My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (15 page)

As I finish getting the diary current, Jen hits the shower for her girl’s-night-out with Harley’s teacher and some other class moms. I’ve been slated to do the Morgan Freeman thing tonight, dropping her and Cricket off at Orso’s. I hear the front door and wave to Harley, who’s going out to eat with Nan and Pop at the Cheesecake Factory. Jen finishes getting ready and offers me a peek at her outfit (she looks stunning). She pops her tiara on; we pack Mulder and Scully into Byron and Gail’s room with Louis, and head off to grab Cricket.

After I drop the girls off, I try to figure out what to do with the two or three hours I have to kill before pickup. I call Burke Williams about getting a massage, but they’ve got me on hold so long that I give up. I stop at Book Soup on Sunset to see if the new
Empire
is out (it’s not), then opt to head home.

I let the dogs out on the patio, then grab a bite in the kitchen. I head downstairs to check out my TiVo options, and settle on a
Saturday Night Live
from 1980 (the barely-watchable Denny Dillon/Charles Rocket year before the rise of Eddie Murphy).

Jen calls, and I head over to the Valley to grab her from Orso’s. I say hi to the mom-squad in attendance, then whisk Schwalbach away because I’m parked in front of a fire hydrant. Jen wants to stop at In-N-Out on the way home, so I grab an iced tea.

We get home, get into our jammies, then crash, watching some TiVo.

Saturday 30 April 2005 @ 11:17 p.m.

I get up around eight-ish, with Jen having let the dogs out already, apparently. I take a whiz then head to my office to check email and the board and start pulling stuff together for the radio show. Jen wakes up and says g’morning, but I’m knee-deep in pulling music for the show. Mewes calls to ask if Jen wants any Coffee Bean. He’s babysitting his friend’s Bulldog, Charles, and wants to know if he can bring the mutt by. Gail intercoms up to let us know she and Byron are heading up to Big Bear to check on their place.

I finally emerge from my office and head upstairs, where Harley and Reyna are watching Mulder adjusting to Charles out on the deck. We throw the pink bone for Mulder, and Charles chases it too. When we throw it in the pool, Mulder dives in after it, leaving the heavy-breathing Charles flummoxed. For the next half hour, we conspire different ways to get Charles to jump into the pool as well, including Mewes going in in his underwear, trying to lure Charles into following. Nothing works. Jen joins us, and we move some patio furniture around before I go downstairs to throw on my workout gear and hit the treadmill.

I do an hour on the treadmill, watching
Deadwood
. When I’m done, I take a shower and go upstairs to fix some chicken salad. I bring my grub downstairs and suck it down while laying on the bed, playing UB, and watching some TiVo with the couch-riding Jen.

While my IM’s open, I see Lynch pop up and ask him if he wants to do the radio show tonight. He’s into it, so I tell him to be at the house around 9:30 p.m. Edgar Wright calls soon after to let me know he’s in town. I ask him if he wants to come by the radio show, and he’s into it, too. Alice Morning Show producer Matty Staudt calls to tell me he’s on the 405 and heading to the room we booked for him at the Renaissance. I tell him I’ll pick him up there in a few.

I swing over to the Renaissance to pick up Matt. After I grab some gas, we go to my place. I give him the tour, then we hit the living room and start mapping out the show a bit, pulling news stories and listing the order of the music I’ve put together.

Around seven-ish a dressed-up Jen and Harley show up, signaling our departure. I leave Matty upstairs and head over to an engagement party for Harley Quinn creator Paul Dini and his fiancée Misty Lee, held at
Batman: The Animated Series
producer Allan Burnett’s house. We chill for an hour, before heading back home, where we find Brian Lynch waiting outside.

Brian and Matt chat about the show, and I burn some cds with all the intro music I wanna use for coming back from commercials. Jen puts Harley to sleep on our couch and I kiss her g’night before going upstairs to collect the guys. After Jen wishes me good luck, I kiss her and head over to the Wilshire Blvd. KLSX studios. En route, we hit In-N-Out and Carl’s Jr. for some pre-show grub.

