The Luna Park Gazette

When David Cassidy died in November the last thing he said before he left this world was “so much wasted time.” Those words came back to me today as I sit in the hospital lounge waiting for 2017 to end. The new year will start in a few hours, and while I won’t be doing much to celebrate, at least I can take stock of my life. Since my movements are so severely restricted, I’ve been taking a closer look at what goes on in my brain and I don’t particularly like it. I spent far too much time regurgitating the awful past in a wasted effort to rewrite my personal history. I’ve said this many times before, but I have yet to learn the lesson. Now that I am not running around like a lunatic, I can see just how much time I’m wasting tilting at the windmills in my mind. So I think my New Year’s resolution for 2018 is going to be very simple: stop wasting time. I have lost a lot of time due to this accident and I will be spending most of the new year just trying to get back to wher...

I have this dream where I get out of bed, walk to the bathroom and start my day. And then I realize that my legs are wrapped up in braces following the knee surgery and I can’t walk anywhere. I will definitely not be home for Christmas this year, as I will be in the hospital rehab center for God knows how long. After that I have to find a way of living in my apartment without moving my knees, and maybe six months from now, when it’s spring, I’m might be able to walk. I’m trying to keep a positive attitude about all this, but I confess it’s very difficult. My doctor says it’ll be 18 months before I’ll be able to go jogging, which means my boxing class, the one I love so much, is out of the question. The thing about the boxing class is that it’s more than just a tough work out. There are so many great people in the class, and I probably won’t be seeing a lot of them again. There’s also my fabulous writing class, which is meeting again in February but I can’t go if I can’t...

I’ll keep this short. I am writing to you from my hospital room in Sunset Park Brooklyn. Yes, my hospital room. On Thursday as I was coming home from the gym I slipped on some snow and cracked up my left knee. I was in total agony and I called a cab to take me home. While getting out of the cab and walking to my front door I managed to fall and screw up my right knee as well I am in total agony and I still can’t believe this has happened. I just got out of surgery a few hours ago and I have a long road of recovery ahead of me. I am frightened, I’m worried about the future and I’m worried about my health. This wasn’t my plan to spend Christmas, but like the man says if you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans. I missed my writing class and our class reading today. I can’t tell you how unhappy this makes me. I can forget about the gym for quite a while—it looks like probably six months or more but if I come out in good shape I’ll be thankful. But right now I’m ...

“Is this going to upset me?” I asked my TV the other night. Naturally my TV didn’t answer. It’s a smart TV, but it ain’t that smart. No matter. I was gearing up for yet another crying fit as I watched a commercial—a goddamn commercial! —about an abandoned teddy bear looking to be loved. “Oh, yes, it is!” I shouted to no one, and began sobbing. I forgot what product was being peddled in this ad, but it doesn’t take much to get me reaching for the tissues. I don’t know if it’s age or lunacy, but I find that I’m getting tear-eyed at the slightest emotional prodding. If someone ever starts a group “Shameless Weepers Anonymous,” I will gladly sign up. While I’ve always been overly sensitive, lately I’ve been balling my eyes out at absolutely anything. And I wonder if there’s a part of me that looks for something to get emotional about just to get the weepy release. Recently I came across a stray memory of a short film that ran on Saturday Night Live 30 years ago called “ Love i...

As the lights dimmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Friday night, the man sitting next to me leaned in my direction. “See you in four hours,” he whispered. And with that we settle in for the BAM’s mammoth adaptation of Ayn Rand’s turgid potboiler The Fountainhead . Two days have gone by and I still don’t know how the hell I feel, but after suffering through this thing I feel like somebody owes me either an apology or an explanation, but I’ll settle for a t-shirt. For the record, I despise Rand and her crackpot views on individualism with a passion. She peddles a particularly virulent strain of horseshit that magically makes mythic figures out of self-centered, money-grubbing assholes, which explains why Paul Ryan, Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican scumbags jizz their shorts at the mere mention of her name. In addition to being a five-star fraud, Rand, who is also responsible for that other literary slagheap, Atlas Shrugged , is a terrible writer who deposite...