• Dammit, why couldn’t Kevin have been at MY college commencement? Sounds like a fantastic speech was given by the man. We received quite a few accounts of the speech but all were quite similar, here’s one [from Jade] we thought summed it up pretty well. Thanks to all our scoopers above for sending in their reports from the scene, too.

Another scooper [Nate] says, “I was deeply honored that he was present at my graduation.” All we can say is that sounds like the way a commencement SHOULD be! Congrats on the honor, Dr. Smith, and on another crowd-pleasing appearance. We’re betting colleges all over the place are gonna be jockeying for the guy to speak more than ever.

• It turns out that all three parts of Kevin’s iF interview ARE online. The links are on the left hand side, right below Kev’s quote about having to have stars cast.
• Stuff Magazine (the counterpart to the very cool men’s magazine “Maxim”) has this to say about the Clerks Cartoon:

• Finally today, a scooper created a funny little Jay & Silent Bob animation based on a scene you might remember. You can watch it HERE.

Hey folks. Just wanted to finish watching the Flyers game today (and what a game it was! Go Flyers!) before getting the update to ya. As usual, not much going on at the moment, though we expect Kevin will check in soon since his commencement speech in Illinois was today.

The new site continues to run smoothly, and we’re quite pleased about that. Again, we’re happy so much of you like it, and hope that those of you that don’t will grow into it a bit. As for the countdowns, they will stay the way they are. We may improve on things a bit in the future, but for now, the applet is staying. Again, remember, the most recent event that’s on the way is always first in the list. Unfortunately it’s tough to modify the application to let you regulate the speed, it’s a hard coded variable on our side. We haven’t tested it on much less than a pentium, so we dunno how slow it can get. At any rate, we’re not going back to the list format of countdowns. We like the new way. Sorry.

Okay, well, let’s take a look at what’s going on in the Askew world today then with some…

• Another damn fine interview with Kevin appears on iF Magazine’s web site, which focuses on the controversy surrounding Dogma. There’s some really fascinating stuff there, including some of the alternate casting choices for some of the roles…

Surf over to their website to read part 1 — parts 2 and 3 are on the way. We’ll let ya know when they’re posted.

• Seems that an editor at Ambercrombie & Fitch’s catalog isn’t a big Smith fan. Check out the angry letter a fan wrote in and the mag’s response:

• This is an unconfirmed report, but we hear that Jay Mewes is going to appear at the Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia. Other guests include Lloyd (The Toxic Avenger) Kaufman and Tom Savini. The Con is held June 29 – July 2.
• In the new Entertainment Weekly (May 12, 2000 with Russel Crowe on the cover) on page 66 in the television section, there is a bit on the upcoming Kevin Smith interview on the Sundance channel, complete with picture, and a great line: “Only Dogma director Kevin Smith would dare refer to an actor’s process of emoting as ‘artsy fartsy nonsense,’ but that’s exactly why you gotta love the guy.” They give the interview a B+.

• And finally today, we present a shot of the girls of the “Coyote Ugly”. The flick opens August 4th. Enjoy, fellas.

Okay, made a few changes. Dates will now display in the countdown application. Hope that makes some of you a bit happier. We know it’s not the same as a big list with everything in it, but that’s the way it’s gonna stay. You’ll get used to it.

Talkback posts will display from oldest to newest. It just makes more sense to read forwards rather than backwards. Sorry for the out of order talkbacks in previous items, from now on they won’t get mixed up (the mixups were due to us changing the configurations).

A submit scoops button is now on the left sidebar.

We’ll have some real Askew news for ya tomorrow…Just not much going on to report. Thanks for stopping in!

Good morning, all. We’ve been checking out all of your comments in the talkbacks and just want to say we’re listening and working on everything that you mentioned.

1) Talkback post order — This is one we’d like your opinions on. You may have noticed that the talkback posts appeared out of order in yesterday’s update. This is because we changed the order halfway through from oldest to newest, to newest to oldest. Originally we thought that having the most recent posts at the bottom would be easier, then a thread would logically read from top to bottom, but if you want it the other way (newest posts at the top, like this thread will appear) let us know. It’s your call. What do you think?

