When I First Decided I Wanted To

Only Love Could Pick A Nested Pair Of Steel Bramah Locks.

It Drains The Bars And Cafes After Hours, Concentrates The Wicked And The Guilty Along Its Chipped Formica Counter, And Thrums With The Gossip Of Criminals, Policemen, Shtarkers,and Schlemiels, Whores And Night Owls ... Three Or Four Floaters, Solitaries, And Drunks Between Benders Lean Against The Sparkly Resin Counter, Sucking The Tea From Their Shtekelehs And Working The Calulations Of Their Next Big Mistake.

There Are No Moments More Painful For A Parent Than Those In Which You Contemplate Your Child's Perfect Innocence Of Some Imminent Pain, Misfortune, Or Sorrow. That Innocence (like Every Kind Of Innocence Children Have) Is Rooted In Their Trust Of You, One That You Will Shortly Be Obliged To Betray; Whether It Is Fair Or Not, Whether You Can Help It Or Not, You Are Always The Ultimate Guarantor Or Destroyer Of That Innocence.

... And Because It Was A Drunken Perception, It Was Perfect, Entire, And Lasted About Half A Second.

There Was A Sort Of Irony In The Fact That These [superhero] Characters - Many Of Whom In That Period, The Golden Age, Had Been Evolved To Fight The Nazis - Were Themselves Very Much In The Nazi Ideal. The Idea That You Can Solve Problems Through Physical Strength, By Being Stronger And More Dominant And More Powerful - That Is Fascism. I Mean, That's It, That's The Essence Of Fascism. I Don't Think The Creators Of The Superheroes Or The Kids Who Were Reading Them At The Time Were The Slightest Bit Aware Of It.