Sunday, July 24, 2005

King Tut-and-Yawnin'


We went. We saw. We went home.

The "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibit has been in Los Angeles for a while now and we finally went to see what all the hoopla was about and in my eyes, well, I'm sorry to report that there isn't much at all to hoop and hollar about.



I really had no expectations for the exhibit. Lee Leman asked if we wanted to go and I thought it'd be a cool thing to cover on my now-pretty-much-defunct website. However, like many stupid museum stuff, cameras were not allowed. So Timotei and I tagged along anyway; even though the ticket price was pretty damn steep ($35).

The thing is that I don't really have any interest in King Tut nor Pharaohs nor Egypt nor tombs and stuff. Hell, I didn't even much like The Mummy movies. So I went in not knowing what to expect and with very little knowledge of King Tut's history.

The history was interesting enough after I read about it throughout the display; and yes, there was a shotload of reading. King Tut was king since he was around 10 years old and died when he was 19. His death is a mystery. I'm not sure what he did that made him so significant, but meh, I didn't really care.

The museum exhibit was sort of ho-hum because to be honest, it wasn't really that cool looking at the artifacts. I could have seen the whole thing on a Discovery Channel special on TV and been happy. Nothing there was a *must-see-in-person* thing. In fact, if you can't make it to the exhibit in its limited run, just go to the official site and view the pictures of the artifacts there. There, I saved you thirty bucks.

So you see a bunch of old busts, jewelry boxes, canes, and figurines and you finally come to the room dedicated to Tut's burial chamber and... they show you a projection of his mummified body. Very anticlimactic.

Throw in a half a billion people all trying to look at the tiny displays and it just wasn't worth the time or the money. Maybe I'm just spoiled because you can see the same types of things in the Met at New York, with far less crowds, and take pictures with them. The only difference is the brand name. All you get in New York is a generic Pharaoh; the Dr. Skipper of Egyptian kings. But hey, it sure as hell doesn't make a difference to me.

It's okay though. I can now tell all my friends that I saw the King Tut exhibit and they'll reply, "Oh really? What do you want for lunch?" Lousy uncultured swines.



Biding my time,

Ricky
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