• Some big news today for regular visitors to the site, in fact, the answer to the mystery surrounding our big secret project that we’ve alluded to since before Christmas this past year. After six months of rework, a brand new News Askew design will premiere TOMORROW NIGHT. We think you’ll like what you see. So take one last look at the current design, take your screenshots, and get ready to say goodbye to the News Askew you’ve known for the past couple of years. Details below.

That big story, and just a few newsbites to take up today’s edition of News Askew. By the way, before we do ANYTHING tomorrow after work, we’re gonna go check out Gladiator. That flick’s gonna be good.

• Well, it’s been hinted at, whispered about in dark alleys, and speculated for months now. But today, we can finally reveal that yes, News Askew will be reborn with a complete redesign tomorrow night (if final testing and preparations go well for the remainder of today & tomorrow). This project represents the culmination of almost six months of work, most of which took place in our spare time between our regular jobs, regular lives, and the maintaining of the CURRENT News Askew. Those things coupled with the immense amount of rework on the new site are why things took so long (we’ll explain more after the site is live).

That being said, we’re very proud and excited about the new site. We feel that we’ve taken all the best elements of the page and made it even better. We’ll be offering a couple features that we’ve dreamed about adding for years now. Even better, the site design allows for faster modification, easier access, and interactive participation.

Of course, with new technology always comes the potential for problems, and, while we have tested things fairly thoroughly, we will give you a few words of caution. First of all, PLEASE upgrade to the latest verison of your browser software, whatever it may be. We recommend Internet Explorer only because it’s what we developed on and tested more completely with. The latest version of Netscape Navigator should also work just fine for you. Next, if you are running at a screen resolution of lower than 800×600 pixels (Set in your Display Properties under Control Panel for a lot of you Windows users), set it to AT LEAST that setting (though the site looks best at 1024×768). While you’re in there, set your color depth to at least High Color (16-bit) if available. If you do these things, you’ll be ready to experience the new site in its ideal form. The design was done with a PC in mind, so WebTV & Apple computer users, keep those fingers crossed.

Tomorrow night, we’re not sure when, News Askew will disappear for a bit as we transfer over the new design. We’ve never done such a massive update before, so we can’t be sure how long it will take. Please don’t be alarmed if you see a message letting you know we’re temporarily gone. We promise, we’ll be back soon. We’re very excited about finally unveiling what we’ve worked so hard on in the past months. Hopefully, it’ll all be worth it.

• More details on the “Scream 3” DVD and then we’ll be done with it (since Jay & Bob’s part is so damn small): It streets on July 4th and is supposed to have a commentary with Wes Craven among other things. Nuff said.
• The college campus magazine “The Link”, in a small article about “Being John Malkovich” hitting video stores, shows what it would be like if the title character was someone else. One of many was Being Alanis Morissette. The article says that the puppeteer “would be Madonna, who’s pissed that Kevin Smith chose Morisette to play God in Dogma rather than her.”
• Comics Continuum ran a small piece on the Clerks cartoon’s pilot episode yesterday.
• Those of you from the UK who are hoping to organize into a group for a trip into the states this October when Vulgarthon 2000 is being proposed to be held, you may wanna check out this SITE.
• What if Kevin Smith made a Batman flick?
• Finally today, since we’ve been kinda light on the reading material, ya may wanna surf over to the Borders website where Sharon McRill has done another great interview with Kevin.