The Luna Park Gazette

I knew I saved that fortune for a reason. Whenever I do one of my wonton-soup-and-movie nights, I like to get a stack of fortune cookies to munch on whilst I enjoy my flick. I’ll readily admit that soup and fortune cookies don’t make for the healthiest meal plan, but I like to give myself a pass on the weekends. And I make sure to read every single fortune in the pile—both for entertainment as well as instruction because good advice can come from anywhere. The other day I found an old fortune on my kitchen table that read “we are taught by every person we meet.” The concept is not new, of course. I’ve seen a couple of variants on Instagram, including one attributed to John C. Maxwell that says, “each person we meet has the potential to teach us something.” The important word here is “potential” because we can’t learn a lesson unless we are willing to receive it. This can be quite challenging when we run across the seemingly endless supply of dopes, dickheads, liars and ...

I had to ask. It’s cold in New York right now, cold as a bastard, to be honest, and car owners of a certain generation might be familiar with the expression “dead as Kelsey’s nuts.” I was speaking with my brother Saturday morning while walking face-first into a freezing wind and he reminded me how our father loved to use that colorful phrase, which means something is done for, kaput and out of commission. After speaking with my brother, I recalled how Dad had dropped that line on me one time in the Eighties after he’d gone out to start up my old Toyota Corolla, which had given up the ghost in our garage. “It’s as dead as Kelsey’s nuts,” he said upon walking into the kitchen. I was too angry and upset about my lifeless car to ask him where the hell he had gotten such a weird expression. This was one of many phrases my parents used to say that hark back to an earlier time, such as “another job well done by your Treasury men in action,” which my father liked to say, and whic...

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I’ve been looking all over my house today for my father’s prayer card. The card, which was given out at his wake, featured an image of St. Patrick on one side and a poem on the other. My mother’s prayer card had a portrait of St. Martin de Porres and for years I used to carry them both with me everywhere I went. It felt good to have them close to me, but I realized now that I haven’t seen St. Patrick in a while. Today is the 17th anniversary of my father’s death and I feel like reconnecting with him in some small way. My father had been hospitalized after falling and hitting his head a few weeks earlier. My sister and I saw him briefly in the intensive care unit and we were told that his condition was critical but stable. Early the next morning, my sister called me to say that he had died. It was five years after we’d lost our mother. “The new year is one week old and with the passing of Little Christmas on Saturday, he died right after the holidays officially ended,” I w...

In retail, they call it “a soft opening.” New restaurants usually debut with a grand opening, as they announce their presence with all kinds of fanfare and hoopla. On the other hand, a soft opening involves working with a limited number of customers, so the owners have a chance to try out their menu on real people. I’ve taking that second approach for the New Year. Rather than waiting for the ball to come down in Times Square at midnight, I’ve been implementing—or trying to—some of my resolutions ahead of all the noise and confetti. I like this plan, but inner saboteur, as usual, is getting in the way of things. This morning I woke up with a bad case of the New Year’s heebie-jeebies, where I’m convinced that I’m not changing fast enough, and I go into emotional vapor lock. This usually starts in the first week of the year, but I guess my shadow self doesn’t feel like waiting. So, I’ve decided I’m going to ease into 2024. I’ll work on the stuff that needs fixing, but I’m...

So, let’s talk about last Christmas. It’s the holidays once again and I’m thinking about a song and my state of mind from Christmases of long, long ago—or at least 12 months ago. Okay, first the tune. “ Last Christmas ” is a song by Wham! that was released on Dec. 3, 1984, back when Ronald Reagan was president, the average cost of a home was $148,000 and Beverly Hills Cop was the No .1 movie in America. The song spent five consecutive weeks at number two in the UK Singles Chart and it was held off from the top spot by Band Air’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” on which Wham!’s George Michael performed. Michael wrote “Last Christmas” a year earlier in his childhood bedroom while he and instrumentalist Andrew Ridgeley were visiting George's parents. He played Ridgeley the song’s introduction and chorus melody, which Ridgeley later called "a moment of wonder". It was releases as a double A-side via Epic Records with "Everything She Wants" in ...

Two guys walk into a bar and one of them looks down to see he’s not wearing any pants. This isn’t the start of joke, or a reminder that No Pants Day is observed on the first Friday in May--I'm sure you already knew that--but rather a scene from a nightmare that came hopping out of my hippocampus late last week. This is a story of fear, confusion, a runaway faucet, and the crankiest plumber in creation. The dream starts off with me riding around in a car with a guy I hadn’t seen in over a year through the streets of some cartoon version of New York. Somewhere along the way I spot an old-time police car with a bubble light and fins, prowling through the streets. But the vehicle was heavily armored in a strange way that defied reality—which dreams tend to do. We get to the bar and I’m wearing this bulky turtleneck sweater that’s weighing me down like a bearskin rug. Everything seemed to be okay until I happened to look south of the border and then—ay, caramba!---I wa...