Okay, so I've been creating dynamic conent in Flash now for over a year and I
feel like there's got to be a better / cooler / or just different way to do
things. Basically what I've always done to get data into Flash is call an ASP
script and Response.Write out the variable pairs from the SQL database into
Flash and then iterate through the returned data. I feel like I've beaten this
to death. Is there a better way to do this? Maybe XML or something like that. I
don't know, the whole process seems to have more overhead than is needed.

Using LoadVars class is the best option when working with ASP/PHP etc...
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Flash/The-Power-of-LoadVars-Object/

Response.Write is the only way u can send data to flash, but u can directly
output name,value pairs with Response.Write if it is simple data. For complex
data its always better to generate XML and send it to flash.

If your server side script supports webservices then one more better option is
to use webservice connector component in flash mx 2004.