My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (72 page)

The contest ran for twenty-four hours, so by the end of page twenty-one of twenty-seven pages worth of entries, we had all the eligible contestants. There were some great ones, yes; but most surprising is how many people apparently think alike. By the end of the list, however, I was pretty convinced the name of the flick should remain simply
Clerks II
.

But that’s not to say there weren’t some clever-ass fuckers dropping suggestions.

Honorable Mentions went to...

John for his naughty suggestion of:
Clerks II: Slapping the Meat in the Buns

Gonz for his even naughtier:
Clerks II: We Touch Your Meat

Milke for his ingenious wordplay of:
Clerks II: Eclectic Burger Crew

Gav for his sexily suggestive: Clerks II:
Meat in the Mouth, Not in the Hand

Hunter for taking it old school with:
Clerks 2: All Holes Filled With Hard Clerks

The Jer for his McDonald’s-inspired:
Clerks II: I’m Loathin’ It

Adam for the pretty funny:
Clerks II: Too Thick to Suck

Mike for the simple fucking brilliance of:
Clerks II: Fuck You!!

Owen for the alliterative:
Clerks II: Contempt and Condiments

zombieplatypus for the very cute:
Clerks II: Hapless Meal

2 Cows Fighting for a personal fave:
Clerks II: Toss the Salad

Ashley for the Pierce Brosnan call-back (and oddly on-point):
Clerks II: Dante’s Peak

Jennifer for the “Snakes on a Plane” riff of:
Clerks II: Clerks in a Restaurant

Josh for the literary:
Clerks II: Purgatorio

Jason for the Matty Damon referenced:
Clerks II: The Bored Supremacy

Jennifer for taking me back to high school with:
Clerks II: Hot Beef Injection

CJ for the true double-entendre of:
Clerks II: Eating Out

ElvX for remembering his film history with both:
Clerks II: The Phantom Lettuce
and
Clerks II: The Frying Game

One, Two, Three and to the George for the porn title:
Clerks II: Hot Beef, Warm Buns, Special Sauce

Kelvin for the ever-fun:
Clerks II: Fry Harder

Rodger for his pimp-daddy suggestion:
Clerks II: You Got Served

And a pair that were on the same page: Gonz and Ward for the good and slightly improved subtitles of:
Clerks II: Back for Sloppy Seconds
and
Clerks II: Sloppy Seconds
respectively.

But the grand prize winner — the dude who walked with the stinky-ass pair of sneakers, signed and personalized — was Joe for his timely (and pretty film-appropriate) suggestion of:

Clerks II: Counter Terrorism

Honorable Mention winners didn’t walk empty-handed either: they’re getting a
Clerks II
can cooler in the mail!

Good times, good times.

Sunday 7 May 2006 @ 9:03 p.m.

Yahoo has a button for a sneak peak at
Clerks II
on their front page. When you click on it, it brings you to another page where you can peep a bunch of pics from the flick.

The holy
New York Times
put up their summer movie preview, and a pic of Jay and Silent Bob rides the top of the page. This is cool online, but the pic was even bigger in the actual, old-fashioned newspaper version in the Sunday edition of the
Times
this morning.

In
Entertainment Weekly
, I got a shout out on their Must List (Ten Things We Love This Week). Number six was the blog-site My Boring-Ass Life, of which they wrote “Kevin Smith’s no-holds-barred online diary is like his best films: raw, openhearted, and mordantly funny.” In the mag, there’s a nice picture of me having what I can only describe as a bad hair day.

However, on the back page of
EW
, Stephen King does a weekly column, with the current edition being a piece detailing his summer movie predictions.

Alright, they’re not King’s predictions; they’re the predictions of a guy he calls ‘The Longhair’. But being that this is the guy who’s also worked under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, I’m not convinced The Longhair isn’t, in fact, King himself.

Regardless, The Longhair predicts this summer’s hits and misses, and under the heading Flop City (below
The Omen
, An
American Haunting
, the Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston flick
The Break-Up
, and M. Night Shymalan’s
Lady in the Water
), he lists
Clerks II
. Of it, he (The Longhair) writes “In
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, Major Toht tells Indy, “That time is past.” He might have been speaking of the
Clerks
franchise. Uh... what franchise?”

