HOLY MOLY.
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Also: A Threevening With Kevin Smith? Really?
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October 14, 2008
September 8, 2008
Still walking
It's not that Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a bad film, it's just that it's a bad Kevin Smith film, the third in the line now that exhibits no turns, no rethinking of the idea. It's a dead-straight romantic comedy between two white American leads (to even call them "disenfranchised" like his previous main characters would be giving them too much credit). In this case the rom-com just happens to take place during the production of an amateur porno which is what I'm sure Smith thinks lends the film its indie badass street cred, but a MacGuffin is a MacGuffin, no matter how many anal toys are involved.
Smith was there in person, though, as was Mewes, as was Mosier, as was Harvey motherfuckin' Weinstein which was relatively cool. I don't usually do the geek-out for celebs, but this one was reasonably meaningful for me. I mean, they showed us Clerks in my first week of film school. The guy's sorta been with me through the whole curve. I wish he'd go back to making Kevin Smith movies - I'd trade all the cinematographic niceties in the world for one more look at a cliche story where the cliches have been all turned around on themselves.
And it wasn't that Not Quite Hollywood was bad, far from it; I'd like to own that flick on DVD and cull from its list of Australian exploitation flicks to add to my library. But at 1 a.m. it's all played at too unmodulated a tone - the "AHHHHHHHHH!!!!" tone - that I was just fighting it too hard. I went home at 1:30, and got what sleep I could.
October 1, 2007
Miscellania extravaganzo
I would say that if Tederick.com readers were thinking of jumping onto Kevin Smith's podcast, this would be the episode to do it, because it is uncannily Tederick-related. There's even a (fiercely negative) review of the best movie of all time, Clue. Plus a bunch of Harry Potter stuff. And they use that creepy-as-fuck "Magic" tune from Ghostbusters at one point, i.e. the Music of the End of the World. You really can't lose.
Speaking of podcasts, Mamo dangles on the precipice of its groundbreaking hundredth episode. The world trembles. And still growing: I handed out three more Mamo cards today. Mamo cardholders of the world, hang on to 'em. They'll be worth bajillions on Ebay once we record the centenary ep.
Tonight, I did all the laundry. All of it. Also, I received crucial pieces of my Hallowe'en costume - from China. That's right, I went to the motherfucking Orient for this thing. And it tickles me blind that the only person who's going to think this costume is even remotely impressive is me. Everyone else will be like, "yes, and this matters why?"
June 6, 2007
Salty wenches
"Almost 200 years ago, James Gosling's ship, brimming with spirits and bound for America from London, was becalmed off Bermuda. Wisely, James put ashore and never left. Eventually the family's leisurely oak-aged, dark-hued rum became extremely popular... Unlike mass-marketed spirits, Black Seal remains a special product available at select outlets." - goslingsrum.com
Well I'm just gonna have to go see Pirates again, is what. Yeah, when that decision got made this morning, I actually started giggling uncontrollably. Mmmmmm Pirates. Best movie ever.
Meanwhile, Kevin Smith to direct the best movie ever: article. Yup I'm trading around the "best movie ever" moniker like a Gem Saloon wipe-rag at this point. I'm okay with it.
Yesterday I got to see Susanne and Meredith, both visiting from out of town, at different points in the day thanks to my crack work-at-home scheme. I also squeezed in a driving lesson wherein I managed to stall the car in the middle of the intersection at Jones and Gerrard, and yet not die. Why? Because gas is my friend. In between there was room for buying the first season of Robin Hood on (very expensive) spec, finishing off some serious deliverables on a project I'm more than ready to be altogether done with, and shanghaiing Brandy aboard the Portrait of a Young Artist galleon as it sets sail for the shimmering waters to our immediate south. I'd call that productive.
April 8, 2007
The edge of the procrastinatory wasteland
I am very slowly getting things done. Last couple of weeks a lot of things have been tossed on the "I'll do that later" pile and I woke up this morning with a keen interest in actually getting the entire list off my desk for good and ever, and although I am by no means working it fast because I am, after all, a lazy fuck, I am crawling through it. A lot of housekeeping stuff and a few creatives as well. I even picked up Terra again - which wasn't even on my list for today so I guess I was procrastinating other stuff by doing it, but it felt good. Wrote for a couple of hours, finished my pages (well, most of my pages), like my pages a lot and they were hard pages so there. Now I've got like three more things to do for the rest of the day and I am dragging my ass like crazy. Like, I just spent twenty minutes positioning Obi-Wan Kenobi on my desk. But now he looks tight.
I am really into SModcast right now. My self-indulegence meter should have gone off like a fire alarm long ago yet I can't get enough. It's like a Smith/Mosier commentary every week, about nothing. Way back in the day Bex and I were going to do a podcast about nothing where we just sat around and talked about whatever we wanted, but I figured nobody would listen to that shit. Well I guess I was wrong.
