• We broke a big scoop with this one early last month, but now the news is official AND appears at the Wizard World web site, www.wizardworld.com. Wizard comics magazine gives away a monthly prize, and January’s a is a really nice one – Yep, it’s your chance to win a non-speaking walk-on part in “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back”! We’d love nothing more than to see a loyal News Askew reader win this prize, so get over there and sign up. Best of luck to you, and if you win as a result, let us know. We’ll expect some good souvenirs from California. 🙂

The contest works by referrals, so once you sign up, the more folks you refer to it will get you extra chances at winning. IF you win, you and one of those friends will get airfare, 2 nights at a hotel, $200, and an all-access pass to the set in addition to your walk-on role. How cool is that? Good luck. Now go and win!

• Well folks, we’re still without any good news regarding the Dogma Special Edition DVD’s release. We know that the disc is going to come out, maybe even sooner than we thought. DVD supersite The Digital Bits posted this update:

What this sounds like is something out of Columbia Tristar’s control, so we’re assuming it’s a content issue of some sort. Our guess is that the gang at View Askew want to put out the best product they can, and are trying to come to an agreement to get a disc that will keep everyone happy released. As in the past with content of previous editions, we are HIGHLY hopeful that all the content that they planned to include on this disc will see the light of day, but thinking about which content this might be, we have some ideas. We’re sure you will, too.

Anyway, keep checking with us for more news and a new release date. As of now, no new date has been set, so don’t trust anything until you hear it at News Askew.

• Well, it looks like we’ll hafta wait a long while, or maybe even NEVER hear the concept story that Kevin came up with for a Spawn/Spiderman crossover at Marvel. Sadly, Todd McFarlane turned down Quesada’s offer to pencil the one-shot crossover over at Image:

Thanks to Marvel for the story.

• Soul Asylum tunes “Can’t Even Tell” (from Clerks’ end credits) and “We 3” (Chasing Amy’s end credits) are on a new “Best of” Soul Asylum album entitled “Black Gold: Best of Soul Asylum”, now in stores.
• Kevin got mentioned on this morning’s Howard Stern radio show, when Howard and the gang were discussing Christmas cards they received. Apparently, Kevin sent one in, and Robin went on a tangent (yes, they played her music) about how Affleck should have gotten Kev a nice Christmas gift for making him look good in his flicks. Hopefully Ben will go on the Stern show someday to set everything straight, as the guy really gets a bad rap on there from time to time, even though he really is a cool dude.
• In a recent EW Online article, critic Liane Bonin talks about how Holywood has been using African Americans in the roles of spiritual beings lately, including Will Smith (Bagger Vance), Michael Clark Duncan (Green Mile), and none other than Chris Rock, as Rufus. She seems to have liked our 13th apostle, because she says that with the exception of Rock, the others seem to have been stereotyped to death and are becoming offensive.
• Canadian music channel MuchMusic (which you satellite subscribers should pick up) runs an annual show called Fromage 2000, hosted by the always hilarious Ed The Sock. This year, in between his tirades on Brittany Spears and all boy bands, he mentioned the fake Jay & Silent Bob that appeared when they blasted the “Sunshine” video by Rubber.
• Finally today, from the New York Post‘s “Page Six”:

• We’ll have an update for you later today, folks, but until then, just a little teaser of what’s coming up and what stories we’ve already got in the works to hopefully save you the time of e-mailing in scoops that we’ve already got…To summarize a few things coming up today, as well as a few things we didn’t report on…We have seen the bit on Dark Horizons about O’Halloran’s movie but mentioned that in Newsbites a couple days back, we also caught the mention of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back on AICN (it was very brief), and finally, we’ll have a short report on the Dogma DVD delay and the stories appearing on Digital Bits and other DVD sites.

Again, we remind you to always check the archives from the past couple of days before sending in scoops, as news gets automatically archived now and may drop off the front page before you have the chance to see it if you don’t visit every day or two. We got a ton of notes on the Dogma DVD delay even though it got reported last week. No big deal, really, but it saves you the trouble of sending in scoops when we’ve already got them out there. As always, though, if there’s a doubt, send it in, as we continue to appreciate each and every mail/scoop that comes in. Without you, the site’s nothing!

Thanks, and we’ll see you back here later today with a new poll topic and the latest from the world of Askew.

• Maybe it was a Y2K01 bug? Who knows…At any rate, if you sent an e-mail to either of us or to the scoops address over the past 2 days and did not get a response (or if the mail bounced back to ya), please resend it, as there was a bug with our e-mail forwarding system. Those of you who didn’t see a scoop used or get a response to a question or comment on the site can assume your note probably didn’t make it through. Sorry for the inconvenience, but all is well now.

We’ll be back with an update soon, though things are still relatively quiet given the long holiday break. See ya then.

• Happy New Year, folks! As promised, we are proud to present our new site dedicated to every little tidbit surrounding the next View Askew Production, “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back”! As most of you know, the film is preparing to start filming later this month, casting announcements are still being made, and there’s a TON of news happening surrounding the project.

The flick is scheduled to arrive in over 2,000 theaters this August 10, 2001. News Askew’s “Scooping The Monkey” website will be the definitive source for everything you could stand to know about the flick, including reports from the set, cast listings/announcements, reviews, articles, statistics, and, of course, news direct from Kevin himself. Currently, the website has the basic shell online with a cast listing and a few statistics, along with every piece of news that’s been reported on the flick so far. As the weeks go on, we’ll open up some new areas, enhance what we’ve got, and be there with you until the very second the flick hits theaters (and then some!).

Many of the graphics that you see on the new website were provided as part of our “Scooping The Monkey Logo Contest”. See below for a list of those whose wonderful artworks were chosen to represent the website. And then, don’t waste a second, get to our new SCOOPING THE MONKEY website. Set those bookmarks folks, as the new address is http://www.newsaskew.com/va5. Enjoy!

• We are proud to announce the winners in our month-long Scooping The Monkey logo contest. We received a TON of entries in the contest, and honestly, it was a TOUGH time deciding on a winner. In the end, we decided to still choose an official logo for the site (which you’ll find at the top center of all the main pages), but to use a few more of the entries as well. So, while our official logo contest does have a winner (who not only created a logo but a brand new “Jay & Silent Bob” FONT for the occasion, available soon at Files Askew), we also want to thank a few other folks whose stuff we thought was just too cool to pass up. You’ll find a new teaser graphic above that we used, a “Splash Page” graphic used as you enter the new page, a “Back To News Askew” graphic, and a graphic for the sidebar links header. Congratulations go out to all of you:

Thanks once again for making this by far the most popular contest in site history. We wish we had something for each and every one of you. Even so, all your graphics deserve to be seen, so we’ve created a page containing them all, with each graphic named after the entrant. So, check out the thumbnails, and take a look at what happens when a couple of graphically challenged webmasters ask a bunch of News Askew fans for a “Scooping The Monkey” graphic. Thanks again to all of you for entering.