• Via @PHazy87 “how is editing of the new flick going?” We’re down to 1:44. I’ll show the studio near end of October, then start testing it.
• Dear @jimmyfallon, Thanks 4 putting me on TV last night. But fair’s fair: next time, I wear the blindfold and YOU shove balls into MY mouth.
• Via @hudo59 “any plans to come to australia for a evening with? big following down here” Waiting for opening at Sydney Opera House. Serious.
• Granted, I worship at the Varadi St. Temple, but this is the best piece I’ve read about Gretzky’s stepping down: http://bit.ly/10mX2c

Read it all, including a 6-tweet congratulatory message to Alyssa Milano, more appearance details, and the aftermath of Kevin’s stint in goal today, here at News Askew and of course, instantaneously via the magic of Twitter.

“(SModcast) is my favorite thing in the world right now,” Smith said. “If that’s taken away by virtue of the fact that … money gets involved, I mean we’ve got enough money from our other jobs, we don’t need money for SModcast. Let’s keep that pure and simple and fun. And you know, I don’t know, there’s something kind of neat about it.”

When he’s not catching up with Mosier, Smith also uses SModcast to showcase other friends and collaborators, such as artist (and manager of Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash in Red Bank) Walt Flanagan and writer-director Bryan Johnson, as well as Smith’s wife, actress Jennifer Schwalbach, and their daughter, Harley Smith.

“People, for the last two years we’ve been doing it, have been like, ‘Hey, bring in Ben Affleck and bring in Alan Rickman (who both co-starred in Smith’s 1999 film ‘Dogma’),'” Smith said. “On the last movie (the upcoming ‘A Couple of Dicks’) we were shooting with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan and they’re like, ‘Well do a SModcast with them,’ but that’s not the point. It’s not like a fucking late night show, … it’s just two people sitting around talking, and it’s nothing new, it’s not reinventing the wheel, but we just don’t feel the need to bell and whistle it up, because we feel like, and based on all the reaction from the people who listened and wrote in comments over the last two years, we feel like the special effect or the magic is the content of what’s being talked about.”

Speaking with Smith, it becomes clear that he’d gladly give up his day job for a life of SModcast.

“It’s definitely the purest thing I’m involved in. … It’s beautiful, it’s my favorite thing I do right now, way more so than the films. If I could get away with just doing SModcast for a living, I totally would. Unfortunately, like the (‘An Evening with Kevin Smith’) Q & As, the filmmaking side of what I do for a living fuels it.

“Like, without that filmmaking gig I don’t know if I have anything, really, to talk about. That’s not true, I know I have tons to talk about, I just don’t know if anybody gives a shit at that point. So I stay involved in the film thing, you know, because A: it’s my passion (and) B: it’s what I do, it’s my vocation, but for me the best thing we do right now is SModcast, it just kills me, it’s phenomenal. And it all started just because I wanted to hang out with Mosier a little more.”

Kevin Smith is getting so good at his public speaking ventures, it’s become a second career for him at this point. Hell, he could retire as a director and just tour around the country with his modified stand-up act, entertaining people across the country. You should know that Smith is a talented writer so he’s combined that skill with his gift of gab for the book “Shootin’ the Shit With Kevin Smith” which is out in stores as we speak.

In freewheeling conversations with his friend and producer Scott Mosier (as heard on their top-rated podcast, known as SModcast), we discover — to pick just four random examples of the riches therein — the genesis of Stalin’s Monkey Soldier army, the horrifying tale of Kevin vs. Steak Tartare, how to make bukkake eggs, and how Kevin was once willing to let Alanis Morissette get mugged…

We’ve got an exclusive excerpt from the book below, a conversation titled “Little Outhouse on the Prairie.” I’d like to think we’ve covered a wide range of topics here on JoBlo.com in the 11-something years since we’ve been up-and-running, but I think this is the first time we’ve had a discussion on using a corn cob to wipe your ass on the site.

You can read said passage at JoBlo, or in your very own copy of “Shootin’ The Sh*t with Kevin Smith”, which should be on your nightstand or bookshelf right now, dang it. Get yourself
a signed copy from the Stash.