Diary of an up and coming sociopath

After two days of hanging around relaxing (comic box excursions aside) I ended up cramming what, for me, amounts to almost an entire month’s social activity into 1 day.

The journey begins at 9:30am, which was the time I had planned to leave. When you lead such an action packed life as I do, sometimes it’s hard to go to bed, which makes it even harder to get out of bed the next morning. Still, I managed to get back to Leamington, drop Nikki off and pick Josh up, and then drive us to the NEC. While Nikki and I were in the car, Jonothan Ross was on and the conversation came around to computer games. You may not know, but I’ve been playing the Taito Classics CD a lot recently, and saying how Bubble Bobble is a great game that I’ve been playing for almost 20 years, as well as the sequel Rainbow Islands, so after last night’s comics diatribe on his TV show, I was even more delighted to hear him single out those two games as his favourite examples of gaming above the current crop of things like GTA and Halo. It just goes to prove that if you take away Jonothan Ross’ charm and charisma, you’re basically left with me.

Besides the customary “wandering around the NEC and getting totally confused by the unhelpful signs” portion of the journey, it was all smooth sailing. We get in about 1pm, and stayed until they closed at 5, which was probably the longest we’ve ever stayed at a Memorabilia. Part of the reason was because this time, it was bigger than ever, in an almost unbelievable way. They had actually added an extra section of convention hall which easily equalled the size of Expo (that we went to in London) and this is for an event already 2-3 times the size of that. Part of that contained the Red Dwarf guests in their own stand, and the rest contained some really excellent retro gaming stalls that were selling all kinds of NES, SNES, and other console games. Even now, I regret not buying SNES SF2 Turbo for £3 when I had the chance, especially since they’re always going for twice that on eBay.

I didn’t find the specific things I was after (Missing Generation X issues, Adult Swim DVDs/Figures) but I did get myself a copy of Mallrats X. Buying DVDs of films I already own sets a dangerous precedent, but this version is significantly different from the other so as to make it alright if you’re a proper Smith afficianado. Which I am. Plus you only have to look at Josh and his multiple copies of any film with the word “dead” in the title and see that I’m nowhere near as bad as I could be.

Speaking of which, one of the reasons we went was to get Josh his George Romero signatures. I continued my career as a photographer of other people with celebrities they are getting to sign stuff and got him this which I think we can all agree, is my best work to date, mainly because my fingers aren’t at all in shot. I don’t know why the hell people keep giving me cameras.

Romero himself was surprisingly like I’d expect Stan Lee to be, with an odd combination of boundless energy and the suggestion that they’re about to drop dead at any second. He did a Q&A session we attended and Ken Foree (He was in Dawn of the Dead, and also played Keenen’s Dad in Keenan and Kel) talked mainly about how even in the 50s Romero didn’t kill off the black guys in his films like some directors did, and how the fact that the black guys and women survived in his films displayed a progressive influence that Romero didn’t seem so certain about. I think he just knew black and female actors were cheaper in those days. And probably still are really.

After the nerdism was over, we stopped off at the Stoneleigh carvery so I could have some dinner, before going back home. I picked Nikki up, dropped Josh off, and then headed down to Oxford to Rachel and Seb’s party, where we met many interesting people the names of whom I’ve almost entirely forgotten, but that’s because I’m shit with names rather than a reflection of the quality of the company. It’s fun going down there (even without the cake that was there this time) but there’s often a deep self-consciousness welling within me that I’m not in University and it was a student party. I don’t want to become the sad old git clinging to studenthood, but then the only parties I went to when I was a student were organised by people who were out of University anyway, so maybe it’s not really clinging onto, so much as compensating for. Oh god, the ravages of age.

By the end of the evening, except for the people who left to go to a club (at the Zodiac. The depressing reminder of the Zodiac.) we were the last to leave again. Clearly I am a party animal. Maybe not as rowdy as a Party Gorilla, but perhaps some kind of Party Marmoset or Tapir. By the time we left at around half one, I felt like I’d been going non-stop since half nine in the morning and after the drive home I basically passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Socially conflicting subgroups is an issue that’s bound to come up in a far more tangible manner when we go and see Patrick Stewart perform a Christmas Carol. I bought the tickets today. Call me insane, but any booking page which lets you select “Judge” and “Rt. Honourable” from the dropdown list of Titles seems to be courting a higher social class than the “barely out of University, debt-ravaged middle class” group to which I belong. I don’t have a clue about the ettiquette. When he walks on stage should I whoop? Is shouting star trek-based catchphrases considered a faux pas*?

Even the receipt I was e-mailed was classy, because it hyphenated “today” as “to-day” which is the sort of thing I only even see in Jane Austen books. I half-expected it to begin “I hope this order confirmation finds you well.” Clearly, the way they write their e-mails has not changed since the 17th century. Hilariously, there was also a link attached to the e-mail which offered police advice for people travelling into London, since clearly if you’re upper class enough to go to a play, you’re rich enough to be scared of the gangs of criminals who roam the streets of London. Watched out you bastards, we’ll be sitting RIGHT ABOVE YOU! We got balcony tickets for the 9th, so we’ll be sitting with the other riff raff at least. I suspect we’ll do well to invest in some binoculars if we want to see anything decent.

*For the non-French speaking amoung you, “Faux” means False, and “Pas” means thingy, so “Faux Pas” means “False Thingy”