The Luna Park Gazette

( Bloggers, friends, and countrymen, lend me your minds. Today my dear friend Josephine Mori will guest-blogging on the LPG. Josephine is a talented writer, editor, and all-around fabulous human being. Please do give her a read.) A writer buddy and I had been noodling a short story, ping ponging segments between us. It became a game and went on for a couple years. Finally, we finished it. Buddy remarks it has graphic novel potential. Not what you say to a devoted text jockey. Quivers down my back bone, tremors in my thighbone. I placate and misdirect. But every so often buddy tweaks me about it. Like some Word doc. Jaws, the story won’t go away. Then, a bizarre thing happens—-a Facebook friend request from one Tony Talbert. We have no mutual friends, groups or pages. Yet somehow it doesn’t vibe the usual spurious friend requests we all get. Curious, I look him up and turns out he’s a fantastic artist: fine art and comic book art. Tony and I connect. ...

I was sitting in my seat at the American Place Theatre when I noticed the woman next to me scribbling Asian characters on a notepad. This was 1999 and I was attending a performance of The Winds of God , Masayuki Imai’s astonishing play about two bargain basement comedians in modern day Japan who are hurled through time and reincarnated as kamikaze pilots in the waning days of World War II. Imai was the author, star, and director of the show, and he was brilliant in every category. Beautifully staged, The Winds of God is a powerful statement about the scourge of war and the curse of fanaticism that drives men to blindly throw their lives away for meaningless causes. Covid-19 has brought the curtain down on theater as we know it. I miss the plays themselves, of course, but I also miss the whole theater experience, including interacting with the other people in the audience. I’ve always found it so easy to talk to people sitting around me in a theater and this night was no e...

Gyms are slowly reopening in New York, but my favorite fitness classes are still out of commission. Fortunately, I have the CCC to back me up. No, I’m not talking about Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps. I’m referring to the Canadian Covid Coaches. Ever since the coronavirus clobbered life as we knew it back in March, I have been scouring YouTube in search of exercise routines to stay in condition. My boxing class had been my main source of cardio for years and I never paid much attention to boxing videos because I didn’t think I would ever need them. Enter the plague. I also like strength training and qigong, a fantastic Chinese exercise discipline that works out the spirit the way boxing works up a sweat. I’ve been very lucky to find a series of great videos that cover all of these areas. But I’ve noticed that several of my YouTube instructors have something in common. They’re… Canadians . Yes, Canadians. They look like us…the sound like...

"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” -- Abraham Lincoln Back when we were still going to gyms, one of my buddies in the morning boxing class used to show me some of his favorite yoga routines. One morning I was having a hard time with a shoulder stretch and my friend gave a piece of advice that I think can work outside of the health club. “It’s not a struggle,” he said. “It’s a surrender.” Exactly. So instead of huffing and puffing and forcefully twisting my torso and risking injury, my friend was telling me to relax and let the stretch happen naturally. There’s effort involved, of course, but not an unhealthy exertion. I’m trying to get my brain to operate on the same principle. Eating properly or exercising are often depicted as chores, but you can enjoy them a lot more if you just drop the resistance and focus on the benefits. I have this unhealthy and unhelpful ability to readily recall unpleasant memories. I can’t remember where I put ...

I watched a certain YouTube video three times in a row this morning and I could watch it a thousand times more. During this plague year of isolation and social distancing, it’s important to sta y in touch with people. To that end, I recently reconnected with my cousin’s wonderful daughter, Lucy, whom I met back in 2009 when I visited my cousin Pat and her family in Santa Fe. I had a blast during that visit, but we hadn’t spoken in a while, so it was great to get the latest news on the New Mexico bunch. Last week, at my sister’s suggestion, I emailed Lucy a bunch of photos I had taken of her during my visit. Lucy wrote back to tell me that she is putting her creative energy into a music project, which she kindly shared with me. In the video, Lucy sings a song called “Hideaway” from an animated film called Wonder Park , which I confess I haven't seen. The song pretty much tells the story of my life as it celebrates the joys of avoiding adulthood at all costs. “ S...

I’m glad I held on to that shoebox. A few weeks, I treated myself to new pair of shoes and, as is my custom, I held onto the box they came in, even though I didn’t have any immediate use for it. I’ve been trying to cut down on the clutter in my apartment, but it just seems wrong to get rid of such a sturdy container. And whenever I do toss out an empty box, I suddenly need one. It never fails. Last week I was working in my computer room and I just fed up with all the debris. I have piles of stuff that I’ve been threatening to sort out for years and while I couldn’t take care of the whole mess in one day, I decided to clean up one small spot near me. Whatever I wanted to keep would go into the shoebox. I sat down on the floor and got to work. I found a single chess piece, a pair of 3-D glasses I bought when I saw the movie Up back in 2009 (Yes, I cried), a St. Anthony medal I am now wearing, and a cover from Parade Magazine dated June 7, 1998 with a photo of George Cloo...

The first U.S. Census began on August 2, 1790. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had marshals take the census in the original 13 States, plus the districts of Kentucky, Maine, and Vermont, and the Southwest Territory, now known as Tennessee. Nearly 200 years later, in 1970, my parents decided to make a little extra money by becoming census takers. I was 13 years old at the time, and, while it’s all pretty vague now, I do recall my mom and dad had these plastic shoulder bags that bore the image of the American flag and the words “1970 Census.” They called people at night and went to their homes to interview the more reluctant ones, and they’d bring home stacks of completed census forms. Both my parents were in sales and they enjoyed connecting with people, so this was a good gig for them. I hadn’t thought about that little bit of family history until last week when my doorbell rang just as I was signing off from work. I rarely get visitors, even before the coronav...