The Luna Park Gazette

There once was a time when I looked forward to the sign of peace. That’s the part of the mass where you shake hands with everybody around you. It's kind of like a spiritual version of the seventh inning stretch. We started doing the sign of peace in the Catholic Church when I was in grammar school and I remember how one of my classmates once grabbed another kid’s hand during mass and said “hey, how’s the wife and kids?” Fortunately for him, none of the brothers caught him in the act for they would have no doubt sent him to meet his maker right there in church. It’s a much shorter trip. I’ve been attending services at Trinity Church for a few years now and I’ve gotten to enjoy this little hand-to-hand routine. I greet my regular buddies and new arrivals and next to the sermon, it is—or was —my favorite part of the mass. But that was before the H1N1 virus and all its attendant hysteria came to town. Now my church has a hand-sanitizing android stationed in the vestibule ready to spew ...

I finally found peace this week. No, not serenity, calm, stillness or tranquility—don’t be ridiculous. I’m still as neurotic as ever. I’m talking about a novel called Peace by Richard Bausch, a gift from my brother which I thought I had lost somewhere between my house and the New York City subway system. I had just made up my mind to read that particular book after looking through the stacks of paperbacks around here. I brought it to work, kept it in a brown plastic bag to protect the cover, but when I got home that night and looked in my bag, I found that I had been seperated from Peace . I looked all over my house, peeked into the garbage can, I even checked out the re-freaking-frigerator--nothing. I tried the Zen thing of letting go and the book apparently returned the favor because I couldn't find it anywhere. At breakfast the next morning I because convinced— convinced —that I had tossed the book in the trash can. Seconds later I heard the garbage truck pulling up in front of...

I was doing my evening shopping the other night when I heard a familiar song on the radio. I had trouble making out the tune because of the noise around me, but I knew I’d heard this song before. As I put my groceries down in front of the cashier, I listened carefully and tried to figure out the words. It was from the eighties, one of my favorite decades for music. And I could tell it was a woman singing. Then there was a sudden gust of silence around me and I was able to name that tune. It was “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna. Okay, well, if you just ring me up, I'll be on my way. Please, for the love of God, ring me up. As soon I got my change, I bid farewell to the Material Girl and bounced down to the corner drug store for some additional shopping. At first I wasn’t paying too much attention to the piped-in music, but as I roamed the aisles in a futile search for whatever the hell it was that I wanted, I started to listen to the song pouring out of the sound system—and wished I h...

"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Matthew 5:44 For the last few days I’ve been trying to remember where I was standing on 9/11 when the planes hit the World Trade Center. I pass by Ground Zero every day on my way to work and as the anniversary drew closer, I'd walk by the Brooks Brothers store on Church Street and see if I could find my exact location on that most hideous day. I had to imagine that the towers were still there and try and recall if I was closer to Church Street or Liberty Street when I watched smoke pour out the North Tower and when the South Tower exploded into flames as the second plane hit the building. I had just come from my gym near City Hall and was on my way to my office, which back then was at Liberty Plaza—right across the street from the Trade Center. That was my father's 80th birthday; my mother was at Lutheran M...

We never go out after dark. Whenever I visit my girlfriend in the Bronx, I always plan on staying in. It's a simple set-up. She cooks a fabulous meal while I hog the remote and HBOverdose on all the movies coming out the TV. We've never formally declared that we won't leave the building until sunrise, but that's how things work out. The neighborhood around Pelham Parkway is not the safest place in town and frankly there's not a hell of a lot to do...except get into trouble. I’ve almost gotten used to the blasting boom boxes, roaring motorcycles, screaming sirens, shouting from the street at all times of the night, and the regular rumble of the No. 2 train clattering on the elevated tracks just two blocks away. I can tolerate the noise, but only from the safety of my girlfriend's apartment, and an incident this past weekend really brought that point home, so to speak. On Saturday we had gone to see “Ruined,” Lynn Nottage’s haunting play that takes place at a brot...

One night, nearly years 30 ago, I was out on a date in Times Square. I had taken my then-girlfriend to see a comedy called “Mornings at Seven,” which was quite popular at the time. It was my date’s birthday and we had started off with dinner at a small French restaurant, went to the show, and then walked around Times Square like a couple of tourists from Ohio. It was a warm spring night and even though Times Square--the so-called "Crossroads of the World"--hadn’t been Disney-fied yet, the place still had a magical feel to it. Or maybe I was just in love. As we walked down a street somewhere in the theater district, we noticed that people coming in the opposite direction were stopping in their tracks and staring at man who was walking a few yards in front of us. It was really a cinematic moment as we got closer, anxious to know who he was and why he was getting all this attention. There were several people with him and they were all entering a club. We caught up wi...

So there I was, hanging off the side of an ancient Indian cliff dwelling at New Mexico’s Bandolier National Monument, praying I wouldn’t slip and fall to a hideous death, when my cell phone started ringing. I couldn’t believe my ears. The phone’s obnoxious trill was so unnatural, so out of place in this ancient, spiritual location. It was like playing a kazoo at midnight mass. I hardly use the damn thing and someone’s calling me now —of all times—when I’m inches away from becoming the lead story on the 11 o’clock news? (Assuming it was a slow news day.) “Someday I’ll laugh at this,” I muttered into the rungs of the wooden ladder that were the only thing between me and oblivion. Normally I can’t resist a ringing phone. Even in my most misanthropic moments—and I’ve had quite a few of those—I have a Pavlovian drive to answer a telephone’s siren call. I just have to know who is on the other end of the line. However, on this day, that phone could have rung, whistled, howled, or sung the ove...