37 Posts. ...in a row?!?

It's 5am, August 3rd, 2007*, and Molyneaux and I just got back. I'm still hopped up on a vente can of chilled java juice and I'm rarin' to tap out a Very Special Blaug Entry....



This is the 37th Post here on The Tauz Blaug, and I'm wicked-excited about it. I was totally stoked when I realized that my post about my trip to see Kevin Smith do a Q & A could naturally coincide with such an appropriate and significant milestone for The Tauz Blaug. So, without further ado...

A few months ago I was surfing my usual haunts on the Internets and I stumbled across what would turn out to be the highlight event of my summer. Upon reading the announcement on Kevin Smith's website that he would be celebrating his 37th birthday by holding one of his infamous Q & A sessions with fans in his hometown of Red Bank, NJ, I emailed my oldest friend with a link to the announcement and one simple question:

"Wanna go? I'm so not fucking kidding. --Tauzin".

The response came back: "Hell yes".

So I ordered the tix and took off work for the event on Thursday and also the following day, just in case I wouldn't be ready to hit the editing machines the morning after. (Turned out to be a VERY good call.)

We decided that we'd take off from York after Molyneaux got out of class and make the 3-hour trip to the Garden State in the early afternoon. Everything went swimmingly until we entered the state notoriously known for its terrible traffic and drivers. We crossed the border into Jersey, and came sailing up to our first toll booth. Immediately I realized that I was in the Express Lane, which was wrong. I then proceeded to swear profusely while causing a minor clog in traffic while I rectified the problem. After rectification, Molyneaux quipped, " Two minutes."

And I was like, "What?"

He said, "We've been in Jersey for two minutes and you're already pissed off at it."

I had to laugh. You know...cuz it was funny and true. The only other snags we hit during the trip came after we arrived in Red Bank. First we missed a sign that directed us to the proper road we needed to be on, which threw us into a crazy little shitstorm of trying to swing back around and get back to the place where we missed our road. We ended up back on the Jersey Turnpike heading in the same direction we came in, so it was like we had missed our exit altogether. Luckily, at the next exit we just doubled back, exited, and noticed the sign we'd missed last time, and got back on track.

Next, we missed our road to turn on again, but this time because there was no road sign to speak of. This led us to explore Red Bank for about 5 - 10 extra minutes, trying to find our road. We finally found it, and then found a parking spot, like, less than a block from the venue. Kickass.

We were about 3 hours early for the event, but we had planned it this way. We swung by the venue and asked a couple questions of the staff, and then took off down the street in the blazing heat. Our destination: Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash! (This is Kevin Smith's comic book shop.) It was only about 3 blocks or so from the theater, and we totally wanted to go in and drop loads of our cash directly into Kevin's pockets. And we did!

Upon entering, I noticed that there was a familiar face behind the register: Walt Flanagan. This is the guy who played several different roles in Clerks, and whose dog is mentioned in Mallrats, and who plays the part of Fanboy in the View Askewniverse. I was excited to see him in the flesh, as this is really the closest to a celebrity encounter that I've ever come.

Molyneaux and I took our time perusing the aisles of the Nerd Mecca.



We saw everything from normal racks of comic books and trade paperbacks to T-shirts and hoodies, bobble-head dolls and book-ends, inaction figures and posters, and awesome collectibles related to comics, sci-fi/fantasy stuff and, of course, a ton of View Askew paraphernalia, both the For Sale kind and the For Display Only kind. I snapped off a few pic's of the FDO kind, but as the crowd grew thicker (as it got closer to showtime) in the small shop, I grew shyer with my camera. Here are a few of those FDO shots:


The coat worn by Silent Bob in Clerks.


Catholicism Wow! Campaign Corner...I love that badass print of Jay and Bob on the left, too.


A demon's hat: Azrael (played by Jason Lee before his name was Earl) donned this chapeau in Dogma.


A Mooby the Golden Calf that resembles the one from Clerks 2 that Dante hit when he took a swing at Randall...Spoiler!


Costumes from Clerks 2. It felt nice to be that close to something that held Rosario Dawson's boobs...

Molyneaux found a couple of cool books, a T-shirt, and a Clerks sticker. But the piece he couldn't pass up was a diorama of Oogie-Boogie and Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. He gets super-boners for anything related to that movie, and this was an uber-boner on top of the already raging Fanboy Boner that he achieved upon entering the Stash's door. It is a pretty sweet-looking set (the diorama...not his boners, that is...), and the price wasn't horrible.

I grabbed up:


a Clerks quote bumper sticker,


the mini-posters of animated Jay and Silent Bob,


a T-shirt with an animated-style Brodie asking if anyone would like a chocolate-covered pretzel,


the Mooby and Friends magnet set,


and a some comics (Sinestro #1 and #2 and the trade of Kingdom Come).

We both said that never before had we seen so much useless shit that we wanted to buy, ALL IN ONE PLACE. We bailed after about an hour of drooling and shopping. We both escaped the premises without spending $100 per person...somehow.

