Cover via Amazon

Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois. 60062. Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was that we did wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write this essay telling you who we think we are, what do you care? You see us as you want to see us in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at seven o’clock this morning. We were brainwashed.-The Breakfast Club

Really I have very little to add to the above quotation. I would just A) ask everybody to watch The Breakfast Club if they haven’t(and shame on you if you haven’t) and B) to stop judging people based on one aspect of their personality.

For instance, I read comic books. In fact, every Wednesday I go straight from my office to my local comic book shop and pick up $20-$50 worth of comic books. This is one of the great joys of my life. However, if you were to judge me based on the popular preconception of comic book fans, you would assume that I was socially inept, single, sexist, and live in my parents’ basement. While in reality, I’m told that I’m quite charming socially, I’m in a loving and committed relationship, I have spent the better part of my collegiate career campaigning on the part of equality and women’s rights, and I haven’t lived in my parent’s house for more than a decade. Being a comic book fan does not define who I am anymore than being a Buffy fan, a Cubs fan, or a political science major does. I am more than just one aspect of my personality, just as every person is.

Perhaps we would all be better off if we took the words of John Hughes to heart. Maybe we could all be a bit less brainwashed.

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?-Ernest Hemingway

While my life is not falling apart, I am certainly living among the sleep deprived today. I thought that I had gone to bed at a reasonable time. I didn’t even think the brief period when our cat woke me up with her caterwauling would be enough to cause this level of exhaustion. However, here I am, struggling to keep my eyes open. Wishing I could crawl back into bed. And having absolutely nothing worthwhile running through my head to make its way to this page.

Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one’s opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.-Mahatma Ghandi

This was the one of the few things that came to mind when I saw this article.

I don’t think I can add anything that isn’t said in the quotation or the article.

The impetus behind this experiment

The grand experiment marches on.

Liz and I have, thus far, watched Clerks(grade B), Mallrats(grade A-), and Chasing Amy(a somewhat shocking, even to me, grade of C). These represent the first 3 films in the oeuvre of Kevin Smith. These have covered his career up to 1997, the year I graduated high school, which is not actually important in the context of these posts but is something that I can’t help but thinking of every single time I see the year 1997. It is just one of those odd things about the human mind. Certain years will always be associated with major events in your life. 1979, I was born. 1997, I graduated high school. 2001, 9/11. And so on, and so forth. But I digress.

Anyhow, we have progressed in our linear(if time can really be said to be linear) journey through the films of Kevin Smith to the year 1999. And, as Prince has taught us, 1999 is a year meant for partying. However, in the film career of Kevin Smith, 1999 is the year that he went from being “sophomoric comedy director Kevin Smith” to being “controversial filmmaker Kevin Smith”. All he had to do to make that leap was make a film that dared to include an off-beat view of religion. In retrospect, it is hard to look at this film and understand what all the commotion was about but in 1999 you couldn’t avoid hearing about the commotion that was being caused by a little film called Dogma.

Miramax, who had released 2 of Kevin’s previous 3 films(Mallrats being the exception), happened to be, at this point, owned by Disney. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mouse House, they were hesitant to release a film that dealt so directly, and bluntly, with religion in a way that may be construed as outside of the normal view of religion. So, with quite a bit of publicity regarding the move, Harvey Weinstein bought the distribution rights from Miramax and sold them to Lionsgate. And not one damn bit of this is important for what I’m going to write about Liz and I’s experience watching the film, but it is important in an historical context of the film.

As for Liz’s experience with this movie, this is the first of the Kevin Smith films that she had seen. In fact, she owned this film on VHS during her high school/college days and, therefore, was as familiar, if not moreso, with this film as I was. That makes this a rather unique experience in the series.

The movie

As for the religious controversy that surrounded the film, I just don’t get it. Perhaps it is because I’m an atheist but if this is what classifies as blasphemous or sacrilegious(two words that were frequently used to describe the film by the religious right) then I’ve been committing blasphemy and sacrilege for longer than I’ve professed to be a non-believer. In fact, if you watch the film, I think you will find that as opposed to being anti-religion or anti-God, this movie is, in fact, very much pro-God, if not pro-organized religion. Does Kevin Smith skewer the Catholic Church for their excesses and their attempts to stay relevant in the modern world? Yes he does. And, seeing as how he grew up in that very Catholic Church(and still professes to consider himself a Catholic), I think he has earned the right to speak his mind on the perceived excesses and foibles of his upbringing. However, for the people who say that this is an affront to the Christian God, then I would ask them to watch it again, closer. Smith does nothing but praise their god throughout the film. Yes, the film deals with a woman having a crisis of faith but at no point is it even suggested that God doesn’t exist. In fact, the very first character that is shown in the film is God. And that same character appears later in the film, played quite amusingly by Alanis Morrissette. Hell, the main antagonists of the film are fallen angels. If anything, this reads more like a rather fucked up lost chapter of the Bible than an anti-God film.

These issues may have been lost on the Catholic League, who protested the film vehemently, but they were not lost on the reviewers, even if some of them wished they were.

Todd McCarthy wrote in Variety:

A very vulgar pro-faith comedy rather than a sacrilegious goof, Dogma is an extraordinarily uneven film that significant cutting might be able to transform into a playable one.

