The Luna Park Gazette

“The soldier above all prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” – Douglas MacArthur Connection with family is vital for my mental health, and even more so now that we’re living under the weight of Covid-19. Today I was fortunate enough to get a call from my niece Kristin that gave me such an emotional lift I’m still feeling it nearly 12 hours later. I was charging my phone in the living room when she called, so I had to do a mad dash from the bedroom to pick up, but it was worth the effort. Our conversation ran the gamut of family business, work, politics, and entertainment. At some point, I mentioned that I had just finished watching Band of Brothers , HBO’s fabulous World War II miniseries. Band of Brothers , which was made 20 years ago, tells the story of Easy Company of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division as they parachute behind enemy lines in the early hours of D-Day. My father was a veteran of the...

On January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer opened fire on the Grover Cleveland Elementary School across the street from her house, killing the principal and a custodian, and wounding eight children and a police officer. Spencer barricaded herself in the house and when a reporter from the San Diego Union Tribune reached her by phone, the teenager said she shot up the school because "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." The line inspired Bob Geldof, leader singer of the Boomtown Rates, to write “ I Don’t Like Mondays ,” which was the number one song in 1979 in the U.K. for four weeks. That incident and those words came back to me last week after a mass shooting in the Atlanta area killed eight people, including six Asian women. A police spokesman told reporters at a press conference that the alleged shooter had claimed the shootings were not racially motivated and that “he was having a bad day.” A bad day? Really? We’ve all had plenty of bad da...

I wondered if Robert Jones ever got his shot. I got my first dose of the COVID vaccine on Saturday, a year to the day after I walked out my office for the last time, as the coronavirus rolled into our lives like a toxic fogbank. That was Friday the 13th and my floor was virtually empty, since most of the staff had taken advantage of our company’s offer to work from home. I wasn’t wearing a mask back then, which seems unbelievable today, but I was washing my hands every five minutes. Broadway was going dark, the St. Patrick’s Day parade had been cancelled, and the world was shutting down. I had entertained some bizarre notion of going to my boxing class after work that day, but my auntie scared me out of it. My gym recently reopened, but there are no classes yet and who knows when they’ll ever start up again. I miss all the people in that boxing class and I hope like hell they’re all healthy and safe. I left the office that day thinking I’d be back in a month or so. I mi...

So that really did happen. The 1971 film The Conspiracy and the Dybbuk concerns some Columbia University students who stood at the steps of the Federal Court in Foley Square many years ago and attempted to remove an evil spirit—a dybbuk—that they believed had taken possession of Judge Julius Hoffman, who, at the time, was presiding over the Chicago Seven trial. The 30-minute documentary features the defendants Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, their attorney, William Kunstler, and the French author Jean Genet. I have this vague memory of watching the actual event being covered on Eyewitness New s when I was 12 years old. There was a young man with glasses wearing a robe and some kind of headgear who called upon the evil spirit to vacate the jurist with all due haste. Julius Hoffman was roundly hated by the left back then and demonic possession apparently seemed like a logical explanation for his behavior to some people. I was starting to wander if I had imagined this bizarre...

And to think I almost watched The Thing again. Last week I stood at a video crossroads as I tried to decide what movie I should watch for my evening’s entertainment. On one hand, I had The Thing from Another World , one of my very favorite science fiction movies that I’ve seen and thoroughly enjoyed God alone knows how many times. On the other hand, there was A Special Day , an Italian film that had gotten good reviews, but which I had never seen before. I knew The Thing would deliver the goods, but the other flick was a total mystery. It might by great or it might suck beyond all description. The only way to find out was to press “play.” I finally decided to step out of my comfort zone and watch A Special Day and I am so glad because I have not enjoyed a movie so much in ages. Released in 1977, A Special Day was directed by Ettore Scola and stars the two cinema legends Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni as neighbors in an apartment building in Rome who mee...

“Running away from your problems is a race you will never win. ” Well, at least this time I was wearing pants. I had a nightmare last week that made my recent nude subway ride dream look like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I kept my clothes on this time, but my emotions were stripped naked. While the MTA debacle was humiliating and frightening, this latest nocturnal commission was a heart-breaking horror show I wouldn’t even wish on the guy who wrote “Billy Don’t Be a Hero”, and God knows I hate that song. It seems my subconscious saw me reeling from its last poisonous production, declared, “hey, chuckles, you ain’t seen nothing yet!” and delivered the goods, which were quite bad. Is it possible to take out an order of protection against myself? This particular disaster took place in some hotel some place in Westchester. Always usual, I don’t know how I know these facts, I just know. I was there on some work-related matter when I ran into a woman I dated in the Eighties and w...

If this keeps up, the MTA will never let me ride the subways again. It’s Valentine’s Day and what better way to celebrate this day of love then by sharing highlights from my latest screaming mimi nightmare? Well, actually, there are probably dozens of better ways to commemorate this chocolate-scarfing, bouquet-huffing holiday, but first I want to relate the details of this three-act nighttime assault on my psyche by my psyche. This internal affair started off by revisiting a painfully familiar theme that first cropped up in December where I am riding a speeding subway train stark-ass naked. Again, with this? Hey, if I’m going to be tortured by my subconscious, the least my mind can do on behalf of the riding public is come up with some new material. I guess my dark side wanted to stick with something that works, so there I was rattling down the tracks without a stitch. A few women were giggling at me, I was certain it was going to get worse, and I was desperately hopi...