An unexpected, but WAY WAY cool surprise today was a TON of original multimedia popping up over at the official Clerks Cartoon website. Some of the cool stuff you’ll find: The call waking Dante up from each of the six episodes, the famous cut “Flintstones List” sequence, sound clips, and even full show scenes (accessible through the production sketches page). Surf over and start soaking up that bandwidth, ‘cuz you’re gonna have a ton of stuff to watch, folks. Remember, the show premieres on ABC at 9:30 on Wednesday, May 31st, but this is your first look at a ton of footage. Enjoy!

• Big news today is Entertainment Weekly‘s coverage of Kevin & View Askew in their big 10th Anniversary Issue. The mag’s got a couple pics and a nice bit of text of how he got into filmmaking and “Clerks”. There’s also a funny bit about how he and Mosier trying to buy film reels, and his hopes that Clerks will inspire a new generation of filmmakers as “Slacker” had inspired him. We’ll post the full story as soon as we get the scan and the text (if someone has it before we get to it, feel free to send it along, thanks).

• Finally today, some fun news from the UK: Seems that a product called Kraft DairyLea (processed cheese, which we’re sure would induce excessive drooling out of Homer Simpson) has coincidentally adopted a cute little cow character called “Moobie” as their mascot. Sure, there’s some slight similarities, but we’re sure the Golden Calf could kick his ass.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll see ya next time!

In a surprise move, it was announced today that View Askew has just opened a new internet “wing” of the Stash, that’s selling rare items that you can’t get anywhere else, on an auction-like basis such as eBay. Thus, the site’s name, eJay.

So far, they’ve got the hard to find Mallrats book, rare signed Mallrats posters (Lee & Affleck autographs, anyone?), the German Chasing Amy poster, and a very rare Chasing Amy “Vogue” poster. Lots more items are sure to come, maybe even some props from the flicks. Ya never know. Here’s the word from the official site:

So what are you waiting for? Surf over to eJay and place your bids!

• Wizard World 2000 in Chicago has announced that Kevin Smith is on their guestlist for this year. We’ve yet to confirm this, but the con itself runs August 4th through the 6th. We’re not sure exactly which days Kevin’s expected to be there, just one or all of them, but we’ll see what else we can dig up in the meantime. Those of you in the Chicago area may wanna mark your calendars, though.

• Sounds like things are slowly coming together for the jam-packed A BETTER PLACE DVD that Vincent’s throwing together. The Synapse website recently posted an update on the disc’s progress with this amazing list of features. Check it out:

What does this mean for the disc’s current July 22nd debut? Probably that we won’t see it by then. If this list is correct, it sounds like a lot needs to be done before the disc can be mastered. Still, we’re sure it’ll be worth the wait, it just takes time to put these special editions together. We’ll keep you posted, and we’re sure that Vincent will, too.

• Well, after many of you speculated, the IMDB has now confirmed it: The “undefeated champion of Rome” that Maximus goes up against in the currently playing (and kicking ass) “Gladiator” is none other than actor/stuntman Sven-Ole Thorsen, best known by most of us as LaFours from Mallrats! A nifty connection, indeed. Thanks to all who wrote in about it.
• A new story from inside.com talks about Miramax’s latest TV projects, and mentions the Clerks series quite a bit. Here’s a snippet:

Hey folks! Well, things have once again gotten very quiet, though we at least expect some reviews, comments, and rumblings from the premiere of the Clerks series in a couple of weeks (2 weeks from tomorrow, as a matter of fact). So today, we’ve just got the beginnings of a post from Kevin, and a few VERY minor newsbites (But hey, it didn’t make sense to do just one story).

Problems with the countdowns in java have of course been corrected. We’ll be adding a link to the upcoming events banner hopefully this weekend that will allow those of you that want to see all the dates/events at once that functionality. It should also fix the problems for those of you using browsers that have trouble with java such as WebTV and the “alternate” operating systems. Stay tuned for that.

Also, we’ve added a TON of Elston Gunn’s fantastic interview right into The Summaries. Those of you that read it will recall that he went down pretty much every rumored project EVER in Kevin’s career, and Kevin gave straight answers on everything. So, if you EVER have a question (or see someone else asking) about any flick Kevin is or was rumored to be involved in, the summaries are now an even better place to go.

Alright, here’s what we could throw together for ya! Thanks for stopping in.

After a very long absence from cyberspace (We don’t think he’d posted in close to a month!) Kevin stopped by the web board to start one of his famous posts that explains what’s been going on since we’ve last seen him. He began with some insight on the honorary doctorate and his experience at Illinois, but then was cut abruptly short (so we assume this will be continued soon). Until then, here it is so far…

• A new interview with View Askew favorite Jason Lee appears at the drdrew.com website this week. Give it a read.
• The recent video release “Art House” features a segment before the flick where the director enters a Hollywood Video store and asks the clerk what flicks are renting well. The clerk procaims that “Clerks” is the top renting indepdendent flick at his store.

That’s it, folks! Sorry again for the light day…We’ll back back with more news as it breaks! Take care.

Before we get flooded with e-mails, we know a few of the countdown days are off. There was a coding error that’s easy to fix, however Chris left for work and I don’t have the FTP password due to carelessly losing it, so they’ll probably be fixed sometime tonight. Sorry about the problem, but no need to e-mail in about it. Thanks.

Hey folks. We realize that things have been sorta quiet ’round these parts lately. There’s not been much to say and we’ve been kinda busy anyway. I took the time to do some landscaping on the house finally, owning a house takes up a lot of spare time, that’s for sure.

The Flyers didn’t do too well today. We’ll get ’em the next time. We were just chatting about other stuff on TV with all the renewals due by tomorrow. Friends will be back for another 2 years. Buffy & Angel will both be back. That’s good. But probably the big news is the trend with summer TV shows. Clerks is debuting on May 31st, along with Survivor, a new CBS reality show (we dunno if ABC and CBS are pitting the shows against one another). CBS also has that show with 10 people locked in a house and watched by cameras 24-7 until they all crack or get booted out. Sounds intriguing. Then there’s always the HBO shows which remain some of the best on TV ever.

On the film front, we tried “Battlefield Earth” for the hell of it last night. We KNEW the reviews were bad but just figured the critics were overreacting and that it would be bad, but still fun. Oh, how we were wrong. This flick makes “Waterworld” look like “Saving Private Ryan”. It’s that bad. No fun AT ALL. Stay away. With only about a 12 million dollar take this weekend, though, it should rank up there as one of the bigger cimematic bombs in history. Thank goodness.

On the Askew front, we’re just gonna stick with NewsBites again today. Hopefully we’re not letting you down by so many of these lately. Basically, when we’ve got stories but only a line or two to write about each, that’s when they become newsbites. If a bigger story breaks, it’ll get its own headline, but with the lack of big news going around, aside from some small references or articles here or there, we feel this is the best way to keep it easy.

Hopefully all of you are adjusting to the new site. We should have some small fixes and enhancements for you soon, it’s just that we wanted to take a break after working six months straight on the new design. Hope ya understand!

A new poll topic is finally here today, as well. Vote and be heard. Let’s see what else is going on today: