The Secret Life of Bebe

So we went to Armageddon over Easter weekend. For those of you not in the know, Armageddon is a “pop culture expo” … basically a geek-fest. Ostensibly it is giant store for people to sell their wares (comics, figurines, t-shirts, movies, games, swords etc etc etc), but  really it is SO much more than this.

Armageddon is a strange collection of geeks, nerds, emos, weirdos, and aged Trekkies (that would be me and Stephen). The thing that brings us all together is a shared love of comics, anime and sci-fi. To be completely honest, I am not into comics at all. I never really liked the chaotic nature of the comic – text and drawings all over the page. I prefer my words all in neat straight lines. This is a somewhat shameful admission for a self-confessed geek.

And anime is a strange form of art that I just don’t get. I suspect that it is very referential – in order to enjoy amine, you need to have a working knowledge of every other amine series ever made, and it helps if you can remember the plot of every Marvel comic ever produced. And if you spent your childhood drawing manga, that would also help. Having not done any of this, anime, manga, and comics in general just don’t do it for me.

So what the heck was I doing there? Other than experiencing the joy of watching Stephen and Megan pawing, nay *drooling*, over the comics, I was there for the Star Trek. Specifically, a panel of three Star Trek actors: Dominic Keating (Lt Reed from Enterprise), Rene Auberjonois (Odo from Deep Space Nine), and John Billingsley (Dr Phlox from Enterprise).

It was awesome. They were entertaining and funny, and the crowd asked interesting (and sometimes ridiculous) questions. It was fun to see the interplay between the Trekkies in the crowd (with their scary and exact knowledge of everything Trek) and the actors, who are certainly not that into the whole Star Trek universe. Case in point:

Trekkie: “Can you name all the star ships in the fleet?”

Dominic: “I couldn’t give a hoot” (or words to that effect)

John: “Well…there’s Enterprise…”

All-in-all we had a really great weekend. It wasn’t perfect (food always an issue; Megan could have had more coffee, earlier; our dorm room could have been a *little* bigger) but no-one got hurt and everyone had lots of laughs.

I’m a proud member of an all-nerd family 🙂