Obviously, McCarthy understands that Kevin Smith was not attempting to blaspheme a faith that he believes in and was, indeed, celebrating his faith in the only way he knows how. Granted, he did not like the way he did it, but he got it. As did Roger Ebert, who wrote:

Smith has made a movie that reflects the spirit in which many Catholics regard their church. He has positioned his comedy on the balance line between theological rigidity and secular reality, which is where so many Catholics find themselves.

Ebert was, obviously, a bit more receptive to Kevin’s particular brand of faith than McCarthy was. However, I won’t be getting into the idea of faith in this movie past what I’ve said here. Why? Because I’m not a believer. I am an atheist, as I’ve stated multiple times, and therefore I don’t give a shit if the film is blasphemous or sacrilegious. All I care about is if the film was good. And so, was it?

In a word, yes. Dogma is, in many ways, Kevin Smith’s most accomplished of his first 4 films. It has great performances by Alan Rickman, Chris Rock, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jason Lee, Jason Mewes, and Kevin Smith. This was the first time that Kevin had trusted himself and Mewes to have roles that really drove the entire plot, so it was a risky choice for him, both as an actor and as a director. However, Smith and Mewes acquit themselves admirably. And, considering the dialogue heavy nature of Kevin Smith films, these were not easy roles to play.

Speaking of the writing, it was fantastic. Gone were my worries about the vile and hateful dialogue that caused me to lower the score of Chasing Amy. Instead, Smith was able to write an intelligent and erudite commentary on the state of religion in American society. The boardroom scene featuring Affleck and Damon as Bartleby and Loki is such a powerful commentary on the hypocrisy of “moral” people in America that it should be shown in ethics classes to demonstrate the virtues of practicing what you preach.

I know that I’ve praised the cast as a whole on this one, but I would be remiss if I didn’t take one particular cast member to task. Linda Fiorentino, who plays Bethany, the female lead, spends the entire film looking either bored or pissed off that she is there. And, considering the fact that she and Kevin Smith were not even speaking during portions of the filming, it would seem that this is not far from the truth. However, as a professional actress being paid to do a job, perhaps she should have put her feelings for the director aside and tried actually acting in the movie instead of standing around like a pouty baby. In the commentary track for the film, Kevin reveals that he wishes he had given the Bethany role to Janeane Gar0folo, and I must say, I think most of the fans feel the same way.

Still, even with the albatross that was Linda Fiorentino weighing the film down, it still is, in both mine and Liz’s opinion, some of his best work in the first 4 films. While not as laugh out loud funny as Mallrats, Dogma certainly marks a much more sophisticated and complex filmmaking style for Kevin Smith. It is an evolution of the deeper, richer storytelling that he had attempted with Chasing Amy. And, unlike with Chasing Amy, it is successful in bringing a richer blend of emotions than the all-out funny that his first two films were known for. Still, even though it is a more complex film that appeals to a broader audience than the slapsticky, vulgar comedy of Mallrats, I would put it just a step below that film in my estimation. Liz, when asked that question, did the same.

Grade-B+

I would have given the film the courtesy of an A-, thus making it even with Mallrats on the grading scale, if it wasn’t for the bland, lifeless performance of Linda Fiorentino. Since she was meant to be the driving force behind the plot, being the last scion and all, I can’t, in good conscience, give this film the A- grade that it would deserve otherwise.

Stay tuned to The Evolution of Kevin Smith because next time we’re going to be talking about the 2001 film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back which, though I own it on DVD, I have only watched once and Liz has never seen. This could be an eye-opening experience. It may take some time to get around to watching it though, as our schedules have became quite busy yet again. I promise to make it worth the wait.

Mittens, himself.

If you had asked me who was going to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election in December, I would have said, without hesitation, that it would be Mitt Romney. In fact, if you had suggested it would be anybody else, I would have laughed and said that the Republican Party is not crazy enough to nominate Newt Gingrich.

Now, if you had been crazy enough to suggest that Rick Santorum would be the main challenger to Romney, well, I would have had a hard time laughing long enough to tell you that you were absolutely nuts.

Yet here we are. With me telling you that, as of today, the Detroit News has a poll out that shows that Rick Santorum is leading Mitt Romney 34%-30.4% among likely Republican primary voters in a state that Mitt has counted on winning since day one.

Yeah...this guy is ahead in the polls.

Romney is well aware of the dire situation he is finding himself in. According to the Washington Post, Romney is planning on spending $1,240,300 in Michigan in the next week while his main  competition, Santorum, is spending a whopping total of $42,443. That is a ratio of $29-$1. If that doesn’t make two things abundantly clear, I don’t know what does.

The first thing that I feel that this insane disparity in money being spent between these two front-runners for the Republican nomination in such an important battle shows is that Santorum is not even remotely ready to be the nominee for his party. Hell, he has no pollsters, no campaign headquarters, and no paid advance staff. Basically, in a very real sense, he has no campaign. Yet, without any of real campaign staff or organization, Santorum is leading Romney in Michigan. I think that shows that the “anybody but Mitt” vote may be even more reliable than the “anybody but Obama” vote in the Republican base.

