Mother's Day

I have been a big fan of animated sitcoms ever since I started watching The Simpsons . . . when it first started in 1989 . . . and I was five years old.

I love them for their sharp humor, colorful designs, and the way they can covertly tackle topics that live action shows can't.  One of my favorite shows is Futurama, about a pizza delivery boy who gets cryogenically frozen on the eve of Y2K and wakes up in the year 3000.  I started watching it in high school and stuck with it through two cancellations and four direct-to-DVD movies.  Indeed, Futurama is responsible for my marriage.  I met my husband at an event for Jewish grad students.  Futurama is his favorite show of all time, and he was instantly smitten with me for my ability to quote the show verbatim.  For our first Halloween together, we went as Fry and Leela, the show's main romantic couple.

But it is almost Halloween, and I am not here to talk with you about romance.  I am going to talk with you about Futurama's villain--Mom.

Mom is the CEO of MomCorp, a large corporation that she uses to amass her fortune and monopolize the world's resources.  One of the businesses she owns is Mom's Friendly Robot Company, which manufactures all the robots in the world.  She can use this to her advantage, inciting a robot revolt with the push of a button that she keeps in her bra.  In interviews, she speaks with in a sweet grandmotherly tone and wears 1890's style clothing.  In private, she wears a skin-tight catsuit and reveals her ugly personality through colorfully vulgar language.  She has three bumbling sons that she berates when they inevitably fail in their tasks.  Sometimes it looks like she will rekindle her on-again, off-again relationship with Professor Farnsworth, but the relationship always ends when Farnsworth remembers how evil she is.

A few weeks ago, &Stitches announced they were doing a "Fictional Villains Stitchalong."  I immediately had an idea--an embroidered portrait of Mom with one of her famously filthy quotes:  "Jam a bastard in it, you crap!"

I'll admit that I briefly considered a line from a deleted scene, "Make that bitch your bitch, you bastard!"  My husband felt that this one was more creative in its use of swears.  When I showed him the finished product, he said, "This is why I love you so much."  Clearly, sharing pop culture is the secret to a successful marriage.