The Luna Park Gazette

Where’s Mariah Carey when I need her? A few weeks ago, I wrote about how hearing “All I Want for Christmas is You” marks the start of the holiday season for me. Despite my advanced age, I always get excited about the seeing lights and listening to the Christmas carols and watching all the old movies. But this year the spirit ain’t here. I could make plenty of excuses: the state of the world, the state of my mind, and the paralyzing fear that “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey” will get stuck in my head and keep on playing until the Memorial Day weekend. I know that’s not true, though. I’ve endured all those things in the past and still managed to have myself a merry little Christmas. I just don’t have the usual enthusiasm, which is no way to feel about the most wonderful time of the year. Even Ebeneezer Scrooge had some emotion about the holidays. It was pure hatred, of course, but at least it came from the heart. Is there a Ghost of Christmas Apathy? And, if s...

I knew there had to be an expression for this behavior. YouTube has become my go-to source for music. Between my job and my writing, I spend most of my time on the computer and YouTube can provide soundtracks to my various moods and personalities. Jazz, big bands, new age, Eighties, traditional Irish, you name it, you’re sure to find it somewhere on YouTube. And the automated suggestions offer even more possibilities. Be advised that the ads on YouTube are a rip-roaring pain in the ass, particularly when I'm trying to enjoy meditation and exercise videos. The site offers its own streaming service, which I might subscribe to, so I can save some money and stop screaming obscenities at my computer. Now there are times where a song will get into my head, and I’ll just have to play it over and over. I figured there must be a name for this activity and a quick Google search came up with the term “Binge Listening,” a perfect expression for the Generation Netflix. I did...

Ralph Kramden thought he had it all figured out. Of course that description could probably fit every episode of the classic TV show The Honeymooners , which starred Jackie Gleason as the beleaguered Brooklyn bus driver. It seems that every show had Ralph coming up with some get-rich scheme that invariably blew up in his face. But I’m thinking of the 1956 episode “Please Leave the Premises”, where Ralph thinks he’s found the miracle cure for aggravation. All he has to do—or so he believes—is repeat the ditty “pins and needles, needles and pins, it’s a happy man who grins” and ask himself what is mad about. Whenever he does, he says, he can’t remember what was bothering him. Ralph is convinced this line will be the answer to all his problems and, of course, he couldn’t have been more wrong. His landlord stops by to announce a rent increase, and Ralph explodes, refusing to pay and barricading himself—and his wife poor Alice—in their apartment. The episode makes me think a...

It happened at 9:50AM this morning. I was checking out my groceries at the Key Food on Third Avenue in Bay Ridge when I heard Mariah Carey’s “ All I Want for Christmas is You ” for the first time this year. Never mind Black Friday sales or card shop displays, the holiday shopping season doesn’t start for me until I hear this 1994 song—though it is surprisingly late this time out. It’s the definitive sign that the holiday snowball has begun its downhill roll and there’s no way to stop it. And I’m a bit ashamed to admit this but…I like “All I Want for Christmas is You.” There, I said it. I feel so much better now. Yes, I know the song is roundly hated by all creatures great and small, and that it is considered the audio version of a lump of coal. But I can’t help it. A 2019 survey in England named this tune as the most annoying holiday song ever. A quick google search shows “All I Want for Christmas” making several “Most Hated Christmas Song” lists, joining the like...

So, what was I doing in 1994? The question came to mind the other night while I was washing the dishes. I noticed that the towel I was using to dry off the plates and silverware was an old cloth calendar that had once hung in the kitchen at my parents’ house. That year caught my eye. I couldn’t believe this thing in my hands had survived nearly four decades. The calendar bears the image of a house with a picket fence and trees on either side. Near the top there are a pair of roosters crowing on either side of a scroll bearing the Kitchen Prayer. “ Lord, warm all the kitchen with thy love ,” it reads, “ and light it with thy peace. Forgive me all my worry and make my grumbling cease. ” I’m particularly fond of that last line since it would pretty much take an act of God to get me to cease my grumbling. There’s little doubt that my mother had picked out this calendar. She had fondness for colonial theme décor and these cloth calendars fit in much better than any of the fr...

A week ago, I had some hope. I can be a bit cynical—some might even say “hostile”—if I don’t keep a close watch on these thoughts of mine. People can get on my nerves rather quickly—if I allow them to--but every so often something happens that almost restores my faith in humanity. Last week, I went to my bank’s branch on 86th Street and 5th Avenue after the gym and found the ATMs had been taken offline. This sucked monkey balls. I had planned on doing some shopping at a fruit store one block away and I wasn’t sure if I had enough cash in my wallet. Some of the local businesses strongly prefer cash over plastic. As I was leaving, a man approached me and began speaking in Spanish, obviously looking to get some money as well. I did my best to explain the branch was out of the commission and pointed to a sign indicating the next one was 11 blocks away. It took a little effort, but he eventually got the idea. As I started to walk away when he called out to me. I thoug...

Whenever I griped about my various jobs, Fred the Shrink had a great response. “It funds your passion,” he’d say. Fred knew that I really wanted to write fiction for a living, but he also knew—much better than I did—that writing professionally is a tough gig and that many writers have some kind of day job to keep them solvent. Fred’s encouragement helped me get through some tough employment times, which thank God, have gotten markedly better in recent years. And I thought of him this weekend when I went to the Edward Hopper exhibit at the Whitney Museum. Born in 1882, Edward Hopper was an American realist painter and printmaker who had an incredible gift from finding drama in the commonplace subjects. He’s perhaps best known for his 1942 painting Nighthawks , which portrays four people in a downtown diner later at night, as seen from a distance through the diner’s window. These people seem so lonely and isolated, but Hopper himself said that he didn’t see Nighthawks as par...