The second thing that is clear to me from the combination of the polling and the spending disparity is that Mitt Romney, who is desperate for a win in the state that his father formerly served as governor of, a state where the name Romney alone should guarantee him a win in a Republican primary, has, intentionally or not, made it so that the Michigan primary will be a referendum on his campaign. Or, to borrow a phrase from my friend Dave, who inspired me to write this post, Romney has made this “his Alamo”. And, much like the Texans at the original Alamo, Romney’s chances don’t look great.

Romney has stated unwaveringly, which is maybe the first time that Romney and unwavering have been used in the same sentence, that the United States Government’s bailout of the auto industry was a bad idea. He has since called it a “failure” and a “disaster”. Hell, even this week he has written an op-ed stating:

Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy are evident in what he did.

Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them…. By the spring of 2009, instead of the free market doing what it does best, we got a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style.

For a man trailing in the polls in a state that is home to the majority of the American auto industry, this is a ballsy stance to take even if the facts are on his side. However, unfortunately for Mitt, the facts are, most definitely, not on his side.

Today, just 2 short days after Romney wrote that Obama’s bailout of the auto industry was a monumentally bad decision, GM basically told him to go fuck himself by announcing their largest annual profit in company history.

For all of 2011, G.M. earned $7.6 billion, nearly all of it from North America. That was 62 percent higher than the $4.7 billion it earned a year ago and more than G.M.’s previous record of $6.7 billion in 1997 (in today’s dollars, the 1997 profit would be about $9.4 billion).

As a result, G.M.’s 47,500 eligible hourly workers will receive profit-sharing checks in March of up to $7,000, an all-time high.

Yeah, you’re reading that right. For a horrible policy that did nothing to help the average worker Obama’s bailout of GM will result in “47,500 eligible hourly workers receiv[ing] proft-sharing checks in March of up to $7,000″. This is one of those moments that Mitt Romney has to just wish he could drop off the face of the planet.

Of course, if you were to ask Romney what he thinks of these workers receiving $7,000 he would probably say something like “But how will they get the other $3000 that I bet them?” This is a man who is clearly out of touch with not just the Michigan electorate but reality as a whole.

Romney is such an inept candidate that he is being beaten by a bad SNL sketch of a Republican candidate. Santorum has railed against higher education for indoctrinating liberal values into the youth of America, while holding three degrees from higher education. Santorum has pushed for creation to be taught in science classes in Pennsylvania when he was their elected representative. Santorum does not believe that there should be a separation between church and state. And with all that super-sized crazy, he is still a more likely Republican presidential nominee than Mitt Romney.

Republicans scare me. I don’t understand them at all. However, I’m happy to watch them beat each other bloody in a protracted primary process before a general election that will hopefully see the reelection of President Barack Obama, who, no matter what some of his party say, has done a damn fine job in the White House.

Still, the fact that a large portion of the United States thinks that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, or Newt Gingrich is a viable alternative scares the living shit out of me. And it should scare you too.

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?-J.M. Barrie

Perhaps kindness beyond what is required could solve a great many problems in our society.

Care about the beings you care about in gorgeous and surprising ways. Color outside the lines. Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. This is your last chance.-Anne Herbert

Caring about the world around us is one of the surest ways to guarantee that we don’t take others for granted.

Be kind. Do good. Change the world for the better.-Louise Burfitt-Dons

There is no greater life advice that can be given than this. No greater goals can be hoped for.

I realize that this entire post is cheesy but I believe in the sentiment with all my heart. Please, just go out and be kind to one another. Or, in the immortal words of Bill S. Preston, Esq in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “Be excellent to each other!”

The filmmaker

Welcome to the third edition of “The Evolution of Kevin Smith” here on TannerWillbanks.com. Let me give a real quick recap of what this series actually is. I have been a fan of Kevin Smith’s movies since I first saw Clerks over a decade and a half ago. However, my partner, Liz, is only familiar with his films in small numbers(Dogma, Clerks 2, and Zack and Miri Make A Porno) prior to the beginning of this experiment. And the nature of the experiment? We will watch all of the films that have been directed by Kevin Smith, in chronological order, culminating in the very first viewing of Red State by either of us.

That is about as concise of an explanation of the series as I can manage. To review the results thus far, Liz enjoyed Clerks with a few reservations, but she loved Mallrats. I am a fan of both films though I gave Clerks a B while I gave Mallrats an A-. Yes, I prefer Mallrats to Clerks.

After taking a long break between watching Clerks and Mallrats, Liz and I didn’t beat around the bush about getting to our next film in the Kevin Smith filmography. In fact, it was less than 24 hours later that we cuddled up on the couch to watch Chasing Amy. I realize that it has been a bit longer than 24 hours since I posted the recap of our Mallrats experience but that is just one of the issues caused by working a full-time job and writing a blog. I hope you can forgive my tardiness.

So, without further ado, why don’t we talk about Chasing Amy?

Yep, that's the Chasing Amy poster.

