My girlfriend Cerise is very sociable, and has formed a large number of deep, lasting relationships with people to whom she is not, in fact, related. She actually goes so far as to write them letters – in longhand, no less – as well as calling them, sending them e-mails, exchanging Facebook links with them, and maintaining three separate holiday greeting card lists of them, all of which I find quite impressive. One of those lucky people is a former college room mate, who is a Jew, or, as many of them prefer to be called, a Jewish person. So yesterday, Cerise and I drove up to Philadelphia to attend her former room mate’s son’s bar mitzvah.
The event was held at a Jewish community center several miles outside Philadelphia proper. As Cerise and I approached, I was struck by how fastidiously the grounds were kept – every hedge trimmed exactly square, holly trees pruned into improbably perfect gum drops, the grass everywhere thick, verdant and cut to exactly one and one-half inches. It looked like a cross between a posh country club golf course and Forest Lawn Cemetery. That is, of course, if upscale country clubs and cemeteries in the United States had security like the American Embassy in Yemen. The entire JCC was surrounded by a nine-foot solid steel spiked fence. Every driveway was protected not only by huge steel gates in that fence, but also by a barricade of retractable solid steel bollards. More solid steel bollards, stationary ones, about four and one-half feet high and perhaps eight inches in diameter, were sunk deep into concrete footings on both sides of every driveway and similarly stretched like a line of tin soldiers across a small plaza where the main entrance was located. That consisted of two pairs of heavy steel frame, bullet-proof glass security doors with electronic locks, which opened not into the lobby, but into an area enclosed on all sides by floor-to-ceiling bullet-proof glass set in heavy steel frames, with another heavy steel and bullet-proof-glass door at the other end. Beyond that stood three armed guards.
Once inside, the help – or “Shabbat goyim,” as Jewish people call them – were mostly Hispanic; although I did notice several blacks. The were all wearing photo ID badges. This included the caterers, who, when we arrived, were dressed in tuxedos, handing out canapés and offering glasses of champagne to the adult guests.
The service itself was held in a large auditorium. There was a big wicker basket of blue yarmulkes by the entrance, so, being able to take a hint, I put one on before entering. Wearing that, I felt like an archbishop, because that’s the kind of hat they, the cardinals and the Pope wear when they aren’t wearing those big mitred jobs – sort of like Prelate Casual or something. Catholics call them “skullcaps,” but they’re really yarmulkes.
Cerise and I got very choice seats, on the second row. Up on the stage, there was an Ark, a table draped with a very fine, dark blue cloth, several microphones on stands, a lectern and four huge vases of very large flowers. On a chair near the table sat a middle-aged man, studying, as I was, the forty-two page program, a copy of which had been neatly placed on the exact center of every seat in the auditorium. Over five hundred people attended that ceremony, so just the printing charges for the program must have been enough to feed an Hispanic lawn and landscape worker’s family for at least three months. And a lot of those five hundred-odd people, I later learned, had traveled all the way from places like Singapore, Antwerp, Beverly Hills and Maui to witness the solemn ceremony that would magically transform a thirteen-year-old boy into a man. And the Protestants think the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is farfetched!
As the rabbi stood up, a hush fell over the assembly, and a thin, olive-skinned teenage girl with a truly angelic face, wearing what appeared to be a black pantsuit, strode onto the stage – or at least that’s what I thought I saw, until I realized that she was wearing a yarmulke, and that, my God, it was a boy, and not just any boy, that was the star of today’s show.
After the rabbi opened with a few introductory remarks, the kid stood up at the lectern and recited Psalm 133 in Hebrew. Hearing him speak, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the kid’s mohel had taken off a bit more than just the foreskin during his bris. Clearly, He Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken had His work cut out for Him on this particular Saturday afternoon. Transforming this stripling – the kind of lad that Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo used to paint, sculpt and fool around with – into a man would obviously require nothing less than a miracle. “That child,” Cerise whispered discreetly in my ear, “should not be wearing shoulder-length hair.”
