The Luna Park Gazette

If there’s a patron saint of klutzes, I could sure use his help. I’ve been on what feels like a nonstop doofus run for the last week or so, as I break or lose just about anything I put my hands on. It started when I misplaced one of my crappy old gloves. I can’t even guess how these things are—I think they once belonged to my father--so it’s not like I lost some valuable piece of attire. But it’s just so goddamn annoying. There are few things as worthless as a single glove-- unless it belongs to Captain Hook. And what really bugged me was the fact that just the day before I remarked on how I hadn’t lost a glove in years. So I got a fistful of karma for mouthing off. In desperation, I hiked all over Bay Ridge, retracing my steps like some cut-rate Kojack in search of my missing mitten. But I came up empty. Luckily the glove turned up at my gym the following day and I thought, okay, life will now return to normal. Then disaster struck. I have a statue of St. Martin de Po...

I put it off for three whole days, but today I finally gave in. I shaved. I hadn’t touched my face for most of the week after deciding that I'd go to a barbershop on 74th Street and let Garry, the man with the razor, work his tonsorial magic. And be advised that I didn’t go for some run-of-the-mill whisker wipe. Oh, heavens no. I ordered up the royal shave for both my magnificent mug and my beautiful hairless head. It was decadent, selfish, a ridiculous waste of money—and I loved every second of it. Hell, I haven’t gotten a shave from a barber since the Reagan Administration. That was back when I went to Leo, a little old Italian man who had a small shop on 68th Street. Leo used to wave to me every morning as I walked to the subway station-even before I became a customer—and one of the first articles I ever did as a reporter was about Leo for a now defunct publication called Bay Ridge Life . Then Leo closed his store and for some reason I stopped getting shaves. I’m n...

I was taking my regular afternoon nap one Saturday when I heard my father’s voice. “ Rob? ” That’s all. Just my name spoken as a question, the way my father used to greet me whenever he called me on the phone. We spoke nearly every morning during the 10 years I lived away from Brooklyn and that’s how our conversations always started. My father’s been gone nearly seven years now, so I guess I was dreaming when I heard him speak. But this audio fragment was the only thing my aging brain cells were able to retain. Any accompanying images vanished the moment I woke up. And yet, as brief as it was, my father’s greeting still lingers in my mind. It got me thinking about my relationship with my father and I have to say that we got along extremely well when we were on the opposite ends of a long distance phone call. On the telephone my father was always supportive and kind. He’d ask me about what I was doing, what stories I was working on. I’d complain about the idiots I had to ...

Confession may be good for the soul, but it can be hell on the nervous system. One of my creepiest Catholic school memories—and they are legion—involved stepping into the confessional. I don’t know who thought children would benefit from kneeling in a pitch-black closet and stammering out their misdeeds toward a scary silhouette, but take it from me, whoever this person was, he was seriously full of crap. I was terrified when the nuns herded all of us little sinners into church to get our spirits buffed and shined. The worst part came after you dropped the curtain and sat in the dark waiting for the priest to slide back the screen on your side of the box. The only reason I didn’t run out screaming was that I knew the nuns would be ready to carve my heart out if they caught me going AWOL. So I knelt there and when the slide pulled back, I looked toward the light and did the routine. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned… Once you received your penance, you got the hell out o...

I woke up early Thursday evening just in time to see someone in a red sweater dash into my kitchen. Burglars , I thought in my semi-conscious state. I’m being robbed! I gradually became aware of my surroundings. I was stretched out on the floor of my living room like the victim in a Law & Order episode. I raised my head and saw my auntie sitting on the couch. What was she doing here? And why wasn’t she beating the crap out of that burglar with her purse? Then I realized it was Thanksgiving Day. That person in the red sweater who had just disappeared into the kitchen wasn’t an armed intruder; she was my sister. And I had fallen sound asleep in front of my guests. I’ve never held a Thanksgiving dinner at my home before, but I’m pretty sure that proper etiquette calls for the host to remain conscious for the entire event. But I was exhausted. I had been fretting about this dinner for weeks and now that I was worry-free, sufficiently stuffed, and only slightly soused, I d...