The Luna Park Gazette

I didn't think we'd ever lose Paul Newman. It sounds crazy to say that, but for some reason I thought we'd have him forever. I know everybody dies, but, come on-- Paul Newman ? I know he was old; I know he was sick. I know he was just a human being and not the supernatural spirit that we like to think certain movie stars are, but I'm greedy. I don't want to let him go. One time when my father was talking about Joe Louis and other fighters of that day, he paused and said with deep conviction "you thought these guys would never grow old." That sounded so odd to me back then, so ridiculous, but when I heard about Paul Newman's death on the radio yesterday, my father's words came back to me. I didn't think Paul Newman would ever die. My mother, like several million other women on earth, had the most incredible crush on Paul Newman. In fact, whenever she spoke about him, she always tacked on the singular possessive, saying " my Paul Newman...

I've been sick for the last few days, so I've been following the stock market's demise from home. I honestly don't think I could help much anyway. It's not like some old football movie, where the injured player rushes to the coach at a critical point in the game and cries, "you gotta let me play!" No, I thinking more of one of my father's lines, when he was really beat or fed up and he'd say in a bogus brogue, "Take me out, coach, I've had enough!" I started feeling lousy on Friday, so I stayed in the entire weekend, thinking I'd beat this thing by resting. But then Monday morning rolled around and I woke up with a headache worthy of a three-day bender. Only there was no bender to justify this misery, which makes me really angry. It felt like someone had driven a railroad spike into the side of my head. I usually fight going to the doctor, resisting until my friends and family are ready to drag me there, but this time I made the d...

And so now the final lie is put to rest. For ages, the neocon chicken hawks who so bravely supported the Disaster in Iraq—as long as someone else does the fighting—have been blathering on about…the Surge . The surge was the latest bonehead stunt put together by the same group of corrupt oil company lackeys and flag-waving yahoos who brought us the lies about weapons of mass destruction and an Iraq-9/11 connection. These were the same geniuses who told us there were be no insurgency—are you listening, William Kristol? Along the way, the pro-war crowd attached the patriotism of anyone who dared disagree with them and dismissed the abuses of Abu Ghraib and similar incidents as mild detours on the road to democracy. Of course they were wrong on every count. But rather than admit their lies and failures--oh, please!--the pro-war bunch came up with another lie…the Surge . The surge was supposed to be it, the strategic move that would wipe out the insurgency—the one that wasn’t going to happe...

“When you really look for me, you will see me instantly. you will find me in the tiniest house of time, Kahir says: Student, tell me what is God? He is the breath inside the breath.” --Kahir, Indian Mystic 1440-1518 A.D. Whenever we went on vacation and my father thought he was doing too much driving, he had a common line he’d always fall back on. “I’m tired of being chained to the wheel!” he’d declare. My father wanted to stay put and relax at wherever we were staying, while the rest of us wanted to drive over hill and dale—with him doing the driving, of course. Being a salesman he drove every day, but being kids we didn’t care about that. We just wanted to go places. I did a ton of driving Sunday, but it was nice to get behind the wheel after nearly a year of being car-free. And I combined two good causes—taking my sister’s cat to the vet in Manhattan and then going to visit our parents’ grave in Staten Island. I’ve been trying to recall the last time I went out there and I think...

I always get cranky when I'm rushed. I was running late for work today and when I got off the train at City Hall, it seemed like every idiot and his brother had come down to lower Manhattan just to get in my way. The closer I got to my building, the worse it got and when I finally reached my street, a gaggle of twits had stopped dead in their tracks to stare at the TV screen in the front window. "Excuse me," I snapped at one man, making it sounded like "kiss my ass." As I passed the TV viewers I muttered "it must be great to be able to watch TV instead of going to work" and I angrily spun my way through the revolving door. And then I remembered what day it was. This is September 11, the seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the day that supposedly changed the world forever. That was the day I stood across the street and watched the planes hitting the towers; the day when the simple commute home turned into a day-long nightmare. ...

It’s getting darker in Verdi Square. I’m trying to ignore the fact that the days are getting shorter and shorter, but as we get deeper into September even I am forced to admit that summer is almost over. Just a short time ago, I was sitting in this little park on the Upper West Side, people watching and enjoying the beautiful summer weather that I had convinced myself would never end. I had some time to kill before seeing my shrink and I thought I’d pull up a bench and let the world roll by. Verdi Square is a good place to do it, with people of all races and descriptions, reading, napping, relaxing or yakking on their cell phones. There was so much activity on this block, so many different stories going on that Verdi could compose an opera about this place alone. I overhead a man playing tour guide as he told his companion that “this place used to be very dangerous,” which is something you could say about entire sections of this city. In fact, you have said that about the whole town ...

When I was a kid, if we really didn’t like something, we would say it “eats the moose.” If we were really mad—and our parents weren’t around—we would say that the offending object, person, or condition, “sucked moose cock.” That was a real biggie, a sign that you truly disliked whatever you were talking about. I'm not sure why the poor moose's genitalia was singled out from all of the animals in creation. Why not the armadillo or the rhinoceros or the anteater or any number of nature's lulus? I can't say, but whatever the reason, the moose's equipment got tagged as the lowest of the low. As I keep learning more about Sarah Palin, John “Did-I-Mention-That-I’m-A-Former-POW?” McCain, those expressions have come screaming back to my mind from across the decades. Let me get this straight: if the Republicans get their way, this woman—an anti-abortion, Jesus freaking-Creationist cretin—is going to be a heart beat away from the White House? Is that what they're telling ...