My Boring-Ass Life (Revised Edition): The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith (9 page)

The show goes great (and long). After which, Pete and Favs do a postmortem, I talk to Mark and his wife Marylou for a bit, say goodbye to Lee and JJ (the amazing Stan took off while I was taking a leak), and head home.

Jen calls me to ask if I could pick up a watermelon for Harley’s class project (they’re studying seeds), so I swing by Bristol to do so.

I get home around 11:00 p.m. just in time to watch some
Simpsons
and fall asleep next to Jen.

Wednesday 13 April 2005 @ 11:52 a.m.

Harley has a nightmare, and climbs into our bed, waking me up. I can’t fall back asleep, so I get up and head to the computer. It’s 4 a.m.

Around 4:30, I get up to take a leak and notice Harley’s back on the couch, sleeping soundly. Nice move, kid: wake me up in my bed then flutter back to sleep in yours shortly thereafter. Thanks.

The dogs get up around seven and look at me like “What’re you doing awake this early, asshole?” I let ’em out and get back behind the computer.

I run into John Sloss, my lawyer, on iChat. He wants to talk about the
Catch & Release
deal, so I head upstairs to call him (so as not to wake up the sleeping Jen and Harley). We wind up talking for an hour about a wide array of topics. When we’re done, I shuffle by the kitchen to discover Mewes, sitting at the table, smoking and playing online poker. I play over his shoulder for a few minutes until I hear the front door signal, which alerts me that Harley’s on her way out with Byron. I poke my head out the third floor window and yell goodbye to her down below.

Jen joins us and starts mixing up some coffee. Mewes, who’s been shooting nights and has just gotten home, is debating whether or not to go over to a girl’s apartment or crash in his own room. His libido gets the better of him, and he heads off. I follow Jenny downstairs and get back behind my computer.

I iChat with my Mom for a while and tell her about the
Catch
stuff while answering email and then head off to take a shower.

Mewes comes back from the girl’s house, and Jen, Jay and I opt for some Griddle breakfast. Jen takes her own car, so she can then head on to the mall afterwards and I can head over to Burbank for a
Star Wars
interview for a British documentary.

At the Griddle, we run into Bryan Johnson, Brian Lynch, Bryan Strang, Matt Kawczynski (Charlie, from
Big Helium Dog
), and
Degrassi
head writer Aaron Martin (who’s in town for some meetings). The Griddle folks give our party posse the back room, and we order, eat and joke around for the next hour, until Mewes wraps it all up because he’s exhausted and still hasn’t slept.

Jen heads out to the mall and I bring sleepy Mewes back the house. Since I’m already late for the
Star Wars
doc thing, I ask Gail to call them to see if I can head over later. It’s about 12:30pm.

I lay down to watch some TiVo’ed
Daily Show
s and check email and promptly fall asleep for three hours.

Jen gets home from the mall and wakes me up, reminding me that I’ve got the CNN “Showbiz Tonight” thing to do. I take a leak, get dressed, and head over to CNN.

At CNN, I chit-chat with the makeup lady Necca and the camera guy Patrick as well as Jeremy, who I believe is the west coast segment producer. Then, I head into the tiny room with the backdrop, camera and chair, and Patrick shoots me out, live to New York, where
Showbiz Tonight
is shot. They ask me to stick around for the Ryan Reynolds segment, so Patrick and I watch the show, ‘MST3K’-style, until Ryan comes on.

I head home, and tell the wife that I got off a “golden showers” reference on CNN. She’s not impressed. I climb into lounge-wear and we head upstairs for some chicken breast Byron’s grilled for dinner. Afterwards, Harley and I retire to the living room and set up the
Star Wars
lightsaber fighting game I picked up the other day. It takes about fifteen minutes longer than it should, because all these plug-in-and-play games have their battery compartments screwed shut nowadays. The game’s pretty bad-assed, though, and we get up to stage three before it’s time for Harley to go to bed. She’s bunking down with Nan and Pop tonight, so Jenny and I are free to... watch TiVo’ed
Law & Order
eps.

But not before I hit the board again. I’m in my office, checking emails and posts when Bryan calls to see if I wanna swing by Mewes’s set with him, as they’re shooting pretty close to where I live. I opt out.

