• Apparently New Jersey is considering eliminating their film commission in order to balance their state budget. Kevin was quoted on the matter in an Philadelphia Inquirer article:

• We’ve got a few one-sheet images from Sony for ya today — First off, the long-awaited Gigli. Yep, Affleck and Lopez on an official poster together for the FIRST time…We expect to see both faces back on the Jersey Girl one sheet this winter, though. The second one up there? Nope, you’re not seeing things…That’s Claire Forlani, action hero! Should be an interesting sight to see when that one shows up.
• Apparently Kevin gets a shout-out in a new song from rap due Twiztid. The song’s entitled “Fat Kidz”. At the end of the tune, Kevin is named (though given all of his Atkins progress lately, we’re not sure if this really qualifies!)

• Kevin returned to the board this morning and littered it with posts answering the usual array of useful and useless questions. Here’s some stuff we thought you might be interested in:

Kevin also confirmed he WILL be appearing at the San Diego ComicCon next month. Visit the View Askew WWWBoard for every word.

Just in from our contacts at Lions Gate, here’s the DVD and VHS shots for the upcoming RSVP DVD. The film, as you likely already know, features Jay Mewes in a major role and streets on VHS/DVD August 26th. Here’s a synopsis and a look at the features:

We expect to have more info and a review of the disc right here, well before street date.

• Another glowing review of those beloved Clerks inaction figues appears at action-figure.com today, along with plenty of photos. Here’s a snippet:

If you don’t own them yet, get ‘em NOW! You don’t want to be playing catchup later when the new sets start showing up.

• REMINDER: This Monday, June 23rd at 9:00 PM, the History Channel is airing “Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked” which features an interview with Kevin. Check it out or throw it into the ‘ol Tivo schedule.
• British movie magazine “Hotdog” names Clerks as their Region 1 DVD of the month. Every month, they choose a disc not available in the U.K. and add it to their wishlist for stuff that should be released there. They give the movie a rating of five stars and the extras four.

• Two absolutely AMAZING comic pages are up for auction at eBay this week — First off, an EXTREMELY RARE page from Kevin’s Daredevil run, from issue 5, the page before Karen’s death. An amazing collector’s item, with beautiful art by Quesada and inks by Palmiotti. Signed by all. Wow. Second, another rare one, the SPLASH PAGE from Kevin’s Green Arrow #3. Art by Hester, inks by Parks, signed by all 3. If anyone wants to spring for either of these for a late birthday present for me, I sure wouldn’t mind! Whoever wins, take good care of them.
• Evem though it’s been around for quite some time, the classic Clerks/Star Wars spoof “Trooper Clerks” has been named an Official Selection by the StarWars.Com Fan Film Awards. Congrats Jeff! A custom fan-made Trooper Clerks figure also appears in this forum thread.
• Project Greenlight’s new season premieres on HBO this Sunday night. Last season’s episodes were fascinating, we’re sure that they’ve got a lot more interesting stuff planned for this year. Be sure and tune it in. Expect both Affleck and Damon to appear in at least the opening episode, and then sporadically throughout the series.
• A couple of View Askew flicks will be airing this month on television in Germany. Mallrats airs on 6/27 and 6/28 on the RTL2 channel, and Dogma on 6/21 on PRO7. Good Will Hunting will air on PRO7 on 7/13.

• Yes, we have noticed that the site has been practically unreachable during a good portion of the day lately — Here’s why. We’re on shared server space at the moment with quite a few other sites under the View Askew realm now, including Newsarama, Poopshoot, and others. The combination of hits on all these sites, especially during the workday when the errant browsing hits peak, is taxing the server so greatly that it’s having trouble keeping up.

Anyway, the GOOD news is that because of the added traffic, we should be adding a new server box to the array soon, hopefully this week, which should bring us back up to the spiffy speeds you know and love here at News Askew. Please just stick with us for a few more days while we wait for the changes to go through, and we promise you won’t be sorry. Thanks for hangin’ in there.

