The Luna Park Gazette

And so, another birthday has come and gone. I turned 62 Good-Jumping-Jesus-Years-Old on Friday and it’s time for some reflection. This is a period when I ponder the important questions of life. Why am I here? What is my purpose? And who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder? Then again, I could always say “fuck that noise” and go out and have a rip-snorting good time instead. Well, I decided to choose Option B this year and I must confess Birthday No. 62 was a trip. For some reason I was in a good mood this year and I resisted any and all attempts to deconstruct my senseless joy in the face of unstoppable decrepitude. I decided to draw strength from a timeless source of wisdom: a fortune cookie from my local Chinese restaurant that contained a simple message: “ The older the crab, the tougher his claw. ” Now who could possibly argue with such brilliance? People keep telling me how crabby I am. Hell, I'm the crustacean sensation and I am going to skip sideways ...

I took hold of the refrigerator door with both hands and cranked my shoulders back as far as I could. I was going to show this irritating icebox who was boss. This was Wednesday morning. I was running late for my ferry and now, for no apparent reason, the refrigerator door, which has always worked perfectly, had suddenly decided to stop closing. I’d closed the door and it would snap back open. I moved around some items on the shelves, convinced that I had removed the obstruction, and closed the door again. And it promptly bounced back open. Okay, I thought, there must be a logical reason for this. Let me and rearrange the stuff on the shelves again. This time I had it right. Except that I didn’t because the damn door refused to close. I have been trying to stick to my Hey 19 resolution for the (former) new year where I put a brake on the anger, one of my most destructive habits. I’ve been making some decent progress in this effort, if I say so myself, but this refrigerator...

I take back all the bad things I ever said about Newark. Well, to be honest, I don’t think I ever actually badmouthed that particular New Jersey city. In fact, I applied for a job there as the mayor’s press agent several years ago and I was set to move there if I had gotten the job. I never got the callback, but I didn’t take it personally. After that, I really didn’t give the place much thought at all, until yesterday, when my sister, auntie, and myself, roared over to the Holiday Inn near Newark Airport for an all-too-brief rendezvous with my brother, Jim, my sister-in-law Amy, and my niece, Victoria. We also got to meet Victoria’s boyfriend. They had flown in from Colorado the night before and were heading out to Ireland on Saturday evening. We didn’t have much time together, but we made the most of it. I had not seen my brother and his family in a few years when I went out to see them in Colorado. We speak on the phone, of course, and Victoria, who has made a second ca...

There’s a scene in the Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West sends her flying monkeys to kidnap Dorothy. In the process, they literally rip the Scarecrow limb from limb and toss his body parts in all directions. “They tore my legs off and they threw them over there ,” the battered strawman tells his companions. “Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there! ” “Well, that’s you all over,” the Tin Man says. Yes, it’s a play on an old expression, but it came back to me on Friday in its original meaning as it held up a mirror to one of my most unhealthy traits. I had just gotten to my office, taken off my jacket and hoodie but, instead of hanging them in the nearby closet, I draped them over my chair, sat down, and started working—with my back pressed against the hoodie. Now, oddly enough, this was extremely uncomfortable. But I didn’t remove the hoodie, I didn’t hang it up or even put it somewhere else. No, I kept on doing my job with this ungainly lump p...

Paul Savage was born in Warren, Ohio in 1925, and like my father, he was a veteran of World War II. Savage was a Marine who earned a Purple Heart at the Battle of Iwo Jima. He would go on to become an actor and writer on such TV shows as 77 Sunset Strip, Murder She Wrote, and the Dukes of Hazard . I’d never heard of Paul Savage until a week or so ago when I saw his name in the credits of an episode of Gunsmoke , the classic western for which he wrote 27 scripts. This particular show was called “ Owney Tupper had a Daughter ,” and I’m still thinking about it after all this time because it’s packed so much drama and raw emotion into one hour. The episode stars the fabulous character actor Jay C. Flippen as Owney, an aging, widowed farmer who has to resort to desperate measures in order to regain custody of his beloved daughter. By time the show is over, Owney has lost his daughter, his friends, and the simple, happy life that he had enjoyed for years. The show, which aired o...

In the summer of 1981, I got on a line outside of Notre Dame in Paris waiting for my chance to see the inside of this most famous cathedral. I was 24 years old and one of roughly 12 million people who visit Notre Dame each year. There was a rather heavyset American man standing in front of me and he was talking to this young woman about the church’s history. I was much younger then, with a bit of an attitude, and I was somewhat annoyed with this man’s seemingly nonstop chatter. Who is this know-it-all , I thought, and why the hell does he have to be standing in front of me? We got about 10 feet into Notre Dame when this man became extremely agitated. I suspect it was claustrophobia because he told his companion “I can’t take this,” and staggered out into the daylight. I felt momentarily embarrassed for the guy before taking a tour of the church and checking it off of my list of places to see. After that, it was off to the Eiffel Tower. I hadn’t thought anything more about...

I was doing fine until the cat showed up. Getting your smartphone hacked can be a real nightmare. I know this because I had a nightmare where my smartphone got hacked. If that sounds strange to you, don’t worry; it’s about to get a lot weirder. By this time in my life, I should probably be accustomed to the technicolor ravings of the red-eyed mutant carnival that I call my subconscious mind. I’ve been having these bizarre mental home movies for as far back as I can remember, so there shouldn’t be any surprises. And yet I still find ways of freaking myself out. This latest detour into Loonyville began with me calling a former coworker for reasons I don’t recall. She wasn’t home, so I spoke with her husband, who sounded like a nice guy—at least in the dream he did. He even invited me over for dinner. As soon as I got done speaking with this gentleman, I spotted an alley cat across the street. I’m forever posting photos of cats on Facebook and Instagram and I thought this fel...