The Luna Park Gazette

The greatest writers, philosophers, and statesmen of all time have made brilliant comments about the futility of war, but my late father had them all beat. Many years ago he and I were watching a Memorial Day ceremony on TV when my dad, a World War II veteran, slowly shook his head. “You know,” he said, “war is such bullshit.” I think that’s sums it up perfectly. Tomorrow is Memorial Day when we honor the soldiers who died defending this nation. All around the country people will lay wreaths, blow taps, and wave the flag. There will be talk of never forgetting those who made the ultimate sacrifice, politicians will crank out the sound bites, and everyone will go to barbecues. But you just know that sooner or later the chicken hawks, the war profiteers, and their idiotic followers will start screeching about invading some global hell zone, taking us down the road to yet another unwinnable war, and the body bags will start filling up all over again. Some people will say now ...

“ Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible. "--Doris Lessing. Wow, does this guy know me or what? I just read my horoscope as interpreted by Rob Brezsny on this, my 59th birthday, and his words went right to my soul. He starts off with the above Doris Lessing quote and then tells me to take her advice to heart. “It's senseless to tell yourself that you will finally get serious as soon as all the circumstances are perfect,” Mr. Brezny writes. “Perfection does not and will never exist. The future is now. You're as ready as you will ever be.” Do it now? But I’m The Procrastinater, who puts everything off to some distant future time that will never get here. And now I can use my age as yet another excuse not to do anything about…anything. Or perhaps not. Maybe I can take this celestial suggestion and make some changes. Why the hell not? My company is very kindly giving employees their birthdays off in honor of the firm’s 10...

The young mother held her baby to the window of their Madison Avenue apartment one recent morning and pointed down at the hopelessly snarled traffic. It was late by commuter standards, almost 9:30AM, and it seemed like everybody and his brother had decided to cram into this particular thoroughfare. I was riding—or crawling—through that very same traffic and that mother and child were about the only pleasant sight during a particularly rotten morning ride. It was such an odd contrast, seeing this tender scene in the midst of all this traffic and commerce. I didn’t know there were apartments in the building, but then the realtors in this city would stick condos in the clouds if they could pay gravity to look the other way. I was going into a work a little later than usual and I was paying the price. I knew the traffic would be bad, but I had no idea it would suck this much. We had just crept by the Syndicate Trading Company building on 37th Street, which has become something o...

She was born on Christmas Day and she believes miracles happen every day of the week. I met an elderly woman on Saturday morning standing on line at a local supermarket. She was behind me and I heard her speaking—apparently to herself—as the cashier rang up her order. “I don’t know how I’m going to get all this home,” she was saying. “I didn’t bring my cart.” The woman was walking with a cane and clearly needed a hand. I was tired and in a hurry, as I was going to the theater with my sister and auntie that afternoon, but I didn’t want to leave this lady on her own. I still have fresh memories of a very kind man who helped me during a recent airplane freak-out and my auntie has trouble walking, so the least I could do was help this lady with her bags. As we walked the half-block down 75th Street to her apartment, she told me that she had moved to the neighborhood five years ago from Eighth Avenue. “I’ve met so many wonderful people on this block,” she said. She recently ...

Years ago, whenever one of the New York Mets hit a home run, Ralph Kiner, an announcer on Channel 9, had a little catchphrase he’d like to say. As the ball sailed over the fence and the ballplayer rounded the bases, Ralph would loudly declare, “it’s gone, forget it, goodbye!” That line came back to me this week, but it had nothing to do with the national pastime. Except perhaps for the fact that I wanted to hit myself over the head with a baseball bat. Here’s the play-by-play: I came out of my gym on Saturday morning, bounced down 86th Street to a local card store and stocked up on about 14 bucks worth of cards. This was the first of several stops I made that morning in my shopping odyssey back to my crib. After the card store I hit the vegetable store, deli and ended up at the dry cleaners just a few blocks from home. And it all went fine. I dumped my various bundles in the kitchen, had some lunch and went for my post gym nap. It wasn’t until 3 hours later that it occurred to...

One night in 1976 I saw a sneak preview of Rocky at a theater on the Upper East Side. I was a sophomore at Hunter College, which was 10 blocks away, and I’ll never forget how the crowd went berserk when Rocky Balboa knocked down Apollo Creed after being smacked around the ring for most of the first round. It was one of my favorite movie moments of all time. Yes, Rocky was a simple underdog story, but it was so well done and the characters were so memorable that the familiar plot didn’t bother me at all. Forty freaking years later—I keep doing the math hoping I’m wrong--I sat down to watch Creed , which tells the story of Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son, Adonis Jackson, who gets Rocky, now long retired, to train him. I was so psyched to see this movie I couldn’t wait to order it from Netflix. It had gotten excellent reviews and there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good boxing movie. Or at least that’s how I used to feel. But a lot has changed in the last four decades. As I w...