In a weird bit of they're-on-my-tail-and-I'm-not-moving-fast-enough, this TV pilot is pretty much the exact concept that was the conceptual predecessor to subculture, i.e. the script idea that Jared came from before I nailed down the subculture idea. You know, sometime I'm actually going to make something of my life and THEN WHAT, HUH? Then other people will be listening to my podcast about nothing and bemoaning the fact that their old script ideas are being turned into my new TV series and I'll say "now who's the dean?"
March 17, 2007
Fucking.
Kirk & Spock: Closer.
Jay & Silent Bob: The Fucking Short Version.
God dammit I gotta get St. Paddy's Day laid.
August 8, 2006
Quand je revolu
Today I very nearly threw out Colonel Tapioca, who is my very most comfortable shirt. I almost threw him out because he was very old, and no longer presentable in public, and so very, very velvety soft. And then I realized that all I ever use him for anyway is sleeping in, on those rare occasions when I want something for sleeping in. And that lending it to a sleeping buddy is also excellent and has been a main Tapioca function. And then I realized that there was absolutely no reason to throw out Colonel Tapioca at all, and every reason to keep him. Oh life.
As it turns out, it's a good thing I didn't drive to Red Bank. Or possibly, a really bad thing. Oh life.
Something weird happened to me in comicsdom recently, because I sort of ascended to the next level a little bit. I had one of those crystal clear moments of the soul and did some housecleaning in the lineup, completely unmotivated by anything other than a realization that my tastes had matured enough to alter the way I look at the stuff I read. Like:
I do not want to read (current) New X-Men ever again.
I will keep reading Powers in spite of, and in fact because, it still occasionally mystifies me.
I do want to read the now-defunct Bendis run on Daredevil, and am willing to pay cash money to do it.
I am ready to have Superman and Batman in my life on a regular basis, just not in the same book.
That may not sound like much to you, but it was like graduating from Mathnet to Law & Order for me.
Tonight Matty Price and Chris and also Max and some Moldovian dude went to the ballgame, and after a bit of early-inning excitement involving various "runs scored," were instead put upon to bear witness to an incredible bloodletting in the seventh inning. I had a pretty great time though... well for the most part anyway, the end was fairly craptastical. For some reason it made me think a lot about dating, and not just because of the two hotties a couple of rows down whose sole interaction with us was when one of them asked me where the ball had gone (it had hit the 500s right above us). Dating is strange and useless in so many ways and so is baseball, and I don't really like going to baseball games more than a couple of times a season but when I go, I make a lot of noise, which is like dating. Oh life.
July 20, 2006
Clerks 2
Kevin Smith will never be a great filmmaker, but he's certainly getting better at being a bad one. His latest opus (and these opuses are becoming opusier every opus), Clerks II, feels like a graduate thesis on Askew filmmaking. There's a "look how much we've learned / how far we've come!" vibe about Clerks II that makes it likeable; if there are too many faults to make it loveable, then at least rest assured that Smith's slacker mojo remains intact.
Bad blood
I went to the doctor this morning to have Bernard looked at. Bernard who is in fact gone, but left behind a hematoma the size of a golf ball which everyone in my office was convinced was going to mean the amputation of my leg. (A hematoma is a pocket of blood.) Well, it turns out everything is perfectly normal and healthy, but that the hematoma will probably be there for months, slowly draining. Suckballs.
These are pretty disappointing. I mean, I know that the plan was to do scenes instead of true action figures, but the problem with scenes is that it's up to the designer to decide what moments he considers "iconic"... and Kate standing in the bamboo ain't iconic. Kate blowing a bunch of folk away, wearing her hot-ass orange tank top... now that's my idea of "iconic." I admit, the nailed the shit out of Jack, Hurley, and Locke, but I don't see a lot of collectability on my end here. I don't do statues (often).
It's sort of amazing, given that I just watched the whole cycle in the spring, how much I'm craving Six Feet Under right now. That can't be healthy. It's a moo point anyway given that the ex-girl (who smited me with the Sfoo affliction in the first place, as I recall) has the key shinydisks. So instead I listen to Coldplay music and think of rain. It works.
Scored me a double pass to the Clerks 2 sneak tonight, so me and my man Chad will hit that shit and report back.
May 14, 2006
I become so numb
Big fat pimp Kevin Smith announced today that Clerks II will grace us nearly a full month earlier than planned; it's now getting dropped on July 21st to take its never-gonna-be-number-one lumps against the Shyamalan flick. Fine with me, get to see it sooner. In like kind, Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder is finally being released on August 15. And along the lines of brilliant catch-lines to sequel titles, Smith invited the Askewies to come up with the tag for Clerks II, and here's what they came up with. My very favourite, obviously, is Clerks II: Fuck You!
Meanwhilst, there ist un trailer for Miami Vice that is stylish and excellent, more so than the last time. I love the stilted dialogue. Love it.
You know, if I could just spend the next eight weeks doing nothing but watching movies and getting high, life would be damn near perfect.
April 10, 2006
The epic of Mewes
7:30 Monday morning and I'm already covered in blood. Human blood. And not even the fun kind; this blood's all mine. Damn! Slippery drippery ooey gooey blood. Mmmmmmmmmm blood. Showers and dreams and sodden sheets. Blood.
