• 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?

• The late bloomers are still trickling in with some more Jersey Girl reviews. If you haven’t seen the film yet, or want to see it again, you’ve still got time. It’s not very often that there’s a View Askew flick on the big screen, so take advantage. Go see JG again this week or during the long holiday weekend that’s coming up!

• Kevin spent over 5 hours taking tons of questions in Maryland on Friday, and yet again wowed all who were in attendance. The elusive Jason Mewes himself brought the crowd to their feet when he made a brief appearance at the show. Walt Flanagan and Bryan Johnson also made a late arrival, so it was a star-studdent event for View Askew fans who were lucky enough to be in attendance.

If you were at the show and wanna talk about your night, feel free to toss it into the TalkBacks!

• Small story, TONS of scoopers on this one. We’re not sure which sect would rule the world should the majority take over: The religious right giving their $$ to The Passion, or the wrestling fans in this country. Anyway, around 30 or 40 folks wrote us in the span of hours to tell us that this website reporting that a WWE hottie is a fan of Jason Mewes:

If the rumors we’re heard about Jay lately are true, we bet his people will be calling her people very, very soon.

• Another article discussing Kevin’s recent Q&A appearance at Berkeley is available HERE from the Daily Californian Online.
• A new Jason Mewes fansite, the Jason Mewes Zone, has opened for business.
• The I-Skew test is now out in print in the latest Wizard, issue #150. You can also view a recreation over at the News Askew Forums.
• Liv Tyler is scheduled to be interviewed on a show tomorrow called Great Day SA, on channel KENS 5 in San Antonio, Texas, at 9 AM central. She’ll be promoting Jersey Girl, of course.

• And finally today, Jersey Girl: Coming to a theater near you, in KOREA, soon!

• Don’t forget to catch Kevin at the UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND for a Q&A tonight — Word has it the big guy’s headed into town a little early to catch Jersey Girl at a theater close to the Q&A locale — So if you’re in that nearby area, you may wanna buy yourself a ticket to the show. Our apologies for the late reminder on this, with the site upgrades, it’s been a busy day. Hopefully a lot of you will make it to the show, and set up your plans a long while back.

• We’d first like to say thanks for all the wonderful praise on the new site. It’s great to see that from you after all the time we put into the new design. Now, that being said, let us say this: Yes, we KNOW the site is really, really slow now, because of these updates. So slow, in fact, we can’t even get in to post our own news. If the site disappears at times, with a “we’ll be back” message, that’s just because we HAVE to take it down in order to work on it. With all the users hitting the forums and talkbacks at once, our little server just can’t seem to handle the abuse.

The problem is either being caused by the forums, the talkbacks, or just general heavy traffic. We’re looking into the issue and hope to install some code cleanup this weekend to eliminate some of this. We’re also looking into adding some memory or completely upgrading to a faster server system for News Askew, if possible. So, rest assured, the site IS slow now, but we will NOT let it stay this way. Please bear with us through the bumps as we get things adjusted. We tested all we could on our own, but the true test doesn’t happen until you open the floodgates. In this case, we got buried. But we’re working on it.

Thanks again for your support, and we’ll be in touch with more soon.

• Welcome, one and all, to the new face of News Askew. It’s been almost 7 years since this site was created, and to celebrate that upcoming milestone, we’ve been working behind the scenes tirelessly for almost an entire year, evaluating the site, what worked, what didn’t, what we wanted to change, and the like. The result: A new face, a new community, and a brand new News Askew. We’ve tried to take the elements that were well-like with the site and work it into an even more efficient, friendly design.

Some features have been in the planning stages for quite some time, and a couple of the bigger ones involve a new sense of interactivity. We’re hoping to make News Askew not only a place to come read the news, but a place to discuss it as well. Thus, a better, faster talkback system. And a new forum. And more on the way. Let’s take a look at what’s up and running, as we speak:

• Entire news database completely converted into new, faster software.
• Brand new TalkBack system.
• New artwork designed by Matt Sullivan.
• Grand Opening of News Askew Forums, powered by phpBB.
• Flash Ad Console (no more top of site clutter!).
• Automatic RSS Headline syndication.

