say so myself. I had a ham and cheese sandwich with tomato and mustard on whole wheat bread. I brought along an orange, an apple, and a small bag of baby carrots. It looked like something your mother would pack for you. A former co-worker once saw me taking my lunch out of the refrigerator in the cafeteria, complete with the baby carrots, and shook his head. “You’re scaring me,” he said, apparently appalled at my good eating habits. On Monday my energy level was pretty low and I decided to ride down to DeKalb Avenue and change to the B train. As the train pulled into...

I'll be doing an expanded version of my monologue "The Memory Mill" this Friday and Saturday, July 11 & 12, at the Stage Left Studio . I wrote and performed this show last year while taking a class at the People's Improv Theater and it's been a wild ride ever since. I'll be the opening act for my colleague, former classmate, and all around good time buddy Cheryl Smallman, who will be performing her fabulous solo show "Dreamless." I have had the privilege of working with Cheryl before so I can attest to her tremendous talent. Stage Left is located at 438 West 37th St., Suite 5. The show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $15. Cheryl and I will be teaming up again on July 31 and I'll have more details as the date draws closer. Come on down for a great evening of solo performing. It'll change your life...and in a good way, too.

Madonna made me drink me too much on the Fourth of July. I went to a barbecue in Brooklyn perfectly ready to sip soda, gnaw on some chips, and make pleasant conversation. I had been out late the night before with my Bay Ridge Meet-Up Group and I wanted to keep things light on the Fourth. But then Madonna Kabbalahed me into drinking too much Prosecco and I promptly passed out on the couch. I don't begin to know how she did it, but I figure if the Material Girl can use the Kabbalah to make Alex Rodriguez cheat on his wife, I'm convinced she had something to do with me getting loaded yesterday. "I feel like Madonna’s using mind control over him. I don’t recognize the man he’s become," Cynthia Rodriguez supposedly told friends, according to The Telegraph . "He was a sweet, beautiful, loving husband and father. Today he’s very cold and calculating." Of course he is. And it's all Madonna's fault. Just like me and the barbecue. I mean, hell, what am I suppo...

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to t...