I've been reading Kevin Smith's blog sporadically for a while now, during this period of anti-Smithdom that has descended upon me since I realized that if we knew each other in real life, K-Smitty would really hate me. But lately he's been writing this surprisingly detailed (well, actually not so surprisingly) multi-part epic tale of the junkiedom and recovery of one Jason Tomcat Mewes. And it's put me right back on the Smith bandwagon, I tells ya. Suddenly he's all types of "my hero." I even watched Clerks special features last night with my pizza and beer and had a swell old time, and I took my signed Silent Bob action figure - which was a stone's throw away from Ebay - and put it up on my wall. It's like the summer of '02 all over again.
The Epic of Mewes begins here.
March 4, 2006
Well, good for you Kevin. Bitch!
Here's Kevin Smith waxing philosophic about the the anniversary of his first date with his wife; he also opines at length about the magnificent Schwalbach pussy. Which would be adorable if it weren't for the ever-growing column of contempt I seem to be feeling towards that man. Shit, I might have to demote his ass clean out of having a Tederick.com category pretty soon.
The Goo last night for another drag show with two Ladies of the Box on my arm(s); this time I forewent the Jennifer Garner look in favour of the Bea Arthur t-shit and a willingness to imbibe. When we got home we tried to get stoned and watch Pootie Tang, but we only really succeeded at the first part. So we ended up throwing it in and going to bed, which was followed by Bex and I having one of the most pronounced and lengthy giggle-fits of my entire goddamn life. I mean, I have never laughed so hard, ever... or at least not since the monkey fell out of the tree. And it was about nothing. Whatever, good times.
Screamed home in the harsh morning sunshine to make yoga, pick up my glasses, and return to 3QF to fret.
January 3, 2006
Can't sleep...
...but check out the 2-day epic of Kevin Smith's anal fissure, which is easily the most gobsmacking bit of blogging I've read in a long, long time. And so glad my butthole is functional in a pleasant and harmonious way.
November 23, 2005
Ground shakes
Tomorrow's the festy Mcfesterton, today's with the moving rapidly about town doing various things, and last night was yet again up until 1:30 hacking and bashing New Tederick.com into shape. Whereas a week ago he was still just my sweet little baby, New Tederick.com is now in puberty. I can tell he's in puberty because he's developed that aromatic boy-in-puberty fug, which wafts out of his bedroom in the two or three seconds per day he actually keeps the door open. His arrival in this cherished period of development means that a) I have to hit him a lot more, and b) he keeps gunning for a glimpse of the wife's ta-tas. I don't know what that's about. I think we sheltered him too much when he was in the anal stage.
Across town, having completed his assignment on Clerks 2, Kevin Smith has returned to the internet to bash the AICN talkbackers again. It was relatively funny the first time, but this is pretty much just sad. But then, I'm slowly turning off K-Smith, and for no sane reason at all, just the prevailing (and growing) sense that if we knew each other in real life, he'd really freakin' hate me.
I'm fairly pleased with New Tederick.com, actually, and his zany RSS-powered neobloggeratum. Not sure when I can launch it with everything that's going on in the next week or so, but hopefully it'll be up by December. And this post will be there.
October 3, 2005
I swallowed a bug
Saturday was up in Aurora on the set of Dave's music video; I call it "Dave's music video" because for the life of me, I don't think I ever knew the name of the band, and right now I can't even remember the name of the song. It was pretty cool, though; as far as days of shooting go, this was definitely the one to be on. Dave (being Dave) concocted a massive house-facade that was to be driven down the road on the back of a pickup truck, and it was one of those quasi-mystical moments that we filmmakers (at this budget bracket) almost never have, and which filmmakers like Peter Jackson must get all the time, where you walk onto a set and something that existed only in your imagination a couple of weeks ago is now large and live and being lifted onto a truck by two dozen strongbacks like something out of the barn-raising scene in Witness. I think the only moment that really comes close to that sort of thing for me personally was when Mark went running out into the middle of Spadina in full costume for the money shot in Bone Daddy; every single moment of imagination, from mental icon to flesh-and-blood existence, that had lead up to that point just sort of crashed through my brain in a heartbeat and I thought unto myself, "Wow... that is exactly what I thought it would look like."
Gratification.
Speaking of filmmakers, Kevin Smith is doing one of those video journal-y things like Bryan Singer and Peter Jackson for Clerks 2, only wayyyyyyyy worse. I mean I loves ya Kev, but you have got to get a better crew on this thing. I was (coincidentally) re-watching the crossover installments from Kong Is King / Blue Tights over the weekend, and the difference between those and this is just a bit too wide. I guess I've reached my Smith "low budget is good" limit.
Went to see Grizzly Man today; loved it, and loved reviewing it even more. Mamogrified this eve. And of the many other things I had planned to blog today, I say only this: I kicked the ball and it spun like a top. LIKE. A. TOP.
[Opposite of gratification.]