The Luna Park Gazette

I guess those kids I heard singing on Christmas Eve were wrong. My sister and I went to a folk mass at St. Patrick’s Church in Bay Ridge last week to get into the holiday spirit. It was nice to see the children all dressed up for the Christmas pageant, but I confess I prefer the old carols to the folk tunes. One particular song repeated the line “God is Love” so many times I was tempted to jump up and shout, “Enough already! We got it!” I’m glad I kept my mouth shut because it seems that no matter how many times you say “God is Love,” a lot of people still aren’t getting the message. And some never will. I’m referring specifically to these so-called “religious leaders” and their stooges who claim that the horrific slaughter of innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary School was God’s judgment on us. Really? And since when did God become Hannibal Lector? Apparently these beautiful children were cut down in a hail of bullets because we don’t allow prayer in schools. Or becau...

While riding the bus into lower Manhattan one morning last week, I saw a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. He was leaning against a building at the corner of Greenwich and Morris Streets. There was a small cloth bag next to him, which I suppose carried all his worldly possessions, and he had a small piece of a Christmas tree propped up against the bag. It was heart breaking to see that this man, who didn’t even have a roof over his head, was still determined to celebrate Christmas in some small way. I think of all the complaining I do, how I moan about the pressure of the holidays, but this poor man had managed to find some joy in this world. If you’re still searching for the true meaning of Christmas, look no further. I recalled yet another image from A Christmas Carol, where Marley’s ghost forces Scrooge to look down at the street below to a young woman and her child shivering in the cold. The pair were surrounded by wandering spirits, people like Marley, who had fail...

There’s a scene in A Christmas Carol where the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Ebenezer Scrooge back in time to a holiday party being hosted by Scrooge’s old boss, Mr.Fezziwig. Scrooge is overjoyed to see his former employer and fondly recalls how kind Fezziwig had been to his workers. The Ghost, however, is not impressed. “He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money,” the spirit says. “Is that so much that he deserves this praise?" Scrooge explains that the happiness Fezziwig gave to his clerks by throwing this bash was as “quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” It was a lesson that Scrooge had forgotten—that it often doesn’t take a great deal of effort to make people happy. And I saw both sides of that lesson in the last 48 hours. Christmas is almost here and while the holidays can be a difficult time of the year, I do enjoy listening to the carols. The first Christmas hymns started to appear in fourth century Rome and I must say that the holiday has produced ...

And the sadness continues… I walked into my local butcher shop yesterday and learned that Mary, the woman who had taken care of our father in the last years of his life, had died. I knew that Mary was being treated for diabetes and that she had just recently moved into a neighborhood nursing home, but her passing still comes as a shock. Mary was a Brooklyn original, a tough Irish dame, who came into our home after our father’s mental condition had begun to deteriorate and made order out of one big heaping pile of chaos. She was a great cook—I can personally attest to this—as well as being efficient and extremely well organized. But Mary was far more than an employee—she was a friend. I remember when she first came over to our house. She was a smoker, but she promised she would always step outside before lighting up. “I’m sure you will,” I said, “but we want you around for as long as possible.” And we still do. I always felt such relief when Mary would call me at work eac...

Oh, fuck you. Fuck your prayer vigils. Fuck your stupid candles and your teddy bears and your flowers and your ridiculous little angel pictures on Facebook. Fuck all that and fuck you, too. It’s the guns, you morons. It’s the goddamn guns. You know it. And if you don’t know it, please do the world a favor and kill yourself immediately. No one will say a prayer or light a candle in your memory, I promise you. Oh, what’s the use? We’ve got 20 children and six adults shot dead in Connecticut, slaughtered like animals by yet another gun-toting psycho and you can almost hear the NRA propaganda machine going into overdrive as they blather on about our rights and big government and black helicopters and the Bible and God knows what other kinds of unmitigated bullshit. They’ll talk about freedom, and, gosh, there’s nothing that says “freedom” like a pile of bullet-riddled kids, is there? Oh, and yes, the gun nuts will be sure to drag the Founding Fathers out of their graves yet ag...