Before we took off from the Stash, I went to Walt and asked for a picture with him. I introduced myself and shook his hand and got Molyneaux to snap a picture. Walt didn't seem overly enthused, but also seemed cool with it, albeit a bit awkward. I thought it was awesome to meet him. If I had been reading more comics at the time, I might have tried to engage in a conversation about them with him, but being as I am still new to the actual comic world, I just said thanks and absconded with my picture of us, shown here:



The real reason we left the shop after only about an hour was so we could get some food before the show. We walked around Broad Street in search of a place to get our grub on. We went into what was probably the gayest locale possible: a Broadway-themed diner. The host seated us in a back corner, and placed the menus side-by-side. We did not sit in the suggested seating arrangement, tho. I let the server know I "have an allergy to bread" and she revealed that it was only her second day of waitressing. Ever. She got someone with more experience who came out and was totally cool with the restrictions. They even told me they'd cook my burger in a clean pan and everything, instead of on the grill which comes into contact with bread rather frequently. My experience there was highly enjoyable, as was Molyneaux's. We made the experience even gayer when he paid for the meal (he owed me for the ticket cost.) The whole scene was ridiculous, but we got both a good meal and a good story out of it. Here's a snapshot:



Back to the car we went, to drop our merch off and head to the show. We stood outside and waited for a while. I could have been interviewed for the DVD while we were waiting, but I didn't have the stones to do it. The guy who played The Sexy Stud in Clerks 2 was doing the interviews. Eventually we went in and found our seats. Even though we were in the nosebleeds, we had a really good view. (Cameras weren't allowed in the theater, but the production crew must've snapped a few pics for Kevin's website... so I heisted a couple of them. Click 'em to check out his take on the event.)



Those fucking seats were cramped and tiny, though. My knees scraped the dude in front of me's back and shoulders more than a couple of times throughout the night. And both times the chick in front of Molyneaux did her double-fisted stretch-above-her-head move, he almost got double-fisted in the face. Almost. I'm just sayin' it woulda been funny, is all...

The show didn't start at 7 on the nose, but The Sexy Stud eventually came out and told us this was being recorded for a DVD, and to "bring our A-game" with our questions. "If you're coming up to ask 'What's a Nubian?'... don't." Then Jen and Harley came out (Kevin's wife and 8-yr-old daughter) to introduce him. He came out, the curtain lifted to reveal a gigantic picture of The Man Himself as an infant. We all sang Happy Birthday to him.



He then explained that for the DVD, we were going to shoot the beginning, immediately followed by the ending. (The reason being that they wanted to catch us in a full-house and overly-enthused state for the end applause shots.) So he then went about thanking his wife and kid, his mom and his brother (all of whom were in attendance) for being in his life. Then he launched into a big ol' thing about Saint Kevin, his namesake and how he's the patron saint of crows...and he read stuff he'd found online--some extraordinarily strange shit about St. Kevin. All very odd and funny. When he was done with that, we did the fake ending.

Then we got to the first question of the night. It was: "Have you ever thought about making a kid's movie, so that you could have something to show Harley before she grows up?"

Dude says "Not really," and then goes into the most elaborate and intricately-detailed story about all four of his dogs, their purchase of each dog, and some really hilarious mishaps between two of the dogs. We got to know those fucking dogs inside and out. It was hilarious and great.

Oh...and it took an hour.

That's right. The first answer took him an hour to tell. While it was happening, I was just waiting for him to close up the stories he was telling and relate it back to the original question. Not that I didn't appreciate the story...but it was the first question! It was ridiculous! And great. Don't get me wrong. It was unbelievable. I was amazed. I was giddy with happiness. I was hanging on his every word and intrigued by the stories he was relaying. About his dogs. And he eventually did exactly what I expected him to do (relate it back to the original question), but it took way longer than I thought it would. Brilliant.

After that, some of the highlights were:

-A dude (needlessly and shamelessly) promising he'd suck Kevin's dick if he answered a really tame question. (He got an answer, but Kevin got no head...after much debate and cheers and jeers.)

-J-Lo toilet paper story

-Tim Olifantastic stories

-Dissing Superman movie

-Clerks 2 was an amazing experience/Mewes on the set of Clerks 2 stories

-Live Free or Die Hard story

-Anal fissure story

So...you might be doing some math right now: if the first answer took an hour, and the show started around 7pm...and they didn't get home until 5am, and there's a 3-hour drive from Jersey to PA... and he told all of those stories, and probably more... then how late did this event go on, The Tauz?

Dude spoke for almost 7 hours straight.

Hard. Core.

Not even a quick smoke break.

I could have/would have stayed later than 2am when he ended the show. It was so entertaining, that I was enraptured practically the entire damn time. I could listen to that man talk about how fat he thinks he is or his sex life with his wife, or how he liked this movie or who he came across in the course of his career or how wacky and innocent (yet not) Mewes is for hours upon hours upon days. If there were a Siren's Song for me, it'd be him talking about damn near anything. My ship's doomed once he starts up. The details, wit, timing, and sheer insanity of his verbal ramblings just draw me in. I truly enjoyed this trip and the evening I spent with Kevin Smith, Molyneaux, and a theater full of smelly fellow dorks who all appreciate the genius of "the Clerks guy".

Feel free to ask me about those stories in person before the DVD comes out. (I have no idea when that will be...) Until then, tho...I gotta get some damn sleep.

* (Full disclosure: I really did write an assload of this the morning I got back, staying up until 6:45am doing so. However, I also went back and added pictures and did some editing in the weeks since.)

Thus ends The 37th Post on The Tauz Blaug... thanks for stickin' with me so far, and come back as often as you like! I really enjoy doing this, and I keep running into friends who read it and say they dig it. That makes me genuinely happy when I hear that, so thanks to everybody who is actually a Tauz Blaug Faithful.