My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (47 page)

I iChat with Chappy about new posters we’re doing in time for Christmas. In the midst of that, Mewes drops by and tells me he’s going to play some UB. I ask him to transfer some chips into my account, so I can play alongside him, but my Virtual PC is acting buggy, so by the time I get on, Mewes has donked out of his cash.

Head down to Harley’s room and help her do homework, then spend a couple hours playing Hide and Seek and Go Fish.

At night, I talk to Annie on iChat about our kids and school, and then get infusion of cash into my UB account.

Jen comes back from Yoga and puts Harley to bed. I’m knee deep in UB, so she busies herself with other stuff. I watch
The Sting
in my office while playing, before moving to the bed, where I kiss Jen g’night, then crack open the laptop. I play UB while watching the
Roseanne
season one DVD box set, then close up shop around two and fall asleep to a TiVo’ed
Law & Order
.

Thursday 8 September 2005 @ 2:15 p.m.

I wake up and do some phoners for the
Rats X
DVD, then secure the details for the
Rats
signing with Lee, via email. Go over the signing with Chap and lock in Mahfood for live art show, then post the info on board.

I shower and head to VA office for an interview with a British network that’s named
Clerks
as one of the fifty funniest movies of all time and chit-chat with Smalls between takes. After we wrap it up, I head to the
Clerks 2
office for a meeting with Roseanne Fiedler, our costume designer (who was a wardrobe assistant on
Mallrats
), going over what Dante, Randal, Jay and Bob will be wearing. Meet with Scott and Laura about the schedule, then meet with Rat about production design.

Arrive home just in time to bring Jen to Asia de Cuba, where I sit with her ‘til Daniella Milton arrives. I head home and watch the Kinison tribute DVD while playing UB. Jen calls for her pick up, so I head back to Asia de Cuba, grab Jen, and head home. We bone for a little bit, then head upstairs to the kitchen where Jen makes Harley’s lunch for the morning, and we retire downstairs, falling asleep watching the
Roseanne
season one DVD box set.

Friday 9 September 2005 @ 2:16 p.m.

Dogs wake me up at seven, so I trudge upstairs, let ’em out, and go check email in my office, then play some more UB. I say g’bye to Harley as she leaves, as she’s heading to Big Bear with Gail and Byron after school.

Around ten thirty, I realize Larry’s running really late, so I leave a message on his cell phone that we can just skip the workout ‘til Monday. Instead, Jen and I take the dogs for my workout warm-up walk up the hill. Schwalbach being all sorts of in-yoga-shape smokes me, with the always energetic Mulder in tow, while Scully and I, the Fat-Ass Twins, do our slow ascent and descent.

Come back and chill in my office, checking the board and email, until it’s time to do an interview with the
Toronto Globe and Mail
about the
Degrassi
25th Anniversary.

Around one thirty, I take a shower and get dressed, and drive Jen, Mewes, and myself down to the doctor’s for cast physicals. Jen’s is done pretty quickly, but Mewes and I — who are run of show — have to give blood, urine, and get an EKG, so we take a bit longer.

We race back to the house to drop Jen off so she can head over to yoga, and she sends down her cell phone, which Mewes and I are going to replace today with a phone that actually rings. We head over to the new Schwab’s shopping complex on Hollywood and Vine, park, and head toward the Verizon store, getting sidetracked by the EB Games next door. I buy the
Spider-Man 2
and World Poker Tour games for my Nintendo DS, and well as
Batman Begins
for my Gameboy Advance.

We head to the phone store, pick out a new phone for Jen, and check out, which winds up taking almost an hour. While we wait, Mewes IMs with Annie and gets chips dumped into his account, so the plan is to go back to the house and play UB ‘til I have to meet Jen for our massages.

We pick up In-N-Out for Mewes, then head back to the house and play UB for awhile, ‘til I head over to Burke Williams, where Jen’s booked massages for us (sadly, in different rooms). I follow up my massage with a facial (not like that, you fucks), then head into Virgin, where I pick up Metallica’s
St. Anger
, Eric B. and Rakim’s
Gold
, Mitch Hedberg’s
Mitch All Together
and a Public Enemy
Greatest Hits
cd I’d never seen before. I drive home where I find Mewes asleep in his room. I start burning my new cds for my iPod while playing UB when Jen comes home. We both putter for an hour, before settling in for some Rummy and
Million Dollar Baby
, which I’ve been bugging her to watch with me ever since I checked it out back in December.