We get to the studio and Mike meets us in the lobby. Mike’s gonna be working the phones for us. He shows us into the studio, when Matty suddenly realizes he didn’t bring any headphones. Oddly enough, headphones turn out to be a precious commodity at a radio station: there are none to be found. Mike and our board operator for the night, Dick, scrounge up enough cans for me, Bri, Mewes and Matt, as well as a pair for our eventual guest, Edgar. I’m going over all the stories we’ve pulled when Mewes shows up. Matt’s giving Mewes the overview of the show when Dick tells us the CDs I burned won’t play. I tell him they’re MP3s, which is problematic, as the studio doesn’t have a computer to play them on. Inexplicably, I’m thrown by this, because I’m not into any of the intro music Matty’s pulled. But there’s no time to fix the problem, as Dick is giving us the wave, indicating it’s time to go on the air.

We have a haphazard start to the show, but by the second hour, we’re in a good place with the whole affair.

I discover that I don’t like being the front-man of a radio show. I liked my three days on Alice because it was Sarah’s show, and she got to steer it, while I simply followed her lead and got to chime in with the funny. But I find myself in the Sarah role with Brian taking the role I was more comfortable inhabiting: that of sidekick. Riding shotgun, I discover, is way easier — because all you have to do is tag-up on the leader. If you go back and listen to the Alice stuff, that’s all I did for three days. And that’s a lot more fun for me.

Mind you, I don’t want to take anything away from Brian or Mewes, who were great and did what they were supposed to do. But I learn that I’d rather be a guest or second banana. (It’s really not that different than the Q&As: in that situation, the audience is in charge, and I’m just tagging up on what they say, in the form of story-telling.) If I were to do the radio thing again in the future, I’d wanna be paired up with someone like Sarah — who’d be in charge of running the show. In radio, I think I’d rather just be a sidekick.

Post-show, Mewes, Brian, Matt, Edgar and I do a post-mortem. Mewes heads off and I bring Edgar, Matt and Bry with me. We drop Edgar off at his hotel, then Matt off at his, then swing back up to my house where Bri’s car is waiting. Lynch heads off and I go inside, chuck on the woobs, check the board reaction to the show and go to sleep.

Sunday 1 May 2005 @ 11:19 p.m.

I wake up around ten to find Jen getting ready. Harley and she are going to grab some Jerry’s in the Valley and pick up her new glasses. I tell her I wanna go too, and jump in the shower. I get dressed, we collect Harley, and we’re off.

We eat at the crowded Valley Jerry’s, then head over to the Riverside Mall where Jen gets her glasses. She looks amazing, but I’m predisposed to dig her new look, as I’m soooooo into a cute chick in glasses (witness Brandi at the start of
Rats
, Serendipity in
Dogma
, Justice in
Strike Back
, and Maya in
Jersey Girl
). While mall-ratting, I grab some new running sneakers (to cut down on the blisters I’m nursing from the treadmill) and Harley plays at the indoor playground for a bit, before hitting a few of the fifty cents rides. While Jen picks up some Harley summer outfits at the Gap, Harley and I hit the Disney store, where we load up on
Stitch
barbecue stuff for me and
Violet Incredible
bathing gear for her. Jen finds us and we take off for the nursery down the road, where Jen picks up a gift for Cookie’s birthday. While I wait in the car, Mewes calls me to let me know he’s going to get a tattoo.

As we’re heading home, I’m overwhelmed by the sudden shit I have to take. I drive like the Bandit to get to the house just in time to let ‘er rip into the bowl.

I get back to my room and Harley’s already taken up residence in our bed, watching
SpongeBob
and coloring. I join Jen upstairs in the kitchen where she’s smoking, checking email, and watching a disc from the
Raymond
season three box set. I have a bit of low-carb ice cream and make a pitcher of decaffeinated iced tea. I down two glasses while getting caught up in
Raymond
(I don’t understand why his wife doesn’t just fuck him all the time; but I guess their lack of sex is what most of the show’s best jokes are predicated on), then embark on a pantry-cleaning mission that’s infectious enough to recruit Schwalbach as well. It becomes her gig, so I make some chicken salad and watch
Raymond
.

Jen decides she wants to go to Bristol to grab some sushi, but I decline, as I’m feeling like round two of my colon-blow is on its way. She brings Harley with her instead, and I sift through the DVDs in front of the bedroom TV, looking for something I can white-noise in the background while I update the online diary. Eventually, I settle on TiVo, and go back to watching that really bad
SNL
from 1980 (Christ, is it bad).

Jen and Harley return, and Quinnster takes the TV over again. We watch
SpongeBob
while I post. Jen calls down from upstairs to tell me to get the camera ready as Mewes is coming home with his new tat.

