The Luna Park Gazette

There’s no such thing as time travel, but a trip to the International Vintage Poster Fair comes awfully close. The event is really meant for serious collectors, which rules me out, but I enjoy looking at these fabulous images that can combine art, history, politics, and advertising all on a single sheet of paper. This may be hard for young people to believe, but posters were a primary method of getting your message out back in the days before TV and the Internet. They’ve been called the "seven-second medium," since that's about all the time they had to catch the eye of a speeding pedestrian. The artists who created these illustrations did so knowing that they wouldn’t last long. The posters would go up on a wall or fence where they might be stolen or defaced and eventually covered up by another poster. But that didn’t stop these people from doing great work. I got interested in vintage posters a few years ago when I did a story for TheStreet.com . The economy was booming...

I came out of my house this afternoon to dump some trash and walked right into the middle of a neighborhood drama. I had the day off from work and I thought I’d relax and enjoy the lovely weather. But things didn’t go according to plan. I was about to go back into my house when I saw some people standing in a semi-circle around an Asian woman who was stretched out on the ground a few houses away from mine. She was barefoot, clad in pajamas, and rolling her head from side to side, sobbing and moaning unintelligibly. One of my neighbors told me that he had seen her walk up the block, sit down on the ground near his house and lay down on the pavement. She continued to roll her head and wail, while one man dialed 911 and the rest of tried to figure out what the hell was going on. I spoke to her softly to calm her down, but I don’t think she heard me. I wondered if she had gotten out of a mental hospital, given the pajamas and the lack of shoes. If she lived around here, then somebody shoul...

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” I was speaking with my aunt recently and I told her I had just rented The Wolfman , a remake of the old horror movie classic that our family had enjoyed for so many years. “Why?” she asked me with gentle exasperation. Struck for answer, I reverted to my standard adolescent response. “Uh…I don’t know.” Actually, I did know. I was hoping for an easy night at the movies where I could sit back and relax with some enjoyable junk cinema. As it turned out, the only thing I got right was the “junk” part. This wolf was a dog and the enjoyment for me came when I dumped the DVD into the mailbox and shipped it back to Netflix. What was I thinking? That today’s filmmakers could actually create something that would rival the old 1941 Universal creepy starring Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi, and the incredible Maria Ouspenskaya? No one could top Ouspenskay...

I’m always a little surprised when I walk into my dentist’s office and see that computer on his desk. He’s had the thing for years, of course, but I don’t go to the dentist as often as I should, so it takes me a while to get used to changes around the office. I was in Dr. Cohen’s office on Saturday for this tooth ache that was lighting up whenever I drank cold liquids. I decided to break with my tradition of letting problems go until they mutate into irreversible catastrophes and actually do something about this particular issue right in the here and now. As I walked into his office I started thinking about how long I've been his patient. I was literally a child, a grammar school student, when I first came here. Back then the only place you could find desk top computers was on Star Trek . I believe I was an eighth grader when I had my first appointment with Dr. Cohen. I went straight from class at Our Lady of Angeles to his office a few blocks away. Naturally, I was a nervous wreck...