The Luna Park Gazette

Annemarie Wiesner should be alive today. She should have celebrated Thanksgiving with her family like so many of us did on Thursday and she should be looking forward to the holidays and the start of a new year. But that’s not going to happen. Annemarie Wiesner, 72, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver on Nov. 16 as she was crossing the street with a shopping cart. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The accident happened at Marine Avenue and 96th Street, which is a short distance from me and just a block away from my sister’s house. She was one of three people killed by hit and run drivers in New York City in a 24-hour period. Local news reports noted how Marine Avenue goes on for several blocks without traffic lights, speed bumps, stop signs or anything else to slow down the maniacs that tear through this neighborhood like characters straight out of “Mad Max.” I can hear them at night on the Belt Parkway, along Shore Road and other streets in this neighborhood...

We don’t need Sherlock Holmes to figure this one. Being a good Catholic boy, I live to feel guilty, and in the past few days as I climb out of the Covid abyss, I am getting those familiar stirrings once again. You should be working on your novel. You should clean up this apartment, it’s a hellhole. You should be eating better . There’s nothing like guilt to let you know you’re healing. When I’m sick, I don’t give a damn about writing or cleaning or reading or healthy eating, or any of the other various vows I have made to myself over the years. And guilt is nowhere to be seen. But now, I’ve finished my first week of work since coming back from L.A., I’m starting to feel a little stronger, and, thus, thoroughly ashamed of my inaction. Yes, I’ve been watching far too much TV. My living couch has permanent dent in the cushion where I’ve parked my keester for far too many days. But my head has been too fried for reading. I’ve been especially enjoying the old Sherlock Holm...

I staggered into the lobby of the Glendale Express Hotel with a heartful of misery and Dr. John on the sound system. It took me a few seconds to recognize the 1973 hit " Right Place, Wrong Time " and a few more days to realize that the song perfectly described my disasterous visit to Los Angeles. I had been staying with my Uncle Joe and his wife for what was supposed to be a 10-day visit, but I was forced to scrub those plans and evacuate his home when what I thought was a sinfus infection turned out to be Covid-19. Yes, after dodging this dreadful disease since 2020, the coronavirus finally caught up with me in sunny California. I was feeling fine when I left--I'd never visit my family if I were sick, even with the common cold. I met up with my West Coast cousins, I zoomed into my writing class, and I was all set to do some touristy stuff. I was feeling so good--except for a slightly scratchy throat which started on my fourth day. The TV weather peop...

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 ...