• On July 7, 1997, when the web as we know it was still in its infancy, we began a crusade to track all the latest news relating to Kevin Smith, View Askew, and anything ancillary. We called it “News Askew”. This Saturday, July 7th, 2007, we celebrate TEN YEARS of continued service to fans like you. With .com sites coming and going, changing interests, eveolving lives, most sites like ours either disappear, change hands, or just lose popularity. So, to be where we are, 10 years later, we’re extremely proud to say that we’ve kept News Askew running for this long, and that the site’s more popular than ever before.

So, we thought, how do we celebrate such a major event? This Saturday, we’re going to mark it with the unveiling of our most ambitious project yet — News Askew X. The new site will not be a mere redesign, but rather, a completely new basis of news presentation. We’ve taken all the stuff that’s worked over the past 10 years, and (hopefully) made it even better. There’s a lot to talk about, so we’ll be spending this week teasing you with some tidbits each day. Tomorrow, we’ll run down a bunch of the new features that you’ll find at the site.

Now, a word of caution, as well — When we began this project, we had no idea how involved it would be — For lack of a better phrase, we bit off more than we could chew. Plus, the more we looked at things, the more ideas we kept getting. So, what we’re rolling out this weekend will not be feature complete. It should be quite workable, without taking away anything that’s currently available. However, the features and redesign will continue, even after this weekend.

More details on the way tomorrow – News Askew X, coming your way in just 5 days.

• If you haven’t heard, film critic Joel Siegel passed away a few days ago. Siegel made news here at the site when he loudly walked on on a Clerks II press screening last year. We hadn’t planned on mentioning his passing, though it seems many of the obituaries recalled their tiff. So, Kevin made a brief comment on the web board expressing condolences, which then turned into a blog post, a few bits of which we have straight ahead:

As for all the scoopers who wrote in with the news, sorry we don’t have you all listed up there — We were debating mentioning this at all, but felt compelled to at least run Kevin’s post. Our condolences to the friends, family, and fans of Mr. Siegel.