Some folks on the message board at my home-base,
ViewAskew.com
, thought I might be pissed at
Entertainment Weekly
for running this. But I got no bones with
EW
. Aside from the two times they’ve given My Boring-Ass Life a shout-out on their Must List, they also hyped
Clerks II
at number ten in a feature last week entitled The Ten Movies We Can’t Wait to See, and gave us a nice write-up in their Summer Preview issue.

I also have no bones with someone named ‘The Longhair’ opining that
Clerks II
will flop. You mean to tell me there’s someone out there who doesn’t give a tin-whistle about the flicks I do? I’m shocked...

However, the irony is that
Clerks II
CAN’T flop. Since our entire budget was five million bucks, if the flick makes ten million bucks theatrically, we’re successful (and that ten million theatrical doesn’t even include the DVD windfall that’ll eventually follow; our flicks do extremely well on DVD).

And there’s DEFINITELY ten million bucks worth of theatrical box office out there for us — maybe a little more than ten million, actually (
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
opened to eleven million the weekend it opened in August 2001, on its way to a theatrical gross of thirty million; and
Strike Back
cost fifteen million more to make than
Clerks II
did).

So when folks like The Longhair poo-poo the theatrical prospects of
Clerks II
, they don’t come off as offensive to me; they come off as more misinformed than anything else. The Longhair can chicken-little it all he (or she) wants, but
Clerks II
will never have an apartment in “Flop City”.

Clerks II
won’t see
Superman Returns
,
X-3
or even
Snakes on a Plane
-type box office numbers, granted. But relative to the flick’s budget, it’ll mint some nice coin, to be sure.

However, box office-shmox office: what really counts is whether a flick stays with the viewer after they’ve gone home, and for how long. Considering the fact that, twelve years later, there was still enough love for/interest in
Clerks
to warrant a
Clerks II
, I’m hoping the latest installment in Dante and Randal’s (complete lack of) adventures earns the same amount of affection, if not more. Keep the theatrical grosses, I say; I’m all about longevity.

Except, y’know... in bed. As my wife will tell you, I’m a five minute-max-kinda-guy there. But they’re some of the sweatiest, fear-of-being-crushed-inducing five minutes my woman has ever known.

So I got THAT going for me.

Johnny Rotten vs. Stan Lee!

Tuesday 9 May 2006 @ 4:02 p.m.

On Friday, 29 April, we held a Spoken Word Event at my house to benefit the arts program at my daughter’s school. Let it never be said that I’m not a philanthropist, okay (but if anyone calls me a philatelist, they’re gonna get punched; I fucking hate stamps)? Because we raised twenty grand for that neediest of causes: kids in private school.

This was the second such event we’ve hosted at the house, the inaugural outing being last year, back when it was dubbed The Poetry Event. This year, I wanted to move away from calling it a Poetry Event and move toward something edgy and cool,
à la
Spoken Word Event, because Poetry Event just sounds too... gay. And I don’t mean gay in that awesome, cock-sucking way. I mean gay in that horrible, boring-ass, lame, straight, breeder kinda fashion. See, I’m a friend of the gay community. I’ve always maintained that I’m just one cock-in-the-mouth shy of being gay myself. And I understand why gay dudes crave a big, luscious dick: hung like a kindergartner as I am, I, too, have always craved a big, luscious dick myself. Sadly, my thirst will go forever unquenched.

When I was a kid, I’d see movies about Hollywood parties and read articles
about Hollywood parties (usually in
Hustler
) that portrayed any Tinsel Town get-together as merely an excuse to have an orgy, replete with pounds of blow and unnatural sex. But last year’s Poetry Event was a real eye-opener for me: I thought a few folks would rattle off some “Two roads diverged in a yellow woods”.type shit, and then suddenly, BAM! An explosion of jism, with spunk criss-crossing the room, creating a veritable spider-web of bodily fluids. Naturally, I wouldn’t have partaken in the debauchery myself, as I’m a happily married man. But, fuck it — I like seeing shit go into other shit, so I’d have been more than happy to watch all that dirty boots-knocking (preferably from beneath a glass table). Sadly, however, I learned that Poetry Event isn’t code for Wife-Swapping. It means exactly that: Poetry Event.

