The Luna Park Gazette

I woke up this morning some time before dawn convinced that I had lost my job at the Associated Press. I had completely bungled an assignment, a fact that not one, but two, editors drilled through my skull in a pair of royal reamings that made me feel like I was back in Catholic school. I lay there in the dark wondering how I had destroyed my only chance to work with this prestigious news organization and if there was any possible way to undo this disaster. Gradually I calmed down. I became more aware of my surroundings, and I suddenly came to a startling conclusion. I don’t work for the Associated Press. I have never worked for this company. I haven’t applied for a job there since the early 2000s, when I Amtraked up to Albany to meet with the bureau chiefs and discuss a position that sounded more like SWAT than AP. They described a monstrous workload that involved racing to all corners of Upstate New York anytime day or night to cover every kind of catastrophe....

When something goes wrong, self-help coach Tony Robbins advises people to ask themselves a simple question. What’s great about this problem? Yes, it sounds counterintuitive and probably a bit corny, but having tried this method myself, I can attest to its effectiveness. I’ve found that asking myself this question is an improvement over my usual response to challenges, which is to throw up my hands in despair, wail that life sucks, all is lost, and demand to know why does this always happen to me? But even though I have a fourth-degree black belt in self-pity, I’ve been trying to change my ways. I finally got around to asking myself that question on Saturday as I started feeling better from this hideous cold that’s been dragging me down for the last week. I was sitting on my couch, merrily feeding my internet addiction when I came across a meme about Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer, Dunkirk and the Batman series with Christian Bale. The meme claimed that Nol...

Okay, I’ll start with the good news: I don’t have Covid-19. I’ve been coughing my lungs out, my head is so stuffed it feels like it’s going to explode and I can barely walk down the stairs without keeling over. Whatever the hell I’ve got sucks royally and I hope it goes away real fast, but at least it ain’t the coronavirus, which I have been successfully dodging—praise the Lord—for the last three years. In fact, I have not been this sick since January 2021, which is an excellent run, especially given some the health problems I’ve had. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that came down with something, seeing as how I’ve been running around like a loon for the last several days. First there was last week’s film shoot, where it rained for most of the day, and then my niece Victoria and her husband came to town from Colorado. I took some time off from work so I could join them and my sister to visit the Museum of Natural History, take in a Broadway show, bounce over to Coney I...

I wonder if this ever happened to Alfred Hitchcock. So, there we were, across the street from the United Nations, where a scene from “North by Northwest”—one my favorite Hitchcock films--was shot. I was the director now, having signed up for The 48 Hour Film Project , where a team writes, shoots and edits and submits a film in, well, 48 hours. Only we were contending with a massive worm that was wriggling its way toward the park bench that we had planned to use in our scene. What would Hitch do? I ws here at my sistet's urging, after she told me that a colleague of hers was participating in the competition and looking for a crew. Immediately, I cranked up the excuse machine: I don’t time for this, I don’t know how to shoot a film—the usual crap. Now bear in mind, I’ve been promising to work on more film sets every single year for the last several decades, so I could get the knowledge and confidence I need to shoot a film of my own. Of course, I was totally ignoring ...

Now it’s my turn to stand on the geezer line. So, there I was Union Station in Washington D.C. waiting to board the train to New York. I had shown up ridiculously early, as usual, and I was starting to get sick of the place. Finally, people started lining up outside one of the gates. Not wanting to board the wrong choo-choo and end up in Chattanooga—or Tierra del Fuego—I asked an Amtrak employee if this was indeed the train to the Big Apple. “Yes,” she said. “Are you over 65 years old?” I didn’t see the connection and I really didn’t appreciate the question. I have grown quite comfortable (delusional?) with people telling me (lying?) that I look much younger than I am. A guy told me this at the gym just the other day, damn it. Yet this woman had me pegged as an old timer in under five seconds and my ego was now a train wreck. “Uh, yes,” I muttered. “Well, then you can get on the express line.” She pointed beyond the curving cobra of humanity that was ready to bum rush...

I sure hope I got that salute right. I’m home now after a 5-day trip to Washington D.C. where I attended a meeting of the the 104th National Timberwolf Pups Associatin . The group is made up the sons, daughters, families, and friends of my father’s army unit, The Timberwolves, who fought in Europe during World War II. Let me say right up front that I had a blast. I met such wonderful people, heard fantastic stories, did some sightseeing around our nation’s capital—including a nighttime ride around town--and spoke with a 98-year-old veteran who had attended the conference. As usual, I hemmed and hawed about making the trip. It’s too much money, I have other projects to work on, I need to clean up my apartment—you know, the usual crap I put myself through. Well, I’m happy to report that I ignored all those irrational fears, booked a hotel room and Amtraked my butt down to Washington. And I’m so happy that I did. My dad’s unit, whose motto was “Nothing in Hell can stop The...

I always listen to the reading of the names. Today is September 11, some 22 years after the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. I was there on that day, part of a crowd that was standing across the street watching the North Tower burn, when the second plane slammed into the South Tower. My father turned 80 years old on 9/11 and the plan was for me and my sister to him to dinner after I got home from work. That was the plan. Instead, I spent that long, horrible day trying to get home after the subways were shut down and I joined a endless stream of people walking over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn while the towers burned behind us and fighter jets screamed overhead. If possible, I like to go there on each anniversary, stand on that same spot across the street, say a prayer for the victims and remind myself how lucky I was to have survived that day when thousands of others didn’t. I was there on the 20th anniversary, but that didn’t work out this year,...