The ceremony took over three hours, with a great deal of standing and sitting, chanting and singing, homilies and the recitation of sacred texts. It was a lot like Catholic Mass, but easier, actually, as there was no genuflection required. The Torah was ostentatiously removed from its Ark and handed to the young fellow, who walked down from the stage with it, up the aisle next to Cerise and me, where the mother’s side of the family was seated, across the back of the auditorium and then down the other aisle. Everyone turned to face the Torah as it moved around that enormous room, and those close enough to do so reached out and reverently touched its bright blue cloth cover.
The kid then returned to the stage, where the rabbi took off the Torah’s cover and the kid layed it down on the blue draped table. This particular Torah, the rabbi proudly told everyone, is six hundred and ninety-four years old, brought from Amsterdam to Philadelphia 1762. Then the kid took out a yad, which is a pointer used when reciting from the Torah, and told us that this is his favorite one, hand-made for him in Israel. While most folks there nodded approvingly, I sat wondering about what kind of thirteen-year-old boy has a collection of sacred Torah recitation pointers.
And so it went, for hour upon hour, ending, interestingly, with the Mourner’s Kaddish:
Yitgadal v’Yitkadash Shmey Rabah,
b’Alma Divra Khirutey
v’Yamlikh Malkhutey
b’Khayeykhon u’v’Yomeykhon u’v’Khayey
d’Khol Beyt Yisrael
baAgalah u’Vizman Kariv,
V’Imru: Ameyn…
Which, it was announced, was being said for none other than the recently deceased Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. So, I guess wherever it is Jews go when they die, if Ted ends up there somehow, they can’t say they didn’t invite him. And all I can say is, the minute he shows up, they better lock the liquor cabinets and hide the women.
After the ceremony, there was a truly impressive kosher buffet, featuring high-end versions of all the well-known favorites, including huge piles of the best lox and brisket from Baltimore; pastrami, sable and whitefish flown in from New York City on a chartered private aircraft; challa bread baked in Israel at the last possible minute, given the Shabbat restriction on the use of fire, then delivered direct by the helpful Shabbat goyim of DHL; Einstein bagels from Silver Spring, Maryland; and, Glatt kosher, free-range organic chopped chicken liver from California. At the bar, you could order anything your heart desired, and – here’s a something many gentiles don’t know – it was all completely open. That’s right, top shelf liquors and wines, and absolutely free of charge, because Jews aren’t supposed to handle money on Saturdays, especially during holy rituals. So if you like to drink, you get invited to a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah, and they say they’re going to have liquor or wine, you should go, because you will be able to tipple all night to your heart’s content without paying a dime. Not that the black bartender didn’t appreciate it when I slipped him a twenty dollar tip anyway – and I could do that, because I’m not Jewish, and neither, of course, was the bartender. So, as might be expected, all the cocktails Cerise and I drank that evening were prepared with extra care, not to mention generous portions of booze.
There was a band at the reception, and they played the usual stuff one hears at weddings and so forth. Cerise and I did quite a bit of dancing, but not many other folks there got out on the floor. I don’t know, maybe dancing is too similar to sports for most Jewish people to be interested in it. Or maybe hardly any of them ever bothered to take dance lessons, I don’t know. But everybody was pretty well oiled up on the free hooch by the time the band struck up “Hava Nagila,” a tune, the rabbi assured us when he took the microphone to introduce it, “that’s been Number One on the Jewish Hit Parade for the last four thousand years!” So, despite the general reluctance to dance the fox trot, cha-cha, salsa, or swing, four bars into that particular song, the dance floor was packed. In moments, a large circle of dancers holding hands had formed, with Cerise and me in it, and scant seconds later, someone ran in with a chair and placed it at the center. A heartbeat after that, Cerise’s old college friend dragged her son, the Bar Mitzvah Guy, now ostensibly a man, into the circle and plopped him down on that chair.
Then, the circle stopped moving around and around – it started moving in and out instead. And when the dancers approached the kid sitting in that chair, we crowded in around him and raised our arms high in a celebratory fashion; and every time we did that, the kid absolutely freaked out, throwing his arms up in front of his face defensively and reflexively cringing into the foetal position. One time, two times, three times… and on the fourth, the men rushed in, grabbed the chair and hoisted him high above the floor, where, in a matter of moments, as excited relatives ran forward to snap pictures of him up there, the terrified kid lost control of his bladder and bowels.