Post-flick, Jen goes to sleep to some TiVo’ed
Simpsons
while I play some more UB. When I donk out of all my cash, I start a TiVo’ed
Law & Order
and fall asleep.

Saturday 10 September 2005 @ 2:18 p.m.

I wake up and check email and the auction. I talk to Mewes upstairs for a bit, then head back to the office and post the artwork for the Ultimate View Askew DVD box. Afterwards, I hit the shitter and play
Batman Begins
on Gameboy, then go to work updating the online diary.

Jen goes to yoga and I chill out online, answering email and checking the board. I clean up my Mac desktop, putting pictures away in iChat, then jerk off to some pics of Jen, before showering and loading the Disneyland Submarine Voyage poster into the car to get re-framed.

I head over to the Valley, drop the poster off at the framer, pick up the new framed
Shag
print, then shoot over to the cleaner’s to pick up Jen’s dress, at which point I’m informed they didn’t start the alteration yet, and that I’ll have to come back at seven to pick it up before they close.

Call Jen on the way home to deliver the bad news, and she’s devastated, as she was counting on wearing that dress for the party. She goes into damage control mode and jumps off the phone.

Get home and find Jen tearing apart her closet, looking for a dress to wear. I lay on the bed and play more
Batman
, ‘til I hit the final level and can’t beat the Scarecrow. Jen comes out wearing a gorgeous dress I’ve never seen before, which she reveals she bought when we went to Japan, back in ‘03 and hasn’t worn yet. She looks truly dazzling, and I give the outfit the thumbs-up.

We head over to Jon Gordon and Catherine McCord’s wedding bash at Mexico City. Since Jon starts his new gig as President of Production at Universal October 1, Jon and Catherine have opted to do the whole wedding thing in reverse, honeymooning over the summer, having the reception today, and finally tying the knot in a small ceremony in Manhattan later next week.

They’ve set up an old photo booth so guests can take pics and paste them into a book of well-wishes, and Jen and I take a set for the book and a set for ourselves. Mewes and I smoke and chat outside, later joined by Jen, Chay, Julie, Judy and Miri. I see and talk to Ben and Jen for the first time since we wrapped
Catch & Release
, as well as Jenno Topping and Chris Moore. I hang with Mos and talk shop for a while, until the food comes, at which point I go outside with Jen to smoke and chit-chat. We head back in and do the rounds for another hour, saying hi to Phil Raskind, and of course, Jon and Catherine.

Around 10:30, I drive Jen and Chay home. Jen almost immediately passes out, and I head upstairs to play poker with Chay, Fanshen and Diego, during which we talk about Italy and Mewes ‘til two in the morning. Afterwards, I head downstairs and play
Batman
on Gameboy ‘til I go to sleep.

Sunday 11 September 2005 @ 2:18 p.m.

Wake up around nine and let the dogs out, then take what — now that I’ve been on the shake diet for a month — passes for a dump while playing the
Batman
game on Gameboy.

I check email and the board ‘til Jen gets up, then sit around chatting with her ‘til she asks me to make an In-N-Out run. I throw on some clothes and head downstairs, stopping at Mewes’s room to see if Chay wants anything as well. Mewes is there, so I recruit him for the ride, and we load the dogs into the car and head out.

Mewes and I bullshit about what he did last night post-party, grab In-N-Out for him, Jen and Chay, grab Burger King for the dogs, then shoot back to the house.

While they eat, we all sit around in the bedroom living room chit-chatting and checking out the birthday video Chay made for her father. I head to the bathroom and play
Spider-Man 2
on the Nintendo DS for a while, then lay down on the bed, doing more of the same. Chay and Jay head off, and Jen and I watch a review copy of
My Name is Earl
a journalist passed off to me, as well as the first two episodes of the new season of
Curb Your Enthusiasm
.

