This weekend, I decided to watch Clerks 2. I have been incredibly forgiving of Kevin Smith because of his Star Wars references - as I think all of us have, because we get giddy when anyone mentions the movies in a film or TV show - but enough already.

We get it. Geeky arguments about who shot first, about which fan base is more loyal and fanatic, and which series of movies is the best. Ha Ha. You popped into the movie-making scene with a movie that incorporated the pop culture arguments that populated our youth. And then you kept making that movie for more than 10 years.

It's gotten annoying now. It might be nice to see a movie from a reasonably talented man that relied on real dialogue, not just one-liners and witticism blurted out by stoned friends.

It's also annoying because it's largely not the case anymore. Most of us are cross-genre fans anyway.

When Star Trek finally started to self-destruct (I'm looking at you, Voyager), we accepted all the Trekkies into our ranks. When Lord of the Rings came out, everyone rushed into the theaters to see the live-action adaptation of everyone's favorite 50-year-old fantasy story. We were all pretty happy, as it would have taken a brain-damaged gorilla to mess them up.

We all accept those in costume, and don't blink twice when some nut refuses to serve on a jury because her grasp on reality has slipped and she refuses to swear an oath to anything but Starfleet. (That really happened, kids, in the 1990s, in case some of you don't remember. It was in LA, I think.) But look at Mike Tyson. You don't need a costume to be a nut.

The point is, the fan bases have been cross-breeding for a long time. Most of us are on the Battlestar Galactica wagon now, and we'll be there for the next Indy movie, too.

So, please, Kevin Smith, I beg you. Enough already. Stop trolling the same waters for the same jokes. Everything has now taken on the tone of feeling like you're somehow better than your own geekishness, because you can make movies where characters talk about it. You've got skill and a reasonably good hand at editing. Stop painting sci-fi fans as impossible, dysfunctional dorks. (And while you're at it, if you're going to lay into religion so ferociously, try to make fun of something other than just Christianity. We get it. You have issues.)

As evidenced by how you handled the donkey sex show in Clerks 2 and the Silence of the Lambs joke that went on too long, you need to learn when to let up. We got the joke. Some of the stuff is still funny. It just isn't original anymore.