As might be imagined, that kind put of a damper on things. Some of the people had cell phones and digital video cameras, of course, so don’t be surprised if you see this young fellow soon on Fail Blog or somewhere similar. The kid, as well as several of the gentlemen who were standing right under him, had to leave early, of course. I managed to escape getting doused and splattered primarily out of pure, dumb goyishe luck – it was a solid, high-strength plastic, bucket-seat style chair, the kind with steel legs, and I had been supporting it from the back. Consequently, a quick trip to the men’s room to wash my hands was all I required, not, as some poor schmucks ended up, a hasty retreat to their homes or hotel rooms for a complete shower and a total change of clothes.
Not surprisingly, the band took a nice, long break after that crap came down, as it were. And while everyone was milling around talking and drinking as the Hispanic Shabbat goyim hurried in with mops and Pine Sol to clean up the dance floor, I struck up a conversation with a fellow named Norman, one of the kid’s uncles, who happens to be a psychiatrist.
“Does he, by any chance,” I asked, referring to the Man of the Hour, “have acrophobia?”
“What he’s got,” Norman told me with a sad shake of his head, “is an extremely over-protective, domineering mother.”
“Sort of an über-Jewish mother?” I replied.
“My sister,” he sighed, “loves her son very much. But anyway, eventually, he’ll be okay. Gay, maybe, but okay. He doesn’t have any serious mental problems, not like my patients do, no way. And let me tell you,” he confided, “this last week has been really, really rough.”
“How so?” I queried. “Is it because most of your patients are Jewish and it’s getting near Jewish New Year? Like Christians getting more mental and messed up around Christmas time?”
“No, no,” Norman contradicted, “it’s not like that at all. Most of my patients aren’t even Jewish. It’s this Marvel Comics thing.”
“What about Marvel Comics?” Stretching my imagination as far as I could, there was still no way I could see a connection.
“Ah, well,” he explained, “I work with a lot of psychotics, you see, and a significant portion of them have delusions of grandeur. And at the moment, I have over twenty patients who think they are one Marvel Comics super hero or another. I’ve got one who thinks he’s The Black Panther, another who thinks he’s Iron Man, three of them who think they’re Wolverine, about five guys who think they’re Spiderman, a woman who thinks she’s Susan Storm…”
“Who?” I’m not much of a comic book maven, and couldn’t quite place the name.
“She’s a member of the Fantastic Four,” Norman clarified. “Her super power is invisibility. This patient of mine is convinced she’s invisible. I say, ‘How can you possibly think that?’ She says ‘Well, when I walk into a room, nobody turns around to look at me, nobody says hello to me, nobody even seems to notice that I’m there. So, I must be invisible!’ What can you do with a case like that? Prescribe Thorazine and hope for the best. That’s all you can do, really. You can cure neurotics with psychotherapy, but talking to psychotics is completely useless.”
“And what’s got all these people who think they are Marvel Comics super heros so upset?” I pressed, at this point goaded by an increasing level of curiosity.
“The merger,” Norman sadly muttered in disgust.
“You mean,” I said, incredulous, “the Disney buy-out?”
“Yup,” Norman affirmed, taking a deep swig from his black Russian. “Just thinking about it is driving them all absolutely crazy; so to speak.”
“What is it about Disney buying Marvel Comics that’s bothering them?” I wondered.
