During his appearance at the University of Akron, Kevin Smith was talking about actor Jason Mewes’ ability to make extraordinarily offensive sexual remarks to women and still manage to come off as unthreatening. (Smith’s story went something along the lines of “Mewes could tell a woman, ‘Show me your butthole,’ and she’d just go, ‘Oh, you’re so silly.’ And then she’d –” and here, Smith mimed bending over and pulling down his pants with a bashful grin.) 
   And while the writer/director of “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy” said he envied that gift, the truth is, somehow, for as vulgar and graphic and juvenile as Kevin Smith can be, the guy manages to stay safely in the “You know, I bet he’d be fun to have over for dinner sometime” territory. 
   Seriously. He pulls it off, and I don’t quite know how. 
   If you’re unfamiliar with Smith’s DVDs “An Evening With Kevin Smith” and its sequel, “Evening Harder,” it’s difficult to characterize the experience. Ostensibly, it’s on par with a filmmaker’s lecture, at least inasmuch as Kevin Smith is a filmmaker, and he talks about his movies and other stuff in the industry. It’s also part stand-up, though, because he’s a great storyteller. Some of his tales sound a little rehearsed, but that’s OK, because he’s apparently got a policy of not sharing stories onstage that he’s already included on the DVDs. And then there’s the audience dialogue: The question and answer sessions which really form the meat of the “Evening with…” shows. 
   Smith’s Akron appearance started off with about 10 minutes of joking about the city, riffing off material he said he’d gleaned on the Internet. Pretty run-of-the-mill warm-up chatter, really, and then he just cold-launched into the Q&A.
   Remembering a lot of specifics from the roughly three hours that followed is difficult, because it’s not like he got up there and lectured and made bulletpoints and pie charts. It was more like being at a party where there’s one guy who’s got really good stories, so everybody kind of winds up sitting in the kitchen listening and interjecting. 
   The feel of a large-scale conversation really stood out when Smith offered the opinion that no filmmaker has ever made a ground-breaking movie with every attempt. Within minutes, audience members were shouting out directors' names, and Smith would respond with an observation along the lines of, “Peter Jackson? 'Heavenly Creatures' – absolutely phenomenal film, no question. 'The Frighteners?' Not so much.” 
   He gets asked a lot about comic books and movie adaptations, too, so we were treated to his grievances about "Superman Returns." (Since I haven’t seen it, the only thing I really recall is that he seemed pretty upset that Lex Luthor is apparently nothing but a big real estate scammer.) This was the only part of the show that carried an echo for me, since I remember reading something similar on Smith’s website, I think. 
   He also told some entertaining stories about George Lucas and Steven Spielberg spending part of a Thanksgiving checking out their own websites; a minor-league tiff with Jennifer Garner over birthday-present etiquette; and a show-closing story about his wife and a severe case – as in emergency-room trip – of medication-induced constipation. (That last one included a great reference to Yukon Cornelius and his pickaxe from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" that had me in tears.) 
   Which brings me back to the off-color nature of the evening. 
   Maybe it’s the nonchalance with which he throws around f-bombs and an arsenal of euphemisms for masturbation, genitalia, and sex of all kinds. And yet he never projected a cooler-than-thou aura, or came off like he was trying to.
   It’s a tough line to walk: When I was growing up, one of my friends went through this phase where he used “fuck” incessantly – to the point where it was actually funny, because no matter how hard he tried to make it sound natural, it sounded forced and ridiculous. He even tried taking up the phrase, “Fuckin’ A,” only he had decided it was supposed to be “Fuckin’ egg.” Time to time, he’d nod seriously, fling back the hair from his eyes, puff at a cigarette and intone with the wisdom of the ages, “Fuckin’ egg, man. Fuckin’ egg.” 
   And if I were to try and pull off Smith-speak in public, even though I’m the same age as Kevin, I’m sure I’d sound as hip as Alan Thicke did when he dropped Scritti Politti references on “Growing Pains” back in the day. (In private’s another matter: A couple New Years Eves back, my wife and I and a couple of longtime friends found ourselves howling over the “shocker” hand gesture and similarly nasty stuff, and in that setting, it was all good.) 
   Then there’s what I think of as the taboo kind of profanity. In the early to mid-80s, the junior high years, the profanity bar for my generation was pretty much set by Eddie Murphy. It sounds ridiculous to anyone younger than 25, I’m sure, but yes, Eddie Murphy was once hilariously vulgar, and so when he used the language, it carried that aura of beer-sneaking mischief, just like staying up late with the volume low on HBO to catch “The Hitchhiker,” because you were guaranteed at least one totally gratuitous boob shot.
   Beyond that, there’s the kind of profanity that I just find off-putting: It’s really shock-for-shock’s-sake kind of stuff, like the old Andrew Dice Clay material. It’s not that it was vulgar that bugged me, it’s that Clay just came off like a dick, whether it was all an act or not. Yes, even though Kevin Smith can say things that are stupid and misogynistic and homophobic and flat-out stomach-churningly vile, he never seems to take any of it seriously enough for it to strike me as stuff that’s hard-wired into his character.
   I’m pretty sure there’s a generational and cultural thing at work, too, since Kevin Smith’s only about four months older than me and a self-confessed geek, and I have a certain amazement that a guy who grew up in the same era as me can manage to talk dirty to an audience of college kids who were in elementary school when “Clerks” came out. How do you do that and not be that creepy pushing-40 guy, especially when you’re wearing that overcoat? I don’t know, but it’s a talent I admire. 
   And that’s the kicker: Here’s Kevin Smith, talking about building giant vagina-shaped doorways and whacking off under a glass table and giving himself blowjobs, and I’m laughing my head off and thinking that someone who can do all that and still reference Sid & Marty Krofft’s TV creations and earnestly support his side of a Batman-vs.-Obi Wan Kenobi debate is probably a pretty decent guy. 
   Fuckin’ egg.