There’s nothing more enjoyable than starting the day off with a call from your bank’s anti-fraud division. I was on the computer early the other morning looking for ways to waste my time, like re-reading the naughty junk e-mail that bore a picture of Arthur the Aardvark. “ Rob ,” it said. “ This is hard for me because I have never done anything like this…but I have a huge crush on you. ” I’ve never gotten a love letter from a cartoon character before. Maybe Arthur has a sister. “ I have never been able to tell you for reasons which you would quickly identify as obvious if you knew who this was. ” I don’t think it’s that obvious. I don’t know anybody who tortures the English language like this. This person has the very subtle username of “RobandME69,” which I suspect has some kind of sexual connotation. I wonder who it could possibly be? “ To help you out with your guessing I made a few pictures and videos with "Rob" written on my body. They're kind of risqu...

So who was that crazy bald guy dancing like a fruitcake at last night’s holiday party? Oh, yeah, that’s right…it was me. Yes, once again it’s that magical time of year when I promise to go to my company’s Christmas party for one drink and a free dinner and end up drunk and way too disorderly on the dance floor. Thank God I had today off so hopefully my awful antics will be old news by the time I return to the office on Monday. Yes, it really was that bad. For you see, I was… that guy. You know that guy, right? The guy who drinks too much and acts like a loon, while people point and laugh at —not with ---him? That was me last night. I’m praying there’s no video of this fiasco, but the jails and psych wards are full of people who have prayed for the same thing. And I wasn’t even planning to go to this year’s shindig at Chelsea Piers. All this relentless holiday cheer has me charging up my inner Scrooge and practicing my “bah, humbugs!” This ongoing grief with my back has...

I’ve been doing my best to like “ Vegas ” but the new CBS show isn’t making it easy. How could this thing have gone so wrong? Here we have a Sixties era crime show co-created by “Wiseguy” author Nicholas Pilegg i that stars two of my favorite actors— Michael Chiklis and Dennis Quaid . I was psyched when I heard about this program: Mobsters, casinos, cowboys, the Sixties—everything a growing boy needs. Well, maybe not... Let me say upfront that show isn’t bad—not by any means. It’s just not that good. And this is even more disappointing given the talent behind it. For starters, the whole mob-early-Vegas storyline is pretty worn out by now, thanks to the earlier show “ Crime Story ” and Martin Scorcese’s “ Casino .” Quaid portrays Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a former MP and western manly man who takes on Chicago gangster Vincent Savino (Chiklis) and his merry band of psychopaths. The battle lines are painfully clear: good old boy versus big city hoodlum; Stetsons versus fedoras; c...

One of my fondest memories of my mother was the way she used to sing. It didn’t matter what she was doing—cooking, cleaning, or riding in the car—if the spirit moved her, my mother wouldn’t hesitate to break out into song. Mom loved the old standards and if she had trouble remembering the words, she’d just fill in the gaps with a series of “la-la-la’s” until she got back on to lyrical terra firma. Like most parents of that era, my mother had little use for rock and roll, declaring that back in her day “we had real music!” I teased her about that once when she started singing “ Hold Tight ,” by the Andrew Sisters. The song contains the immortal lines, “ Hold tight, hold tight, a-hold tight, hold tight, fododo-de-yacka saki, want some sea food mama, ” which my mama recited perfectly. “And you complain about my music?” I said after this performance. My aunt told us how my mother used to drive her crazy by singing “ Meet the Sun Half Way ” when they were growing up and Mom s...

I’m trying to remember when the Black Friday “door-buster” phenomenon started. My memory might be fuzzy, but I swear there was a time in America when we didn’t have these savage displays of greed. Yes, there were Black Friday sales, but people behaved themselves back then--as opposed to today where psychotic shoppers camp out all night so they can storm shopping malls in a retail rendition of “The Hunger Games.” The news footage coming out of shopping malls is absolutely sickening. These images go all over the world and I can only wonder what people in other countries are saying about us. There was a series of violent incidents today at stores across American as crazed consumers fought, pulled guns, and ran people over with their cars in their zeal to nail a bargain and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. People who call themselves Christians are acting an awful lot like the ancient Romans. It has gotten so bad that The Huffington Post is asking readers to “Send Us Your Ho...

