The Luna Park Gazette

One of the toughest things for a reporter to do is speak with a victim’s family. During my five years as a police reporter in the Poconos, I had to interview—or attempt to interview—people who had lost their loved ones due to fires, crashes, or crime. It was a grim business, obviously, since answering a stranger’s questions about a deceased or injured family member was the very last thing that people wanted to do. I tried to be sensitive to their suffering, but I always felt like a rat for intruding on their grief during one of the worst moments of their lives. Some people told me to go to Hell, hung up on me or ordered me off their property. But there were others who willingly answered my questions. One man, whose father had committed suicide by burning their house down, shook my hand, and, with tears in his eyes, actually apologized for not being able to speak to me. I didn’t know what to say to him. I got a little better at approaching people as the years went by, but it ...

World War II stories aren’t the same anymore. I’ve been reading novels and watching films about the Second World War for decades, but lately I find them to be more upsetting than I once did. They remind me of my father, who was a WWII veteran himself, and just how awful the war must have been for him. He told me some incredible stories about his time in the army, and I loved hearing them, of course, even when he repeated them over and over. I couldn’t get enough. But I’m starting to see the darker side of his stories, the things he didn’t tell me. He’s been gone for several years and I’m only now getting some idea of how much he must have suffered during those terrible days, when he was just a young man in his twenties. He must’ve been in constant fear, dodging bullets, scrambling for shelter during artillery attacks and witnessing his friends getting killed. That fear—and a lot of good luck—probably kept him alive. My father was part of the generation that was supposed t...

There’s a void in my life and I’m loving every inch of it. For the last eight months, I have been sharing my living room with the lifeless carcasses of my old TV, DVD player, and printer. I got a new TV and DVD player in October and a new printer before that, but instead of junking the junk appliances, I merely moved the deceased devices a few inches over to the right and…just left them there. You may be wondering why I did this? I know I sure as hell am. Why in God’s holy name did I elect to keep this zombie pile of tubes, circuits, and wires prominently displayed in my home for nearly a year as if it were a Warhol original? Well, I’m sorry to say the answer is similar to the same excuse I offered when I took so long to buy a new TV in the first goddamn place. I was afraid to make a decision. I couldn’t carry that monstrous TV down three flights of stairs because of my bad back and the sanitation crew wouldn’t take it even if I could because of the restrictions on tossing o...

I frantically dug my phone out of my pocket, dialed my sister’s number, and began my meltdown. “Joan!” I wailed as the tears started to flow, “I stopped by the house on Senator Street and it was a bad idea!” I had returned to my family’s home for the first time in nearly three years last week and I didn’t handle it very well. The morning had started off with a visit to the Good Fortune Supermarket , the site of the old Fortway Theater on Fort Hamilton Avenue to research a book project I’m working on. On the way there, I stopped by McKinley Park, which I had not visited in years. My sister tells me that our mother used to take us there when we were children, but I’m sorry to say I have no memory of that. After revisiting the Good Fortune, I walked through nearby Leif Ericson Park, which was filled parents, kids, and elderly people, most of whom were Chinese, much like the rest of the neighborhood. From there, I walked down to Sixth Avenue, where I spotted the Sixth Avenue El...

With all this talk of books and authors lately, I’m reminded of a certain subway ride I took many years ago and one of the most exciting reading experiences I’ve ever had. This was in the early Eighties and the book in question was Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby . My interest in the novel was stirred by a theatrical production which came to Broadway from London in 1981. The show made headlines because it was nearly nine hours long—theatergoers had a choice of attending two nights or seeing the whole show in one setting—and because tickets were going for the then-unheard of price of $100 each. Today, of course, one hundred bucks is pretty much the going rate for a show on the Great White Way. We didn’t have that kind of money back then, but my family had a fabulous time watching a televised version of the London production that was simulcast on the local public television and radio channels. The late Roger Rees played the title role and he was supported by an incredib...

“The only way to deal with the future is to function efficiently in the Now.” – Gita Bellin I can’t believe I said “yes.” Accepting a simple dinner invitation may not sound like a daring leap into the unknown but it felt like a milestone for me. I’ll explain in a minute, but, first let’s get right to the big news: As of today I am 60 years old. Yes, that’s right, we’re talking six decades here, people. I am amazed, stunned, somewhat frightened, and, above all, thankful that I am still walking the earth and not residing under it. I’m doing my best not to freak out at that sizeable digit, but it hasn't been easy. I mean, how in the four-alarm hell did this happen? How in God’s name did that adorable little kid attending classes at Our Lady of Angels Catholic School morph into a hairless crank with creaking bones who hears voices and receives flyers from both senior citizen homes and burial plot salesmen in the same day’s mail? (One at a time, boys, please.) I would dem...

“All this time the man who killed me will not die.” – Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings I recently discovered the work of Marlon James. This didn’t happen by way of a book review, or media buzz, internet message boards, or even the old time word of mouth routine. I became aware of his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings while walking home from the store one morning when I looked down and saw a single page from the book on the street. It was page 585 and 586 of the 704-page novel about postcolonial Jamaica that Entertainment Weekly called “nothing short of awe-inspiring.” I probably should’ve kept walking, as I’ve got enough paper, books, and other assorted crap in my house already. But as a reader and someone who has published his own book , I felt badly that an author’s work had been abused like this. Published by Riverhead Press, A Brief History of Seven Killings is James’ third won the 2015 Man Booker Prize, a first for a Jamaican-born author. And ...