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...