I walked down 75th Street this morning and saw a blind man heading toward me swinging his cane. Had it been any other time, I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to him, other than to stay out of his way and offer him help if he needed it. But today I had an appointment with an eye doctor and vision—or the potential loss of it—was preying on my mind. I’ve been very lucky. At 55 years old, I’m still not wearing glasses. I’ll admit I do a good deal of squinting and I view print in three stages: small, very small, and hell, no . I knew I’d have to give in at some point and get glasses, but I was hoping to put it off until…forever. But last week I started seeing bright flashes of light in the corner of my eye whenever I turned my head quickly. I tried to ignore them but it was scary having these lightning bolts going off around my head. Then two days ago the floaters showed up and refused to leave. They’re like hairs or an eyelash only you can’t wipe them away. I race...

The first thing I heard was the screaming. I was walking down Fulton Street this morning and as I prepared to cross Broadway and go into my office building, I heard a shriek that shook me right out of my Monday morning stupor. “Let go!” I looked to my right and there were two cops, one male, one female, wrestling with an African-American woman. She was sitting on the ground right outside the subway entrance and the cops were trying to pull her to her feet, but she wasn’t cooperating at all. I never did get a look at her face, so I can’t say if she was young or old, but she seemed to have a lot of energy as she fought with the two police officers. As the three of them struggled, the woman screamed louder. Her wig tumbled off her head at one point and lay on the ground like roadkill. The male cop pulled out a cannister of mace and squirted it into the woman’s face. She turned away, but kept on fighting. It was an ugly, bizarre scene to witness on this chilly morning and nat...

Clarence the angel showed up a little early this year, but he certainly earned his wings. The Clarence in question was a customer service representative from my company’s human resources department and while he seemed nothing like the heavenly helpmate from “It’s A Wonderful Life,” he did a very good impersonation. Yes, you’re probably fed up with any references to Frank Capra’s holiday classic, seeing how often it’s shown on TV. But the holiday season is getting underway and the guy’s name really was Clarence, so I think the comparison is justified. And furthermore—I love that word--the name Clarence means “bright, shining or gentle,” according to the dictionary, and this fellow was all three. I “met” Clarence in the middle of a nervous breakdown when I thought I had missed the annual enrollment deadline for my company’s health care plan. If you miss the deadline, you’re not covered for the following year and that’s why I make a point of getting it done in time--even thou...

We always had plenty of presents around our Christmas tree each year and every now and then one of them would go unopened. Usually the package had been pushed so far under the tree that it escaped our notice for a day or two. But it would eventually be discovered and if the gift happened to have your name on it, well, that really made the season bright. I had a similar experience recently, although it had nothing to do with Christmas or wrapping paper. No, this particular present was a Japanese film called “ Still Walking ” that I had recorded a year or more ago and never watched--until now. Night after night I would see the title listed on my DVR screen. I’d read the synopsis about a young man dealing with his aging parents and I always found something else to watch. I think the only reason I recorded it was because the film had a high rating from the Sundance Channel. I had the film for so long that I seriously considered deleting the thing without viewing it. I’m trying to cl...

I guess this counts as significant... I came home tonight from a long, hard commute to find that my cable, TV, and internet service had been restored. After all the ranting, cursing, angry phone calls and emails, I walked into my home office and saw the row of green lights glowing on my modem. That little black box had been dark for so long that I felt like singing " When the Lights Go On Again " at the top of my lungs--only I didn't know the words. I was told that the work crew wouldn't be in my neighborhood until Monday, but that turned out to be wrong--just like everything else the Time Wiener Cabal told me. So I'm finally back on my own computer. I am so grateful that my sister had very kindly allowed me to hook up my company laptop to her modem so I wouldn't have to travel to Manhattan. That worked fine for two days, but then last night her modem died. I was convinced that it was my fault, but the cable company said her modem was old and on th...

Calling somebody “a two-bit grifter” probably isn’t the best way to express yourself, but I was pretty annoyed at the time. I was unloading my rage into an email to Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt, who collected $8.9 million last year but who still can’t get my phone, internet, and TV service working 11 full days after Hurricane Sandy. I entitled my missive “Dear Parasite,” so there was no way he could mistake it for a fan letter. In a recent third-quarter phone call, Britt was quoted as saying “We’re still evaluating the loss and the extent of insurance coverage, but we don’t expect the amount to be very significant.” Not very significant? Maybe not for you, Glennie Boy, but you should try talking to people who have real jobs. You’d be amazed. I am so fed up with these rock star millionaires who can buy their way into presidential elections or clog up various media platforms with their comings and goings but never seem to do an honest day’s work. This country’s priorities are s...

