Victory!

#433234 on the list of things I never expected to happen: My mother calling me after an episode of Entourage to say,

“Oh my god, it was like my life was onscreen!”

My mother, whose only contact with the entertainment business was when she was friends with a guy who starred in a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie. My mother, who watches way, way, WAY too much cable TV. She counts on HBO and Showtime to keep her hip. It’s touching, really, because she watches this stuff in part to understand the world my brother and I inhabit. But sometimes it gets disturbing, like the time I told her about seeing Glenn last August and she asked, “Does that count as a deja-fuck?” That was when I took the remote control away from her and hid it in the basement.

Anyhoo.

The real reason she said that, of course, was ComicCon. My mom’s been attending similar conventions for years because, in her spare time, she writes science fiction. She’s pretty good at it—two of her books were published when I was about 13. For a while she let my brother and me tag along when she hit NorEasCon or Arisia and, once, WorldCon when it was in the booming metropolis of Springfield, Mass. You really have to see these conventions to understand what they’re like. Hotels full of people dressed up as their favorite book/movie/TV show characters. Lots of elf ears and Vulcan ears. Ballrooms full of vendors selling chain mail, authentic Star Trek uniforms, fantastical jewelry and things like stuffed dragons that are based on creatures in the Anne McCaffrey books. It’s pretty amazing and scary and impressive. And scary.

My father thinks the whole Con thing is nutty. He watched the Entourage episode, too. He got on the phone and asked one question: “Where are all the fat, unhappy people?”

I hung up before my mother could bring up the Pussy Patrol, or the strap-ons. Really, mom, I don't want to KNOW.