The Luna Park Gazette

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...