Interesting end to the week. Very draining, all told, particularly when my Thursday magazine - all 176 pages of it - came together in the space of about 2 days because of the lateness of the Editorial. On Tuesday, my designer was still waiting on 20+ pages worth of stuff. She also got shouted at by the Editor because of her use of a texture in the background of something or the other. Possibly not 'what the magazine is all about', but certainly not worth shouting about. My boss is getting quite tired of that Editor, and so has arranged a meeting with the Senior Manager on the Production/Editorial side and the Senior Editor to complain that, while people are supposedly 'aware of the problem' and that it's all being 'looked at', nothing has actually been done... and the Senior Editor's repeated (literally every month) assurances that "it'll be better next month" have counted for precisely nought.
After work, I went off to the Tate Modern, for the exhibition called 'Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera'. It had passed me by completely that one of the Property Salespeople at work had been talking about it during the week, and had dismissed it as "pornography, all the way through". While there was certainly some nudity involved (OMG! Nekkid penis! Boobies!), none of it was remotely pornographic - simply a selection of photographs (in one of the 7/8 rooms of the exhibition) taken while people were performing sex acts. There's an important difference.
For one, much of this exhibition was utterly tedious. I'm sure the 'artists' found their own photographic hijinks appropriately thrilling and/or amusing but, to an outsider, the 'projects' were without focus (no pun intended) and generally quite inane. It didn't tell me anything about the human condition, or reveal anything of the innermost thoughts of the subjects. One series of photos were taken of occupied homes in the early hours, when all their shutters were closed and curtains drawn. The artist supposedly hoped to sell the photos to the occupants of those houses. He obvious didn't realise how creepy his idea was.
Or maybe he did. Strange folks, artists.
Today, I trotted along to the London Film and Comic Con, at Earls Court 2. I've only been to one or two of these, and the previous one(s) weren't too impressive but, having found this year's early London Expo to be a complete bust, I figured it'd be worth giving it a shot.
Organised by the folks behind Collectormania, it boasted a similarly bewildering selection of guests, including the Right Honourable Sir William of Shatner. Not that I was there for the stars, or the potential autographs.
Oh, no. I was there for the shopping.
I wasn't expecting much, but I was exceedingly pleased with what was there. The usual suspects - Retro GT and Genki Gear - put in their welcome appearances (so tempting to get the Turboload Tape T-shirt from the former... and possibly a new Speccy T-shirt), and one of the good TransFormers stockists was on hand to supply me with my haul for the show - Leader Class movie Starscream (awesome!) and Voyager Class Payload (aka G2 Long Haul - actually far preferable to the movie Long Haul as Payload's paint job is infinitely better, and evokes the G2 Constructicon perfectly), and also deliver the news that Auto Assembly is very close to beating it's own attendance record, set last year. Weekend Entry now seems to be the only option, should I wish to attend. I'm still considering the logistics... I know the train route, I know a nearby hotel (Rule One of conventions based at hotels: Never stay in that hotel), and I could easily trip up on the Friday night and come back on the Sunday afternoon...
I also picked up Megatokyo volume 6, and a Darkstalkers tribute artbook. Didn't spend half the money I'd taken with me, but the show was definitely worth attending. Strangely, the atmosphere was better than the London Expo - not so much elbow, all round.
Not quite so many Cosplayers, either... but ExCeL has much more room for them to glomp in.
The DC Comics gallery was pretty excellent, and Nintendo's Wii/DS stand showed only a couple of new games versus their stand at the Expo. Didn't stay for any of the talks/panels, but those things are rarely of much interest to me.
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