I’ve moved from the bed to the now-empty couch (as Jen’s upstairs still) to continue blogging when Jay arrives. We head into the bathroom to remove the bandages and see what the new tat looks like.

I intercom up to Jen who comes downstairs for the unveiling to Harley. Harley is captivated. Both she and Jen coo over the spine-length tat of her moniker, and suddenly my forearm tag of ‘Harley’ seems a bit low-key. I take some pics, rebandage Mewes, and he heads off, having completely stolen the hearts of a pair of chicks in their pjs.

I post the tat pics, then check some email before Jen reminds me it’s 7:15 p.m. I get dressed and head out to Improv Olympic on Hollywood Blvd.

At the Poetry Event, Jeff Garlin (who most folks know from
Curb Your Enthusiasm
and
Daddy Day Care
) invited me to join him at this show he does every Sunday night at Improv Olympic, a small comedy club a few blocks from my house. It’s a standup show that’s generated by the audience: there are three comics who get up and talk a bit about themselves, then someone in the audience suggests a topic, and one by one, the three comics on stage take turns on the mic, making with the funny based on the suggestion.

Jeff maintained it was something I could do in my sleep (based on having peeped
Evening With
), so I took him up on his invite. When I show up at the joint, I’m not so sure. I’m not a comic; what am I doing at a comic’s club NOT sitting in the audience?

I greet Jeff backstage and he goes over the program, then introduces me to the third in our party tonight: Andy Dick. As I’m a huge
News Radio
nerd, I’m delighted by this. I think about doing the fan-boy thing and doing Matthew’s ‘Little Billy’ lines from the
Talent Show
episode back to the guy who played Matthew, but think better of it and let the man eat his Baja Fresh dinner in peace.

Jeff goes out on stage and does his intro and about fifteen minutes of standup. Then, he introduces me, and I get my first glimpse of the house: it’s a smallish room with two levels that seats maybe 100 people max. I flash on the one and only time I ever attempted standup, back in ‘91, at an open-mic night at Rascal’s Comedy Club, between the Monmouth and Seaview Square Malls in Eatontown. Though it did spawn the “you sucked your own dick” convo in
Clerks 2
from a routine I did that night, I was not good at it. At all.

It’s always weird when folks who attend the Q&As tell me “you should do standup”. Doing Q&A is simply answering questions posed, so there’s a give-and-take with the audience; they’re really the enablers, as without their queries, I cannot give replies. Standups have it much, much harder, as they’re expected to get up and just generate, without any assist.

So I launch into a Q-less A, in which I talk about my day a bit, and dove-tail into some well-honed Q&A stuff, and shockingly, I go over well. I step off the stage and Andy goes on to do his intro, while backstage, I talk to Jeff about movies and heading up to Vancouver at week’s end.

Jeff brings us both onstage. Andy and I sit while Jeff takes the mic and gets the suggestion from the audience. The suggestion is: “dentists”. Jeff does a really funny ten minutes on everything but dentists, and then gives me the mic. I tag up on what Jeff was talking about (he ended with being Jewish), and do some Jewish stuff that dovetails nicely into my
Passion of the Christ
stuff, and hit on dentistry, which dovetails into my
Lord of the Rings
stuff. I kill with both, and give the mic to Andy. Andy does a fantastic fifteen minutes on being a tour guide in Chicago at the Water Tower and masturbating behind a screen that showcases a slide-show there (I can’t do it justice), as well as a great bit about doing laughing gas at the dentist’s office (even funnier). He kills, and gives the mic back to Garlin, who teaches us all a thing or two about stream-of-consciousness conversational comedy.

Before I know it, the night’s over. We have to give the stage up to a comedy group called Cog, but it’s my turn up at the mic. I’ve got five minutes, and I have
to follow this Garlin/Dick tandem bit about Andy’s drug problems vs. Jeff’s foodaholism which fucking killed. I can decline and let Cog come on five minutes earlier or take the mic for five minutes and risk ending our show on a less funny note than these two pros. The bar’s set pretty high, so the safe bet is to not be the closer. So, like a jackass, I get up and go for it.

And I’m so glad I did — not only because I would’ve always wondered what it would’ve been like had I chosen to not follow Jeff and Andy’s genius bit, but also because it’s the closest I’ll ever get to doing something death-defying. I have no interest in hang-gliding, rock-climbing, or parachuting out of a plane now, because I’ve known the sheer terror and adrenaline rush of trying to be as funny as two standup pros who just finished rocking the mic so very thoroughly.