The Luna Park Gazette

Each year before I stuff myself on Thanksgiving Day I go to the gym and try to “earn the bird.” My goal is to work out like a psycho—more so than usual—so I’ll be able to enjoy a guilt-free holiday meal. It’s ridiculous, of course. The idea of me being free of guilt is kind of like an opera being free of music. Where's the fun in that? But I did my best this week and then I headed out to Long Island with my sister and auntie to have dinner with my cousin and her husband. There were relatively few glitches, even though I (naturally) worried about all sorts of mayhem, like miss train connections, psychotic parade-goes, runaway floats, terrorist elves. etc. We had one minor incident when we mistakenly got off a packed train at Jamaica Station only to learn that we didn’t have to switch trains. We charged back onto the train expecting to stand for the duration of our trip, but the three lovely people who had taken our seats immediately got up and insisted we sit back down. A few days h...

Illustration by Greg Bellamy One of the first things a reporter does when arriving at a major fire scene is find the guy in the white helmet. That’ll be the fire chief and he’s the one who will help you make some sense out of all the mayhem. Or at least you hope he will. I covered many fires during my five years as a police reporter in Pennsylvania. There were blazes where people died, where there was nothing left of the building but the foundation; one time a gas explosion destroyed an entire church in Stroudsburg. But I think the biggest fire I ever covered in all those years chasing sirens was the blaze that destroyed the Salvation Army Thrift Center in East Stroudsburg nearly 20 years ago. The building was huge and it was filled with old clothes, furniture and other second hand items. One night all of that stuff quiet literally went up in flames—and I was right there. Many of the fires I wrote about happened in some distant part of my coverage area. Often by the time I arrived the...

I’ve been a film addict ever since I saw “The Men Who Made the Movies” on PBS nearly 40 years ago. I can’t begin to guess how many hours—years—of my life I’ve spent in movie theaters. I like to think I have a variety of interests, but there’s something about film that just gets hold of me. I’ve always loved those few seconds when the lights go dim and the movie is just about to start. There's no drug in the world that can match that feeling of anticipation. When I was in high school and college, I used to plot my weekends around the movies. I was either going to see the latest foreign flick, or catching a classic at revival houses like the Elgin Theater or Carnegie Hall Cinema. Those theaters are gone now, thanks largely to VCRs and DVD players, and there are very few places that show old films—“retrospective cinemas,” as one of my film teachers called them in college--with a straight face no less. And yet as I write this, I am struggling to remember the last time I actually went t...

A guy wakes up in a hospital after suffering a serious injury to find the world that he knew has been destroyed and he must now struggle to survive in a hostile land. Now does this describe the beginning of: (a) Day of the Triffids (b) 28 Days Later , or (c) The Walking Dead ? If you said a, b, and c, you are correct. All three films begin with some poor bastard regaining consciousness in a hospital room and learning that he has to fight for his life against invading aliens…or raging humanoids…or walking corpses. Whatever the problem may be, it is so terrible that it makes the hero completely forget about the lousy hospital food. Triffids , a British 1962 flick, got the whole hospital wake-up thing started--I think--when murderous plants invade Earth during a meteor shower that renders most of the earth’s population blind. Our hero is a sailor recovering from eye surgery and is thus spared the loss of his vision. It’s been years since I’ve seen this movie but I remember being especia...