Jay & Silent SMod
The Midland
Monday, May 2, 2011
Last night at the Midland, folks paid $30 to $60 to watch two guys sitting at a table, chatting with each other, shooting the shit for a little over an hour ... TWICE. It's that fucking entertaining. You could download it for free in a couple of weeks, but the communal atmosphere (and copious amounts of liquor) add a lot of fun.
Director Kevin Smith and his pal and producer Scott Mosier came out first to do the podcast that started off (and gave the name to) the network of shows Smith has, SModcast. Beginning with the witty comment, "Since there's nothing in the news, we might as well talk about Star Wars and such," the pair riffed on the recent Osama bin Laden death news for a while, before easing into the focus of the night, "ViewAskew Viewed Askew."
It seems Smith had opened up his laptop one morning to discover a text document "left by elves," wherein he did a running commentary on his second film, Mallrats, while fantastically high. The resulting document, "Mallrats Viewed Through a Green Prism," covered the first half-hour of the film. For last night's show, Smith fired up what he described as "a massive Cheech-and-Chong-style joint" and did the second half-hour of Mallrats, and the resulting text was what he and Mosier went through onstage.
The highlight was a a community-theater audition for "Pippin" on the ice planet of Hoth -- a note-perfect example of SModcast's hilarious segues and rambling asides. "You ever get high inside a Tauntaun?" asked Mosier, reading from Smith's laptop. The audience rolled along with Smith and Mosier through the sometimes bizarre humor on display.
A perfect example was Smith's frequent allusions to the deep truth and honesty in Mallrats, a film about hanging out at a mall after being dumped. In reference to the scene where Brody and T.S. visit the dirt mall and meet Miss Ivana: "This scene is the equivalent of reaching down while she's blowing you and feeling her cock." I can't imagine what the usher my mom's age thought of all of this.
It would only get more hilariously obscene when Smith came back after the monologue with longtime friend, Jason Mewes, for Jay and Silent Bob Get Old. Introduced with theme music from MC Chris (as was SModcast), the audience went crazy for the pair. I'm not sure whether it just took the whole of SModcast for the audience to get warmed up (or something), but the crowd was on fire for the entire duration of the night's second half.
Mewes referred to Osama bin Laden as "Obama Poseidon," but the funniest part of the set -- and possibly the whole night -- was a hilarious story of Mewes' time in rehab with Ben Affleck and the difficulties of tugging one out when sharing a room with a Hollywood star. It involved a demonstration of two different techniques, both involving unique cleanup methods (one uses a sock).
Jay and Silent Bob Get Old was way more active than SModcast, with Mewes acting out every sexual escapade he related, be it performing oral sex on a '70s-bushed tech in rehab or cuddling in a bus bunk with his wife. It was the filthiest pantomime ever, really.
"Acting with Youse and Mewes" closed the evening out and was from "Notting Hill," with Mewes as Anna (Julia Roberts' character) and a gentleman from the audience as William (Hugh Grant), with another lucky woman from the audience acting as director of photography as she captured the whole thing on a Flip cam. The whole concept is that Smith is a director by trade, and Mewes an actor, and this allows both of them to do their trade for humorous purpose. It was clever and a rare way for a couple of fans to get up onstage with their heroes. The fact that they each got to walk off with a copy of the YooStar video game was just gravy.
Smith called the Midland his "second home," having been here just "a month and some change ago" for his Red State screening, as well as his sold-out Q & A last year. He seems to like Kansas City, and while the show last night wasn't sold-out, there were people all the way up the balcony, showing that KC loves him back.
Geek shirts seen: "Han Shot First," "I fart in your general direction," "Bazinga!", Superman, Wonder Woman -- a veritable cornucopia of dorkiness.
Overheard: "OK, I'm not going to show them my boobs."
Notebook dump: "Everyone here smells like they live in an ashtray."
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