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I’ve been sampling many workshops at the Convention Center, and I notice that whenever I sit down on a chair next to a chair with someone else’s stuff on it, and the owner of that stuff is sitting on the other side of that chair, they always tap the top of their stuff in a subconscious gesture of territoriality. I also observe that a man with one leg (he walks with crutches) and his wife seem to arrive at every single workshop that I attend. Hmmmmm. I’m beginning to get suspicious. Obviously, I’ve seen too many spy movies.

A cartoon in the 1991 convention program showed two rooms where lectures were being given. The attendees in the room featuring “Do It Yourself Porn: Make Your Own XXX Movies” were overflowing into the corridor, while the room featuring “Socio-Political Ramifications of Current Trends in the Erosion of Civil Liberties” was empty, except for the baffled lecturer. It was a nice touch of self-deprecating humor, an exaggeration not too far from reality. At this ’97 convention, porn actress Nina Hartley’s “So You Want to Throw a Party: Recipes for a Successful Orgy” attracts ten times more audience than attorney Bob Burke’s “Sexual Politics: A Behind the Scenes Look.”

Unfortunately, one workshop, “The Undertone of Sexuality in the Star Trek Series,” has been canceled— “due,” someone added to the

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