The Luna Park Gazette

And then Doug came walking in. I met Doug during a nightmare hell flight back to New York from Chicago on Tuesday when my magic happy pills, which normally dull my terror of airplanes, suddenly and mysteriously went south and left me conscious and alert whilst I was 5 miles in the air. I don’t fly often but whenever I do I always make sure to pack my trusty bottle of Xanax and it’s always worked perfectly. Yes, I usually end up in a drooling stupor, but thanks to those little pills I’ve been able to travel to places like L.A., Colorado and Hawaii without freaking out all over my fellow passengers. But something went very wrong on this trip. I noticed it first on the flight out when I was more jittery than normal. However, I was so focused on traveling to a new city to meet new people that the fear slipped out of my mind as soon as I landed at O’Hare. The panic returned a thousand fold on the way out, though, beginning with a time-sucking slog through Chicago traffic that had m...

The answer was right there in the lyrics of an old song and I never saw it until now. The origins of “ Bless ‘Em All ” are a little sketchy, but the song is probably most associated with World War II. Or at least it is to my way of thinking. For those of you who may know not this little ditty , it goes something like this: Bless 'em all, Bless 'em all. The long and the short and the tall, Bless all those Sergeants and WO1's, Bless all those Corporals and their blinkin'sons… My dad, a WWII veteran, knew this song and he told me the rank-and-file soldiers often substituted another word for “bless.” Please feel free to use your imagination. There’s also a play and film entitled The Long and the Short and The Tall that we watched when we were kids and we always laughed when one character told another “I can be a bigger bastard than you!” The song had been out of my head for the longest time until I went to confession at the Church of Saint Agnes , which is clo...

I looked at myself in the mirror, adjusted my tie, and fell straight through time. This was the first day of my new job and I was all nerves and crazy. That’s only natural, of course, but I was really winding myself up into a higher state of lunacy. I was wearing my best suit and a brand new pair of shoes, which I had bought just for this occasion, and then my mind decided to slide out the back door. You’re going to be 59 years old next month, I told myself. And what have you done with your life? Shouldn’t you be more successful by now? Yes, now that was exactly what I didn’t need to hear on this particular morning. And as I looked at my reflection I had this lightning flashback to my grammar school days. I was suddenly standing in the kitchen of our family’s house, some 40-odd years ago, all done up in my Cub Scout uniform and my mother was giving me the once over before sending me off to Catholic school hell. (Just kidding...well, no, actually, I'm not.) “All right, C...

“Have you ever thought of yourself as a captain of a ship?” That one made me laugh. If I had to come up with a nautical image of myself, it would probably be as a lowly seaman flopping around below decks with a mop and a bucket. Hell, I’m so frightened of open water I’m liable to screech “abandon ship!” while rowing in Central Park Lake But Kathryn, my healer and mystic , said my spirits were giving her this ship captain message loud and clear. “They’re saying you’re more in alignment now,” she said. “You’re more in control.” I went to see Kathryn today for another one of her brilliant energy sessions. It is particularly important to do this now because tomorrow I am starting a new job. Yes, that’s right. I’ve been hired as a business writer for a large publishing company and while I’m excited and grateful beyond words, I’m also scared clear out of my mind. I knew I needed a session with Kathryn to help calm my nerves, as I was cranky and irritable for most of Saturday, an...

I saw the old timer taking aim, but I couldn’t believe he was pointing that thing at me. And then he took my picture. I gave him a “what the hell?” look and he took another picture of me. This was London, 1993 and I was finally visiting the grand old city after threatening to make the trip for ages. Apparently someone had alerted the local media. The old fellow approached me and explained that he was a photographer who wanted me to have a memento of my trip to his hometown. It pains me to admit this but my appearance must have screamed “tourist” as I was bearing a camera, guidebook, and a rather clueless look on my face. New Yorkers are obsessed with being in the know so it was a little disheartening to be pegged so easily by one of the locals. The old guy wasn’t taking snaps of my mug out of the goodness of his heart, of course. He offered to send me copies of his work for a nominal fee. But instead of telling him to get lost and that no one had asked him to take my godda...

Who let the hogs out? I had another yet one of my carnival sideshow dreams last night and while portions of it actually made some kind of twisted sense, the sudden appearance of two randy porkers has got me rather confused—and a little worried. Okay, so in this latest psychotic episode, I’m riding a motorcycle, which by the way, I don’t own in real life, and I’m heading to my 9:30 AM cycling class at the New York Sports Club’s 86th Street gym. Now that part is real. I go to that class every Saturday morning and it’s great. The instructor is a talented young woman who manages to mix warmth and humor in with a punishing workout. She insists that we sing along with her musical selections, probably to take our minds off the abuse. She even had me gagging out “ Total Eclipse of the Heart ”—and I damn near had one. On top of that, she’s into astrology and, upon learning that we’re the same sign, she promptly dubbed me “Mr. Gemini.” Now in the dream I’m looking in vain for a parkin...

One night nearly 20 years ago, I got off the R train at Bay Ridge Avenue after a long day at work and saw that Hollywood had come to my neighborhood. A TV production crew was shooting an episode of Law & Order at a local carpet store on Fourth Avenue and 68th Street and when I looked across the street I could clearly see Jerry Orbach , who played the veteran detective Lennie Briscoe, talking to another actor inside the store. It was quite a thrill having one of my favorite TV shows being shot so close to home. I hung around for a little while, but it looked like the crew was going to be there for most of the evening and I finally went home. I’ve always been a Law & Order fan and I’ve come across a few of the “murder” scenes being shot throughout New York in the two decades that the show aired. It's such a New Yorky show and now it was in my backyard. I was thinking about this particular episode this week and realized that it would be rather difficult to track i...