The Luna Park Gazette

There’s no better way of celebrating the holidays than watching an old-time horror movie—at least that’s what my family did this year. I got together with my sister and auntie on Thanksgiving Day for the usual blast of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and apple pie. And wine. Oh, yeah, plenty of wine. The food was fabulous and I ate like it was my last meal. I know people always say that on Thanksgiving, but this time I really broke the record. Even my loose pants couldn’t handle the strain of my bulging waistline. It was bitter cold in my part of the world on Thursday, so I was extremely thankful to be indoors spending time with the people I love. And the wine. Really thankful for the wine. After dinner we waddled over to the living room to watch some tube and relax. This is the start of the Christmas insanity and there are plenty of holiday movies and specials to watch, but it just so happened that my sister had recorded Carnival of Souls , a horror movie cult classic that never...

It must have been the longest night of my father’s life. My dad was a veteran and I grew up hear his stories about fighting in World War II. These stories were frightening, tragic, and occasionally funny and I never tired of hearing them. There was this one time when he was trapped in a foxhole during a lengthy attack. The shells kept on falling and my father had nowhere to go, so he was forced to take cover in this wet, filthy hole in the ground all night long. I can’t begin to imagine how terrifying that experience must have been, to be trapped in the freezing darkness while the whole world blows up all around you. When the sun finally came up and the explosions ended—for the moment, anyway—both my father’s feet were so badly frostbitten that he couldn’t walk. A pair of medics eventually showed up, loaded him onto a stretcher and began taking him to the nearest field hospital. As they walked the artillery fire started kicking up again. The two medics panicked, dropped ...

It feels like someone broke open the gates of Hell. Wildfires have been ripping through California, killing at least 25 people and burning more than 100,000 acres. California was the site of our latest Second Amendment massacre, which happened in Thousand Oaks, where a deranged gunman shot up a local bar on Friday, killing 12 people, including Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus, who was planning to retire in a year or two. The slaughter was committed by yet another loner psychotic with a gun who also killed himself. There were all the usual elements of a mass shooting: footage of survivors and family members sobbing in each other’s arms; lines of police cars and ambulances streaking up to some blood-soaked location, and, yes, thoughts and prayers for the victims. There’s also the mini-biographies of the victims, most of whom were so young and ready to start their lives. Several of them had actually witnessed last year’s Las Vegas mass shooting and one of them, Telemachu...

There’s a scene in Martin Scorsese’s mob classic Goodfellas where Ray Liotta’s uber-paranoid gangster is convinced a helicopter is following him. As the coked-up criminal frantically tries to escape the mysterious chopper, Harry Nilsson’s “ Jump into the Fire ” cranks up on the soundtrack. I always loved that scene, but recently I got a chance to experience what that guy was going through. I had gotten up nice and early one morning for my daily meditation. I’ve been meditating for a few years now and I am slowly seeing the benefits of this daily practice. I set the timer for 20 minutes and do my very best to be mindful and present. And I think it’s helped me a lot. I’m a little better at taming the anger and reining in the depression. It’s been an extremely slow process, but I’m encouraged by my progress and I want to continue improving. Now some sessions are better than others and on this particular morning I was really nailing it—if I do say so myself. I was breathing so ...