Blab from Silent Bob

[Isn't It Ironic] Sometimes people ask me what qualifies a newspaper as "alternative?" How about this: The review copies we get from book publishers are always chock full of (air quotes here) irony (end air quotes).

Today in the mail I got My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith, 470 pages of what really does amount to one celebrity's mundane life. It's got a little edge. Very ironic. It's hardly the stuff of Britney Spears backing over a paparazzi's foot. But Smith, better known as the hilarious Silent Bob of Clerks, etc., really does live in parenting hell like the rest of us (please god, may I never be subjected to another afternoon of watching Barney the Purple Dinosaur or fascimile).

The genesis of Boring-Ass Life was in response to a March 2005 post on one of Smith's Web sites that asked: "What do you do all day?" Smith didn't know. So he started keeping a diary. Of. Everything. He. Did. In. The. Course. Of. A. Day. He blogged about it. Now it's a book, too.

Uh, it's funny. At least what I've skimmed through this afternoon. But then I must say I love Kevin Smith. In a cast of characters at the front of the book, he describes Jen thusly: "This is my wife. She holds my heart and dick." And Harley: "This is my daughter. She just holds my heart."

As for Smith, he tells us he is "still married, still a dad, still a filmmaker, still fat, still alive." Like I said, honest. And funny. (Holly Mullen)