A brief bit of background regarding my past experience with Chasing Amy. This movie was released during my senior year of high school. When I saw it for the first time, on VHS, shortly after the home video release of the film, I was blown away. I was an 18 year old comic book geek from a small-town in Western Kansas who had seen a best friend come out of the closet a few years prior. To see a movie that featured comic book artists/writers and homosexuality depicted in a way seemed, at the time, to be realistically. I was smitten with the performances of Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, and Joey Lauren Adams. It was one of the first DVDs I bought when it came out as a Criterion Collection(which is still the only Criterion DVD I own) and I swore that it would be my favorite Kevin Smith film of all-time. Then I promptly put it on the shelf and hadn’t watched it in at least 5 years before this viewing with Liz.

Okay, now that I’ve set the scene, you can imagine that I expected this to be the film that would blow my mind again. It would show both Liz and I that this was when Kevin Smith really found himself as a writer/director. I mean, the entire movie is about how moving back to a story that is more personal and small from the bigger budgeted commercial stuff is a noble cause. Hell, it was almost universally praised by the critics when it came out. Seriously, it has a 90% fresh rating at Rottentomatoes.com. Here is a small sample of the critics thoughts on Chasing Amy:

Owen Gleiberman, from Entertainment Weekly, wrote:

Smith isn’t just fooling around anymore.

Roger Ebert wrote:

While the surface of his film sparkles with sharp, ironic dialogue, deeper issues are forming, and Chasing Amy develops into a film of touching insights.

And David Ansen, writing in Newsweek, said:

Instead of cool twenty-something irony, Smith startles us with raw emotional honesty.

I mean, with reviews like this, how could it not be the movie that changed Smith’s artistic vision for the better? Well…that’s a tricky question.

I cannot stress enough that I did enjoy Chasing Amy, even after not watching it for half a decade. I found Affleck and Lee to be just as charming as I remembered them to be(though I did have some issues with Lee’s character, which will be addressed shortly). I enjoyed the discussion of wanting to stop doing the crass, commercial stuff, here represented by the Bluntman and Chronic comic book which was obviously standing in for Mallrats, in favor of something more personal. These are the type of self-reflective stories that often catch my attention and make me want to lose myself within the narrative. Chasing Amy has the potential to be a game changer in the career of Kevin Smith. It could have been the moment when he stepped away from the sophomoric comedies that had made his name until that point and became a much more respected and lauded filmmaker.

But that isn’t what happened. And the reasons, after a half decade of not watching, are clear to me as a viewer of Chasing Amy.

First, while the film is a departure from Kevin’s first two films in that it is more focused on the relationship between Affleck’s Holden McNeil and Alyssa Jones, played by Joey Lauren Adams, than on the relationship between Holden and Banky, played by Jason Lee, it still remains firmly entrenched in the genre that would come to be known as “bromance” once Judd Apatow started making films. I think you would be hard pressed to find a viewer who thought that the most interesting relationship in Chasing Amy was the romance between Alyssa and Holden. Instead, the relationship between Holden and Banky is much more complex and, for that matter, better written. It was this relationship that led Liz to say to me “So, are all Kevin’s movies about relationships between two male friends?” And no matter how hard he tried to make Chasing Amy about the relationship between Alyssa and Holden, he wasn’t able to step away from the “bromance” that has defined his career up to that point(and beyond).

And why should he try to step away from the “bromances”? Before Judd Apatow was doing it, Kevin Smith perfected the concept of telling a love story about two heterosexual men. And that is what he should stick to. Instead, in Chasing Amy, he attempted to write an unusual love story between a lesbian and a heterosexual man. Unlike in his bromances, Smith was unable to resist the urge to make it so that the lesbian is convinced to abandon her lesbianism for her straight knight in shining armor, thus proving Banky’s point that, in the View Askewniverse, “all every woman really wants, be it mother, senator, nun, is some serious deep-dickin’.” While I can understand Smith’s love story, and he does give some nice reasoning for why Alyssa Jones was not your average lesbian, it is problematic that, in a movie that includes the aforementioned line regarding the “deep-dickin”, Smith portrays a lesbian that abandons her sexuality in a heartbeat when Affleck’s Holden professes his love for her in the rain. I think this would have been easier for me to stomach if she hadn’t been so clearly identified with the lesbian label from the beginning. It is interesting that what I found groundbreaking at 18 is the same thing that gives me pause at 32. I can’t seem to understand why it was so important for Smith to have Alyssa identify as a lesbian than as bisexual. Identifying her as a lesbian seems to reinforce the idea that homosexuality is a choice, which is not a view that I can get behind. And, yes, this did color my view of the film.

That isn’t the only thing that lessened by enjoyment for the film after 5 years either. Beyond just the problematic Banky quote that was mentioned earlier, I was put off by many other lines that Banky utters throughout the film. Here is one of the most problematic:

What difference does it make if I refer to her as a dyke? Or if I call the Whalers a bunch of faggots in the comfort of my own office, far from the sensitive ears of the rest of the world?

This is addressed by Holden at this point, as he is asking Banky to refrain from “passive aggressive gay bashing”. Unfortunately, the only reason he gives in response to Banky’s questions is that he loves Alyssa. The better answer to his question is the obvious one, to me. The reason not to refer to a woman as a dyke or “call the Whalers a bunch of faggots” is because it is just plain wrong. There is no difference between using those terms and using a racial epithet to attack any other minority.

