The Luna Park Gazette

The scene begins with a woman facing the wall of a crumbling shack and humming tunnessly. This is from an episode of Peter Gunn , a classic detective show, entitled “Spell of Murder” and it put quite a spell on me. Created by Blake Edwards, Peter Gunn ran from 1958 to 1961, and starred Craig Stevens as the eponymous hero; Lola Albright as Edie Hart, a nightclub singer and Gunn’s girlfriend, and Herschel Bernardi as the perpetually exasperated Lt. Jacobi. The show also featured some excellent filmmaking, appearances by some of the biggest names in jazz at the time, and a slew of fine character actors, as well as appearances by such future stars as James Coburn. Mary Gregory played the woman in the shack. Over the course of her career, she appeared in such films as They Shoot Horses, Don’t They and Sleeper , as well as reoccurring roles in LA Law and Knots Landing . However, it’s her single scene in “Spell of Murder” that sticks out in my mind. She only has three minut...

And he looked like such a nice guy. David Owen sent me a friend request on Facebook last week. I didn’t recognize the name, so I clicked on to his profile to see if we had any friends in common. We didn’t. I wasn’t sure how he had gotten my name, but I’ve made a few random friends on Facebook in the past. I might make a new friend—and God knows I could use them. His profile described him as an elderly widower who lived in New Orleans. He seemed harmless. How could I turn someone like that down? If I ever go to New Orleans, I thought, I could look David up and he could show me the sites. There’s nothing like getting a tour of a strange city from a local. And if David should decide to visit New York, I’d be more than happy to show him around town. Now at about this point you’re probably hopping up and down in front of your computer screaming “ Schmuck, what’s the hell is the matter with you? It’s a scam! ” And rightfully so. I only wish you had been there ...

They called it “The Ludovico Technique.” There’s a scene in A Clockwork Orange , Stanely Kubrick’s 1971 film about a dystopian society, where Alex, a sadistic gang leader portrayed by Malcolm McDowell, undergoes aversion therapy to cure him of his violent ways. Alex’s head is strapped down so he can’t turn away and his eyes are pried open with clamps, so he has no choice to look at films portraying murder, torture and rape. It’s a harrowing scene and I could never imagine subjecting a fellow human being to that kind of abuse for any reason. But that was before I started reading Kimberly Garcia’s Twitter feed and now, I’m not so sure. Kimberly Garcia is the mother of Amerie Jo Garza, one of the 19 children killed—along with two teachers—who were murdered in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Udavle, Tex. on May 24. The tweets are excruciating. There is no filter, no commentator sanitizing this woman's agony. Her unimaginable suffering is torn right out of h...

For over a year now, I've greeted my sister and auntie on Saturday mornings with the same question: “Did you watch our friends last night?” By “our friends” I meant the characters in A Place to Call Home , a wonderful Australian television series that we happily allowed to take over our lives. My question about watching the program was purely rhetorical, of course, as I couldn’t imagine either one of them watching anything else on Friday evenings. And I wasn’t kidding about the “friends” part because over the course of 67 episodes these characters did indeed become our friends--or at least some of them did. There were others in the show we hated with a passion. We spoke about them as if they and all their troubles—and God knows they had a ton of them--were quite real. The lives of the wealthy Bligh family at their estate Ash Park in the town of Inverness took on a very personal meaning for the three of us. I honestly can't remember the last time I...

“Keep your face toward the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind you.” Maori proverb. Trixie Flagston was on to something. Now it’s true that she’s an infant appearing in the comic strip “Hi and Lois” but that kid knew how to pick her friends. Specifically, Trixie is best buds with a ray sunlight of called “Sunbeam”, whom she communicates with through thought balloons. Mort Walker, the strip’s creator, said he got the idea for Sunbeam by watching his own children. “It looked so cute," he said, "seeing a baby sitting in the sunlight, luxuriating in the warmth and brightness, with sparkly dust flying around, glistening in the sun’s rays.” Debuting in 1954, "Hi and Lois" focuses on the Flagston family and offers "a portrait of a wholesome family with traditional values," as one website described it. "Wholesome family" is enough to turn my stomach, but then this was the Eisenhower Administation so I shouldn't be surp...

The words of the prophets aren’t always written on the subway walls and tenement walls. Sometimes they’re right at our feet. I learned this lesson on Saturday while standing at the express bus stop on 23rd Street and Fith Avenue. I was waiting to get the X27 back to Brooklyn when I looked down and saw a sentence written on the sidewalk. “ What opportunities have you provided for your child ” The line—I’m assuming it’s a question—was written in neat white lettering and it appears the author had taken his or her time, which is interesting as this is a rather busy intersection. I was wrapping up an afternoon in the city that began with a visit to Rennert’s Gallery on W. 17th Street where I saw a fabulous collection of vintage posters for “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.” This was a bit of compromise since my conscience was telling me to attend a Meetup event in Queens where I could see something new and enjoy some human company. But I also wanted to visit the gallery. ...

"If you don’t ask, the answer will always be no.” It’s amazing how the simple can suddenly become sacred. My mother’s been gone for 20 years now and I’m still reluctant to part with anything that she’s written. I still have many of the birthday, Christmas, and Easter cards she gave me over the years, as well as a handful of newspaper articles that she thought I could use, and a yellowing copy of a poem called “Don’t Quit” that I taped on the wall just above my computer. It was much worse in those terrible days immediately after her death when I couldn’t even part with her shopping lists. A scrap of paper ticking off such everyday items as milk, bread and eggs turns into a priceless artifact when the person who wrote those words is gone forever. It was an entirely different story when I was a kid and I’d go shopping with one of her lists in hand. I was extremely self-conscious back then, determined not to cause a stir, and whenever my mother put something on the list ...