“Well,” Norman shrugged, “think about it. Here you are, absolutely convinced that you’re the Silver Surfer. Your official biography says that you are, and I quote, ‘one of the noblest and most tormented cosmic entities in the universe.’ Your parents were misfits in the hedonistic Utopian society of planet Zenn-La, and when the evil interstellar overlord Galactus penetrated Zenn-La’s long-neglected defense perimeters, you were the only member of that society capable of dealing with the threat. You did that by cutting a Faustian bargain with Galactus, where, in exchange for the continued freedom of Zenn-La, you agreed to constantly explore the universe, seeking out new worlds for Galactus to conquer. Pursuing this strategy gradually corrupted you to the point where, instead of leading Galactus to energy-rich, uninhabited planets, you started leading Galactus to inhabited ones, eventually finding planet Earth, where you did battle with the Fantastic Four. During the conflict, you fell in love with a beautiful, blind sculptress, who sensed your inner turmoil and convinced you that humans are basically good and therefore worth saving. So you betrayed Galactus, aiding Uatu the Watcher and the Fantastic Four in their eventually successful quest to obtain the Ultimate Nullifier, a cosmic weapon of such awesome power, Galactus was forced to withdraw. But not before exacting a ironic but very appropriate revenge, trapping you forever on Earth with an energy force field specifically tuned to your life force vibration spectrum. And that, I might add, is just the tip of the iceberg. If you think you’re the Silver Surfer, then you don’t just think you’re a super hero. No, you believe yourself to be an extremely complex, conflicted, idealistic, multi-faceted character; a character, in fact, of sufficient nuance, depth and sophistication to rival any created by Thomas Mann, Herman Melville or Fyodor Dostoevsky.”
“It certainly sounds like it,” I admitted. “Maybe I should read more comic books. Is that typical?”
“You bet,” Norman confirmed. “Visit http://www.marvel.com and read the character biographies. They’re all like that. And then, on the other hand, you have Disney characters.”
“Like Mickey Mouse,” I suggested.
“Right, and as far as I can tell, Mickey Mouse doesn’t even have a biography.”
“I think Donald Duck has one,” I offered. “He lives in a place called Duckburg with his three nephews, Huey, Louie and Dewey, has a significant other named Daisy Duck, who lives with her three nieces, April, May and June, and an uncle, named Scrooge, who’s very rich and stingy, but nevertheless has a heart of gold.”
Norman imbibed a sip of his cocktail, nodded agreement, then spoke. “Absolutely correct. But that’s not a character biography. That’s nothing but the premise for a bad situation comedy.”
“I see your point,” I conceded. “But how about,” I pondered, “say, the Little Mermaid? She’s a pretty well-formed, complex character with a significant back story.”
“The Little Mermaid,” Norman pointed out, “was invented by Hans Christian Andersen. And she’s nowhere near as complex or contradiction-filled as a Marvel Comics character, either. But she’s a perfect example of what’s bugging my patients who think they’re Marvel super heros. Disney bought the rights to the Little Mermaid, a character who, in fact, did have a modicum of interesting, sophisticated elements – including, for example, a profound conflict between her desire for a long life on Earth and the possibility of possessing an immortal soul – and turned her into a totally vapid, superficial version of herself suitable only for generating box office revenues and bogus, money-pumped Oscar wins.”
“Oh,” I realized, “you’re saying that whenever Disney buys a character, Disney deliberately destroys it by ruthlessly seeking the lowest common denominator, taking away everything that makes it truly interesting and rendering it an impotent husk of what it once was!”
“Correct,” Norman agreed. “And what my patients are worried about is that Disney will turn them into a one-dimensional abomination like Goofy. Plus, because they’re insane, most of them are extremely paranoid, too, and a lot of them are convinced that once Disney has full control of Marvel, guys in black helicopters from Burbank are going to kidnap them and then force them to perform in a musical!”
“The Incredible Hulk on Broadway!” I exclaimed.
But before he could reply, Norman’s cell phone played the theme from M.A.S.H.
“Excuse me,” he wearily proclaimed, “but this is the phone number I only give to my patients… for emergencies. Yes? Of course it’s me, who else would it be? What’s the matter? No, no, don’t start with me about all that business again! Listen, nobody at Disney is going to take your hammer away and make you learn to tap dance, okay? Because you are not The Mighty Thor, that’s why! And furthermore, they’re aren’t any hidden messages in Hannah Montana videos about a Disney conspiracy to do anything even remotely like that to anybody! There aren’t any hidden messages of any kind in Hannah Montana videos, hell, there aren’t even any intentional ones, alright? Now, when was the last time you took your meds? See there? Just what I expected – you’re overdue! So take that Haldol dose you should have taken six hours ago, wait forty-five minutes and if you’re not asleep by then, call me back and then we can talk! Good. Fine. ‘Bye.”
“Oy gevalt,” Norman kvetched as he returned his cell phone to his pocket, “before this is over, the Disney-Marvel deal is gonna drive me totally meshuggenah!”