• We know this isn’t directly View Askew related, but we received this note today and wanted to do our part to help out. Top Shelf comics are in danger of ceasing operations completely unless they pull in some BIG numbers this month, due to their main distributor going Chapter 11 on them. They CAN be saved though, and you can do your part to help out. Here’s the open letter we received from Top Shelf explaining the situation today:

The folks at Top Shelf are good people and have an excellent product. A lot of great deals are to be had right now as well as the result of the sale drive — Orders over $100 get an extra $25 of books free, and shipping is FREE for all orders in the United States. Surf to HTTP://WWW.TOPSHELFCOMIX.COM to place your order and check out all the great books they’ve got available. Jimmy Palmiotti (who you know from the Daredevil run he did with Kevin) has personally asked that folks help out, even with a small order. We’ve also just received notice that if you order THE SOAP LADY, Renee French has offered if you email her (cornelia@world.std.com) your address to send you an original sketch. Artbomb is offering a direct shopping cart to Top Shelf (they get 100% of the profits) and a free t-shirt with ANY Top Shelf order!

Check out Top Shelf’s line of products, and help get them through this! It would be a real shame to see them go, and a big loss to the comics world.

• In the April 8, 2002 issue of Time Magazine, there’s an article on Miramax: “Has Harvey Lost His Way? How a wandering mogul took MIRAMAX off course and plans to get it back on track.” Kevin is quoted:

The article is available HERE.

• With all the talk about George Carlin lately, we received an amusing e-mail from someone who’s obtained the Backstage Riders that Carlin uses at appearances – This stuff is always fascinating, as it gives you a glimpse of all the stuff that folks ask for before concerts and the like. Click the thumbs above for details.
• Just an FYI for those of you that don’t own the Clerks or Chasing Amy DVD’s. They’ve been released at a much cheaper price, and can be found for $12.99 a lot of places. Be on the lookout! Dogma’s also getting a budget release in the UK next week. Details for preordering it can be found HERE.
• This Clerks homage was unearthed in an old web comic’s archives.
• A new interview with Jason Lee appears over at Countingdown — It’s there to cover “Big Trouble”, but also touches on skating, Mumford, a bit about Dreamcatcher, and more. See ya next time.

• Yes folks, you wanted it — You got it! More rare and one of a kind View Askew stuff for YOU to bid on! Check out the big Dogma items this week, including Bethany’s bloodied shirt and a screen-used Mooby doll (proabably one of the first ever made!). There’s also another signed poster and some other rare stuff — Get those bids in, cuz when they’re gone, you’re gonna wish they were yours.

• More from Carlin! He appeared on the Imus in the morning radio program and chatted about “Jersey Girl” for quite a while. He revealed that his role will be a SERIOUS role, with some of his regular humor but a lot more on the serious side. He mentioned that he wanted to prove he was capable of serious acting as well as humor. Should be excellent to see!
• View Askew actually picked up a few of those Bikkie awards we mentioned in an earlier update, including Best Comedy and Best Onscreen Duo, and Most Memorable Line! Check out all the results HERE.
• Corona’s very detailed and addictive Coming Attractions website ran some gag stories to celebrate April 1st yesterday, one of which was for a fake film called “Dude, Where’s My Wife?” that they had Kevin writing, as well as a “2001” Remake that would star Jason Mewes.
• “Big Trouble” (featuring Askew regular Jason Lee as part of a big ensemble cast) is finally nearing theatrical release, and we’ve got a couple reports from folks who caught a test screening of the film. Two very good reviews, too, so this sounds like one you’ll want to check out! Watch for some minor spoilers ahead:

• For April Fool’s day, the staff of the Daily Pennsylvania (student run newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania) ran some fake articles, one of which happened to be related to Kevin Smith coming to teach a film class there. It’s a fun article, and one you’ll enjoy reading over.
• Following up on the previously viewed VHS copies of Jay & Bob at Blockbuster Video: Some stores have previewed copies of the film already, others will put them out at the end of the month. The previewed copies are going for around $9.99. If you don’t own a DVD player yet, you might want to pick one up.
• And finally today, it seems to happen every damn year…

• We’re not sure which website this comes from, but here’s some more details on that Stan Lee DVD that we mentioned in the last update:

Tying in with the theatrical release of Spider-Man, on 05/07 Goldhil Video will be releasing Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters And Marvels for $24.95. This 2 part 95-minute documentary (the first of which is hosted by Kevin Smith) looks at the life and professional career of the man who brought a plethora of super heroes into our lives. The documentary will be presented in full frame with DD 2.0 audio. The bonus material will include a behind-the-scenes featurette, rare Stan Lee home movies, bonus interviews, an “inspirational” poem read by Lee, and segments from the never released Fantastic Four movie.

• The DVD Easter Eggs website www.dvdeastereggs.com has opened a new “25 Top Eggs” section. 4 out of the 25 are View Askew films: Dogma: Special Edition actually takes #1, Mallrats comes in at Number 10, and J&SBSB is number 14. A Better Place is also in the top 25, coming in at #20. The egg on Mallrats also comes up in this recent Tech TV article.
• A band in Virgina has the name RST Video – Must be some fans of the flicks for sure there.
• The latest issue of Alternative Press, with the band Puddle of Mudd on the cover, features a three page interview with Jason Lee starting on page 28. The only major bit of info pertains to Fletch Won:

• You’ll find some cool Bluntman and Chronic skins that are available for EA’s awesome new superhero RPG, “Freedom Force” HERE and HERE.
• The unofficial Fletch Won Homepage has a new home: www.fletchwon.net.
• Jason Lee appears in this months SKATEBOARDER magazine — He was rated #24 on “Best Skateboarder on Wax” for STILLWATER, he was rated #8 for “Best Decks With Celebrities on it” (for his BLIND Claudia Schiffer board), and most importantly, The Jason Lee Blind 1990 board with a picture of a familiar Dr. Seuss character closing his eyes is one of the Most Treasured Skateboards ever made! It ranges from $400-$650.
• In the recent issue of Total Film magazine, they review region 1 dvds and have given the J&SBSB film 3 stars and the DVD itself 4 stars. The Clerks Collectors edition is also called a “Classic Disc” that no collection is complete without.
• Renee Humphey’s film Hard Luck premieres in Los Angeles April 5th at the Laemmle’s Fairfax Cinemas. Hard Luck stars Kirk Harris (My Sweet Killer), Renee Humphrey, Matthew Faber (Welcome to the Dollhouse), Joanne Baron (Perfume) and Academy Award Nominee Karen Black.

• We received an excellent report on a recent appearance from George Carlin, which reveals the nature and size of his role in Jersey Girl – Sounds like we’ll be seeing quite a bit of Carlin this time around! Here’s details:

• Vincent’s got a fantastic appearance coming up, and it sounds like it’s a can’t-miss event if you’re going to be in the area — We’ll let him take it from here:

Sounds like a golden opportunity folks, and a great crew on stage to ask questions of – If anyone attends, be sure to take some photos and send in a report for us – We’d love to hear about it. You can view the trailer for “A Better Place” at the View Askew website.

• “Panel One: Comic Book Scripts by Top Writers” has hit shelves, but is in very limited supply over at Amazon. The book features Kevin’s script for the Jay & Silent Bob story from Oni Double Feature 1, and is available in better comic book stores everywhere. The book also has a nice juicy superhero script by Neil Gaiman, 33 pages of Jeff Smith drawn script, and other contributions by Greg Ruck, Dwayne McDuffie, Trina Robbins, Kurt Busiek, Marv Wolfman, Steve Lieber, and Nat Gertler. Get your copy today!
• Blockbuster Video expects previously viewed VHS copies of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back to start going on sale in early April.
• And speaking of video, J&SBSB is at #8 on both Video Store Magazine’s Top 20 Rental Titles chart (for the week ending March 24) and on Video Scan’s DVD Consumer Sales chart (week ending March 16).
• Alternet.org, the non-corporate news site, ran a mock movie award contest based on…well, based on mocking other movie awards. Jay and Silent Bob came in second, to The Lord of the Rings, for most homoerotic movie of the year. You can read more about it HERE.
• Apparently, there’s some View Askew fans at the Sobe company — The fine folk at Sobe include little sayings under the caps of their beverages, usually little pop culture references with a lizard spin on it. A recent cap spotted of their “Liz Blizz” Pina Colada flavored beverage read “Jay and Silent Lizard”.

• Here’s one of the best web comic appearances of Jay & Silent Bob we’ve ever seen — Jay and Bob are in today’s edition of “Shoot Me Now”. Prior to this episode, some of the main characters were lost at sea and wound up at the lost city of Atlantis. The Atlantians are kinda like fish people. “Chuck” gets thrown into an arena to fight a monster which is basically a shameless rip-off of the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. In this strip, Jay and Bob (as Atlantians) take their turns fighting. This comic is well written and well drawn, don’t miss it!
• Clerks on the big screen again this weekend — St. Louis area folks, ‘Clerks’ will be playing again this weekend at Ronnies 20 Cine’ (ticket info – (314)822-2463). It’s Friday and Saturday at 11:30pm only.
• The alt.video.dvd newgroup reports that the ‘Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters And Marvels’ DVD released on May 7th features “director Kevin Smith and Stan Lee discussing the characters of many Marvel favorites”.
• Another strange appearance of Jay & Bob was spotted in this web comic HERE.
• Lots of folks are mixing their own tunes these days with PC mixing software — There’s some tunes in the audio section for “DJ Jay & MC Silent Bob” at the Consumption Junction website if you’re interested in checking them out.

• Finally today, we’ve been receiving tons of e-mails from folks celebrating the announcement of the 37 cent stamp here in the US – So we figured we’d finally give it a mention. One fan had an idea of what the Postal Service might want to use for the design. Have a great Easter folks, if we don’t talk to ya before.

• Well, it seems like ages since we’ve had one of these to post, we even missed this HUGE update from Kevin at the board yesterday. He’s got a lot to announce, including a cameo in Daredevil, and lots more. Here he is:

Talk about a bunch of fantastic news! We’ll do some checking into those DVDs, and hopefully have an early look at those for you as they’re put together. Any of you who have ever checked out one of Kevin’s live Q&A sessions know that there’s no way they’ll be disappointing. As for folks who have never seen Kevin speak, you’re in for a real treat when those discs hit shelves. Those of you attending Kev’s appearances this week, have a blast!

We’ll also hopefully be able to post some copies of those commercials for you to check out once they become available. They sound like an interesting bunch.

Of course, we’ll keep you up to date with all the latest on these exciting developments, and have that Roadside Attractions spot for you to check out next week in case you miss it or it’s past your bedtime.

• IMDB’s PeopleNews today ran this blurb on a deal done between Affleck and Kevin:

• And speaking of Affleck, “The Sum of All Fears” trailer has now been posted in Quicktime 5.0 format. You can find links to both at Apple’s Official Quicktime Movie Trailer page.
• And finally, an interesting little footnote to yesterday’s Newsbites — The guy who draws the Melonpool comic strip, Steve Troop, used to work for InColor, a color-seperation and comicbook coloring place in San Diego, and was the guy who actually did the coloring for the comic covers used in Mallrats and Chasing Amy. Interesting stuff! InColor also did the coloring for the Kitchen Sink Press Mallrats cards, amongst other things. Thanks to his old parter, Greg Skinner, for the info!