How I met Kevin fucking Smith yesterday...

 I stumbled across a YouTube clip from the Stephen Colbert show, interviewing Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes about the new movie, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.  Kevin said they were doing a tour to promote it, and he said on October 14th, something awesome was going to happen, they were getting hand and footprints at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood.  I thought, "I'm fucking there."  So as I struggle to draw Sharpie pictures and somehow get my scraggly ass out of homelessness, I remembered to head over the hill (actually under, I take the train) from Studio City, since I'm so close.  So go back and read the last post, about how I watched from across the street, then got outside the fan section, and then magically got in the fan section.

 Then, happy to be standing 8 feet away, Kevin Smith started talking to the fans in front of me.  I got the photo above of Kevin (white hat for losers who don't know), as my phone was on it's last bit of battery.  Then... more magic... people got their selfies with Kevin, and then left, and suddenly I was one person away from the fence.  Next thing I know, I was up front, and Kevin Smith took a step, and I asked him to sign my goofy sign.

The funny thing was, he took the sign and signed it, and he was completely cool.  He looked, the whole time, like he couldn't believe all this was actually happening.  At the time, I thought he seemed like a little kid that just got to Disneyland for the first time.  He had this "Holy shit, is all this really happening?" vibe.  But thinking about it later, Kevin was more stoked than that.  He was like a 13-year-old boy would be if you snuck him into a strip club, an all nude one.  He couldn't believe the whole scene was real. 
"Gracious" was the word that popped into my head.  Kevin Smith was completely down to Earth, cool as fuck, and gracious that this all happened.  It's cool to meet people whose work you really respect and admire.  But when you meet them, and they come across as just a great human being, it's fucking epic.  Meeting Kevin Smith yesterday was epic.

I said something like, "Hey, I've been a fan since Clerks, and glad you're still around (he had a major heart attack last year), keep writing funny shit."  He said something back I'm too lame to remember, and handed me my sign back.  Then he reached out to shake my hand.  He wasn't rushing, he spent a solid minute or two talking to each person.  I was stoked as fuck.

After he walked away, I looked at the my sign.  The quote, Dante's line, that Kevin wrote for Clerks, was "I'm not even supposed to be here today."  Kevin Smith wrote below that, "I agree."  Fucking classic.

Then, a few minutes later Jason Mewes got away from the interviews, and came back to the fans, and I got him to sign my sign as well, as he was being pulled away to do another interview.  He signed it quick, started to hand it back, and then pulled it back and added some Jay-speak, "Snootch." 

Suddenly, I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard with one of the coolest pieces of Hollywood movie memorabilia in existence, I have a panhandling sign signed by Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, aka Jay and Silent Bob, aka Bluntman and Chronic.  Epic fucking day.  Thanks Kevin and Jay, and everyone for a cool time, and for making some of the funniest movies ever. 

This WILL NOT be sold on eBay.  It's mine motherfuckers.