2) Complaints about the java countdowns — The reason we used that was less clutter. The main news area was getting cluttered with so much other stuff that we didn’t like it. Also, the countdowns will ALWAYS start with the closest event, so, if you just want to know what’s coming next, it will always be FIRST. Also, the headline is a live link that will take you to a site with more info. We’re pretty sure we are going to stick with that for a while.

3) The new look & the poll — It seems that the majority of you like the new look but there’s still quite a few that prefered the old way. Guess it goes back to the old adage “You can’t please all the people all the time”. Sorry that we let you down, but we hope that the new look grows on you in time.

4) Submit scoops on the main page — What can we say. We just plain forgot. We will be adding a SUBMIT SCOOPS link under the news heading in the left sidebar shortly.

Other than that, things seem to be working great. Talkbacks ARE slow, we know this. We could speed them up but then the main page would not get updated with [XX COMMENTS] information with news stories. We hope to make improvements down the road on this but it’s tough.

Okay, so did we miss anything? Anything else bothering ya? Thanks for visiting and being a part of the new launch. We have 136 registered TalkBack users in a little over 12 hours. Not bad.

Hey folks…Whew. Well, we made it. If you’re reading this update, the new site is live. We gotta admit, for a while, it seemed like it would never happen. Read below for all the details on how the new site came about, new features, and more.

“Gladiator” kicked some major ass tonight. This is THE movie to beat this summer. We know it’s not even Memorial Day yet, but this is a rockin’ flick with not only some of the coolest war/fighting scenes ever, but some damn cool characters and dialogue, too. Russell Crowe is the man.

And how about that Flyers game last night? Staying up for that one was worth it, but the price is getting paid today. Yikes. Last night’s matchup against the Pens was the 3rd longest hockey game in NHL history, with 3 regular perods and almost 5 overtime periods, lasting a full 7 HOURS (7:30 PM – 2:30 AM). Wow. And now the series is tied up at 2 games a piece, with the Flyers taking last night’s win in overtime. GO FLYERS!

We’ve got a few news stories, but nothing major (Yes, we DID see the poll on the STAR WARS webpage and were going to skip it, though we’ve gotten 40 messages or so on it so we suppose we’ll do a newsbite on it), so check out all that’s new with the site AND a section of bonus NewsBites as well. Enjoy. We hope you like it.

Welcome, one and all, to the new and improved News Askew! We’ve worked our collective asses off for the past 6 months to put this puppy together. It’s a pleasure and a relief, after months and months of promises, to finally bring the new site online for you to enjoy.

The idea first came about when we realized that, while the main page looked okay on the surface, it was a mess underneath. A lot of areas were getting lost in the shuffle, and the site was tough to maintain with all the news archives. We’d also been wanting to add a search engine for the longest time, but our current archive structure (1 month = 1 big file) didn’t lend itself to any good search program out there. So, we decided to take a different approach and start fresh. This was back in November of 1999.

Why did this take so long, you may ask? Well, here’s the big part — We re-entered and archived EVERY news story in this site’s history. We’re using a new database-driven news engine, which will enable us to make faster updates, handle the archiving of news stories automatically, provide search capability, and more. Why did we do this? Well, it was either that or just scrap 3 years of news, and we didn’t really find that to be a viable option. So, we spent the last 6 months re-creating each and every story, down to the graphics, scooper names and e-mail addresses, links, and more. We didn’t want to lose any of the history that made News Askew what it is today. So, we’re happy to say, you’ll find it all intact. Keep in mind that our 3 year news database is HUGE, so searching it takes a while, but when you consider all that’s being searched, and the way it’s being done (on a story-by-story basis), it’s not all that slow. Remember to use double quotes (“like this”) to surround phrases that you search on. It makes a big difference. The searches are also returned in random order (not by recent to oldest date or anything). Sorry. It’s not the best search engine, but it definitely works. Search smart, and you’ll be fine.

In addition to the new news engine, we’ve added some noticeable new features to the site. First of all, things have been completely re-organized to allow more logical access to things. Our “Featured Story” area keeps an archive of all the stories that were too long or too important to just use as single news items. The “On Location” area keeps a record of any View Askew related event we’ve attended, along with detailed descriptions of what went on there. Read the stories below for more features and announcements regarding what else is new in this massive update.

