The Luna Park Gazette

“I believe in order that I may understand.” – Anselm of Canterbury I walked into a church for the first time in two years on Friday. I was out shopping when I passed by St. Anslem’s Roman Catholic Church on Fourth Avenue. I usually stop outside to recite the prayer before the crucifix, where, with burning soul, you beseech Jesus to fix deep in your heart lively sentiments of faith, hope and charity, true contrition for your sins and a firm purpose of amendment. It can be very comforting when the news is dark and you’re feeling lost. And yet all the times I’ve prayed outside St. Anslem’s, I’ve never gone inside, even though I’ve lived in Bay Ridge most of my life. I was always too busy heading somewhere else to walk in, and then the place was locked down, along with the rest of the planet, when Covid-19 came to town. But on Friday I saw a woman pull up the front door and step inside and I decided it was time to see the interior. A mass was just finishing up when I ...

No wonder I’m so tired. I’ve had vivid dreams for most of my life, but during the last week I experienced two back-to-back work-related nightmares that were so intense I should be getting a second paycheck. These psychotic situations bore no resemblance to my current job, for which I am very grateful. No, these delusions were a mental milkshake of past experiences, underlying emotional issues and heaping dose of WTF? The first one found me working at a weekly newspaper in Brooklyn not unliked the one I worked for in the Eighties. In this dream, I was heading off to cover some kind of occurrence at a local restaurant. The only problem was I had no idea what kind of occurrence I was covering, although judging by the hostile looks I was getting from the employees, it wasn’t good and they clearly did not want me there. I grew accustomed to this ill will whenever I showed up at crime scenes and accidents, where people were really just not that into you. It’s part of the jo...

I guess this is what they mean by “serendipity.” Many years ago, a woman named Madelon Champion approached Rod Serling, the genius behind The Twilight Zone , at a party and suggested an idea for an episode of the legendary TV show. Of course, Serling got unsolicited story ideas all the time. He once described how he and his staff had gone through a stack of manuscripts where the majority were “hand-scrawled, laboriously written, therapeutic unholy grotesqueries from sick, troubled, deeply disturbed people.” “Of the three remaining scripts,” he said, “all of clearly poetic, professional quality, none of them fitted the show." But this time was different. Serling was so impressed with the proposal that he paid Champion $500 on the spot gave her on-screen credit for suggesting the story idea. This would be the first and only time he’d do such a thing. The result of this meeting was episode entitled “I Shot an Arrow into the Air,” which I recorded on Friday nigh...

“A ship is always safe at the shore, but that is not what it is built for.” – Albert Einstein Oh, the humanity. The 50th New York Marathon ran right through my neighborhood this morning and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed it more. The five-borough, 26-mile race returned after a two-year hiatus when the 2020 event was scrapped due to Covid-19—along with just about everything else we know and love in this town. The first New York City Marathon took place on Sept. 13, 1970 and was held entirely in Central Park. Of the 127 registered runners, there were 55 finishers. The first five-borough New York City Marathon took place in 1976 with about 2,000 runners. This year’s event had about 30,000 participants, but there have been more than 50,000 competitors in previous races. The marathon starts in Staten Island, goes over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and comes right through my neighborhood of Bay Ridge. My sister and I have been standing on Fourth Avenue for years a...

I can’t believe how rotten I feel. This is Day 2 of my effort to finally quit drinking Diet Coke and my body is not happy. I’ve got a headache, I’m more irritable than usual and my soul is crying out of a nice tall glass of that bubbling brown poison. But I ain’t giving in. It seems fitting that I would address this particular personal demon on Halloween, except that Diet Coke is all trick and no treat. Understand that you’re talking to someone who quite literally starts his day with Diet Coke. I drink a glass of the swill with my oatmeal in the morning and I keep going until it’s time for bed. I’ve been drinking some form of diet soda or ice tear since college, but I think the problem really exploded when I came down with mononucleosis in the Eighties and began recklessly guzzling the stuff. When I worked at a newspaper in Pennsylvania, I would routinely walk over to a nearby 24-hour place, grab the biggest cup they had, and pour myself a gallon or two. And then ...

I’ve forgotten just about everything I learned in my high school French class, but the expression bete noir clings to my battered memory like a barnacle on a battle ship. The literal translation of bete noir is “black beast,” but the dictionary definition is “a person or thing one particularly dislikes.” I suspect the reason this particular term has lingered for so long in my mind is that there are so many things in this world that keep it alive. My blogging buddies Ron at Being Ron and Bijoux at Bytes from the Burbs have both written posts about the things they really hate—their bete noirs —so I thought this would be an appropriate time to unleash one of my beasts. The place: my doctor’s office. The time: Friday morning. I had gone in to get a blood test and a shingles injection, a seemingly simple affair that somehow morphed into a monster ferocious enough to make Godzilla crap his drawers—should he ever decide to start wearing drawers. I showed up at 8:30AM, certa...

I feel like a villain in a Bond movie. I recently treated to myself a new chair for my home office and this thing like looks it came straight off of the set of Thunderball . I had been threatening to improve my seating arrangements for a couple of years, but now that my company has officially gone virtual, an upgrade became an imperative. I spend so much time at the computer between my job, my own writing and screwing around on YouTube that I can no longer sit in the old straight back number I’ve been using for years. So, one Friday after work I bounced up to a national office supply chain store--which shall go nameless--and perused their furniture. I was set to check out the traditional office chairs lined up at the back of the store, but then I saw…the Emerge. The Emerge is a gaming chair that is so unlike any other workplace seat I’ve ever seen before. And I had to have it. …bonded leather back and seat…135 degree recline…adjustable height, arms, tilt tension and ti...