The Luna Park Gazette

Thank God there was a bathroom. As my body ages, I find that I’m heading to the loo a lot more often than I did in my younger days. It’s gotten to the point that I’ll check the location of the lavatory upon entering a new place before scoping out the fire exits. I understand that this is a fact of aging, but there’s no law that says I have to be happy about it. I spent the day on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on Saturday after signing up for The 48 Hour Film Project, a contest where teams write, shoot, and edit films in the allotted time period. I had done this last year with the idea of getting more experience on a film set and gaining enough confidence to shoot a short film of my own. A year has gone by without me making that film, so I figured I’d join this competition again as way of acquiring additional knowledge so I could get my rear in gear. Like last year, I was the director. I wasn’t at all happy with my directorial debut and I was determined to do a better jo

The greeting was written in chalk on the sidewalk outside of P.S. 102. “Welcome back,” it said. This was the first day of school in New York and the buildings were gussied up to encourage returning students and put a positive spin on the least favorite day of a kid’s life. At least, it was for me. Another message in chalk encouraged students to “Dream Big.” A wonderful sentiment, but I couldn’t help thinking about a school in Georgia where chalk was probably being used to draw body outlines and the only dream was the living nightmare of yet another mass shooting in America. By now, I’m sure we all know about the massacre at Apalachee High School, where a student at the Atlanta area school killed four people—two students and two teachers—using the mass shooter’s special: a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle.” Gee, where have I heard about this weapon before? Oh, yeah, that’s right—at just about every other mass shooting in this demented country. Welcome to America

“I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.” — Friedrich Nietzsche I was rolling by the produce aisle in my local supermarket yesterday when I got a sudden craving for some citrullus lanatus. As we all know, this is the formal handle for watermelon, that famed flowering plant species of the Cucurbitaceae family. Watermelon was synonymous with summer when I was a kid, and I’d have a healthy helping of the stuff nearly every single day. There were some nice pieces in the refrigerated section, and I thought about treating myself to some of this large edible fruit. But then I stopped. This was the last of August, meaning we were hours away from September, which means summer is over and I shouldn’t indulge in warm weather eats. I’ll have to take out the air conditioners, pack away my beach chair, break out the cold weather gear and prepare for months short days and freezing temperatures. I’ll relentlessly complain that summer goes too fast and th