Our beautiful new logo comes to us courtesy of Clerks Cartoon artist extraordinaire Chris Bailey. We loved it so much when we saw it that we didn’t have the heart to shrink it down to a banner size. We think it’s the perfect look and feel for a first impression on the front page, and want to thank Chris a ton for helping us look a lot classier than we really are. New hand-designed header graphics & drinking game logos, courtesy of graphics wiz Dave Blumenstein, adorn our subpages. Thanks to Dave, we were able to get away from our boring old text headings and spice things up a bit. We dig his work immensely, and thank him very much for helping us out with a crucial area where we’re basically talentless.

Finally, we are very proud to present our Talkbacks area. Each news item will now provide this much-requested feature. Please log-in, reserve your user name, and read or participate in some of the discussions. We’ll be monitoring TalkBack closely to ensure that it stays an enjoyable, useful addition to this site. This is our favorite new feature, and we hope it gets a lot of use. Like the search engine, TalkBack IS admittedly slow, due to the massive amount of data we’re dealing with. We’ll make improvements as we go.

While we’ve done our best to test the site across platforms and browsers, we also realize that with newer technology comes greater chance for error. So, if you are experiencing problems with the way the website works or looks, we STRONGLY suggest that you upgrade your web browser of choice to the latest version (We recommend Internet Explorer 5.0, though the latest Netscape should work as well). WebTV boxes should also work, though you’ll be missing on some of the cooler nuances that the new site offers. Also, try and run your PC in a FULL SCREEN browser window and at LEAST 800×600 resolution (though 1024×678 is ideal) for the perfect effect.

As with any new site, we expect there will be some degree of an adjustment curve to the new look, as well as some bugs to iron out. The archives will have missing graphics and broken links, which we’ll tend to as we have time, so don’t worry about those. If you find any major problems with the site, please let us know. Have fun!

Probably our most desired new feature and the one we’re most proud of is the Talkbacks area. Each news story will now have a discussion area for comments, questions, and the like. We hope this will do a few things for us: First of all, it will allow you to ask questions regarding items in the story that others may be able to answer quicker than us (while at the same time eliminating some of the e-mail clutter). They’re also intended just as an area where items can be discussed amongst the most important folks out in the Askewniverse: the fans.

We’ve created VIP slots for all the key players in View Askew, so if a name’s in RED, you know they’re the real deal. Anyone pretending to be someone from View Askew or a direct affiliate of ours that does NOT post in red is an impostor. That being said, if you think yourself a candidate for this, and we have not already gotten a special password to you, please let us know and we’ll get you set up.

At presstime, “RED” posters will be as follows: Kevin (Kevin Smith), Vincent (Vincent Pereira), Deadshot (Jason Mewes), Ben (Ben Affleck), Brian_Lynch (Brian Lynch), CartoonGuy (Chris Bailey), DanteHicks (Brian O’Halloran) and, of course, Brad & Chris (us). We can’t promise if ANY of these folks will show up, mind you, but their accounts are there and can be used anytime they’d like.

Some talkback areas are allowed to run rampant with continuous nonsense and flaming. We will stand for no such thing. These areas are meant for fun, sure, but there are limits. We’re not going to censor bad language or your right to an opinion (positive OR negative), but we do have the right to remove anything that we find offensive or inappropriate. We also can suspend and ban accounts at any time, and this goes for the first offense. We want Talkbacks to be a place everyone can go and enjoy, not a dumping ground for flaming and other garbage.

A word of caution: Talkback posting will be a bit time consuming since our news database has to completely regenerate for each item posted. The wait is not due to transfer speeds or modem speeds, simply for the amount of data that must be processed when a post takes place (the front page must be updated to indicate that your comment was posted). We apologize for that, and hope that the slight speed problems won’t discourage you from posting once in a while.

So, what are you waiting for? Go get your name reserved in the Talkbacks area! It’s important, by the way, that you register with a proper e-mail address. If not, any password problems or other issues relating to your ID will not be taken care of, and it’s possible if you ever forgot your password that you might lose your ID forever. So please be careful. Talkback DOES include an e-mail address suppression feature if you would like your address to remain private. This feature is available to every user.

Okay, so ya got it? Alright then, get talking!