The Luna Park Gazette

“So,” my niece, Victoria asked me Friday night, “how does it feel to hit the Big Seven-O?” The question nailed me right between the eyes—just like everything else Victoria says it to me. She was calling from Colorado to wish me a happy birthday, but being Victoria, of course, she had to wrap it around a brick and hurl it straight at my fragile ego. “No,” I shouted into the phone. “I’m 61—I’ve got a few years to go!” Victoria has this gift for getting on my nerves. She’s been doing it for years and I sometimes wonder if she was genetically hot-wired in some secret government laboratory just to bust my prunes. Even she noted that our relationship has always had this backhanded quality to it. “It’s the same way with torturers and their victims,” I replied. But seriously, people, no birthday would be complete without a harassing phone call from Victoria. In addition to this familial abuse, my most wonderful sister took me to dinner and then to a production of Eugene O’Neil’...

There’s a scene in the 1919 French film J’accuse! where soldiers who have been killed in battle rise from the dead and begin marching on the living. I’m not sure why I’m thinking about that film now. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we had yet another school shooting in America, this time in Texas, with the tragically familiar TV footage of parents, teachers, and children sobbing and hugging each other while SWAT teams storm the building. Maybe it was something to do with a sobering Washington Post story that said more people have been killed in schools this year than have died serving in the military. Or at least it should be sobering to anyone who isn’t dry-humping a firearm. Or maybe it has something to do with an interview of one of these weeping children in Texas, who when asked the idiotic question “was there a part of you that was like ‘this isn’t real, this would not happen in my school?’” bluntly replied, “No, there wasn’t.” “It’s been happening ev...

I came flying through the doors of P.S. 170 at the end of the day and ran straight toward my mother. I had just created an incredible rendering of an apple tree in my kindergarten class and I couldn’t wait to show it to her. I had drawn plenty of pictures, of course, but this time I had really outdone myself. However, things didn’t go according to plan. As I was handing my work of art to my mother, an evil gust of wind blew the drawing out of my hands and right under a parked car. Naturally I started crying and I’ll never forget how my mother bent down and tried to retrieve my drawing from underneath that damn car We never did get that drawing back, but my mother was grateful beyond measure notwithstanding and did everything she could to console me. I thought about that incident this morning, on Mother’s Day, and naturally I started crying all over again. She’s been gone nearly 16 years now, but that image of her desperately trying to find my drawing cut right through me. ...

Okay, so I’ve got the keys, I just have to figure out how to use them. Last week I described a dream I had where I was trapped in a runaway car with my late parents that ended with me pulling the key out of the ignition and avoiding disaster. I interpreted this dream as a message from my subconscious mind that I can take control of my life. Well, apparently, I didn’t get my own message because while keys figured prominently in my life this week as well, it was no dream and I was definitely not in control. It had been a rather stressful few days, and when I say “stressful” I mean I completely overreacted to any problem that cropped up and made them much worse than they really were. Things got so bad that one night I came home from the store and found I had locked myself out of my apartment. Please note that I didn’t forget my keys. I had them right in my hand and I went through every single key on the ring. But none of them worked. This was impossible, unless, of course, m...

I sat in the back seat of my parent’s car while we raced down a dark country road. My mother and father, long since gone from this world, were sitting up front as we drove through an incredibly dark forest. This was a dream, of course, and it was about to turn into a nightmare. I haven’t dreamt about either one of my parents for a long time and I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt about them together. I used to travel a lot with my parents when I was younger, so the image of me sitting in the back seat of their car is definitely rooted in reality. During this dream ride, the only thing I could see was the twisting road ahead dimly illuminated by the headlight’s beams. I don’t know where the hell we were, but wherever it was, I could sense that it was cold, remote, and dangerous. And it got a lot more dangerous when my father keeled over behind the wheel. I could see his head rolling from side to side as the car started flying all over the road and I heard my mother screa...

“Where have you been?” It’s a question I’ve been hearing a lot lately as I slowly make my return to civilization. This latest inquiry happened on Saturday as I was walking up 69th Street near Colonial Road. The woman who runs the Hot Wok, my local Chinese food place, was crossing the street when we spotted each other. “I had an accident in December,” I said, giving her an abbreviated version of the slip in the snow saga that has dominated my life for the last five months. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.” “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re better.” Yeah, me, too. I walked away feeling a little more human, a little more connected to the real world. April in New York has been too goddamn cold for my liking. I’m still doing my stairway climbs, but it sucks when you have to bundle up at a time of the year when you should be listening to the birdies chirping. But the last two days have been more spring-like and everyone outside of an in...

It was like Rocky …only in slow motion. I took my act on the road this week, or at least on the street, when my surgeon finally gave me the okay to walk out amongst humans without leg braces, walker, or cane. “I think you’re ready for just about anything,” he said Tuesday morning. Ready for just about anything. I have been waiting to hear those words since mid-December when I first hit the snow-covered deck and wrecked both my knees. Every morning when I went lumbering to rehab with those awful leg braces I told anybody within earshot that I was going to be walking every day by spring. This latest was much more optimistic than the original estimate, when my doctor thought I’d be out of commission for 18 flipping months. I walked home from the doctor’s office that day, both out of a desire to use my legs again and the fact that I’d had a brutal shouting match with a local car service driver and dispatcher earlier that morning after they left me hanging outside my house for 2...