My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (2 page)

I go through the morning email, while watching a series of TiVo’ed
Simpsons
, while Jen continues to organize the poetry reading fundraiser we’re hosting at the house for Harley’s school.

FedEx delivers a box of
Silent Bob Speaks
books, courtesy of Kristin Powers at Talk/Miramax Books. I peep ’em out and re-read the introduction.

An awesome two-hour session of afternoon delight with the wife.

We go back to email/board stuff/general bid-ness while
The Pirates of Silicon Valley
plays in the background.

Shower at around 2 p.m.

Head to the food store with Jen to pick up some barbecue fodder for dinner.

Drop into Harley’s school to watch the end of her karate class. Harley breaks a board. I start to fret that my kid can kick my ass.

Do a phoner with producer of NPR segment I’m to tape the next day, in which I interview Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller about
Sin City
. We go over the points we want to make sure I hit during the chat.

I barbecue up burgers and chicken, while Byron handles the swordfish.

Family dinner. We’re joined by Chay Carter.

I head downstairs to watch some TV and read the board. In the process of doing so, I fall asleep at around 8 p.m.

Jen wakes me to go pick up Malcolm at the airport. Mewes and I make the trek out to LAX and pick up the Good Load himself.

On the drive home, we crack one another up with the outlandish premise built off Mewes’s meeting with Erin Gray (Wilma Deering from the
Buck Rogers
TV show) the previous day. Ms. Gray had generously invited Mewes to a ComiCon over in the UK in June. Mewes and I turn it into a what if scenario: what if Mewes gets there, only to discover that he’s to dress up as Twiki from
Buck Rogers
, in complete Twiki costume, minus a face-plate. For the three days, he’s expected to follow Ms. Gray around, doing his best Twiki impersonation, never mentioning that he’s Jason Mewes. Mewes ups the stakes by insisting I go as well, only to discover the Con’s insisting I hang off a chain around Mewes’s neck and play the role of Dr. Theopolis. We riff on this for the entire ride home.

Back home, me, Mewes, Malcolm and Jen sit around the living room and chat for a bit, before me and Jen turn in.

Tuesday 22 March 2005 @ 12:07 p.m.

I get up around 6 a.m. with a wicked piss-boner. Jen’s still sleeping, so there isn’t much I can do with it. Jerking off isn’t an option, as Harley’s taken to sleeping on our couch. Two months ago, in an odd turn of events, she deemed her room too spooky, and refused to sleep in it. To accommodate her, Jen gave her the choice of sleeping anywhere else in the house that made her feel secure, so long as it wasn’t Nan and Pop’s bed, Mom and Dad’s bed, or the couch in Mom and Dad’s bedroom suite. First, Harley test-drove the living room couch. Then, it was the library floor. And just as she was settling into the guest room, Mewes moved back in, thus negating the guest room as an option. Mewes offers to pay Harley for the use of her room (which is much bigger than the guest room), but Harley insists on keeping her bedroom as her “playroom”, while seeking a place to sleep elsewhere in the house. Somehow, that’s become the couch in Mom and Dad’s bedroom suite, which means Jen and I have lost a bit of the freedom we used to enjoy at night: Jen’s freedom to smoke in bed or on her couch, and my freedom to watch movies with the volume turned way up — not to mention the freedom to wake up and tug one out if I feel the need, prior to the Schwalbach midday special.

I make the dreaded morning climb up the stairs to let the dogs out on the
patio, take a leak, then head to my office to check email and read the board.

Harley wakes up, then wakes Jen. I kiss her goodbye and Jen gets Harley ready for school. I continue to putter online.

Malcolm gets up and we all chit-chat in the bedroom for a while before heading out for breakfast at the Griddle. We check to see if Mewes is awake yet, but he’s still out cold (for the curious, Mewes tends to sleep in his clothes).

After breakfast, we speed home, and I jump in the shower. Following that, Malcolm and I head over to the NPR studio on Jefferson in Culver City.

On the drive, I talk with Matty, the producer from the Alice Morning Radio show, who’s gonna help me with a four-hour test-drive broadcast I’m gonna do in LA the second week of April, if everything works out.

We get to NPR where I meet up with Robert and segment producer Jim Wallace. Robert and I cram into a small recording booth while the techs get Frank Miller on the line from NYC.

