The Luna Park Gazette

I was preparing to leave my gym Friday morning when this middle-aged gentleman walked into the locker room. “Good morning, sir,” he said with refreshing sincerity. “Good morning,” I responded. I got a good vibe coming from this man so I decided to keep the conversation going. "Are you all done?” I asked. “Oh, no,” he said. “I just got here.” “I just finished.” “C’mon,” he said, “that’s not fair!” I laughed and wished him a good workout. “Have a beautiful day,” he said. That was it. The entire encounter lasted less than a minute, yet I got such a boost out of talking with this man that I briefly forgot how tired I was. It’s amazing how one good person can undo the damage of a dozen nitwits. I decided that would indeed have a beautiful day and I promised myself that I would pass this gentleman’s kindness on to other people. And then I went home and switched on the computer. I had forgotten that the night before I had downloaded one of Apple’s seemin...

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” ― Lucille Ball. There was a time back in the Eighties when WPIX, a New York radio station, played nothing but love songs. I'm not sure if there are any other types of popular songs, as love in one form or another seems to be theme in nearly every song I've ever hear. Nevertheless, that was their schtick and the station went so far as to run a series of TV commercials featuring clay animation cherubs to reel in new listeners. I didn’t much care for the format and those clay angels creeped me out, but the concept is coming back to me now as I look to get my mind in some kind of healthy condition. I’ve heard for decades about the importance loving yourself and how you can never really be happy until you do. It sounded great, but I could never could my head around it. Loving your family, your significant other, your dog—that all makes se...

I can’t believe I didn’t know this. Last week, the filmmaker Richard Donner, director of such big budget spectacles as The Omen, Superman and Lethal Weapon , died at 91 years old. I have to confess that I am not a particularly big fan of Donner’s movie work. While there is no denying that his films were incredibly popular, I found several them to be rather noisy and uninteresting. Like many of the older filmmakers, Donner got his start in television, directing episodes of such classics as Wanted: Dead or Alive, Have Gun Will Travel and Perry Mason . I’ve been watching several of these shows lately on the MeTV channel and I’ve seen Donner’s name a few times, but I had no idea until I read his obituary that he directed what is arguably the most famous episode of The Twilight Zone , “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” C’mon, don’t sit there and tell me you don’t know what episode I’m talking about. That’s the one from 1963 with a pre-Kirk William Shatner portraying a man recover...

I’ll wave no flags today. Today is the Fourth of July, marking the day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. There will be the usual fireworks displays, barbecues, and all sorts of talk about freedom and liberty, but I’m not really feeling the Spirit of ’76 today-not when the country my father and so many others fought to offend is crumbling beneath our feet. Last night I watched the New York Times special report about the January 6 insurrection where a mob of deranged Trump supporters tried to destroy the democratic process. I’ve seen plenty of footage of that horrible day, but the Times report gets right into the heart of the disaster. The attack was bad enough, of course, but Republicans are compounding that atrocity by refusing to approve a committee to investigate the incident—the same people, by the way, who held 10 investigations of the 2012 Benghazi attack—and are repeatedly downplaying the severity o...