He goes beyond just that instance though:

Banky: Alright, now see this? This is a four-way road, OK? And dead in the center is a crisp, new, hundred dollar bill. Now, at the end of each of these streets are four people, OK? Are you following?

Holden: Yeah.

Banky: Good. Over here, we have a male-affectionate, easy to get along with, non-political agenda lesbian. Down here, we have a man-hating, angry as fuck, agenda of rage, bitter dyke. Over here, we got Santa Claus, and up here the Easter Bunny. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first?

Holden: What is this supposed to prove?

Banky: No, I’m serious. This is a serious exercise. It’s like an SAT question. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first? The male-friendly lesbian, the man-hating dyke, Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny?

Holden: The man-hating dyke.

Banky: Good. Why?

Holden: I don’t know.

Banky: [shouting] Because the other three are FIGMENTS of your FUCKING IMAGINATION!

This above exchange is the clearest example of how my view of the film has changed since I was 18 years old. I remember, on my first viewing, that I found this exchange to be hysterical and intelligent. Now, at 32, I cringed as I watched this exchange. I couldn’t stand it. I actually left the room to pour a new soda as the scene came on because I didn’t want to be sitting next to my wonderful, loving partner while something so fucking hateful was spewed from the screen in a film by one of my favorite writer/directors. And that was the situation I found myself in multiple times throughout Chasing Amy. I was uncomfortable that one of the most critically praised films from a writer/director that I admire is also home to one of the least tolerant main characters that I can remember. It was a horrible realization to come to. And it is something that I wasn’t able to overcome.

Liz, for her part, enjoyed the film, though she was a bit put off by the homophobia also. Even though she enjoyed it, she did say that it wasn’t nearly as enjoyable for her as Mallrats which is a verdict that I can certainly concur with.

Chasing Amy-C

I know that many people think this is Kevin Smith’s best film. And I would have said the same thing last week. However, with the issues that came up for me while watching the film, I have to say that of the 3 films that we have covered thus far in “The Evolution of Kevin Smith” this is my least favorite as a 32 year old man. And I don’t see that changing in the coming few flicks(though Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is on the horizon). My lack of enjoyment of Chasing Amy comes as a shock to me, to be honest, but with everything I’ve posted above, I hope you can see why I have my reservations. Even with those reservations, I would choose the worst Kevin Smith movie over most comedies that are put out today, so keep that in mind.

Later this week I’ll be posting our experience with Dogma, which is one of the few movies in this series that Liz had seen prior to our watching it. And, yes, we have watched it already. I’d look for the post to come out around Friday. Until then, enjoy some movies!

Isn't our campus pretty?

Dear Wildcat Fans,

Hi. My name is Tanner Willbanks. You might know me from such websites as TannerWillbanks.com. I’m also a member of Jayhawk Nation. I know that you hate that name. You think we’re arrogant, elitist, and pompous. I can’t argue with any of those statements, honestly. I don’t think you can find any elite basketball program in the nation that could argue with any of those labels. When you have won over 2000 games in the history of your program while only losing 804, you get to call yourself elite. Don’t get me wrong, your almost 1500 wins are cute, but let us speak like adults here. You’re not in our league when it comes to the discussion of status of programs.  And that is why I’m writing to you.

I’m writing you to apologize. See, you’ve been wishing for years, as long as I can remember, that we would take you seriously as a rival. You’ve practically begged the University of Kansas to “admit” that you are our arch-rival. Of course, this has never been the case. As much as we’ve always embraced the fact that you were our number one in-state rival, we never had the hatred in our hearts for you that we reserved for the motherfuckers who burnt our town to the ground from one state over. We are two schools that co-exist within the same state-funded system while our real arch-rivals for the past century-plus have been the Missouri Tigers, a rivalry that literally started with an actual war. But they have fled our rivalry. After this season, we will no longer acknowledge the existence of that team that was built on a legacy of defending slavery. Instead, we will finally give you the acknowledgement that you’ve long craved.

We will let you be our number 1 rival. And for that, I apologize.

Now, if you are, indeed, going to be our number 1 rival, I feel that it is in both of our best interests that I give you a few pointers that will make it easier for you to put up with the yearly humiliations that will face you on a basketball court. Read on for my helpful tips and tricks.

• Get Rid Of Stupid Nicknames For Your Arena

For some reason that I, nor anybody else that isn’t a Wildcat fan, can understand you refer to Bramlage Coliseum as “the Octagon of Doom“. Really? The Octagon of Doom? Whose doom exactly is it that is spelled out by the Octagon of Doom? Let me give you a brief history lesson, Wildcat fan. Bramlage Coliseum opened for business on October 21st, 1988. Since that time, it has not been a great place for you to play the Jayhawks. In 24 contests, as of last night, you have one 2 times in Bramlage Coliseum. 2 times. This is why, in Lawrence, the Octagon of Doom is known as the Hawktagon of Doom or, even more commonly, Allen Fieldhouse West. During that same stretch of time you have won more times at Allen Fieldhouse(3) than at your own house(2) in the rivalry.

