The Luna Park Gazette

Okay, so I'm making a cheap reference to a crap-ass summer movie, but it's not like I killed anybody. At least, not yet. I just wanted to write about a bizarre and ultimately funny inicident that happened as I was leaving work yesterday. There's a woman at my office--well, she was at my office, but Friday was her last day. We'll call her Jill--thought she doesn't know jack! (Sorry, couldn't resist that one.) Anyhow, for the whole time we worked together Jill would never give me the time of day. She sat two desks away from me for close to a year, but every time I walked by her, she'd get this zombie glaze over her eyes and look through me like I was disembodied spirit. At first I would nod to her, something I do with everybody in the office, as I think it's polite. But after being blown off a few times too many, I shifted to an attitude along the lines of " kiss my royal Irish patootie, bee-yatch! " and ignored the living hell of her. Code of S...

My sister came over to the house the other day and found an Easter card I had given to my parents in 1994. It's a big ivory number with the words " For Mother and Dad With Love " above an Easter basket. I always liked the larger size holiday cards for my parents. " Children do not realize ," it begins, " how deep is parent love, how wise..." Reading that card today, I see there's a lot I didn't realize, or maybe things I just didn't want to believe. I didn't want to believe my mother would die some day, or that my father would be so old and frail that he could barely stand up. I didn't realize or I didn't believe, either way, that's what's happening now with or without my persmission. My sister was cleaning up the house to make it more senior-friendly for my dad--getting rid of boxes, cleaning out the hallway to my father's bedroom. My father's home from his second hospital stay in less than a month, but God only...

If I can get through a day like Friday, I think I can pretty much survive anything. My father had to go back to the hospital on Friday, little more than a week after he had been released from a seven-day stay at the VA Hospital. I try not to think about things like bad omens, hexes, evil eyes, and the like, but any day where you hear Abba's 70's musical nightmare "Dancing Queen" twice is less than five hours is bound to suck in major ways. And Friday was such a day. The day started out very badly, when I heard my father fall down in the bathroom at about 6 AM. I was half-asleep but I knew the sound and I ran in there and found him curled up on the floor twitching and shaking as if he were being eletrocuted. It was horrible seeing him like that, confused, frightened and helpless. I got him to a chair, saying " Dad, Dad ," over and over, but he just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Finally he started to respond and I got him back to bed. No...

When I was growing up, my mother had this expression she'd say if she saw of any us stuffing our faces while standing up. "Sit down," she'd declare, "and eat come un Cristiano !" Eat like a Christian. Now my mother didn't have a bigoted bone in her body, but I can see where this phrase would be rather disturbing to a lot of people as it equates being civilized with being Christian. I used to wonder why eating standing up was such an offense to the All Mighty. I wanted to ask my Jewish friends in school, hey, why don't you guys sit down when you eat? This phrase came to mind recently the other day when I got an e-mail from an outfit that billed itself as a Christian Lending Network. I figured I had enough Christians already and didn't need to borrow anymore, so I put my cursor on the delete button. But then I realized this company was offering to loan money "based on Christian Principles." "Put Your Faith in Us!" The ad copy s...

I feel like a ghost in this empty house. At one time, this place was full of people--my parents, four children, my grandmother, a dog and a cat, a whole tribe living in a three-bedroom apartment on the first floor. People grew up, moved on, or died and now, with my father in the hospital, I'm like a night watchman at some obscure museum. I walk the length of this place checking the doors, switching off the lights. I finally got the privacy I so desperately craved, but now it feels unnatural and unhealthy. I feel like I'm under house arrest. Which in a sense, I am. I wish I could tell you I'm doing the whole Risky Business thing, dancing and lip-synching in my underwear, but that doesn't work so well for a 49-year old man. I do have less chores with my father away, I don't have to make his coffee in the morning, heat up his pancakes, or give him his medicine. Instead of "Old Time Rock 'n Roll" I'm thinking of an old Fifth Dimension song called ...

They don't get lightning storms in L.A. That's what my Uncle Joe told me the other night when he called me from L.A....during a lightning storm. He had called to see how we were doing and while I love talking with the guy I was wincing every time another lightning bolt cracked through the sky. We've been having a streak of thunder storms in the northeast lately, big, massive affairs that sound and feel like artillery attacks going on in the clouds. The kind of storms where it's not a good idea to talk on the phone. "We don't get storms like that out here," he said, as I held the phone three feet from my head. "I miss them." I found it hard to believe that L.A., the land of extremes, didn't have thunderstorms, not with the brushfires, mudslides, endless rainstorms, and Charles Manson. But then we don't get earthquakes in Brooklyn, so I guess it all evens out. There was a guy on our block who got hit by lightning as he spoke on the telephon...

Well, it's been a hell of day. My father is in the hospital right now, having suffered what the doctors fear is a stroke. When my sister and I left him, he was being difficult and annoying, which is pretty much par for the course with my father. But he needs to be watched and tested over the next few days. It started yesterday when I got a call from the nurse at the senior center where my father goes twice a week. He had fallen down and while the nurse couldn't find any sign of injury, she was concerned and wanted to speak with my dad's doctor. It got worse when my dad's aid, Mary, called me at work to say my father was home and insisting she call his old company in Albany, NY. Even though he's long since retired and the company went out of business about 30 years ago. I had noticed some unusual behavior the other night, when my father got up at around midnight to tell me something about "two guys breaking out of jail." I told him to go back to bed. At Mar...