After about two hours of
Law & Order
s, the phone rings. It’s Bryan, who tells me his harrowing (yet kinda funny) story about being car-jacked and kidnapped at gun-point right outside Mewes’s set. The jackers ran up to his car, gun trained on Bry, and demanded his wheels. Bry, of course, told them to take it, but the jackers told him to get in the back seat, as he was coming with them. They got on the 101 (from Highland), and asked Bryan where an ATM machine was. Bryan had them get off at Alvarado, where one of the jackers took Big’s ATM card and got money out of his account while the other stayed behind with him in the car, pointing a gun at my boy and telling him “This isn’t personal. We don’t wanna hurt you. Once we get the money, we’re gonna drop you off and keep your car. But if you try anything, I’m gonna shoot the shit out of you.” The other jacker got back in the car and wanted to hit another ATM, and at this point, Bryan gets out of the car, bewildering his captors, insisting they’ve gotten their money, so he’s done. He said he ran across the street to a liquor store and called the cops (and Mos, who picked him up). I’m so flabbergasted, I have to have him repeat the story. I thank Christ he didn’t get hurt and add that I’m suddenly really glad I didn’t go with him.

Around eleven, with visions of moving to another, safer city dancing in my head, Jen and I fall asleep to TiVo’ed
L&O
s.

Thursday 14 April 2005 @ 11:52 a.m.

I wake up around 7:30 to let the dogs out, take a leak, and hit the computer.

While I’m wading through email and posts on the board, Byron calls up to the room to ask if I can pick him up at the Range Rover dealership where he’ll be dropping off Jenny’s car for a checkup. I confirm.

I hear the front door beep at 8:15, which means Harley’s heading to school. I head out onto my porch to tell her goodbye, and Byron tells me he’ll give me a shout from the Range Rover place with an exact address.

I check some more email when the call comes in twenty minutes later. I get dressed, take a coffee order from the couch-riding/Poetry-Event-fretting Jen, kiss her forehead, and make for the front door, closely followed by Scully.

Scully takes the ride as I go to pick up Byron at the Range Rover service place. On the way home, we stop at Carl’s Jr. for some burgers for the dogs and a Low Carb Breakfast Bowl for me. Following that, we hit Starbucks for an iced latte for Jen, and Chi Lattes for Byron and Gail.

I deliver Jen’s latte and she gets ready for a hair appointment and some other errands. She takes my car (as her car’s being serviced) and heads off.

I hold down some iChats with my Mom, my brother, Chappy (my Stash West partner), Nicole (from
Degrassi
), and Ming. We take the tickets for the
Mallrats
public screening, and Scott IMs to remind me we’ve got a lunch date.

I shower and get a ride down to the office, where Scott and I watch some
Mallrats
re-edit he’s been working on, and then head over to The Palm for some lunch steak.

After lunch, we stop over at Laser Blazer and pick up the new DVDs. Afterwards, we cruise back to the office and continue the
Rats
edit ‘til six, when Mosier has to head out. He gives me a ride home, and I find Jenny in the bathroom, getting ready for her 6:30 Poetry Event meeting with Daniella and Russell Milton.

I head to the bathroom, then sack out on the bed and go over posts on the board while watching some TiVo’ed
Daily Show
s.

Around nine-ish, I head upstairs to pop in on the Poetry Event meeting. We talk about the possibility of making a few seats available to board members in the LA area, and go over the order of the readers for a bit before Jen heads downstairs to put Harley to sleep on our couch. I walk Daniella and Russell out, close up shop upstairs, and join Jen in bed. We watch TiVo’ed
Simpsons
‘til we fall asleep.

Friday 15 April 2005 @ 11:53 a.m.

I wake up at Jen’s behest. She’s telling me to let the dogs out. It’s nearly seven.

I take a leak and hit the computer to update the online diary. Byron intercoms around 7:30 to wake Harley up. I wish him a happy birthday.

I open the curtains as Jen climbs out of bed to gently wake Quinnster. She takes her downstairs to get ready for school, and I go back to the computer.

I hear the front door, so I go out onto my office deck to say goodbye to Harley. When I go back inside, Jen and I start talking about the Poetry Event some more before she has Byron and I moving the blackjack table and sundry other pieces of furniture down to the library to clear up space in the living room.

I do something in the morning that I now can’t remember (it’ll come back to me), but I know I was doing something, because I remember getting home and the dogs being gone, picked up for doggie camp for the weekend.

Jen and I bicker a bit before she heads out to her mani-pedi-facial appointments at Burke Williams. We go back-and-forth about whether to take Byron out for lunch or just barbecue at the house before he heads for Big Bead midday. Jen finally decides we’re gonna barbecue, and says she’ll pick up some steaks from Bristol on her way home from her appointments, but before she picks up Harley, who’s getting out of school early for a half-day. We bicker some more, and Jen’s off.

