The Luna Park Gazette

I finally got around to watching an episode of The Twilight Zone that I recorded during the annual New Year’s cable marathon. I’ve seen just about every episode of this classic series—many of them several times over--but there was one in particular that I wanted to watch again. Entitled “Where is Everybody?” it is actually the show’s pilot, which was broadcast on October 2, 1959. It stars Earl Holliman as a man who is stranded in a deserted town with no memory of who he is or how he got there. The man, who is wearing an air force flight suit, is slowly going crazy as he desperately searches for other human beings. If you’ve ever felt lost and alone in your life this story will probably touch a nerve. In the end— spoiler alert! —it turns out that the guy is an astronaut training for a mission to the moon and has been hallucinating after 20-plus days of isolation. "The barrier of loneliness — that's the one thing we haven't licked yet," the astronaut’s commanding offi...

When Casey, our family dog, started to age, he had trouble getting around. He was fond of sitting on my parents’ bed and since the climb was difficult for him, my mother would get behind him and give him a push. “It’s tough to get old, sweetheart,” she’d say affectionately. I’m appreciating those words more and more lately. For example, a woman greeted me at my gym on Sunday saying that she hadn’t seen me in a long time and asking me how I was doing. We chatted briefly and then went our separate ways and I still have no idea who she is or how she knows me. Should I be worried about this? I like to listen to Jonathan Schwartz’ radio show on WNYC on the weekends. He plays a lot of tunes from the American Songbook—music from my parents’ day as I often say—but he also slips in songs from my day. This happened recently when he played a Harry Chapin song called “"W*O*L*D." The song tells the story of an aging DJ trying to get back with his ex-wife. He’s bouncing all over the map to...

There’s an old Italian saying that goes “spit in the sky and it comes back in your eye.” It’s a warning not to wish ill on other people because those bad intentions may backfire all over you. My mother was a firm believer in this proverb and she made sure to teach it to her children. If we ever said anything bad about someone, like “I wish so-and-so would drop dead”—she’d freak and literally chase us around the house crying “take it back! take it back!” When I was a teenager my mom told me that my grandmother had compiled a collection of old Italian spells and charms. My grandmother died when I was in the fifth grade and when I learned of this volume I kept bugging my mom to give it to me so I could have the thing translated into English. I was reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft and this collection reminded me of the Necronomicon , the handbook of black magic that appears in many of Lovecraft’s stories. My mother wouldn’t let me see this tome, no matter how many times I asked her. Perhaps...

My cellphone bit me the other day. Well, it didn’t actually bite me. I wasn’t paying attention while closing the damn thing and it pinched the top of my index finger. It hurt like hell and if I hadn’t been coming out of church at the time I would have launched into an aria of obscenities. But thankfully I kept a civil tongue in my head. I’ve been having a tough time with technology lately. In the addition to the carnivorous cellphone, my office computer got clotheslined by a virus, I lost my internet connection on my home machine, the battery in my landline phone died, and my bank refused to honor my ATM card. That last one was particularly spooky as I was really short on dough. The bank freeze-out happened on the same day as the cellphone attack-only I was on my way to church instead of coming out. I thought I’d pick up some cash before the service, but the ATM refused to hand over my money. For some reason I tried changing machines as if another ATM would be more cooperative. But the...

I was riding home on the R train the other night when a man came walking through my car playing “Quando, Quando, Quando” on the trumpet. He was doing a pretty good job and I was impressed by the way he pushed his beat box with one hand and blew his horn with the other. I tossed him a dollar as he went by. “Quando” means “when” in Italian and that seems like a fair question to ask at this time of the year, as in “when, when, when will this goddamn winter be over?” There’s snow all around me. I’ve spent so much money on that de-icing crap I should buy stock in the company. I can’t step foot out of the house without putting on the parka and strapping on these Frankenstein clodhopper boots. But then I’m hardly going out at all thanks to this hideous weather. Thank God for Netflix. And now another storm is on the way… These never-ending blizzards remind me of a story my father told us about a particularly harsh winter he experienced when he was a young man. My father, who lived in Upper Man...

Whoever said Sunday was a day of rest should have seen me yesterday. I was leaving my house at about 10:30 AM, gym bag over my shoulder, sack of laundry in one hand, and a fistful of mail in the other. It was cold as hell and I was in a hurry—which I see now was the cause of all this grief. My plan was to drop off the laundry, mail my letters, and head for the gym. That’s my usual Sunday routine, except that this time after I dropped off the laundry, I saw that one of my letters was missing. And it wasn’t just any letter, oh, no: this was the one to my credit card company that contained a rather sizeable check. I know, I know, why don’t I just pay my bills online? I’ve got no excuse except that I’m worried some hacking geek in a dank basement will clean me out with a few clicks off his keyboard. I ran up and down the block a few times with my head down to the pavement like a bloodhound, looked around my house, and interrogated the laundry guy, who must’ve thought I’d gone through the ...

I was walking through Washington Square Park on Sunday when I saw a young man playing a piano. It was freezing cold, there were piles of snow all over the place and here was this guy hitting the keys like he was making his debut at Carnegie Hall. I was pretty tired, but I was reasonably certain that I was not hallucinating. Musicians are hardly an unusual sight here when the weather is warm. On a summer weekend you have your pick of performers, along with the jugglers, magicians, sword swallowers, capoeiristas , comedians, and the guys who pose like famous sculptures. But tickling the ivories outdoors in January? That takes nerve. The guy had a decent crowd around him, too, considering the rotten weather. Maybe he was out there now because he didn’t want to compete with other musicians. In fact the only thing resembling a rival for the small group of gawkers that I could see was a fellow sitting on a nearby park bench with several pigeons balanced on his head and arms. A few people wer...