The Luna Park Gazette

“Be liked,” Willy Loman tells his sons in Death of A Salesman , “and you will never want.” I’ve read Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning many times in my life, studied it in college, watched several TV productions, and even listened to a LP version of the story. But I never saw the show performed live until Saturday, when I went to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman take on the role of the doomed salesman, and it hit me harder than I was expecting. The play can seem both dated and topical, a time capsule from a distant age, but also a harsh reflection of today’s corporate battlefield, where the obsession with profits can obliterate years of hard work and dedication, all in the name of the so-called “free markets.” My father was a salesman who worked for Tobin’s First Prize Meats, an Albany-based wholesaler, for over 20 years and many scenes in the play were painfully familiar. And if I see some of my father in Willy Loman, I also see a lot of myself in Biff, the son who never becomes ...

As someone who writes for a living, I have developed a strong distaste for clichés. Falling back on a worn out phrase insults the reader and cheapens the writer. There are times when you’ll be forced to drag out some clunker--like when you’re on deadline and your editor is screaming at you to file the story this very second or he'll send you out the door in a body bag. But even in those stressful times, you can turn the pressure into fuel, letting your mind stretch beyond the familiar to grab hold of something exciting. One of my least favorite expressions is “truth be told.” It has this faux upper crusty sound to it and, more importantly, it really shouldn’t be necessary. Why do you have to tell me that you’re telling me the truth? I would hope that you’re telling me the truth all along without having to advertise the fact. Has everything you said before you dropped that phrase been untrue? This old line came to mind as I listened to the monologist Mike Daisey try to explain the ...

Yogi Berra said it best: “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.” I learned the value of these words on Saturday when my sister and I took her cat, Smokey, to the veterinarian in Manhattan. This was the first time we made this trip since Smokey’s brother, Tuxedo, died back in January. I was behind the wheel and it was painful seeing my sister walk toward the car with only one cat box in her hand. Smokey was flying solo now. But Smokey doesn’t like to fly or ride in the car for the matter and he made his feelings known by howling for the entire length of the trip. Nothing my sister said or did could calm him down; he just wailed and wailed. I don’t like driving in New York and that’s why I gave up my car years ago when I moved back to the city. Between walking, riding the subway, and taking the express bus, I do just fine. (Check out my buddy Ron’s post about this same topic over at Vent .) But taking Smokey on the subway is, of course, out of the question. All the noise and ba...

I just saw “ War Horse ” on Broadway with my family yesterday and although it was about as subtle as a kick in the head from a Clydesdale, I had a great time. The tale of a boy and his horse who are dragged into the screaming hell known as World War I, “War Horse,” —now the subject of a Steven Spielberg film —is the kind of production that the word “extravaganza” was coined for. The cast is huge—as if a Cecil B. DeMille picture had jumped off a movie screen. The effects are stunning as puppeteers bring the horse, Joey, to life and recreate ferocious battles and doomed cavalry charges across No Man’s Land. This is theater as theme park. The story could not be simpler—basically "Lassie" with hooves and a bridle, but there’s so much going on you probably won’t object to the lightweight plot. Nick Stafford’s play is based on a Michael Morpurgo’s novel and it premiered in October 2007 at the Royal National-Olivier Theatre in London. The play opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater ...

I walked down Sixth Avenue in the rain on Friday night and watched the Empire State Building disappear into the mist. It was an eerie, film noir kind of setting and it fit so perfectly with my evening. I had just gotten done viewing the International Center of Photography’s Weegee exhibit, "Murder is My Business" and I was in a B-movie state of mind. Weegee, the nom de flash for Arthur Felig, was a famous New York press photographer of the 1930s and ‘40s who captured the soul of the city in all its glorious mayhem. Gangland slayings, four-alarm fires, car wrecks, raucous celebrations, Weegee recorded it all in screaming black and white. This was my second go-round with Weegee, having gone to an earlier exhibit at the center back in 1997 when I first moved back to New York. But that’s okay; I can never get enough Weegee. Legend has it that Weegee, a phonetic rendition of Ouija, got his handle because of his uncanny ability to show up at the scene of the madness—sometimes bef...

I’m a sucker for cult movies. I've always loved obscure, low budget flicks that nobody's ever heard of. They often put Hollywood blockbusters to shame with their inventiveness and originality. I remember going to see Jimmy Cliff in “ The Harder They Come ” in a theater on the Upper East Side when I was in high school. And then there was “ Once in Paris ,” which came out in 1978 and, if my memory is correct, played at the now defunct 68th Street Playhouse for over a year. Watching these movies, you feel like a member of a select club, one of the in-crowd. You just can’t wait to leave the theater and go out into the world where you can drop the title of an obscure film and enjoyed the puzzled looks on your friends’ faces. The trouble is that, like anything else in life, what makes a good cult movie is a matter of opinion. One person’s brilliant piece of work can be the next person’s pretentious pile of crapola. Recently I recorded a movie called “ The Town That Dreaded Sundown ....

While vacationing in California last year, I spotted an adopt-a-highway sign that been put up by an outfit called the United Atheists. United Atheists? What unites them, I wondered—their belief in nothing? If that's all then the meetings must be awfully short. Please understand—I strongly support freedom of religion and that includes the freedom not to have any religion at all. But I suspect that a lot of people who say they don’t believe in God would suddenly see the light if their car blew a tire on that highway while they were doing 70 mph. There are no atheists in rollovers. You can’t turn in any direction without running into some religious issue. Recently I made the mistake of reading the comments section of a news story about some horrendous disaster and one of the posters had put up the usual “God help the victims” line. And, like clockwork, this brought sarcastic responses from the non-religious types and a holy snark war quickly broke out. “Good luck with your Sky Wizard...