The Luna Park Gazette

Well, shucks, maybe I am a robot. I’ve spent most my life under the apparently misguided apprehension that I was a flesh and blood human being, but a recent online encounter with a CAPTCHA prompt has me questioning the very nature of my existence. CAPTCHA, I very recently learned, means “Completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart,” but that knowledge hasn’t made my life any easier. I was attempting to comment on a blog post and after typing in my incredibly insightful thoughts, I hit the submit button and waited to unleash my wonderous words on an unsuspecting world. Then I got the CAPTCHA prompt, which asked me to click on photos of all the store fronts I could find in a series of images to prove that I wasn’t a robot. No problem , I said, marking off the appropriate pictures, now post my comment . But I must have missed one of the storefronts because instead of seeing my words go public, I was given another prompt where I had to pick off all...

I was looking through my journal this morning when an entry from December 21 caught my eye. This was a Friday and I suspect it was a wonton soup night—one of those evenings when I just don’t want to face the world--as I had quoted a line from a fortune cookie. “ There’s no boosting a man up the ladder unless he’s willing to climb, ” it read. It’s a good thought to keep in mind, especially now, since it complements a dream I had last night. In this dream I had just booked a flight to Los Angeles when it occurred to me that I had used up most of my vacation days and would not be able to get the time off from work. I started to panic, not believing that I had made such a bonehead mistake and wondering what the hell to do. Should I cancel my trip? Would the airline let me reschedule? And it wasn’t clear if this was a vacation or if I was finally making good on my decades-old promise to move to LA. I needed advice and my subconscious responding by summoning up my parents, who ...

I came down to earth on Thursday in the best way possible. I was attending my boxing class and when Abby, our instructor, told us to start jumping up into the air. This is part of the warmup and it builds up your legs and endurance while giving you a preview of the absolute hell that is to follow. I was hopping up and down when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of my classmates, a very nice guy I’ve known for years, didn’t appear to be jumping all that high. Gee , I thought, he’s not trying too hard, is he? This is something I do much too often: judging or criticizing others when I should be minding my own business. And even though I keep my mouth shut, I don’t like making these snarky judgments of other people—especially people I like. And then something strange happened: a voice that seemed to be coming from outside of my mind said, “why don’t you focus on your own jumping and forget about your buddy?” It sounded like great advice, so that’s what I did, gett...

I was sitting in a bar in Windsor Terrace Saturday night when Marvin Gaye told me I had to give it up. As I sipped my wine, I had a flashback to the first time I heard Gaye’s hit. I was a sophomore at Hunter College and on that particular day I was in a record store on Lexington Avenue, which I’m sure is long gone. This funky song that I’d never heard came on the sound system. A guy near me walked up to the cashier and asked her what were we listening to. “Got to Give it Up,” she said. That was over 40 years ago and there I was hearing it again—along with a wonder list of such slick tunes as “Always Something There to Remind Me” and “Go Back, Jack, Do it Again.” Usually when I walk into a bar I don’t begin to recognize any of the songs I’m hearing, but this seemed like my kind of place. I was in the neighborhood to attend a reading by one of my writing class buddies and I had arrived a full hour early due to the rather embarrassing fact that I had not properly read the inv...