For this year’s event, we had so many requests for tickets that we over-sold the show, and roughly 100 people at $200 a pop got to cram into my living room and peep an impressive roster of readers, all of whom did a bang-up job busting with the stanzas and iambic pentameter. I was the emcee, and here’s how I introduced the evening’s readers:

As police psychiatrist Dr. Emil Skoda on three of the four different
Law & Order
incarnations, he’s helped convict tons of felons, and as Vernon Schillinger on HBO’s
Oz
, he gets to rape all those felons. He’s worked with both the Coen Brothers AND Spider-Man, and since he’s also the voice of the Yellow M&M in those M&M commercials, he’s the only guy here tonight who can get away with the pickup line: “I’ll melt in your mouth, not in your hands.” Ladies and gentlemen... J.K. SIMMONS.

Our next reader’s the only person here tonight who’s been a guest on
The Love Boat
,
Hill Street Blues
,
Murder, She Wrote
,
LA Law
AND
Doogie Howser, M.D.
As Hank Kingsley on
The Larry Sanders Show
, he introduced “Hey, now!” into our lexicon, and he played both George and Oscar Bluth on one of my all-time favorite shows,
Arrested Development
. Give it up for a star of stage and screen, and a funny motherfucker... MR. JEFFREY TAMBOR.

I’m pretty sure our next reader is the only cat in the room tonight who’s been on the stage at the World Famous Apollo. He’s just finished his first season on
Saturday Night Live
as a full-fledged cast member and he’s got a comedy DVD coming soon called
I’m Snap Famous
. Give it up for the man from Hot-Lanta, Starkisha himself... MR. FINESSE MITCHELL.

Our next reader is the first of two living legends in the house tonight. Nobody knows who created the Greek gods of myth, but when it comes to twentieth-century mythology, we can all say we KNOW who created some of the biggest icons of pop culture history: Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the X-Men. And since he also created Daredevil, I will always owe this man for providing me with a bottomless well of ‘Ben Affleck in tight red leather’ jokes. He’s a gentleman, a scholar, a friend, and the hottest eighty-four year-old piece of ass you’ll ever see. The star of
Mallrats
, ladies and gentlemen... MR. STAN LEE.

Our next reader is one half of the comic duo Girls Guitar Club, so finally we’re getting someone up here who doesn’t have a dick. Besides me. You’ve seen her on
Mr. Show
, you’ve seen her on
The Larry Sanders Show
, you’ve seen her in
Dude, Where’s My Car?
but most folks probably know her as the CTU tech analyst Chloe O’Brian on the show that’s not habit-forming at all,
24
. Let’s hope her poem is called ‘Does Jack Bauer Get Out of the Baggage Hold With the Cassette Tape?’ Ladies and gentlemen... MARY LYNN RAJSKUB

Keeping the dickless mojo we’ve got going on now, our next presenter taught an entire generation of girls that it was cool to carry a laser blaster and wear your hair all fucked-up and stupid. In 1987, she published her first novel,
Postcards from the Edge
, and then followed it up with
Surrender the Pink
,
Delusions of Grandma
and
The Best Awful There Is
. She’s been in tons of movies, written the Academy Awards, and she’s a mom. I’ve always wanted her to tell me she loves me while I was being lowered into a carbonite pit, just so I could offer her a pimp-like nod and say “I know”. Give it up for an over-achiever... CARRIE FISHER.

Our next reader brings a screeching halt to the all-dickless reader streak we’ve been on, but while he’s all man, he’s also been known to get tarted-up a bit. In the year 2000, he took home two Emmys for his brilliant standup show
Dress to Kill
that played every other hour on HBO. If you haven’t seen his prior shows
Definite Article
and
Glorious
, you’re a fucking disgrace. He’s played both Lenny Bruce on stage and Charlie Chaplin on film, but he’s a legend in this house for introducing the phrase: “Cake or death?” into our lexicon. One of the funniest human beings to ever walk the earth, ladles and jelly-spoons, I give you... EDDIE IZZARD.

Next up, we’re gonna drop a fucking Academy Award-winner on yer asses who’s gonna hobble you dirty-birds with a cockadoodie reading. She taught us how to scream “TOWANDA!” in
Fried Green Tomatoes
, busted-dust in
Primary Colors
, and hot-tubbed with Nicholson in
About Schmidt
. And if that’s not impressive enough, she’s also directed a shit-load of episodes of
Six Feet Under
. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the one and only BoBo... KATHY BATES.