Now, you do have an all-time record, when including all opponents, of 285-95 at Bramlage, which is a home winning percentage of right at .750. That is respectable. However, it is not doomworthy. By contrast, KU’s record at Allen Fieldhouse, which, granted, has been open since 1955, is 679-107, or .864. Yeah, that isn’t a typo. In an arena that has been open for 33 more years than yours, we have only lost 12 more games. Ever. And yet, the only nickname we give to our arena is “The Phog” which is just a shortened version of its proper name, Phog Allen Fieldhouse.

And you call us arrogant?

• Learn Geography

There was a sign last night at the game, in the student section, that, unfortunately, I can’t find a picture of right now. It read “You aren’t in KS anymore! EMAW!” I know this sign existed, because my partner showed me a picture of it that had been tweeted in her feed last night before bed. Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, K-Staters, but Manhattan, the home of your university, is in Kansas. I mean, what the fuck are they teaching you kids at that school?

Got one of these, K-State?

•  Build A Tradition

K-State fans talk a lot of trash. You guys even have a hate week all about how much you dislike us over here in Lawrence. However, when it comes to tradition, you have nothing. You have appeared in exactly 4 Final Fours, which does give you 4 more than Missouri, but is not enough to be considered a “winning tradition”, especially when you consider that the last one was in 1964. A winning tradition is something like, I don’t know, 13 Final Fours, 22 straight NCAA tournament appearances, and 3 NCAA Tournament championships(and that isn’t counting 2 championships from the days before the NCAA tournament existed). Instead, the Wildcats have appeared in 2 straight NCAA tournaments. 20 more to go, fellas!

But perhaps your idea of a winning tradition is just within the conference. Okay. On that note, K-State does have an impressive 17 regular season conference titles and 9 conference tournament titles. Of course, the last one of those came in 1980, so they have absolutely no titles within the Big 12, which did not exist at that time. Contrast that with 54 regular season conference titles(including a current streak of 7 straight) and 25 conference tournament titles(including the last 2) that Kansas can claim and you begin to see what I mean by building a tradition.

Maybe K-State’s tradition comes from just straight up regular season wins. Since 1902, K-State’s all-time record is 1486-1053(.585). It is a winning record, so I guess that does satisfy they most basic definition of “winning tradition”. KU has been playing the game for 4 years longer, so that probably accounts for the fact that they have a record of 2058-804(.719). I mean, obviously, in those 4 years KU played, at least, 600 more games. That is why they have the inflated win total, right, Wildcat fans?

And don’t get me started on the proportion of Jayhawks playing at the next level compared to Wildcats.

• Don’t Say Wait Until Football

The most popular statement made when Kansas wins won of the 22 games that we’ve won over the past few decades at Bramlage is “We’ll see you in football.” This is an ineffective taunt for many reasons. One is that most Kansas fans couldn’t care less about football. It is sad but true. KU is a basketball school. Even when we won the Orange Bowl(in the same year we won our third NCAA basketball national championship) it didn’t change the fact that football at Kansas is what most fans do to kill the time between basketball seasons. Saying “we’ll see you in football” is the same as us saying “we’ll see you in basketball” to you. It is comparing apples and oranges. Most Kansas fans just don’t care about football(even with Charlie Weis).  However, since I am one of the few Kansas fans that does care about football, I’ll make a few more points about why it is a stupid comment for your fans to make.

Do you, my dear K-State friend, know what the all-time record is between KU and K-State in football? Well, it is disputed between the two schools but it is either 65-39-5 or 64-40-5, depending on who you want to believe. And, just in case you were wondering, the 65(or 64) win team is not the Wildcats. I can already hear the Wildcat fans protests, “But, Tanner, that is all ancient history. We dominate you now!” Except the record does not bear that out. It is true that from 1993 to 2003 K-State did dominate the series. They won 11 in a row. Bravo. However, since 2004, the record in the series is 4-4. Not exactly dominance by either squad. So don’t try to act like you are the greatest thing since sliced-bread on a football field K-State. In fact, your all-time football record of 476-613-41 is nothing to write home about. KU on the other hand has an all-time football record of 573-570-58, still not great, but better than the Wildcats.

Winning traditions just aren’t K-State’s thing it appears.

• Be Careful What You Wish For

Really everything else I’ve put in this letter can be summed up by this one phrase. For years you’ve wanted to be treated as our number one rival. You’ve wanted us to stop dismissing you as the annoying little brother that won’t quit asking us if he can come play with us and our friends. Well, congratulations, Wildcats. Due to Missouri’s cowardly departure from the conference, you will finally get your wish. Kansas and Kansas State will finally have the hate-fueled rivalry that you have been having by yourself for decades now. But you better bring your A game. See, we’ve already won 22 out of 24 in your gym. And now, we’re going to be trying extra hard everytime we see you. This could get very ugly very quickly. And I wouldn’t count on a 38 point Pullen miracle to save you from humiliation.

We’ll see you on the court.

Sincerely,

Jayhawk Nation
 

Kevin Smith says hi.

