Is There a 12-Step Program for Science Fiction Addicts?
First horror, and now this. No wonder why I wasn’t the world’s greatest student.
INTRODUCTION
My Bar-Mitzvah was pending in 1977. I was required to learn the usual Jewish prayers, in Hebrew, to sing aloud to a group of friends and family, most of whom would surely have no idea what I was saying. Or singing.
Except for some of the older ones, that is, those whose parents formally arrived in the U.S. via Ellis Island.
The Bar Mitzvah would be held in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn — then a predominantly Jewish neighborhood — and many of my older relatives did get by on some Yiddish 101 when they did not want the kids to know what they were saying. Some, like my immensely missed Uncle David Palatnek, knew the Hebrew word-for-word.
I could not disappoint him or my father, both having been raised in households where both Yiddish and some Hebrew were de rigueur. I needed to learn my haftorah portion, and fast.
Thing is, my two favorite comic book characters were having a cross-over that month, the titular characters from Marvel’s “Tomb of Dracula” and “Werewolf by Night.” This would surely be the dream clash of all dream clashes … and so I secretly read both issues cover-to-cover a dozen times when I was supposed to be studying my…
