The Luna Park Gazette

I met a woman on the elevator today who had finally had enough. "Going to lunch?" I asked her as we rode down to the lobby. "No," she declared. "I'm going home!" "Really?" "Yes," she continued. "Did you ever have one of those days when you just can't take it anymore?" One of those of days? Jesus, I've been having one of those days every day since the day I was born. If I had this woman's attitude, I would have gone back into the womb years ago. "Well, good for you," I said. "Instead of going berserk in the office, you're going home so you won't have to kill anybody." So we got down to the first floor, I went to the gym for my lunch time boxing workout and my elevator companion went home. I wonder how many office shoot-outs could have been avoided if people had done what she was now doing--going the hell home. Maybe we all need to get in touch with our inner Snagglepuss. Clearly that...

It's almost 10 o'clock and Thanksgiving is nearly over. My relatives and I did the restaurant thing in our neighborhood and it worked out fairly well. It was a beautiful day here in New York and I went for a nice long walk before stuffing my face. It has turned much colder and I can hear the oil burner coming to life as I type this. Oy, that oil bill... It's hard to believe that neither one of my parents is here with us on this day that celebrates families. With my father's death in January, my siblings and I are officially orphans. I actually had to ask my sister what we did last year since I kept drawing a blank. She reminded me that we first went to visit my dad at the nursing home in Coney Island then took the train to my aunt's place in Manhattan for dinner. Ah, yes, I remember it well. It was raining something fierce that day and we took the bus to the Stillwell Avenue train station. I remember going by Nathan's and seeing the place was open and serving cu...

I stood outside Lundy's the other night peering through the dusty window. At one time, this seafood place on Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay was the supposedly the largest restaurant in America. My father told me that he walked in there one night and there were over 2,000 people in the place. But that was years ago and now Lundy's is just an empty shell. I was coming from a family birthday party and I stopped by to look at the place before walking back to the train station. It was hard to imagine all those bodies in this empty place. I googled "Lundy's" tonight and in addition to getting hits about the famous restaurant, I also came across web sites devoted to an apparently fierce conflict in Canada called the Battle of Lundy's Lane that took place during the War of 1812. While I'm certainly no historian, it bothered me that I had never heard of this particular encounter, which one site described as "the battle bloodiest ever fought on Canadian soil....

My state senator sent me a birthday card last week. "Wishing you the best on your special day," it said. My birthday was back in May, so I was a little confused by my senator's card. Apparently the day was so special, no one told me about it. The guy used to be a cop prior to his political career and seeing how slow he is on the birthday beat I'm glad he wasn't a fireman. I'll be sure to vote for him...in August. Actually, I could use a friend in high places right now to help me get my truck back. When I say "my truck," I don't mean a real truck, naturally, I mean the huge billboard of a truck that once loomed over the West Side Highway. It belonged to Yale Express System, but when I was growing up it was known as "Robert's truck." Whenever we went up to Bear Mountain or to my Aunt Loretta's place in Upper Manhattan, I made sure to look for my truck. The thing was monstrous and it looked like it was going to fly off its moorings...

Mom always said I should get a good night's sleep and I'm starting to see why. I'm on the Netflix routine, so every weekend, I jam a couple of DVD's into the old player piano and catch up on the movies and TV shows that I've been missing. For the last few weeks I've been watching an HBO series called Carnivale , a enjoyably bizarre little tale that got canned a couple of years ago. It has one of the most entertaining opening credit sequences that I've ever seen, with a swooping camera that goes into tarot card images which then morph into Depression Era newsreel footage. The show's got all sorts of weird, supernatural elements that I enjoy and, while I've heard the program ended with a lot of loose ends hanging, I still intend to ride down this dead end street until I run out of blacktop. I watched an episode last week where the hero, a young man with a mysterious past--naturally--is being tortured by strange dreams. I was watching late Saturday nigh...

Well, I did it again. Tonight, I participated in the class show for the Solo Performer 2 course I'm taking at the People's Improv Theater, or The PIT, as we like to call it. I took the first class earlier this year and we had our class show in May. I am not a natural actor and I don't speak in public, so these classes push me in ways I never thought possible. In the theater they like to say "break a leg." Last night I damn near busted a toe walking into my room. I let out such a yelp I must have frightened people two zip codes away. But the show must go on. I wasn't happy with my performance tonight, to be honest. I stuttered a couple of times, but I also think I "acted" better this time around. I was conveying emotion, and not just reading. I spoke about losing my parents and how difficult it was dealing with my dad, who suffered from Alzheimer's, so there is no shortage of emotion here. One of my classmate's had invited sever...