The Luna Park Gazette

Get me the hell out of here! My sister and I are taking off for Los Angeles tomorrow morning and after the shellacking I’ve taken today I’m ready to ditch the plane and swim all the way out to the Left Coast if I have to. This might prove difficult given the large amount of dry land between here and California but then I ain’t thinking too clearly at the moment. Over the years I have come to expect misery of all stripes to strike as vacation draws nearer. It’s a working stiff’s rite of passage I suppose. Massive bills, sudden illnesses, work woes, and all manner of busted plumbing are to be expected as you prepare for some much needed rest and relaxation. But even I was stunned by the avalanche of madness that slapped me upside my life today. First I managed to somehow wrench my hip at the gym this morning. And what really burns me about this is the fact that I hurt myself after the goddamn workout. Yeah, that’s right, it was after the weights, after the boxing class, whe...

I never thought I’d say this, but thank God for Throwback Thursday. Like the rest of humanity, I waste entirely too much time on Facebook, liking, uploading, and complaining. Every day I swear that I’m going to cut down on my Face time and every day I’m right back on the insidious social network service, clicking away like a set of castanets. However, a recent Throwback Thursday, where people post old photos of themselves or their loved ones, brought back a fabulous 44-year old memory that I had totally forgotten. Mary, an old friend, onetime neighbor and former grammar school classmate, had posted a photo of her late mother. Now I love old photographs as they are just filled with stories, and, of course, seeing a friend’s golden oldies is even better. And this one was a real treasure. As I looked at that photo I had this flashback to my grammar school graduation dance. It was June 1971. Richard Nixon was in the White House and Our Lady of Angeles Catholic School in Brookly...

I’ve always been of something of a dreamer, effortlessly slipping away from reality into a world of my own making. When I was a kid my dad used to try to find out what was going on in my mind, which was pretty much a lost cause given all the strange activity going on in my noodle, but my father made the effort nonetheless. “What are you thinking about?” he’d asked me every so often. I usually just shrugged and looked away. I don’t remember the various scenarios my imagination was churning out back then—I can barely recall my thoughts from this morning. However, on this Father’s Day, I find myself thinking about the time The Three Musketeers made my dad cry. My father used to tell us about the books he read growing up and the Dumas classic was one of his favorites. And so when the Musketeers all left this world in The Man in the Iron Mask, it was too much for my father’s young self to bear. “I read the ending of that book,” he said, “and I went into the bathroom and I cried...

I saw the sign one Friday morning as I crossed Broadway on my way to work. It was on the back of Pepperidge Farm delivery truck parked on Fulton Street and I saw the words written especially for me: “God is in the Details.” He is? Hell, I thought the Devil was the in details. Had these guys switch duties without telling me? And why is Pepperidge Farm suddenly preaching the good word? I remember their commercials from the Sixties, which ended with some geezer with a straw hat, glasses and loose dentures telling us “Pepperidge Farm remembers…” The ads were an attempt to hark back to a simpler time when food was pure and healthy and not mass-produced in factories with ingredients that seemed more appropriate for rocket fuel than anything you’d want to eat. Then I looked closer at the sign and saw God wasn’t in the details. The slogan is “Good is in the Details.” Good God, I’m hallucinating again. No matter. God knows I needed some good news and I decided to accept this nonexist...

During World War I more than 3 million US soldiers passed through Hoboken, NJ on their way to Europe and their desire to come home soon led to General Pershing’s line “Heaven, Hell or Hoboken…by Christmas.” I just finished my first week at my company’s new office in the Mile Square City and while you’d never mistake it for Heaven, it certainly isn’t the Hell I feared it would be. Honestly, I like Hoboken. I like it a lot. And it ain’t even Christmas. It’s true that I have a longer, more expensive commute, and I have to struggle through the waves of office lemmings who charge into Manhattan while I go against the flow of traffic. However, once I take the short ride on the PATH train to the other side of the river, the pace slows down dramatically. The streets are much less crowded here, so unlike the crushing mass of cars, trucks, and bodies that clog up Broadway. I feel like I’m a small town…which, of course, I am. But it’s a small town in a great location--a kind of hip ver...