Earl
is a great, original show, and both Lee and Ethan are fantastic in it. There’s a
Raising Arizona
flavor to it, and Lee is pitch-perfect in the single-camera show. Mercifully, there’s no laugh-track, so it plays like a feature, and the premise — Earl has over two hundred mistakes he has to make up for in order to balance his karma — is such that if the critical gods keep smiling down (or up) at the show, it’ll run for years. This is one time you can believe the hype; even without my boys on the marquee, I’d still think this is the best sitcom I’ve seen since
Seinfeld
.

After watching the new
Curb
eps, we pop in the box set of last year’s
Curb
and get through two episodes before Harley gets home from Big Bear. Jen chills with Harley for a bit before she leaves for yoga, and then Harley and I head over to Westwood.

We stop at the Stash where I drop off the new Matt Potter in-store reel, and pick up a few hardcovers. Then, we roll over to Aahhh’s, where their Halloween section’s up and running already. Harley picks out a pirate girl costume, and we grab Snow White and Superman costumes for Scully and Mulder. We pay and head home, listening to
Some Kind of Monster
on the way home and wrapping up with Harley’s current fave, ‘Hollaback Girl’, before getting back to the house.

Jen’s back from yoga, so Harley wants to boutique her Halloween threads. I get Harley into her outfit and ta-da it for Jen, before heading upstairs to show Byron, Gail, Jimmy and Ween. I pop the dogs into their outfits and try to take some pics, but Mulder — who’s deathly afraid of cameras — slinks away to hide, a cowardly Krypto.

Chay makes Jen a salad for dinner, then spends the night, watching
Veronica Mars
eps. Jen puts Harley to bed, and we watch more
Curb
, during which Jen falls asleep and I play more of the
Spider-Man
game on the DS, ‘til I close up shop and hit the hay.

Monday 12 September 2005 @ 1:21 p.m.

Wake up, work out with Larry, shower, and then head over to the
Clerks 2
office, where I pick up Mos, Dave and Tony, and we head out to the location to start shot-listing.

We spend half a day shot-listing all the exterior scenes at the location, and when we’re done, we discover there are more planned shots in the first five scenes of
Clerks 2
than in all of the original
Clerks
.

We head back to the office where I drop the guys off and I shoot back down the 101 to home.

I get into the house and play a game with Harley before she goes to bed, then crash with Jen, watching TiVo.

Tuesday 13 September 2005 @ 11:13 a.m.

I get up, throw some clothes on, and drop Harley off at school. Then, I come home and do some
Rats X
DVD phoners, including a great one with Bob Grimm of
Las Vegas Life
and the
Reno News and Review
, during which we talk about how puzzling it is that the new generation of film school kids haven’t seen
Jaws
, much less
Do the Right Thing
.

I get in the shower, get dressed, and head over to Burbank to do some ADR [additional dialogue recording] on my
Veronica Mars
episode. The drive there is far longer than the ADR itself, which I hit in two takes, and I’m out the door and on the way home five minutes later, talking to my Mom on the cell en route.

I get back to the house and chill with Jen and Harley a bit before Larry comes by at 6:30 with his friend Jerrod, a guy who runs a pretty big t-shirt company. We spend the next three hours talking about doing a new Askewniverse line of t’s for Hot Topics.

They leave and I climb into my woobs, crashing with Jen, watching TiVo’ed
Simpsons
and playing
Batman Begins
on Gameboy before falling asleep.

Wednesday 14 September 2005 @ 11:13 a.m.

Wake up and work out with Larry, then do another interview for the
Rats X
DVD.

I shower and head over to the
Clerks 2
office, where I meet with Scott Purcell, the brilliant graphics guy we’ve used since
Chasing Amy
. I go over the shirt designs for Randal and Jay for a bit, then chit-chat with Roseanne about Becky’s costume before collecting Mos, Dave, and Tony and heading over to the location to start shot-listing the interiors.

Dave and I are shooting the shit out of this flick. We’re doing very little of the static two shots we did on the first
Clerks
, with a ton of hand-held coverage planned instead. What would’ve been one set-up on the first flick will now be five set-ups, minimum. This time around, the look of the flick will be as important as the performances and what’s being said.

We shot-list ‘til seven thirty, at which point Tony, Dave and Scott head back to the office and Chappy meets me at the location to lead me back to Graphitti Designs.