The hundred or so folding chairs are delivered, and Gail calls up to ask me if Jen wanted white chairs or not. I tell her I’m not sure and call Jen at Burke Williams, because I don’t wanna let chair one into the house if she didn’t pick white chairs. After a few minutes, they track her down and I ask her about the chairs. She sounds frazzled, and says she thought it was some kind of emergency that they dragged her out of her pedi over. I counter with it’d be an emergency if she came home and found a hundred chairs she didn’t order sitting in our living room. She signs off on the white chairs, so the white chairs start coming in.

When Jen gets home, we bicker some more (this time over the Burke Williams emergency phone call), and I head upstairs and fire up the grill. Gail’s made Byron a birthday cake shaped like a pair of skis, so that’s our steak follow-up. We sit down to the earliest family dinner on record and do the cake and candles thing afterwards.

We say goodbye as Byron loads Harley and Louis into his truck, headed up to Byron and Gail’s Big Bear cabin for the weekend, skipping the Poetry Event altogether.

Jen and I hang around the house for the rest of the day, getting the living room in shape and moving stuff around. After much discussion about opening the event to some LA board folks, I throw a message up on the board about five tickets up for grabs, requesting some info from each applicant.

While I’m working on the board, Jen’s holding a marg-tasting meeting upstairs with Chay, Bryan Johnson, Darrin Johnson and Brian Quinn, the Issacs for the Poetry Event (when they pour, they reign). Brian Lynch also comes by, and I head upstairs to join the boys in the kitchen while Chay and Jen chill in the living room. The men grill Bry about his carjacking, and we make copious jokes about all the head Bryan could’ve given to get out of it. A good time, as they say, is had by all.

The boys leave and, with Harley in Gail’s room for the night, Jen and I bone hardcore and fall asleep to some
Simpsons
.

Saturday 16 April 2005 @ 11:53 a.m.

Poetry Event Day. The dogs wake me up around eight-ish. I let ’em out, then hear Jen rustle and rise as well. With the whole house in pre-event mode, we skip breakfast.

I run into Mewes in the kitchen, where he’s smoking and playing some online poker at
UltimateBet.com
— his new favorite pastime. I watch for a bit before heading back downstairs to my office to check email and deal with the board folks who’re interested in attending the Poetry Event.

Cookie and Catherine McCord arrive early to start preparing the food. Jen asks Mewes and I to move a table from the foyer up to the deck, so we do so. Upstairs, I find Cookie and Catherine knee-deep in food prep and Jen setting up the outdoor martini bar. We all take a break and sit around on the deck, where I grill Catherine about her fiancé, Jon Gordon, our Miramax homeboy. Mewes is sitting with us, but he’s rocking UB on his laptop, somehow managing to make out the screen despite the massive sunlight beating down that makes it almost unreadable.

Mewes joins me in my office with his laptop, still in the thrall of UltimateBet. After months of seeing him play and hearing all about the heady wins and bad beats, I ask if I can give it a shot. He lets me play on his laptop for a bit, and I’m instantly hooked. I give him back his laptop and jump online on my desk-top, hell-bent on buying a downloadable version of Virtual PC for Mac (UB isn’t a Mac-friendly site) so that I, too, can become part of the poker action. Problem is, I can’t find anyone selling it for instant download. My only option is to head over to the Mac Store, but I dare not attempt it, lest Jen rip my head off for trying to do something other than getting ready for the Poetry Event. I IM Matt Potter who’s got Virtual PC on the G4 desk-top I bought him last year in exchange for editing the
Tea Party
doc, so he uploads a copy to our server site.

While it’s downloading, I’m playing at the site on Mewes’s laptop. Jen comes in to the office to tell me it’s time to get showered and ready for the Poetry Event. After two warnings, I do so, and air-dry at the desk-top while I pull together some notes for each speaker’s intro, as well as some opening remarks.

From about six o’clock on, as I hit and re-hit the IMDB for my intro material, the door phone’s ringing like crazy and I’m buzzing people up left and right. I finally head upstairs to give Jen the cordless phone so she can be on door duty. While there, I see Bryan Johnson, his brother Darren, and Brian Quinn — all of whom Jen’s recruited to work the bar at the event. Zak and Joey and their friend John are also in the house, handling the door and the crowd.