And here’s what’s in the works:

• Improved, high speed news archive search engine.
• Live, 24/7 chat area featuring scheduled, moderated chats with VIP guests.
• More new Sullivan artwork!
• And whatever else we can think up…

From past experience, we know that some of you will love this new design, and some of you will hate it. By nature, some of us fear change. All we can advise you is to please stick with it, and give it a chance. Of course, if there are any huge bugs preventing you from reading the site now, we’d like to know. We have tested the site in all the popular browsers at various screen resolutions, and believe that it’ll work out of the box for the majority of you. However, if there’s a problem with something, feel free to let us know.

Speed: As we work the bugs out and your browsers get all of our new graphics cached, expect slower loadtimes than you’re used to. This will speed up over the next few days. The site will also experience some heavy traffic as folks try out the new features, too. So we want you to expect some slight lag, as that’s what normally happens during a big change like this.

Alright, we’ve got a lot more to announce with the new design, so let’s get down to some details…Neeeext!

• We’re proud to announce the newest member of our team here at News Askew, our resident artist, Matt Sullivan. Matt’s a young comic artist looking to break into the comic book biz, and we’re very happy to have him on baord. His concept for the characters you’ll see around the site takes the best elements of fantasy and reality, to create a look for the characters of the Askewniverse unlike any we’ve seen before. But don’t read about it. Let’s show you!

By now, you’ve probably noticed our spiffy new logo in the upper left corner, which we love. Here’s more. First up, a fun new piece of Jay & Bob on the News Askew Archives page. If you’ve never been there before, that’s your gateway to all of the news dating back to the dawn of this site. It’s fun to look back and read that stuff.

And, best of all, given that this site basically started with just a few Drinking Games and nothing more, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do something special with Drinks Askew. So, we chatted with Matt and came up with an idea for a new splash page to enter the games that we think you’ll all really dig. So be sure to take a look at that one today.

We’re hoping that this gig is just a stop on the road to huge success for the guy. Look forward to more of Matt’s artwork all over the place as we continue to expand and enhance the site. We’ll try to let you know as it’s added, so you don’t miss any of the new creations.

To see more of Matt’s work, visit FlyOnFire.com. If you like Matt’s stuff, or want to chat with him about doing some work on a book for you, drop him a line! Get a hold of him while you still can, as we’re expecting he’ll be a very popular guy soon.

• The News Askew Forums have registered over 900 users in under 3 days! Now that the new site’s here, we’re
  ready to take the keys and unlock the doors. Before you go hog wild and start with the posting, PLEASE read the Rules &
  Regulations, which will always reside in the top post of the top forum. We don’t ask for much, and hope to run a very
  loose, fun place where you can feel comfortable to hang, speak your mind, ask questions, and become a part of the News
  Askew community.

The forums will also be used as gathering areas for special events, such as Stash Bashes, Vulgarthons, and the like. They’re
the perfect place to get in touch with other fans and then connect in person when you’re preparing to attend. We’ll let
you know when those special features become available. Special areas will open and close as needed for View Askew functions.

Over 900 of you have ID’s, so now it’s YOUR turn! Let’s see what you have to say. Click over to the News Askew Forums and get typing…

• The News Askew talkbacks are once again open for registration, and better than ever. Please note: As a result of this being a newly
  written system, ALL users have been removed. So you’ll need to re-register. Sorry, we could not import your old user accounts. Other than that, you’re
  good to go and welcome to comment on all of the latest stories posted here at News Askew. The new system eliminates the issues with the old one such as
  double posting, and especially that horrible delay that occurred when waiting for a message to post. We think you’ll be very pleased with TalkBacks now,
  and urge everyone to give them a try. Let’s get you talking!

NOTE: The talkbacks are in a very early stage of development. So, we don’t have a “forgot my password” feature implemented at this time. So we URGE you,
please, WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORD. Save it somewhere near your computer. Do it NOW!

Please also note that the News Askew Forums and TalkBacks are two different areas. We recommend that you create a username identical to your Forum
username (if you have one) just to keep it simple. This is not mandatory, though. The systems are not connected by a database, so you can have a
different name in the talkbacks if you’d prefer. Having one does NOT automatically give you the other, though. You gotta register both places.

You’ll find a registration button at the top and bottom of any talkback page. Just click that, supply your info, WRITE DOWN THE PASSWORD YOU CHOOSE, and
you’re good to go. Best of all, logging in once should keep you logged in on that computer via a cookie, so you won’t even need to enter your username and
password with every post you make.

We worked hard to implement this system as part of the new design, so we hope you enjoy it. If you have any issues, let us know. Of course, if you LIKE
it, we’d love to hear that, too. Enjoy.