Interview goes great. It’s about an hour long, and we cover the
Sin City
books, film, and ethos. Both Robert and Frank are articulate, eager speakers, so the hour flies by (Frank tells me I out-Catholiced him on my
Daredevil
run, which I find kind of funny). After we wrap, Jim tells me he’s now gotta somehow cut the piece down to eight minutes for NPR broadcast (the entire interview will run on NPR’s website shortly after the piece airs). I pick Robert’s brain about using Troublemaker’s Austin facilities for
Ranger Danger
(as always, he’s very accommodating and encouraging) and Malcolm and I head back to the house.

Jen, Malcolm and I sit around bullshitting for a while and re-heat some of the leftovers from last night. Jen’s off to the store to pick up some missing ingredients for a Bunny cake she’s making for Harley’s Fairy Tale Ball tomorrow in school, and Malcolm and I head to the Dome for a three o’clock tech scout with my Stash West partner in crime Bob Chapman, Q&A shooters Zack and Joey, and the Dome rep, Bob.

We tech scout the Dome with the very helpful Arclight folks, and figure out where folks are coming through, when the marquees are going up, what the schedule is gonna be, where the video projector will be stationed, the chairs for the various Q&As, etc., etc.

Malcolm and I head home in the pouring rain and find Mewes playing online poker. Based on the pouring rain, we opt out of the poker tourney at the Geisha House we were supposed to hit tonight at nine.

I find Jen upstairs slaving over the Bunny cake, then head down to the bathroom for a half hour shit/Nintendo DS session.

We order up some pizza and Jen and I settle into some TiVo.

Talk to Jeff on the phone for about a half hour, going over Vulgarthon and
Clerks 2
stuff.

Call Dwight, too.

We put Harley to bed and head upstairs to the living room. We watch an episode of
The Office
with Malcolm before digging into a little
Amongst Friends
. Mewes joins us after a bit. Twenty minutes in, I start taking shit from everyone else for making them watch the flick. I must be high or something, because I still think the flick’s pretty watchable.

Jen and I head back downstairs and crash watching TiVo’ed
Law & Order
s.

Wednesday 23 March 2005 @ 12:07 p.m.

Fucking dogs wake me up again. This time I first take a leak in my bathroom (fuck them, I’m going first), then trudge up the stairs and let ’em out.

I hit the computer for a bit before Jen and Harley get up. When they wake, I’m rushed into the shower for a trip to Harley’s school. Since Jen’s got a facial at eleven, we take separate cars to the school. Malcolm and I are charged with safely delivering the Bunny cake.

It’s Fairy Tale Breakfast day in Harley’s class, which means that all the kids dress up like their favorite character and load up on eggs, sausages, donuts, cookies, juice, etc. Harley goes as Tinkerbelle. Me and Malcolm show up after Jen, and Byron and Gail follow us. Mewes wakes up late, yet still manages to get to the school in time to catch some costume action. Malcolm just about passes out when he sees Johnny Depp in the class. Depp’s there to peep out his ol’ lady and kid doing a reading of the classic Mulan fable (not the Disney version). Since he’s currently shooting those
Pirates
sequels back-to-back, the Deppster’s sporting silver-capped teeth beneath his facial scruff. He seems a little shy but very in love with his family. We exchange a very quiet “‘Sup”, as he heads off to his Valley-side set.

After an hour or so, we escape the Fairy Tale Breakfast, and Mewes, Malcolm, Jen and I grab some Griddle. Jen breaks away early to hit her appointment, and Malcolm and I head over to Laser Blazer on Pico to pick up this week’s new DVDs.

On the way back, I stop at the Sprint Store to pick up a new phone. Unlike my last trip to a Sprint Store, this time everyone’s pretty helpful, and we’re out of there in half an hour, phone in hand, complete with old number switched over and address book intact. Oddly, a guy who waited on me and Mewes in a Sprint Store back home in Eatontown now works at this Sprint Store out here. While I’m checking out, I’m chatted up by another Jersey relocator (this one from Wayne). Jersey represents big time, with three out of the ten people in the store hailing from the Motherland, which reminds me that I’m heading home next week. I take a pic with a non-Jersey guy who sped my order along, and we’re off.

We hit the office. I have a long convo with Phil and Mos about Panasonic, Final Cut Pro, Apple, and whether or not we wanna shoot
Clerks 2
in digital.

