Thanks, JP. I wish I could provide some links to those ancient debates, but, alas, they are no more. I do remember my opening salvo though. I paraphrased Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath":
Wherever there are people celebrating the overrated movies of Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino [I lumped the two together at the time--still do], I'll be there [busting balls]. Wherever there are people over the age of 14 reading comic books, I'll be there. Wherever there are grown men playing with toys (or "collectibles" as they call them to avoid embarrassment), I'll be there.
You can only imagine the sort of hornet's nest this stirred up among the nerds on View Askew. Ah, but it was fun.
Well, I saw Clerks II today (I couldn't resist after Tom's terrific rant). All I can say is that Tom went easy on that movie. He should have condemned it for the full 3 hours. Man, I was literally stunned by how bad it is. I mean, Tom didn't even mention Kevin Smith copping a scene from The Drew Carey Show of all things, adding a scene that has no bearing whatsoever on the "plot" just so he can put his kid in the movie, and how 'bout Rosario Dawson pronouncing two "s" sounds for the possessive of "parents'" (I know this sounds trivial, but it irritated the hell out of me)? Ugh. Then there's Smith's weird religious preoccupations. Remember the religious nuts who used to show up at sporting events with their "John 3:16" signs? Well, Smith seems to have found the equivalent in the jail scene toward the end of the movie. Then there's the borrowed bad bestiality joke from "Bachelor Party." It wasn't funny then and it sure as hell isn't funny now, but that didn't stop Smith from using it again for his big finale (I'm always shocked after seeing a Kevin Smith movie that some adult didn't intervene to tell him that his script is horrible, but at this point I think he's viewed as a brand or a franchise that no one can mess with). And I was wrong about some hidden "laughs" after the credits. All there was was a huge list of names of people who had signed up to Smith's myspace account (I was reminded of The Jerk when Steve Martin discovers that his name has been "published" in the phone book). I can just picture all the slack-jawed Smith acolytes sitting riveted in their seats waiting to see their name on the "big screen." As Tom said, there doesn't seem to be a bottom for Smith, he just keeps going lower and lower.
