It’s Baylor, McNeil, Granville and Calloway:

Rudy BAYLOR … (Matt in ‘The Rainmaker’)
Holden MCNEIL … (Duh)
C.T. GRANVILLE … (Ben in ‘The Voyage of the Mimi’)
Cotton CALLOWAY … (Matt in ‘The Good Old boys’)

MEETUPs are informal, local, face-to-face gatherings where Kevin Smith junkies of all types can MEETUP and discuss all-things-Askew!

All MEETUPs are FREE and are happening in over 500 cities WORLDWIDE!

We’ve tried to make it easy by picking some good MEETUP spots for this event, including local restaurants, book stores, and coffee shops.

Check out the Kevin Smith MEETUP page here: http://kevinsmith.meetup.com

It would be great if you could notify as many folks as possible via email.

And… If you have the power to put a link on your site, check out these excellent links: http://kevinsmith.meetup.com/link.jsp — We WILL reciprocate!

Let’s spread the word! Power in numbers!

Questions, ideas or comments?

Please drop me a line – Really, I do want to hear from you: Myles Weissleder

Kevin Smith’s hetero-lifemates are available in 3-D form in the new Jay and the Silent Bob Cold-Cast Statues. Sculpted by Clete Shields, these are the first two in what will be an ongoing series featuring the colorful characters from Smith’s View Askewniverse. Based on sculpts originally commissioned by Smith, these incredibly detailed caricature each stand roughly 11” tall and are painted with a faux-bronze finish. Jay and Silent Bob have never looked better!!

Future statues will include Rufus, Brodie, Loki & Bartleby…and other characters from Kevin’s flicks. Each statue is limited to an edition size of just 1000 each and are packaged in a full-color protective box. Supplies are limited and are subject to allocation based on orders received. PLEASE NOTE that the Jay and Silent Bob statues are sold separately and are two different products. Scheduled to ship November 2002 (CAUT: 4).

$145 each.

MEMORABILIA #6 — This issue comes with two free comics, plus an exclusive Previews variant cover! Whatever you¹re into, you¹ll find pages of authoritative features, chats with the experts and colorful price guides, as well a whole bunch of crazy stuff. This issue we¹ve got comics coming out of our ears; including the top 30 rarest comics ever, and icon Kevin Smith with all his comic know-how. (Titan) (CAUT: 4)

“…From the get-go, Lucas captures my limited imagination with one simple proposition. Darth Vader was once a teenager. How pedestrian,yet how profound! Evil’s gotta start somewhere, right? Why not show why Johnny can’t read – or in this case, can’t play well with others, and insists on using the Force to choke underlings who don’t live up to his expectations? From the hit-or-miss origin of Phantom Menace’s take on baby Anakin as the galactic Hitler in short pants, Clones ups the ante by presenting us with the heart of darkness right where everyone’s always known it lies: in the passions of a volatile high schooler.

Right off the bat, Anakin is portrayed as a kid who thinks he knows more than he does, and insists on proving to everybody that he’s as good as them, if not better. I went to high school with his guy. Granted, he didn’t grow up to carbon-freeze anybody (in truth, I believe he works at a Shell station now), but had he been given a lightsaber and taught how to pull the Jedi Mind Trick on folks, he might’ve.

In Clones, Anakin is a twelfth grader with a license and parents who want him home by eight: he’s a disaster waiting to happen. Who else but a tortured teen leaps out of a sky-speeder to capture a bounty hunter who’s talked smack about his girl (or, in the case of Clones, set loose killer centipedes in her bedroom)? With little-to-no concern for his own well-being, based largely on his assumption that he’s immortal (that worst of teenage attributes), young Skywalker forces Zam Wessel’s craft (how sad is it that I’m 31 and I know the name of a character who’s never really identified and appears only fleetingly in the film?) to crash-land in a densely populated city, and then pursues her (it) into a bar only to watch his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, make the final collar. And how does the Force-ful whelp wrap it all up with the wide-eyed cantina bystanders? He tosses them a condescending “This is Jedi business.” The balls on this kid! …

There’s something bittersweet about the fall of Darth Vader now, that hadn’t existed before Clones: had his mother simply died of old age, the guy might never have developed that extreme case of asthma he seems to suffer from in Star Wars, Empire, and Return of the Jedi.

Which leads to the most haunting moment of Clones for me: when Anakin breaks down to his puppy love, Amidala, and confesses that he butchered that no-good bunch of sand-eating bandage wearers with his hi-tech Zippo. This scene really resonated with me, because Amidala wears this expression that very quietly says “Holy Christ I’m in love with a human time-bomb.” The sad, hopeless look on her face upon learning of his murder spree brought to mind that moment in Jedi when Luke asked Leia if she rememered what her (and his) mother was like. Leia (in what may be Carrie Fisher’s finest hour in the original trilogy) reminisced that her mother always seemed sad. Here, nearly 20 years later, we get to see what Leia was talking about.

And that’s what worked best for me about the Anakin arc in Clones: the doomed love affair of Anakin and Amidala. Most of the critics dismissed this as the flick’s most ham-fistedly handled aspect, but I thought it played out tragically and beautifully. High marks to both Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, because I completely bought their relationship. He wants her desperately without really even know! ing why, as do all teenage boys when they find who they assume is their one-true in high school. And even though she knows this guy is poison, she can’t help but fall for him – the little slave-boy that grew up to be a conflicted, impetuous hat tank who insists everyone’s giving him a raw deal. In high school, the really hot chicks always went for the massive ****-ups, and eventually wound up married to them. But this marriage doesn’t end in small town affiars and divorce; this marriage ends with the girl scattering her kids across the galaxy to save them from their father, who by that point is more machine than man.”