• Howdy, folks…Haven’t done one of these in a while, so we figured we’d just check in before the new work week begins, with an update and a few words about what’s going on lately. I’m back from a busy weekend at the Liz Phair concert in Philly (who has to be one of the few performers I’ve seen who can get a ton of applause just for stretching), and extra theatre time seeing Jersey Girl again this weekend, THEN Hellboy (an entertaining flick, though nothing overly groundbreaking). Now, it’s time to catch up on the latest happenings in the Asknewniverse and see how our new design’s holding up.

The weekend seemed to be much better concerning speeds here at the site. There’s a few speedup fixes going in tonight, and we’re hoping that they can help make things smoother for the upcoming week. It’s interesting how when folks are at work and supposed to be WORKING that site traffic goes way up, isn’t it? Very interesting indeed. Anyway, hopefully you’re reading this update and didn’t have to wait a half an hour to get it to show up. We’re continuing to monitor the site, and won’t stop tweaking things until we’re happy with the site’s ability to handle heavy traffic.

We’ve already been entered into the internet’s RSS databases, and our new RSS feed is getting a ton of use. We’ve been made aware of an excellent method to make use of News Askew’s RSS, as well. If you use My Yahoo as a homepage (or you frequently visit it), this new feature will enable you to add the “newsaskew” channel to your My Yahoo page, anywhere you want. It works amazingly well, and is simple to set up. Thanks to Jeff for the great find!

In television news, with the season wrapping up, network TV’s going to get very busy again, but a lot of the best stuff is on cable right now. The Sopranos is off to a good start for HBO, and if you’re NOT watching the new series, “Deadwood”, clear your schedule at 10 PM tonight. The show, loosely based on true events in this town, is nothing short of specutacular. Alias and 24 continue to be two of the best network shows out there — You’re missing out if you’re skipping those. Angel sadly doesn’t seem to be getting any salvation after the cancellation was announced, despite one of the biggest rescue campaigns ever undertaken, and the excellent new “Wonderfalls” has also been dumped by FOX after just 4 episodes. What a shame.

Reality TV’s kind of drying up these days. Is anyone else now bored by this all-star Survivor? Just seems like the show’s jumped the shark with that move. The Apprentice is fun from time to time, but also generally a dry hour for a lot of its running time. Audiences seem to continue to eat up reality TV though, which is a shame as it’s eating into programming time for original network shows to air. However, Big Brother will be back in a few months, along with The Amazing Race, two guilty pleasures that are a blast to take in every summer.

And then, theatrically, there’s Kill Bill 2 in a couple of weeks, which these two webmasters absolutely can’t wait for. If the rumblings we’re hearing are true, this one may even surpass the already amazing KB 1. Looking forward to it.

Alright, now that we’re caught up on general stuff, let’s get on with this today, shall we?