The Luna Park Gazette

“Easter is very important to me. It’s a second chance.”—Reba McEntire I was doing my weekly shopping trek through the neighborhood yesterday when I spotted a cat in a local real estate office taking in the afternoon sun. This feline was really loving the rays. He—or she--sat on the other side of a glass door in the sphinx position with his eyes closed and his mind completely focused on savoring this bright spring day like it was a boatload of fresh tuna. Now there’s someone who really appreciates the little things in life , I thought as I lugged my groceries down Fifth Avenue. Today is Easter Sunday, a day when we should appreciate all the beautiful things in life both big and small. I’ve been in something of a funk for the last week so this is a good time to renew and reclaim everything I hold dear. I felt like I was in a rut with my writing and I got so low that I seriously thought about ditching the whole fiction writing fantasy. Given my age and lack of success thus far...

I was standing on Broadway near Rector Street on Thursday night waiting for an overdue bus when I heard someone shouting. Hostile voices are such a part of life in New York that you need a pretty severe set of pipes to get anyone’s attention and whoever was behind this particular commotion had wind power to spare. It took a few seconds for the gibberish to gel into language, but all at once the words came into sudden and brutal clarity. “Fuck you!” This might be a traffic dispute. The streets downtown are chronically congested and rush hour in this town could easily provide the backdrop for a French Connection reboot. Or maybe two losers had bumped into each other on the sidewalk and were now pathetically standing their ground in a nose-to-nose effort to prove who was the bigger idiot. I’ve seen this kind of thing before and I would gladly award them both the top prize. Whatever it was, I thought, it’ll blow over in a few seconds and we’ll return to our regularly schedule...

When I was a kid I remember playing a game with my friends that we called “hide-and-gun-seek.” It was similar to the traditional children's game, only we were all packing toy guns and when we found whoever was “it” we filled him full of imaginary bullets. At that time it seemed perfectly normal to pretend to kill each other. Toy guns were some of my favorite Christmas and birthday gifts when I was growing up. Of course, back then when we pulled the trigger nobody actually died. Things are different now. Kids commit mass murder on their computers and the gunfire out on the streets is all too real. The non-stop slaughter is giving me nightmares—literally. I actually dreamed the other night that I was in the middle of a mass shooting. Given the number of shootings and the ever-increasing body count, it’s a wonder I don’t have bullet-filled dreams every night. Nearly 2,500 people have died in America in gun-related incidents since the since the Sandy Hook massacre in Dec...

I’ve become something of a transit snob lately. After years of suffering through the roar and the filth of the subways, I decided that riding the express bus is the only way to commute. Instead being shoved and abused by the crush of humanity for a grueling subterranean trip, I now travel above ground, sit in a comfortable chair and watch the world roll by my window. It’s more expensive, but I’ve decided that I’m worth it; and, more importantly I’ve grown accustomed to riding to work in relative comfort, while avoiding the subway’s vermin, religious psychos, and panoply of plagues that would make a germ warfare specialist scream. Riding the bus is civilized, comfortable, and you don’t have to deal with all that railroad riff-raff. I’ve gotten such an attitude that I can easily picture myself wearing a top hat and monocle as I cruise through town. Oh, I say, Dudley, try not to hit too many potholes! I had a doctor’s appointment on Friday near Union Square, which was only a sho...

If Victor Hugo was right when he said “it is by suffering that human beings become angels” then somebody owes me a deluxe set of wings. My tragic tale begins in Los Angeles where my sister and I were visiting our Uncle Joe and his wife. One rainy afternoon we decided to go to a local theater and take in a showing of “ Les Misérables ." I am a movie fanatic, but I have not gone to the theater in ages as I am fed up with the losers who pollute the multiplexes with their churlish behavior. If I want to see baboons behaving badly I’ll go to the zoo. But for some reason I felt hopeful this time out. Maybe my streak of cinematic bad luck had finally come to an end and I would actually sit amongst well-bred humans for a change. I had never seen “Les Misérables” during its lengthy Broadway run, and since the film was up for several Academy Awards, here was a chance to see what all the excitement was about. Things went smoothly at first. In fact, it looked for the longest time ...

“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”-- Andre Berthiaume My mother always had this fascination with masks. Whenever we went to the Brooklyn Museum , she always made sure to visit the African mask collection. She loved ceramics and she made masks out of clay, one of which I managed to keep when we cleaned out our parents’ house nearly two years ago. Unfortunately, like a lot of the things I took out of that place, I had no idea what I had done with the mask after I moved into my new apartment. It could be in any one of several boxes, I thought, and most likely buried beneath a ton of other stuff. I got to thinking about that mask after I attended a Lunar New Year celebration at the Huntington Library , one of my favorite sites in the L.A. area. My sister, my cousin and I looked over the list of events, which included music, martial arts and gymnastics, and something called " bian lian " or face chang...

This was a day that only soup could heal. Winter will not go without a fight and the grumpy old man proved that point today by dumping a few inches of snow on our fair city just to show us all who’s still in charge. I was equally ornery, though, and elected not to wear my boots. I had worn them once already this week in response to what turned out to be a false alarm, so I decided that I wouldn’t clunk around the office all day again in those clodhoppers despite the obvious presence of snow right outside my door. I spent a good part of the day at work in damp socks thinking about my lonely boots sitting in a closet back home with nothing to do. Snow always looks great when you’re inside. I loved being outside in the snow when I was a kid, but that fascination has faded with age. I got a nice, warm view of the inclement weather during a meeting at my supervisor’s office this morning. I looked down Broadway and saw everything slowing down, as the snow forced this place of cea...

Once upon a time I thought Hollywood didn’t know jack about fairy tales. You’re talking to someone who suffered through “ Snow White and the Huntsman ” and stared in dyspeptic disbelief at the commercials for the extraordinary rendition of “Hansel and Gretel.” “ Jack the Giant Slayer ,” which debuted as this weekend’s top film, continues the trend of updating fairy tales. I won’t comment on a film I haven’t seen, but earlier attempts at modernizing these classics only managed to magically turn our most beloved children’s stories into stinking heaps of dragon dung. To be fair, there are respectable names attached to “Jack the Giant Slayer.” The movie is directed by Bryan Singer, the filmmaker who gave us “ The Usual Suspects ,” one of my all-time favorites, and the cast includes Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, and Bill Nighy. That's several tons of talent right there and I hope the film uses them well. The Village Voice said this new jack movie has “a sure ...