The Luna Park Gazette

If I ever run into Gideon Sundback, I’m going to kick him square in the clasp locker. Fortunately for him, Sundback died nearly 70 years ago, so the possibility of my Florsheim having a violent connection with his unmentionables is, at best, remote. But I still don’t like the guy. A Swedish immigrant, Sundback is credited with developing the zipper, improving upon the old clasp locker and earning himself a place in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. I had never heard of him, even though I use zippers on a daily basis, and up until recently I would’ve had the utmost respect for him. Imagine all the buttoning we’d have to do if he hadn’t improved the old time fastener and shaped it into the amazing device that seals up our coats and keeps our privates private. However, I’ve been having a run of bad luck with the zippers in my life lately and I’m starting to wonder if great Gideon's ghost is haunting me. Two of my coats and one of my sweaters have been giving me zipper-...

The crewman charged off the ferry, ran up the dock, and quickly unlocked the gate. “We’ve got hurry,” he said to me and another guy, the only two people on the pier. “We’ve got to get going!” This was early Friday morning at the 69th Street pier. It was dark, cold, and freezing winds were churning up the Narrows and knocking the ferry around like a toy in a bathtub. During the spring and summer, the ferry ride to work can feel like a mini-vacation. But now I felt like I was in a scene from Captains Courageous . Usually there are half-a-dozen or so people taking the early AM boat, but on Friday it was just me and that other dude trying to stand upright against the wind. I knew I should’ve taken the bus. The dock was pitching and groaning as we jogged down to the boat and the waters were so rough that the ferry pilot announced on the PA system that we were skipping the next stop at Sunset Park and going straight to Red Hook. Nobody argued with him. I’ve been thinking abo...

Forgot about the 13th floor, it’s the eighth floor that scares the hell out of me. I work in a medium-sized office building in the financial district. It doesn’t have a 13th floor, like many buildings in town, but that hasn’t slowed down the malevolent mob of gremlins that seem to inhabit the elevator system. Twice is the last few months, I’ve been trapped in the elevator after it came to a screeching halt at the eighth floor. I don’t function well in small spaces; I dislike heights, and I get totally nutzoid when I’m stuck in a small space suspended 150 feet in the air. The first incident occurred several weeks ago while I checking my smart phone on the way down to the lobby. The elevator jammed so violently that the I-phone flew out of my hand as if it were possessed. I’ve worked in office buildings for a large portion of my life and I’ve never been stuck in the elevator. For those of you who have not experienced this machine age nightmare, trust me when I tell you that it...

In the end, it was worth all the aggravation. My sister, auntie, and I kicked off the first day of 2020 with a fabulous Chinese meal that stretched my waistline and pushed my anger management skills to stratospheric levels. We had been getting takeout from the fabulous Flatbush eatery Wing Hing on New Year’s Day for a while, but we stayed local last year and went to a place called E Noodle in Bay Ridge. It’s close to home, the food is spectacular, and they serve that most astonishing of appetizers—oh, God, help me—soup dumplings. I first tried this indescribably delicious delicacy a few years ago at a Chinese restaurant in Bensonhurst. Having never heard of this dish, I mistakenly thought my companion meant “dumpling soup” and had gone temporarily dyslexic on me. “No,” she insisted. “These are soup dumplings.” Yes, exactly. The dumplings have the soup inside them and they’re so sinfully yummy they can drive your taste buds to distraction. Unfortunately, none of the Chine...

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”—Henry David Thoreau I spent the first morning of the new year performing an ancient ritual. Burning sage, or smudging, is a healing practice that has been used for centuries to purify a space, drive off unwanted spirits, and clear away negative energy. Benefits are said to include removing bacteria from the air, repelling insects, improving intuition, improving mood, and reducing stress and anxiety. Smudging can also be used to invite positive energy when you want to do something creative. I don’t know how the hell I missed this wonderful ritual, but fortunately my brother, Peter, recently turned me onto it. He reminded me that when I fell on the ice two years ago and wrecked my knees, I was stuck in my home for weeks, with braces on my legs, unable to move physically or spiritually. A load of seriously crappy energy built up in my home during that awful period and I never formally invited these unpleas...

“Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.” -- Wayne Huizenga In Latin, the phrase is “ veritas lux mea .” It is the motto of Seoul National University, among other things, and it can be translated as “the truth is my light,” or “the truth enlightens me.” Either way, these words will be my guide for 2020—and beyond. Yes, we’re coming up to New Year’s Day, that wacky time of year when I gear up to make all sorts of incredible changes in my life. And even though the ball won’t be coming down in Times Square for a few days yet, I’m already feeling the January jitters, an entirely self-inflicted and completely insane need to rebuild my entire existence from the DNA up. Nothing outrageous, of course. I just want to finish my novel, shoot a film, produce a play, move to Los Angeles, and fall madly in love all before Groundhog’s Day. Hmm…perhaps that’s a little too ambitious. Now I just want to say that 2019 was a darn good year. ...

I walked up to the ticket counter, took out my credit card, and pointed to the price list. “One adult and one senior, please” I said. The time was earlier this month and the place was the fabulous Norton Simon Museum in Los Angeles, where I was visiting my uncle and his wife. My uncle had stayed home on this day, so it was just my aunt and me. Now when I’m out with family, I tend to be the youngest in the crowd—unless my nieces are around, so I didn’t think there was anything unusual about my request until my aunt pointed to the price list. “It says ‘Seniors over 62,’” she said. Yeah, I know what it says. So? And then everything stopped—except time. I turned 62 in May, so that means…I am now eligible for the senior discount? In the immortal words of W.C. Fields, “Mother of Pearl!” Don’t get me wrong: I’ll gladly take any discount I can get, but I’d rather take three decades off my age than 3 bucks off a museum ticket. The sign was a little spooky, but the next day I...