I take a few minutes to talk to Devon at
Newsweek
about a possible
Revenge of the Sith
piece they might want me to pen, and then I hit the Avid and start digging back into
Jersey Girl
to pull together the longest cut of the movie I can for Vulgarthon. What I assume will take an hour winds up taking six. It’s a real walk down Memory Lane, as I’m seeing footage I haven’t seen in at least two years, so long ago was some of the stuff dropped from what would eventually become the movie.

Ten cases of the Silent Bob Speaks books show up at the office, and Mike lays them out for signing. Jen and Harley stop by on their way home from school to inform me that Harley took first place in her Karate class for an exercise in which she performs a series of moves (chaka, is it called?). Jen’s had a hardcore facial (not like that, you fucks...) that leaves her skin very sensitive, so much so that we stretch our lips out cartoonishly to kiss, so as not to have my beard scratch her.

Over the course of my editing day, Mos, Malcolm and Phil head off to other stuff, leaving me and Biggie Smalls to hold down the fort. I finally wrap up the rebuild and head home around 7:45 p.m. to drive Jen over the hill to a girl’s-night-out dinner with her friends.

Back home, I dig into some barbecue with Harley, Byron and Gail. Mewes shows up, and after I set Harley up in my bed with a new
Dora
DVD and the heat on, I head back upstairs where me and Mewes finally tackle a dining room table full of figures, comics, and posters that’ve been waiting for our signatures since before England. We listen to some King Diamond and talk about the flick he’s starting the day after V’thon — an indie flick called
Bottoms Up
, co-starring Paul Walker and Paris Hilton. Jay’s a little nervous, as he’s the lead, but feels that by day two or three, he’ll be settled into a groove. During a music change-up (from Black Metal to late eighties pop), I tell Jay the story of that summer of ‘89, when Bryan, Ed and I couldn’t get into a party to save our lives, even though we were non-troublemaking non-drinkers.

I head to my office (the one in the master bedroom suite) and check some email for a bit when I get the call from Jen to come pick her up. Back over the hill I go.

On the short ride home, Jen’s lamenting over how her face feels like it’s been sun-burned, courtesy of the deep facial. We hold hands and listen to some Dave Matthews’ ‘Crash Into Me’.

We move the out-cold Harley from our bed to the couch and pop on some TiVo. We skip the nookie, as her face is still hyper-sensitive, and we can’t kiss. Jen’s out within five minutes of hitting the bed (after a nearly-fruitless quest to find some ice to rub on her face). Locked out, Malcolm rings the door at around midnight. I let him in then head back upstairs and fall asleep to a TiVo’ed
Law & Order
.

Thursday 24 March 2005 @ 12:07 p.m.

Fucking Mulder and Scully. Today, they wake me up at 6:45 a.m. I take a leak, let the dogs out, and then head to my desk-top computer to play catch up with the board diary-thing.

Harley wakes up and joins me at my desk. We watch the
Madagascar
trailer a record eleven times in a row before she heads off to find Pop and breakfast.

I jump onto iChat and IM who I assume is Walt regarding the
Silent Bob Speaks
book, and having a bunch in stock for next week in the east coast Stash when I’m back there for the Count Basie gig. Turns out it’s not Walt but Mike Zapcik (Helpermonkey). We get 400 books ordered and I tell him that, post-Basie gig, I’ll come back to the store for a signing, if they feel like staying open. They’re down with it.

I’m still on iChat holding down convos with Ming, Helpermonkey and Joey (her appearance at Vulgarthon’s up in the air, as she may have to leave for Arkansas earlier than expected to start the flick she’s directing — which, as you might imagine, is quite the bummer), when I get an IM from Jon Gordon’s assistant Leslye about having lunch with Harvey Weinstein that afternoon. Suddenly, the balance of the day changes.

Jen wakes up and summons me and Gail upstairs for a family meeting regarding Easter. Turns out we’re having twenty people over for the early dinner, and Jen wants to go over the menu/figure out who’s coming exactly and what we need. Malcolm’s in attendance too, and he not only comes up with a helpful suggestion regarding feeding the masses Easter Sunday, but also volunteers to go pick up the near-pristine 35mm print of
Chasing Amy
I bought over the phone yesterday for the low, low price of less than five-hundred bucks. This will save me a trip to Palmdale.

Somebody posted on the board that, in his blog, Zach Braff reacted positively to my revelation in the press that I’d love to cast him as Fletch in
Fletch Won
. I forward Jon Gordon Zach’s reaction, and he gets me Zach’s number.