• Well, we’ve finally got around to putting the finishing touches on the full story behind our trip to California to see “Jersey Girl” last month. A word of warning though, the story itself really doesn’t have a lot of Askew-related stuff inside of it, it’s more just a journal of all the cool stuff we got to do when we were out there. A review of “Jersey Girl” itself will be posted separately, and will not contain any spoilers for the film (therefore it’s going to be limited due to keeping out a lot of specifics, a spoiler-type review will be posted here when the film is released). But hey, anyway, for those of you who might be curious about what we chose to spend our time with when we had a rare chance to leave the east coast, check out our feature story: News Askew Invades Hollywood!

• Howdy, folks, haven’t done one of these in a while so it seemed like a good time check in and say hi. How are you? That’s nice.
  With the busy summer season upon us, there’s a lot of activities to do outside of the site, but don’t think that doesn’t mean that we’re not on top of things. We’ve been basically grouping news up to allow for a decent update when the site gets one — Otherwise we might have had a day or two with just one or two newsbites…So if you see a day skipped, that’s normally why. We still have some plans for the site itself as far as new features and improvements go, things have just been proceeding slower than we’d like, but rest assured, they WILL come. Until then, we still have a nice summer planned — With nothing definite in the pipeline for View Askew’s next feature, we’ll be covering any movement on that (Will it be Fletch…The animated film…Something else?), as well as the new comics Kevin’s getting finished up as a result of Jersey Girl’s editing coming to a close.
  And what about that Jersey Girl, huh? Well, rumor has it that the test screening we attended did very well, and that the film is very close to its final form. You’ll read below that Gigli is on a summer release schedule now, which means that JG will likely keep its home in its new February 2004 spot. Sure, it seems like a long wait. We know it is. We’ll try and keep you occupied as much as possible until then.
  That’s about it, really. I’m (Brad) turning 30 next week so this is my last weekend to go and enjoy life as a twentysomething. Frankly, something tells me it won’t feel much different. Gotta give a quick shout out to my friends at the Appalachian Brewing Company for hooking me up with a keg of their excellent wheat beer for the kegerator here at home — It’s mighty tasty, and much appreciated. If you’re in the Harrisburg area, look these guys up. They make a damn fine ale. Ask your local distributor for ABC. Anyway folks, enjoy the weekend, be safe, have a blast, and we’ll catch ya next update. Here we go with this one:

• Hey, you wanna own a BRA signed by Kevin and Jennifer Smith? The Bras Across RFK Celebrity Brauction (being held by the Washington Freedom) is currently running. All proceeds from the auction benefit the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University. You can also bid on an autographed bra from Alanis Morissette. Rumor has it that Eliza Dushku might also be contributing one. No, we don’t think it’ll be a USED bra. You sickos.
• A happy belated birthday to View Askew favorite Jason Mewes, who celebrated yesterday. Hope that it was a good one, and
  that you’re doing well.
• In other Mewes news, his film RSVP was recently purchased for distribution by Lions Gate. It’s now set for an August 26, 2003 DVD release. We spent some time with writer/director Mark Galluzzo in Venice Beach, California during our visit, and he assures us an excellent DVD full of great special features. Mewes fans, be sure to look this one up. We’ll add it to the countdowns for ya so you won’t forget.
• Seems that someone thought Mighty Ducks goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere beared a striking resemblance to a View Askew celeb. Check out the photo HERE. Sure, we can see that.
• Catch actress Ever Carradine, who played Jay’s mom so excellently in the intro to “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back”, currently on the FX series “Lucky”.
• A small report and more photos from WizardWorld can be found at the respective links in this very sentence.
• It seems that Affleck and Jennifer’s “Gigli” has not been changed to “Tough Love” after all, as evidenced by Sony’s official page for the film. Gigli is slated for a July 30 bow and is rated R for “sexual content, pervasive language, and brief strong violence”.

• And finally today, it looks like Washington state has a pretty big View Askew fan — Check out the license plate, then check out the type of car — That’s right, a Mercury TRACER. That’s priceless. Have a great one!

• Yes, you ARE in luck! As we’d hoped, the remaining WizardWorld stuff, INCLUDING those rare Black & White Dante and Randal figures, can now be yours through the Stash! There’s also that new open/closed sign (which WAS around before, but in very limited capacity), ALL the film shot glasses, and those Philly T-Shirts. Here’s details, links, photos, and more: