The Luna Park Gazette

Nearly 30 years ago, a co-worker at a newspaper in Waterbury, Connecticut gave me a candle as a Christmas present. The candle is a round swirl of red, white and green wax and I kept it ever since, never once thinking of actually using the thing for its intended purpose. It's so attractive I thought it would be shame to light it up and watch all that beauty melt away. And I’m already paying enough money to Con Ed for the lights, what's the point of going all Ben Franklin? Then one day last week I caught sight of that candle sitting on my kitchen table and I thought, yeah, it’s time. I honestly don’t know what came over me; why, after more than three decades I had this sudden urge to finally light that wick. Maybe it was a desire to change, to break out of old molds and do something different, no matter how small or insignificant. The businessman John G. Shedd once said that “a ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” I think the same can be...

The wind was the first clue. I woke up this morning some time before dawn to the sound of a harsh wind blowing outside my window. Wow, I thought, that doesn’t sound like sunny Southern California at all. Well, that’s because it wasn’t. I had been dreaming and I quickly realized that I was nowhere near Los Angeles, where it was sunny and 75 degrees. I was still in my home in Brooklyn on a cold December morning waiting for the sun to come up. L.A. was a mirage and it served as the setting for a larger, and ultimately more painful, delusion where I reunited with my former best friend who ghosted me several years ago and moved out West a few months back. I recall walking down a wide boulevard with the sun shining down on my face when my buddy came bouncing up to me from the opposite direction. I don’t remember when we said to each other, but I do know he stepped right in to give me a strong and very sincere hug. That feeling of his arms around me is so, real, so...

It’s a funny how a song can sneak up on you. Two things I love most about the Christmas season are the lights and the beautiful music. You can pretty much keep the rest of the madness, but don’t take away those fabulous decorations or my holiday tunes. My favorites songs include “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” and “O Holy Night,” which can bring tears to my eyes if you get me in the right mood. Most of the more modern holiday songs leave me cold, though I must confess that I am one of the few people on earth who actually likes “All I Want for Christmas is You,” even though it was voted the most annoying Christmas song in 2019. I’ll certainly take Mariah Carey's song over “Grandma Got run over by a reindeer,” any day of the week, and don’t even get me started on “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey,” which is so bad it could turn the Pope into an atheist. And then we have “ Driving Home for Christmas ”, Chris Rea’s holiday song that was re...

When I worked at my old office on Wall Street, most mornings I would make a point of stopping by to see my buddy Juan. Juan’s a great guy and I always got a nice lift whenever I spoke with him. We’d shoot the breeze for a little while before I’d have to leave, and Juan would send me on my way with this fabulous line. “Make it a great day,” he’d say. Did you catch that? Juan didn’t say “ have a great day.” He said, “ make it a great day.” That suggests that we have more power over the events in our lives than a lot of us realize. This message was reinforced recently when I went to my gym and spotted a small, handwritten sign near the front door. “Make today matter,” it said. There is it again. A literal sign encouraging us to make something happen with the time allotted to us. These two threads were pulled together last week when I read an editorial by New York Times by Lindsay Crouse called “ You Can Make Any Day the Best of the Year .” In her column, Cro...

“I believe in order that I may understand.” – Anselm of Canterbury I walked into a church for the first time in two years on Friday. I was out shopping when I passed by St. Anslem’s Roman Catholic Church on Fourth Avenue. I usually stop outside to recite the prayer before the crucifix, where, with burning soul, you beseech Jesus to fix deep in your heart lively sentiments of faith, hope and charity, true contrition for your sins and a firm purpose of amendment. It can be very comforting when the news is dark and you’re feeling lost. And yet all the times I’ve prayed outside St. Anslem’s, I’ve never gone inside, even though I’ve lived in Bay Ridge most of my life. I was always too busy heading somewhere else to walk in, and then the place was locked down, along with the rest of the planet, when Covid-19 came to town. But on Friday I saw a woman pull up the front door and step inside and I decided it was time to see the interior. A mass was just finishing up when I ...

No wonder I’m so tired. I’ve had vivid dreams for most of my life, but during the last week I experienced two back-to-back work-related nightmares that were so intense I should be getting a second paycheck. These psychotic situations bore no resemblance to my current job, for which I am very grateful. No, these delusions were a mental milkshake of past experiences, underlying emotional issues and heaping dose of WTF? The first one found me working at a weekly newspaper in Brooklyn not unliked the one I worked for in the Eighties. In this dream, I was heading off to cover some kind of occurrence at a local restaurant. The only problem was I had no idea what kind of occurrence I was covering, although judging by the hostile looks I was getting from the employees, it wasn’t good and they clearly did not want me there. I grew accustomed to this ill will whenever I showed up at crime scenes and accidents, where people were really just not that into you. It’s part of the jo...

I guess this is what they mean by “serendipity.” Many years ago, a woman named Madelon Champion approached Rod Serling, the genius behind The Twilight Zone , at a party and suggested an idea for an episode of the legendary TV show. Of course, Serling got unsolicited story ideas all the time. He once described how he and his staff had gone through a stack of manuscripts where the majority were “hand-scrawled, laboriously written, therapeutic unholy grotesqueries from sick, troubled, deeply disturbed people.” “Of the three remaining scripts,” he said, “all of clearly poetic, professional quality, none of them fitted the show." But this time was different. Serling was so impressed with the proposal that he paid Champion $500 on the spot gave her on-screen credit for suggesting the story idea. This would be the first and only time he’d do such a thing. The result of this meeting was episode entitled “I Shot an Arrow into the Air,” which I recorded on Friday nigh...

“A ship is always safe at the shore, but that is not what it is built for.” – Albert Einstein Oh, the humanity. The 50th New York Marathon ran right through my neighborhood this morning and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed it more. The five-borough, 26-mile race returned after a two-year hiatus when the 2020 event was scrapped due to Covid-19—along with just about everything else we know and love in this town. The first New York City Marathon took place on Sept. 13, 1970 and was held entirely in Central Park. Of the 127 registered runners, there were 55 finishers. The first five-borough New York City Marathon took place in 1976 with about 2,000 runners. This year’s event had about 30,000 participants, but there have been more than 50,000 competitors in previous races. The marathon starts in Staten Island, goes over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and comes right through my neighborhood of Bay Ridge. My sister and I have been standing on Fourth Avenue for years a...

I can’t believe how rotten I feel. This is Day 2 of my effort to finally quit drinking Diet Coke and my body is not happy. I’ve got a headache, I’m more irritable than usual and my soul is crying out of a nice tall glass of that bubbling brown poison. But I ain’t giving in. It seems fitting that I would address this particular personal demon on Halloween, except that Diet Coke is all trick and no treat. Understand that you’re talking to someone who quite literally starts his day with Diet Coke. I drink a glass of the swill with my oatmeal in the morning and I keep going until it’s time for bed. I’ve been drinking some form of diet soda or ice tear since college, but I think the problem really exploded when I came down with mononucleosis in the Eighties and began recklessly guzzling the stuff. When I worked at a newspaper in Pennsylvania, I would routinely walk over to a nearby 24-hour place, grab the biggest cup they had, and pour myself a gallon or two. And then ...

I’ve forgotten just about everything I learned in my high school French class, but the expression bete noir clings to my battered memory like a barnacle on a battle ship. The literal translation of bete noir is “black beast,” but the dictionary definition is “a person or thing one particularly dislikes.” I suspect the reason this particular term has lingered for so long in my mind is that there are so many things in this world that keep it alive. My blogging buddies Ron at Being Ron and Bijoux at Bytes from the Burbs have both written posts about the things they really hate—their bete noirs —so I thought this would be an appropriate time to unleash one of my beasts. The place: my doctor’s office. The time: Friday morning. I had gone in to get a blood test and a shingles injection, a seemingly simple affair that somehow morphed into a monster ferocious enough to make Godzilla crap his drawers—should he ever decide to start wearing drawers. I showed up at 8:30AM, certa...

I feel like a villain in a Bond movie. I recently treated to myself a new chair for my home office and this thing like looks it came straight off of the set of Thunderball . I had been threatening to improve my seating arrangements for a couple of years, but now that my company has officially gone virtual, an upgrade became an imperative. I spend so much time at the computer between my job, my own writing and screwing around on YouTube that I can no longer sit in the old straight back number I’ve been using for years. So, one Friday after work I bounced up to a national office supply chain store--which shall go nameless--and perused their furniture. I was set to check out the traditional office chairs lined up at the back of the store, but then I saw…the Emerge. The Emerge is a gaming chair that is so unlike any other workplace seat I’ve ever seen before. And I had to have it. …bonded leather back and seat…135 degree recline…adjustable height, arms, tilt tension and ti...

So that’s what grandma meant by stonato . While the word officially means “out of tune” in Italian, stonato can also be used to describe someone who is bewildered, confused, or out of sorts. That pretty much describes my condition last week when I lost an entire of hour of my life and still can’t account for it. This chronological misfire occurred on Thursday when I got up to go to the gym. I start work at 7:45AM, so I like to get to the gym at 6AM and work out for about an hour before bouncing home, knocking out a shower, and getting to work. It can be a bit of close shave some mornings and I usually wolf down breakfast while banging out a story, but the arrangement has worked well for me. Until Thursday. Everything seemed normal at first, sort of. I did notice that there were a few more people in the gym than usual, but the place was still virtually empty, which is the way I like it. After the workout, I skipped across Third Avenue to get a bottle of my favorit...

Now I know why they call it Brooklyn on the Hudson. My sister and I took a ride up to Beacon, N.Y. on Saturday and we had a blast. Once again, my sister took the lead on this adventure, getting me up off my keester, out the door and away from my precious comfort zone. The original plan was to Metro North our way up to Poughkeepsie, but that’s a longer haul and best started earlier in the morning and later in the season to catch the fall foliage. So, we switched up and headed for Beacon. I texted our friend, Paula, a Beacon resident, whom I had not seen in years, from Grand Central to let her know we were on the way, and she very graciously met up with us on ridiculously short notice to provide a first-class tour of this funky little burg. The city in Duchess County has been a favorite relocation spot for New Yorkers, as they ditch the city’s high rents and assorted madness and book to Beacon. That migration only intensified with the COVID-19 outbreak. The town was cr...

"History is a vast early warning system." – Norman Cousins What was that about history repeating itself? I recently started watching a British TV show called The Indian Doctor , which tells the story of the eponymous physician who moves from Delhi with his wife to a Welsh mining town in the early Sixties. It’s a fish-out-of-water story and, while I found the first season enjoyable enough, I thought about bailing on the show to cut down on my TV watching. However, I changed my mind when Season Two began and our hero, Prem, played by the fabulous Sanjeev Bhaskar, had to contend with a smallpox outbreak in the village. But he also has to battle ignorance and religious fanaticism in the form of Reverend Todd, who refuses to be vaccinated, holds group meetings despite ordinances against social distancing, and encourages his congregation to trust prayer of over science. This series, which ran from 2010 to 2013, was intended to paint a picture of the past, but it a...

There’s no wrong way to float. That priceless bit of advice was the last thing Divine J9, the founder of Body Mind Salt, told me Wednesday just before I began my first float therapy session. I had been walking by this spa on Third Avenue for weeks, promising myself that I was going to give float therapy a try, but never making an appointment. This is an all-too-familiar behavior pattern for me, but since I had off last week. I decided it was time to sink the excuses and sign up for a float. Float therapy, or sensory deprivation, involves climbing into a tank of water filled with Epsom salt for a zero-gravity voyage through inner space. The first isolation tank was designed in 1954 by John C. Lilly, a physician and neuroscientist, who wanted to study the origins of consciousness by cutting off all external stimuli. Studies have indicated that time spent floating in a sensory deprivation tank may provide such benefits as muscle relaxation, better sleep and decreased stres...

I’m sure going to miss those views. I returned to my office on Monday for the last time to clean out my desk as my company completes the move to a virtual workspace. I have the week off and since I don’t feel like risking a run-in with COVID-19, I’m doing yet another stay-cation. In February 2020, we had moved from our old and spooky location on Wall Street to this wonderful new facility in Brookfield Place overlooking the Hudson River. We were up on the 27th Floor and we had spectacular views of the city from every window. I posted photos of the place on Facebook and told everybody and his brother that I couldn’t wait for spring when I would eat lunch outside by the water. It was going to be great. Two weeks later we shut down the office in response to COVID-19. Most of us believed at the time that the closure would be brief. We’d return to the office—and normal life—in a few weeks, maybe a few months, at most. But the body count and infection rates climbed and working...

For one awful moment this morning I was back in 2001. I had gone to Ground Zero to mark the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. I was feeling bit anxious, given the pandemic and ever-rising level of madness in this world, but I was there when the planes hit the World Trade Center and I was determined to be there today. Twenty years ago, I was standing outside a Brooks Brothers store on Church Street watching smoke pour out of the North Tower and wondering what the hell was happening. I was working in a building across the street and the plan was to go home, meet up with my sister and take our father to dinner for his 80th birthday. As I watched the North Tower burning, I recall thinking that if this was indeed a terrorist attack, they often happen in twos. And then that second plane hit the South Tower. The area looks so different now. The Brooks Brothers store is gone and the Trade Center location has been turned into a memorial. So many businesses in the a...

Every time I walk through the front door of my building, the first thing I see is the empty downstairs apartment. The woman who had been living here moved out a few weeks ago and I still haven’t gotten used to the sight of that barren studio. I walked into the place a few nights ago to look around and I thought of the times in my life when I had moved; all the hassle of packing up my life into boxes and suitcases and moving on to the next empty apartment. I started to feel the itch. I love my apartment and I know I am lucky to have it, yet there’s a part of me that’s always looking for the next new place. My company announced last week that, like so many other businesses, we’re giving up our office space and going virtual. We had just moved into a fabulous new building in early 2020 when COVID-19 came crashing down on the world. I despise commuting with all my heart, particularly now with onset of colder weather and the spread of the Delta variant. But I hate the fac...

Fifty-four years ago today, my family got together with a group of friends to watch Dr. Richard Kimble walk out of a courtroom a free man. This was the final episode of The Fugitive , which starred David Janssen as the doctor wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife, who escapes after the train taking him to the death house crashes. Kimble travels around the country searching for the mysterious one-armed man who actually killed his wife. Each week, William Conrad, a fabulous actor who later starred in the Seventies detective show Cannon , recited the opening and closing narrative in his singular voice. Kimble would “toil at many jobs…and run before the relentless pursuit of” Lt. Girard, portray by Barry Morse, who was obsessed with Kimble’s capture. The program aired for four seasons and it was the first show in television history that actually ended, instead of just disappearing from the airwaves. That may sound a little odd today, when TV programs like The Soprano...

On Saturday, April 13, 1968, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Sherman of Park Avenue, announced the engagement of their Donna in the New York Times . “Plans have been made for a wedding this spring,” the announcement said. Donna Sherman was a professional singer who graduated from the Brearley School, attended Vassar College, the Aspen Music School, and the Yale Summer Music School. She was engaged to Donald Alan Ewer of Toronto, who was a director and actor in theater and television in Canada and the U.S., according to the Times announcement. I know all of this thanks to the Times’ online archive, the TimesMachine , which can transport you to different eras and lives with a few clicks. I’m researching material for a novel and I’ve found the website invaluable in bringing the past to life and turning history into breaking news. The one drawback, however, is that I tend to get distracted by the old articles, announcements, and even the advertisements. The front page of t...