Freyburg

Well, not really. But apparently some clever South Korean scientist types have figured out a way to clone embryos and extract their stem cells, which means in decades to come we might be able to replace our ramshackle organs with fresh guts, all sprung from our own bodies.

Now, I’m all for this development. I’m not a big fan of death, and the longer i can put it off through cleverness the better. Dubya’s wound up about the potential for God taunting, but for my money the more likely abuse of this new discovery isn’t athiest immortals but new and frightening variations on Botox.

With very little fanfare, Apple has slipped video capabilities into iTunes. You can already view movie trailers and music videos within the iTunes framework, but I was surprised to find one of the podcasts I regularly download had a video attached to it, which iTunes played in the ‘album art” section on the lower right corner.

Apple never does anything like this “just because,” and I suspect they’re building up to making iTunes into the gateway for buying video content, just like how the iTunes Music Store is now the defacto way to buy digital music. It wouldn’t surprise me if, a year from now, you could buy a movie from Apple and watch it on some “iHome” console. These video noodlings in iTunes are just the groundwork.

There’s a Watchmen movie site, and it trumpets the fact the film is due Summer 2006. Besides the fact a comic this brilliant deserves a slot at Christmas, I’m not thrilled with the idea of taking Alan Moore’s masterpiece and translating it to film in the first place. But I guess we’ll finally be seeing Rorscach, Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan on the silver screen next year, for good or ill.

The console wars are heating up something fierce, with each of the Big Three announcing their new and shiny hardware this week at E3. The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 both look impressive, and Nintendo’s new “Revolution” console probably has a few tricks up its sleeve.

I’m torn as to which beast I’ll eventually break down and get. The PS3 has (no surprise) a far superior line-up of launch titles, but all the good stuff eventually slums its way to the Xbox. And one of the reasons (in fact, probably the main one) I got an Xbox in the first place is because it whups the Playstation hard for first person shooter games, my particular gaming weakness. I can’t see that changing with this new generation of consoles.

I also got the Xbox with the intention of modding it into a media centre, but the impulse to tinker is slowly being replaced as I age with outright laziness, and the Xbox may end up just being a video game console.

And before I forget, Nintendo also announced the Game Boy Micro, a tiny version (more or less) of the Game Boy Advance SP. I’ve got an Advance, and it’s a great little rig for retro-gaming. I’d probably be sorely tempted to pick up the Micro for travelling, provided the price is right.

Alright, enough of that pretentious French crap. The New York Times has a glowing review of Revenge of the Sith. The Guardian has a funny ripping of same. And MSNBC has a story about Ian McDiarmid, who for my money is the best thing about ROTS.

So sayeth this article. It makes some very valid points about how people torrenting shows are actually creating larger potential audiences for advertising It also rightly claims that unlike music and movies, which people are used to paying for, TV has always been more or less free, and no-one’s going to reach for their wallet no matter how many torrent sites go down.

The Black Table has a great review of the new Nine Inch Nails album which sums up the essential problem with Trent Reznor’s music; though well crafted, it’s the same old moody dribble as always.

Maybe that’s not Reznor’s fault. When you’re in your twenties and feeling alienated from everybody and everything, NIN is a fine anthem for your angst. But once you’ve hit your thirties, not only does it feel like Trent’s spinning his wheels but it isn’t even relevant to you anymore. Or if it is, you’ve got bigger problems than what kind of music you dig. And Trent clearly needs to cheer his ass up, pronto.

But I could be wrong; I burned the album for a young friend of mine, and she declared it top-notch.

based on the fact that I saw a young man sitting on Davie Street today, nose buried in a copy of Watchmen. I stopped, informed him he was reading the best comic book ever written, and went on my merry way.

Of all shapes and sizes.

Anthony Bourdain wrote Kitchen Confidential, a scathingly funny book about the inner workings of the restaurant world. He’s also railed against the culture of the “celebrity chef”, while still working that particular cash-pony pretty hard with his book and TV show, “A Cook’s Tour.”

But now he’s wandering into Emeril territory with a sitcom based on Kitchen Confidential. Zuh?