Culturite

Pundits argue that the computer is quickly on its way to becoming the primary source of delivering audio-visual entertainment. Others will argue that it’s already happened. With over 12 billion videos watched online in the U.S. during the month of May, its hard to argue against the ubiquity of the PC as the king of media. To further this claim, market research company, Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), has released a study that claims that almost 20 percent of primetime “episodic” television shows are watched online.

This number is an average representing IMMI’s measurement of “3,000 teens and adults’” viewing habits of “fourteen primetime shows on two major networks during the fall of 2007 and spring of 2008.” We feel that this dataset of only 14 primetime shows and two networks is actually too small to accurately generate an overall sense of people’s viewing habits. As the report itself states, online viewing depends on “the genre of the content and the amount of time the show has been on the air.” In other words, not all TV shows are created equal. In fact, as we reported last month, the season finale of Lost had almost as many people downloading the episode via BitTorrent as watched it live during the original broadcast.

Now that their feud is over, Cheech and Chong are high on plans to reunite for their first comedy tour in more than 25 years.

Cheech Marin told AP Radio that he and Tommy Chong “looked at each other going, ‘If we’re ever going to do something it has to be now because you’re not getting any younger and neither am I.’”

The duo who gained fame for their marijuana humor tossed around some ideas and figured a comedy tour would be “the most fun” and “the least hassle,” the 62-year-old Marin said.

Marin and Chong, who broke up amid creative differences, have tried to reunite before, but have always fought too much. Marin laughed and said: “It takes about 3 minutes for that to happen. There’s this veiled hatred.” But he added: “We’ve kind of resolved that.”

“We’ve gotten to the age where we don’t feel like fighting anymore because the end is a lot closer than the beginning,” he said.

Marin said he thinks pot humor can be as funny today as it was back in the ’70s.

“I think it’s time for a revival of dope jokes. It’s a much bigger audience now, it’s much more widespread and institutionalized,” he said in an interview earlier this month.

Alicia Keys and Jack White have teamed up to record the theme song for the new James Bond film, “Quantum of Solace,” the producers said Tuesday. It’s the first time in the 22-film Bond franchise that the theme will be a duet.

The song, called “Another Way to Die,” was written and produced by White, best known for his work with the White Stripes. The movie soundtrack will be out Oct. 28, a few weeks before the film.

A massive rock slide has blocked a portion of the Sea to Sky Highway in both directions.

The route, Highway 99, and an adjacent railway, were buried under an estimated 16,000 cubic metres of rocks, some the size of trucks, according to initial police reports.

South of the slide, traffic heading north from Vancouver was being turned around at the Eagleridge intersection near the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, but residents of Lions Bay were being allowed through. North of the slide, local traffic was being allowed south as far as Furry Creek.