6/14/06
Tomorrow, Jeff and Brian kick off their three week, city-by-city grass roots press tour to support the flick. This is what their daily grind looks like…

June 14 – San Diego
June 15 – San Francisco
June 16 – Portland
June 19 – Seattle
June 20 – Phoenix
June 21 – Denver
June 22 – Houston
June 23 – St. Louis
June 26 – Kansas City
June 27 – Cleveland
June 28 – Miami

On the 19th, my leg of the grass roots press tour kicks in (I was also supposed to start tomorrow, but had to put off my departure ’til Monday, as Harley’s birthday party is this weekend). Here’s where I’ll be whoring out the flick…

June 19 – Dallas
June 20 – Minneapolis
June 21 – Chicago
June 22 – Detroit
June 23 – Boston
June 26 – Philly
June 27 – DC
June 28 – Atlanta
June 29 – Toronto
June 30 – NYC

When the boys and I are done, there will be press days in NYC and L.A. for the whole cast as well (which is where Rosario kicks into action).

We’re now less than a month away from the premiere (July 11th at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles) and a little over a month away from opening day.

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6/13/06

Scott, Jeff and I recorded the In-Theater Commentary Track for “Clerks II” today. On the Monday after the opening weekend, you’ll be able to download the track at iTunes (not sure if it’s a free download or not just yet, but I’d imagine it is), pop it on your iPod, and bring it to the theater to listen to in conjunction with a viewing of “Clerks II”. It’s a wall-to-wall conversational commentary (no dead spaces of us just watching the movie, folks), and it’s loaded with spoilers, so I wouldn’t suggest listening to it unless you’ve seen the flick first.

The whole thing turned out nicely: very informative and pretty funny. I could see doing this for every flick’s theatrical run.

I know many people including myself wondered if Kevin had lost his nerve after Jersey Girl and just wanted to play in a pond where he knew the water and could avoid jumping any sharks. He seemed to be pretty happy about the production and the direction of the film based on interviews or items on his various websites and I cant knock the guy for returning to his roots…hell Ive got how many versions of Star Wars? If George Lucas can rape your childhood then Kevin can play a secret touching game with my early twenties I suppose- he did promise candy if I got in the car- so away I went.

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If you identified with the movie 10 years ago chances are its still going to ring true for most people (us slacker types, who like to bitch..talkbackers I’m looking at you) and its a lot of fun. Though I admit I left the theater feeling like I had a strange warped sense of Déjà vu- like I wasn’t sure what to think at first, it was Clerks, but at the same time it was in color and had some parts of Jersey Girl thrown in or contaminated (depending on your point of view), all in all, the movie is pretty damn funny and the plot has more going on then the first Clerks, in that it goes outside the short time frame and gives a sense of whats gone on between the films and what could happen after, instead of just keeping the status quo of the first film. It feels more complete as a film than Clerks did and its a good thing.

Like Jay and Silent Bob in a Kevin Smith feature or Eugene Levy and Fred Willard in Christopher Guest’s movies, Ratzenberger has become Pixar’s company player. He’s never the lead, but pops up in key supporting roles like the villainous Underminer in “The Incredibles” or the Yeti in “Monsters, Inc.”