The Luna Park Gazette

I was caught in the middle of an international incident last week, but at least it was close to home. In fact, it was my home, my backyard, to be exact, right outside my bedroom window. I woke up hearing voices, which isn’t terribly surprising for me, but these particular voices were outside my head this time. And they were speaking Chinese. That’s not shock either, since my neighbors on either side of me are Chinese—along with half the block—and when I looked out the window, it seemed like half the block was out there, with one man cementing a weak spot in the fence and three women hanging around him apparently telling him what to do. Some of my friends are surprised when I tell them about this, but I have absolutely no problem with these folks walking around my backyard. I’m not some shotgun-toting survivalist who’s going to charge down the alley screaming “ git off’n mah propahrtee, yuh dang heathens! ” These are lovely people: kind, friendly, and above all—praise Jesus!—they’re qu...

This just in from the Associated Press... Barack Obama swept to the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday night, a transforming triumph that made him the first black American to lead a major party into the fall campaign for the White House. Thousands of national convention delegates stood and cheered as they made history. I haven't been watching the Democratic convention much this time around and I've been doing my best to avoid the punditry and the mainstream media coverage, which are getting harder and harder to tell apart. However, from the little I heard on National Public Radio each morning it sounded as if the Democrats were doing their best to shoot themselves in their collective foot. In other words, they were being Democrats. So I take comfort in this moment and I salute Hillary Clinton for stepping aside. I keep hearing all this talk about angry Clinton supporters who feel she was cheated out of her day in the sun. Well, you know something? I was a Clinton sup...

Gamel Mohammed, you’re on your own. For the last week or so, I’ve been getting robot phone messages at home from a collection agency looking for a certain individual named, yes, that’s right, Gamel Mohammed. Every night I’d come home, pick up the phone and hear that rapid beep-beep-beep alert announcing that there was a message for me. Only it wasn’t for me, it was for Gamel Mohammed. The caller—if you want to call her that—was actually a machine, a female android monotone announcing that “this is a call for… Gamel Mohammed …about an outstanding bill.” Even though she stopped to insert the person’s—victim’s—name in that clunky style, the android lady sounded so official, so sure of herself, that I was often tempted to check my driver’s license to make sure that I wasn’t… Gamel Mohammed . “If you are not… Gamel Mohammed …please hang up the phone.” I always took umbrage at that line, partially because I like the word “umbrage,” but mostly because I don’t like some soulless cyborg tellin...

I never did get to the cemetery this weekend. And I didn't go to the veterinarian either. But I was ready to go either to place on a minute's notice--just like the Strategic Air Command. My sister had asked me to drive over to the cemetery in Staten Island with her on Saturday to visit my mother's grave. Friday was my mother's birthday and I miss her so much, even after all these years, that hardly a day goes by that I don't find myself getting teary-eyed over some memory of her. But I don't like going to the cemetery. It's a long trip for starters, but even if I lived around the corner from the place I don't think I would visit that often. I honor my parents in my own way. I also don't like driving in this city, where the roads seemed clogged with gang-bangers, speed demons, and road ragers just itching to assassinate anyone who commits the slightest moving violation. I don't know--I just don't have my manhood so deeply entwined ...

The t-shirt I saw at Coney Island on Saturday summed it all up pretty succinctly: “The days of this society is numbered.” Yes, they certainly is. And summer is disappearing pretty quickly, too. Apparently this t-shirt is a hot item with…somebody, and the grammatical error is intentional, or at least I hope it are. I headed out to Coney Island to enjoy the sun catch a band called, yes, really, “ Witches in Bikinis ,” which--witch?--was playing two sets on the boardwalk. (No "sets" jokes, please.) I had met one of the members on the subway back in March. We had a nice chat, exchanged a few emails, and I promised to come see the group perform. With a name like that I could hardly resist. So Saturday was the day. (Whoa--I almost wrote "Satyrday." Oh, Sigmund, where are you?) I hadn’t been to Coney Island since last August when I did a video for my old company, which I shall not mention by name because I don’t want to. We did the video shoot just a few weeks after the to...

I’m not really a monster, you know. I’m just a little stressed. I feel the need to defend myself against the monster charge given some of my recent behavior. I mean very recent, not the last 50 years. I had some adorable kids call me "Mr. Monster" during the recent blogfest picnic in Prospect Park, but that was meant in fun. Now I’m not so sure. This latest square dance with dementia started at work, when some inconsiderate schmuck decided to print out at least two entire books, books , I tell you, on the office copier. This copier serves about half the floor, so if it gets bogged down on one massive project, you have a lot of angry people—with me leading the way. In spite of all this crap about a paperless society, I still like to print out my stories before I file them. I find if I proofread a story solely on the computer screen, I tend to miss something. And since I make a lot of mistakes when I write—misspellings, typos, dropped words (a big problem)—I really prefer to ha...