About a month ago, Liz and I began an experiment in which we watched all the films of one Kevin Smith in chronological order. It was suggested that I would document this process right here on TannerWillbanks.com. The first film we watched, as the description of the a fore mentioned experiment would indicate, was the first film from the writer/director/actor, Clerks. You can read about that experience here. This would be the first time that Liz had seen most of the Kevin Smith films, as she had only watched Dogma, Clerks 2, and Zack & Miri Make A Porno prior to this. However, as a fan of Smith’s twitter-feed, as well as that of his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, it wasn’t difficult to convince Liz to watch the films with me. What has proved difficult since that first screening of Clerks is finding time in our busy lives to sit down and watch the movies. Luckily for anybody who actually enjoys me blathering on about films, we had a rare instance of free time this weekend.

So, without further ado, let me discuss our viewing of Mallrats this past Friday night. (Even though this isn’t a review in the classical sense, I feel that I should probably point out that there will likely be spoilers included below for anybody who hasn’t watched a film that came out in the mid-90s. You should always refer to this post prior to reading anything even slightly review-ish on this website. Now, on with the show.)

The film in question.

I’m not going to lie. One of the reasons that it had taken us this long to watch Mallrats is that I was nervous about Liz’s reaction to the film. I don’t think it is a shock to anybody reading this that I absolutely love Kevin Smith’s movies. I own all of them on DVD or Blu-Ray with the exception of Red State, which is only because I’m saving watching it for the first time for the end of this experiment. As a lover of all things Kevin Smith, I want the woman I love to get the same pleasure from the films as I do, and I wasn’t sure that would be the case with Mallrats.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Mallrats is, in my mind, one of the best View Askew movies out there. I think that it holds up well in the 16 years since it was released theatrically and it introduced Jason Lee and Ben Affleck into the Askewniverse, which was vital for some of the later flicks to really work. However, I am know that lovers of Mallrats are almost equal with haters of the film. If you doubt that for a second, let me just share with you a few of the reviews that I found with a very quick Google search.

Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin states:

Mallrats mixes clever bits and an appealing quirkiness (which goes a long way) with gross-out practical jokes, needless repetition and obvious padding, since it has no real plot.

Which is not exactly the glowing review that a director hopes for with his first studio project.

Roger Ebert, a critic who I respect above most others, wrote:

The fatal flaw in plotting the material is that we don’t care.

Again, probably not the sort of glowing review Smith was hoping for after the critical praise that was heaped upon Clerks.

And, in a review that I can only call unfair, Chris Hicks of the Deseret News wrote:

There are some funny bits of business along the way, but they are invariably undercut by uneven performances, gags that fall flat and a mean-spirited tone. In the end, this one leaves an extremely sour aftertaste.

After seeing this reaction from critics regarding the film, you can understand why on more than one occasion since we watched Clerks when Liz said “We should watch Mallrats” I hesitated. I didn’t want her to be turned off from watching the rest of the sequence of films because she hated Mallrats. However, I should have known better and trusted the taste of my partner. In the end, when the film had finished playing and we were discussing it afterwards, she looked at me with a guilty glance and said “Can I tell you something without you getting mad?”

This was it, I thought. She hated it. She doesn’t want to watch anymore of these infantile films.

“I liked this more than Clerks.”

Seriously, I had worried that she wouldn’t like the movie and she, instead, had placed it on a higher plane than Smith’s critically-lauded first film. I laughed out loud at that because, as friends who I have discussed this with know, I consider Mallrats to be one of Smith’s truly great films while I think that Clerks is only okay. It was in that moment that I, once again, realized why my partner and I are perfect for each other.

Okay, but now that I’ve ranted about the process of getting to watching the movie, let me talk about the movie for a second. I’ve already blown the ending of the “review” by stating that both myself and Liz enjoyed the movie greatly. Still, even though I love this flick, there are some things that do annoy me. And, as we are looking at the evolution of the writer/director, there are a few things that should be pointed out as quickly becoming trademarks/hang-ups.

First, as there are two very distinct versions of this film available for home perusal, let me stress that we were watching the theatrical release, not the extended 10th anniversary edition, though I do own both. For a more pure reaction from Liz, I have chosen to always go with the theatrical versions of these films. Still, as I have seen both versions, I would urge you to avoid the extended version at all costs. The cut opening scene that is added back in on the extended version is amateurish and clumsy, something that Smith avoids, for the most part, in the rest of the film.

Let me touch on a few things that I disliked during this viewing of the film.

Rape jokes aren’t funny. Perhaps it is because I haven’t sat down and watched the film with a critical eye in years but I had forgotten the two major rape jokes within the plot. One is about statutory rape. Tricia Jones is the 15 year old that is having sex with men of varying ages for her book. This may seem like a benign joke except for the fact that I know girls from high school who had adopted her coding system to code their own sexual encounters. While I understand the point that Kevin was trying to make with Trish the Dish, I do think that it could have been down without resorting to a subtle glorification of statutory rape.

The second rape joke is a throwaway scene in the wrap up text at the end. Shannon Hamilton, played by a douchetastic Ben Affleck, is shown in prison standing in front of the bars to his cell. Slowly, the hand of his cell mate closes over his and he gets a pained and panicky look on his face. Yeah. Implied prison rape isn’t funny, Kev. Sorry.

