The Luna Park Gazette

" What you do want from me? I’m a fucking human being! ” I was shopping in a vitamin store on 86th Street when I heard someone shouting those very words for the entire neighborhood to hear. At first I thought someone was auditioning for a local production of The Elephant Man . But then I saw a young woman walking done the street shrieking into a cell phone. Well, lady, I thought, since you claim to be a human being, perhaps you could act like one? It wouldn't take much. You could just lower your voice, clean up your mouth, and keep your private business private. That would be a great start. We’ve all gotten used to hearing bits of one-sided conversations as we pass people on the street and sometimes they can be quite loud. But this woman had reached a decible level so high she could have won a yodeling contest--without leaving Brooklyn. Her voice faded as she walked down the avenue and I dismissed the Jersey Shore reject from my mind, certain I'd never see--o...

You can’t keep a good zombie down. In fact, that’s pretty much what makes them zombies—that and the cannibalism. Like zombies themselves, the zombie movie refuses to die. There are some slight plot variations, but the basic story usually involves a handful of humans fending off a battalion of flesh-eating corposes. The humans fight among themselves, get picked off one by one, and then the zombies smash their way into wherever the heroes are hiding and then all hell really does break loose. Roll the credits. These movies will never be mistaken for great cinema, but some of them—a few of them--can be reasonably entertaining as you long as you’ve got nothing else going on. Now if you’re squeamish…you probably shouldn’t be watching a zombie movie. You know there’s going to be severed limbs and gallons of fake blood spilling all over the place, so why torture yourself? If you expect everyone to hug it out and go vegan, you don't know much about zombies. Zombies are pretty low on the mon...

I came home late one night last week and saw a small group of men on Fifth Avenue huddling around a silver van. At first I thought they were all friends, but then I noticed the air was charged in a way that was anything but cordial. Everyone was speaking Arabic, a sign of the neighborhood’s shifting demographics, and the tones were getting increasingly unfriendly. I know--I should have kept walking. You never know what can happen in these situations. Someone might not appreciate being eyeballed and decide to punch your teeth out. If things get really hostile and people start shooting, a bullet isn’t going to say “please” before it tears through your skull. But I wanted to know what was going on. I’m a journalist and I’ve been hanging on the edge of mayhem for years, waiting for the cops or fire fighters to give me the official story. I’m also nosy and this scene was like reality TV without the commercials. I moved through the crowd that had gathered to watch this incident, but I woul...

Now I know what “hell on wheels” really means. I took a ride on the world famous Cyclone roller coaster today and having survived this experience I can you two things: this was my first time on this attraction. And it was probably my last. I was part of a select group of just four people who had been given a special ride on the Cyclone and while I was quite honored by this star treatment, I am really happy to be alive. If there is a record for screaming the phrase “Oh my God” repeatedly in under two minutes, I smashed it to pieces. Now, you may be wondering why a man who is afraid great heights and excessive speeds would willingly climb aboard a roller coaster knowing full well that he would have to deal with, well, great heights and excessive speeds. I had been contacted by Ariel Kaminer, a New York Times columnist who is doing a story about the Cyclone. She had come across some of my blog postings where I wrote about visiting my father at a Coney Island nursing home a f...

I was sitting on the R train Sunday morning when the screaming started. We were at the 45th Street station in Sunset Park. I was going to a gym class in Manhattan and I had left my house ridiculously early so I wouldn’t be late. I was overdoing it, but it's always a good idea to give yourself a little extra time when you're traveling at off-peak hours. There are fewer trains on the weekends, so if you miss one, you’d better have something to read. Perhaps that thought was on the mind of a young woman who was racing down the steps to get onto the train. The doors were closing just as she got to them and she tripped—perhaps the platform was slippery from all the goddamn rain we were having. Whatever the reason, she managed to somehow slide her leg into the space between the train and the platform, which I didn’t think was possible at this particular station. It was the kind of freak occurrence that you couldn’t do if you tried a hundred times. But there it was. “Stop the train!” ...

This is the kind of day where you want to pull the covers up over your soul. It’s raining like hell here, the wind is blowing and you feel really sorry for anybody who has to be outside right now. I went out twice today and both times and I got soaked to the skin and bone. Enough, already; whatever I don’t have now I’ll do without. The rain does have its good points. Like a snowstorm it forces you to slow down and look at yourself. And you can take care of those little things you've been meaning to do. I’m into my fifth day of no diet soda. That may not sound terribly impressive, but anyone who knows me will probably go into shock upon hearing this. My family has pleaded with me for decades to cut out Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi. Every New Year’s Eve since the Carter Administration I’ve resolved to stop drinking the stuff and every year that was the first resolution to hit the deck. In fact over the years, it only got worse until I was drinking three cans during the day and coming hom...

At least my veins look good. I had planned on going to the gym on Sunday morning, but I ended up in the emergency room at Lutheran Medical Center instead. I had been feeling this discomfort around my chest for about three days and when it refused to go away, I finally went to the hospital. It started Thursday night right after supper. I had been feeling pretty good; I had come through a tough week without blowing my stack, at least not too much, anyway. And then I started feeling lightheaded, my stomach gurgled like a cauldron, and my chest felt a little...weird. I sat down and said "what the hell is this?" I actually considered called 911. I got dressed, got out my insurance card and sat in my living room with the phone in my hand. I’m not a young man anymore, of course, but I’m also a bit of hypochondriac. I pictured an ambulance and a fire engine pulling up in front of my house in the dead of night with the lights going. I saw myself being carried out on a stretcher in fro...