Glenn Britt made $8.9 million as the chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable, but that's no resaon why he shouldn't take my phone calls. I called Mr. Britt directly today. I was fed up with dealing with the minimum wage androids on the company help line, the ones who seem incabable of telling why my cable, internet, and TV service has been out for the last 9 freaking days or when it might come back on. I had to learn about Barack Obama's victory over the radio this morning because I have been denied the most basic forms of modern communication. Don't get me wrong, I love the radio, but there are some things you want to see. It felt strange dialing Time Warner's number and, to be honest, I almost hung up. He's a big executive, he doesn't have time for the likes of me. But I held my ground. No, goddamnit, I thought, if Glenn Britt wants to pull down all that money to do whatever the hell he does, than he can bloody well listen to his customers complaint...

So it's Day Eight and I still don't have an internet, telephone, or television connection. This is also Election Day, and I did my civic duty, but at this rate I'll have to get the results by carrier pigeon. I am getting so fed up with this. If I lived in the backwoods of Kentucky, I would understand that the hook-ups would be touch and go. But I don't. I live in New York Freaking City, the center of it all, and yet I'm forced to borrow my sister's computer to blog and tape my cellphone to my head to talk to people. I've been away from the web for so long I feel like Amelia Earhart. Yes, I understand other people have it worse. Yes, I should probably be ashamed of myself for complaining. But the combination of the chronic fatigue, bad back, and inability to communicate with the outside world is making me nuttier than usual. I get the feeling that if I were reduced to just a head in a fish tank, someone would knock on the glass and say, "you k...

Hey, blog buddies: I'm writing to you from an undisclosed location (my sister's apartment) because the degenerate goofballs at Time Warner still can't get my internet connection going. Is this the 21st Century or what? I hope all of you are safe and well. I did get my MRI done on Wednesday, but since my specialist is located in lower Manhattan, and thus out of power, I don't know what the next step will be. I'll be posting and catching up on your blogs as soon as I can. I thank you all for your concern and please do me a favor and take care of yourselves! See you soon.

It’s big, it’s nasty, and it’s heading this way. That may sound like a description of the nun that used to monitor my grammar school cafeteria, but I’m actually referring to Hurricane Sandy, aka “Frankenstorm,” which is currently churning its way up the East Coast and heading straight for my house. And just in time for Halloween… New York Governor Andrew Cuomo this morning ordered the suspension of all subway and bus service, the schools are being shut down, and residents of low lying areas are being told to pack up their troubles in their old kit bags and get the hell out of Sandy’s way. There’s talk of heavy winds, sheets of rain, and a possible guest appearance by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as all Hell literally breaks loose in my hometown. Okay, I may be feeling a little paranoid, but I think I’m entitled. I’m still in a lot of pain from chronic back trouble and I’m supposed to get both an MRI and my flu shot tomorrow—the very day that this meteorological monstr...

I left my house for the first time in a week today and found out that I need more tests. I had to take car service into Manhattan because my aching back can’t handle riding the subway. Hell, I can’t even handle the subway stairs. It was so strange being in the real world after my week-long house arrest. We rode by my office, by the street where my gym was located and I kept wondering why I wasn’t out there with the rest of the working stiffs, making the walk from my health club to my office building on Broadway. People looking at me might have thought I was some big shot riding in the back of this car while the peons did the mass transit routine. If they only knew… My doctor tells me that I am not responding to the 7-day steroid bomb treatment that he prescribed for me, so I have to get another MRI. I had one of these tests last year and it was decidedly unpleasant. You’re basically sandwiched within this monstrous machine that takes photos of your innards. It felt like it w...

It’s been a week since my back trouble starting kicking up again, but I feel like I’ve aged 20 years. I can barely walk, it kills me to sit at a chair for any length of time, and the only way I can get relief from the hideous pain that radiates up my shin is to stretch out flat on the floor like a corpse in a murder movie. I’m a prisoner in my own home. The simplest movements have become a struggle. Getting out of bed or walking to the kitchen takes forever, as I have to lean against the wall every few steps and let the pain subside. Walking down from my third floor apartment to get the paper is nothing short of torture and I have to sit down on the steps several times on the way back up because it hurts so goddamn much. My sister has climbed another notch higher toward sainthood by bringing me food and thus keeping me from starving. I had to take car service into Manhattan on Wednesday to see my back specialist and as I sat there in waiting room, racked with pain, worryin...