Geek Room Update

The big push was to get my Geek Room finished before my guests arrived for the Kevin Smith event. Now that that has come and gone, I've been making little adjustments to the room -- mostly to satisfy my OCD, er.. I mean sense of aesthetics.


I added a Phoenix poster to the front of the door, since I couldn't find a good "Abandon Hope..." sign. Why? Because Jean Grey and the original Phoenix saga rocked!


Nothing much different when you first enter the room. Seeing my Spock bear wearing GIANT headphones always gives me a guffaw. And I added my Jayne hat, which every true Browncoat will recognize.


As I mentioned in my original Geek Room post, I moved one of the "V for Vendetta" posters to complement the wall grouping I already assembled. The Venom black light poster doesn't currently have a new home. Instead, I hung...


The "Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder" poster I got from a fellow VA Board member. Kev, after all, is The Man.


I rearranged some things on the bookcases and took this photo to document them.


It wasn't until I started assembling my Geek Room that I realized how much Green Arrow and Green Hornet stuff I had. GA has long been one of my favorite characters; something about blonds with beards and hairy chests wearing tights just does it for me, I guess. Who knew?


And here's a close-up of my Justice Society of America figures. Roy Thomas has long been one of my favorite writers and I consider his run on the JSA as the definitive work on the group. It was certainly his work that made me a fan of the group, throughout its many incarnations.

That's it for now. It's a sunny, relatively warm day here in Ohio and I thin Jake and I will take advantage of that fact. Geek Room be damned!

Afterglow: The Kevin Smith Q&A

Photo by Karla

So, after months of anticipation, I attended Kevin Smith's Q&A at EJ Thomas last night. My brother scored me four "VIP Seating" tickets, which allowed my little group (Tammy, JR and Tanya) our pick of seats down front. (HUGE props to Tom, my bro.) We chose third row center, so we weren't looking up Kev's nostrils. As it was, we lost everything but the top of his head when he stood at the podium -- which he did very infrequently, lucky for us.

Now I've seen Kevin do the Q&A thing several (bordering on many) times. I've met him numerous times, shook his hand, talked to him. But there was something really special about having him in my hometown. He was looking resplendent, still on his Optifast liquid diet and totally lickable.

The quality of questions was better than at some previous events I've attended. The two guys from the university who introduced Kevin had people look around to see what a sold out event at EJ Thomas looked like, .

My only real complaint about the venue, other than the 3-hour time limit, was that they blocked out the entire first 6 entranceways (I'm guessing several dozen rows) for VIP ticket holders, which left a lot of empty seats right up front. As an usher, I knew they usually wait until just before the start of the lecture and let people "fill in." Last night. this created a mini stampede and generated more confusion than I thought was really necessary. I'm not sure how to avoid it though -- what speaker/performer wants to stare at a bunch of empty seats down front?

You could tell Kev is still coming off of Clerks 2 as he mentioned that project several times, including the fact that he thought it was his best work to date and that Jeff & Brian are his favorite onscreen pairing, over even Affleck & Lee.

Highlights off the top of my head:

Gavin, from the VA Board, aka TearsInRain, was the first person to ask a question. As he spent the entire day shepherding Boardies and generally being the kind generous guy he is, the fact that he was first makes me believe in karma just a bit more. He actually had pint glasses made commemorating the event for everyone from the Board. Incredible.

One of Kevin's early stories involved meeting George Clooney, who was upset about a negative review on Kevin's old website moviepoopshoot.com -- a review not written by Kevin himself. Kevin talked about looking for something to hit Clooney with -- a folding chair, anything, because he knew if it came to blows, Clooney could take him. I'd heard the story before, but it is always a killer.

I may never think of Vin Diesel the same way again.

I hadn't heard Kevin's Jennifer Garner/Tim Olyphant "Catch & Release" story live. It's a tad long, so I won't recount it here, but apparently Ms. Garner, upon hearing that her Man, Ben Affleck, forgot his personal assistant's birthday, believes that "it's the responsibility of the person having the birthday to let people know it's their birthday." Egad.

Kevin was making the point that no director always, consistently delivers groundbreaking films, which started a long barrage of people yelling out names ("Kubrick!" "Scorcese!" "Lucas!") and Kevin giving his reactions to some of their films.

In the middle of answering a question, Kevin spotted a little old lady in the audience and was amazed that she stayed as long as she had. She was attending with her son, filming the event and made a remark about liking glass tables, which was priceless.

Kevin told a long story about learning to suck his own cock when he was younger and discovering that the taste of his own jizz made him realize he could never be gay. This was the final straw for most of the senior citizens in attendance. Quietly, in groups of twos and threes, they filed out of the theater. I have to admit it was funny and not at all surprising.

Kevin finished the evening with a story about his wife being constipated due to a taking Vicodan after some surgery. After hearing about her "impacted fecal matter," I may never look at Rudolph and see Yukon Cornelious the same way again. Ever.

There was much, much more of course. I got to see the always-resplendent Karla and meet some folks from the Board I hadn't met before. And I got to hang with my peeps, who are still here as I type. It has been a terrific couple of days.