Another small issue that I had was with some of the acting. I’m used to a bit of pained acting in a Kevin Smith film. Hell, Clerks was nothing but pained acting. And when it is Walt Flanagan and Bryan Johnson hamming their way through another “Tell ‘Em, Steve-Dave!” moment or Scott Mosier struggling to be an actor as Mr. Svenning’s assistant, I can handle this. However, when professional people who were hired to be actors because of their acting ability and not because they are Kevin Smith’s childhood friends can’t seem to give a performance that rises above that level, this is when I have a problem. And, yes, I’m looking at you, Claire Forlani and Jeremy London! These two actors, in the male and female lead roles, were atrocious. I’ve heard Kevin be less than complementary of both in later interviews, especially Forlani, and you can see that tension come through in the performances.

You would think with the rape jokes and the bad acting that I wouldn’t be able to rise above that and love this movie. However, this movie does have a few things going for it that completely nullify any negatives that I have in my mind.

One of those things in the presence of Stan “The Man” Lee. Call me a fanboy if you want but for a lifelong comic book fan, such as Kevin Smith, to land a cameo by the one and only Stan Lee in his film. That is something worth getting excited about. It was one of those perfect casting moments, unlike Forlani and London. It ranks up there with the fact that Smith had to fight to keep the studio from recasting Jay, the drug dealing stoner played by the one and only Jason Mewes, with Seth Green or Breckin Meyer. While I love both Green and Meyer, I can’t imagine anybody but Mewes playing Jay. But let me be honest. They could have recast Jay with Claire Forlani and I probably would have still loved this movie as long as they made one other casting decision exactly the same.

This movie is made by the casting of Jason Lee as Brodie Bruce. This was Lee’s first major film role after beginning his adult life as a professional skateboarder. There was nothing that indicated that Lee would be the breakout star of this movie. However, a perfect storm of Lee’s trademark delivery and Smith’s vulgar but witty dialogue was able to make Jason Lee a mandatory member of the Kevin Smith repertory company for many films to come. Whether it is in his interactions with an underrated Shannon Doherty, Ben Affleck, or Jason Mewes, Lee is the bright spot of this film in almost every imaginable way. His performance alone is what makes this one of my favorite movies from my high school years. And the stories that he shares about his cousin Walter are vulgar comedic gold. For instance:

One time my cousin Walter got this cat stuck in his ass. True story. He bought it at our local mall, so the whole fiasco wound up on the news. It was embarrassing for my relatives and all. But the next week, he did it again. Different cat, same results, complete with another trip to the emergency room. So I run into him a week later at the mall and he was buying another cat! And I said to him, “Jesus, Walt, what are you doing? You know you’re just gonna get this cat stuck up your ass, too. Why don’t you knock it off?” And he said to me, “Brodie, how the hell else am I supposed to get the gerbil out?” My cousin was a weird guy.

And that is the story that opens the movie. Lee’s performance sets the tone for the film from the very first line.

And that, my friends, is why I love Mallrats. It never hides what it is. And what it is is the larger budget sibling of Clerks. If you can watch these two films and not see the direct descendant of Randal Graves in Brodie Bruce, then you are not watching the same movies that I am. Hell, I will even admit to the obvious similarities between Dante Hicks and T.S. Quint, though I would have preferred they not have used Jeremy London for the role. And Rick Derris begat Shannon Hamilton.

I read the negative reviews of Mallrats and I wonder what exactly those critics expected. In Clerks you had a movie that included jokes about hermaphroditic porn, a woman having sex with a dead guy in a bathroom, and a running gag about a girl sucking 37 dicks. Why do they seem shocked that the humor in Mallrats includes a story about a gerbil in a man’s ass, a repeated joke about anal sex, and a topless psychic? If there are two films that are more closely related in the history of cinema, I don’t know what they are.

Since I have started giving graded reviews in the month since I started this series, I guess that I should give one to this film.

Mallrats Grade: A-

Yeah. An A-. For the record, if I had been giving grades when I did Clerks, it would have been a B. This film would have gotten a solid A if it wasn’t for London and Forlani. Seriously. I hate those two.

So, that concludes this episode of the Evolution of Kevin Smith. Join us in the very near future for a look at Chasing Amy(I say very near future because we watched it this weekend too and it will be up later this week). Until then, keep your kids off the damn escalators!

Stephen King

Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. Imagine if you like, Frankenstein’s monster on its slab. Here comes lightening, not from the sky but from a humble paragraph of English words. Maybe it’s the first really good paragraph you wrote, something so fragile and yet full of possibility that you are frightened. You feel as Victor Frankenstein must have when the dead conglomeration of sewn-together spare parts suddenly opened its watery yellow eyes. Oh my God, it’s breathing, you realize. Maybe it’s even thinking. What in hell’s name do I do next?-Stephen King in On Writing

At the risk of neglecting the blog, I am not in a space where I have the time to write anything of consequence here today. I am, however, fermenting an idea that will be used as some fiction writing soon. Also, I’m sure as soon as my batteries are recharged from my week of fitful sleep that I will be back to boring you with long winded prose on this very blog. Until then, I give you advice from Stephen King.