If there’s one thing I could say about my childhood, it’s that I was a Game Show junkie. I loved to watch hours of game shows. I loved the thought of people competing for cash and prizes on the various television shows. I loved nearly all of them from the more luck based ones like “Let’s Make A Deal”, “High Rollers”, and “Card Sharks” to the ones where you actually had to know something, like “Jeopardy!”, “$25,000 Pyramid”, “Super Password.” In high school, I even tried out for a teen tournament version of Jeopardy! Unfortunately, I didn’t make it on.

I also used to get all the home game versions of all my favorite shows, and then eventually bought them as computer games when those started to surface, and then when digital handheld versions became popular, I bought those too. Now the latest incarnations are applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. These are probably my favorite versions as I have my iPhone with me all the time and there’s no mess or clean up like the old home game versions. Not to mention, no bulky boxes to store the games when they’re not in use.

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Every once in a while I get a craving and generally nothing really satisfies it until I get what I’m craving. And today I was just getting the bug to have some food from an A&W restaurant. I grew up in Canada and A&W’s are one of the first and larger fast food chains in Canada. I’d even go so far as to say they are far more popular in Canada than I’ve seen here in the United States (using in Southern California anyway). Usually when I get a craving for A&W its due to nostalgia for the Canadian A&Ws. I know the last time I got a craving for A&W and went to one of the ones here in San Diego I was disappointed because American A&Ws are nothing like the Canadian ones. The menus don’t offer the same items and the food doesn’t even taste the same. So I knew I was probably setting myself up for another disappointment but it’s been a couple of years since I last went to A&W but I was willing to chance it.

These days A&W is one of the “brands” of restaurants part of the YUM! Corporation which consists of all the restaurant brands bought up by the Pepsi Corporation. (In Canada, A&W’s were started by the American A&W’s but were sold off in 1972 and have no ties to the American A&W operations) I’m not sure if YUM! is just a new name for the division, a spun off & separate company, or even sold off, but anyway, they are home to familiar restaurant names, like Kentucky Fried Chicken (or KFC), Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, A&W, and Long John Silvers. Pepsi originally bought up these restaurants so they could ensure these restaurants served only Pepsi products as beverages. One of the concepts YUM has been doing in recent years is putting in single locations that offer more than one brand in one restaurant. Usually it ends up being a KFC or Taco Bell co-branded with one of the other not quite as popular brands.

In any case, all of the ones in San Diego county were KFC/A&W’s and oddly enough all of them are in the South part of the county, none of them were in North County. So none of the locations are conveniently located for me. So I headed off to the closest location that Google maps pointed me to. I even checked it on the street view to see the location before going there and sure enough, there was a KFC & A&W combination store. However, when I got there, the signage for the A&W was gone, just the KFC remained. From the dirt on the walls where the signs used to be, it looked like it must have been a recent removal. (more…)

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I just had my six month visit to the Dentist and I unfortunately have to report I have a cavity that needs to be filled. I’m not exactly looking forward to that as the process is never fun, but I suppose all in all it’s not too bad, I didn’t get my first cavity until well into my twenties. I think I was more traumatized by my first cavity where I had to cope with the fact my teeth were no longer perfect. I wasn’t too happy about that as I always had great teeth so I never really worried about it.

I then got a couple more cavities a couple of years later, and those ones were completely preventable on my part. I just have always been really stubborn about not liking to floss regularly so those cavities I’d formed were on the sides of my teeth right where they met up with my next tooth, so they were preventable, I just have a real problem getting into the habit of flossing daily. So I settled for doing it about once or twice a week. And that’s worked pretty well for the last few years. So when I went into the dentist for my routine cleaning this week I really wasn’t expecting to hear I had another cavity. Oh well, what can you do about it. So I’ll be going back into the Dentist to have that filled in mid January.

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The Xanadu Movie screening the other night was so much fun. Not only is it a classically bad movie, one I happen to love immensely, it’s got an incredible soundtrack, and the screening as a part of the Out San Diego monthly movie screening series was the first time I got to see the movie on the big screen. The audience was encouraged to sing along and talk back to the movie in ways probably similar to screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and so the screening became an interactive fun event.

The audience here in San Diego shouted back at the screen causing fits of giggles during scenes that were definitely cheesy, and others were greatly enjoyed by the audience, that by the time the movie finally progressed to the final scene in the Xanadu club and Olivia Newton-John knocks the title track out of the ball park, the audience was cheering in excitement. It was a fun night out and a much better experience than sitting home and watching Xanadu on DVD. Now to just get up to Orange County to see the Xanadu stage show again before it moves on to its next destination. (more…)

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In what will most likely be my final visit to Which Wich? for the year, I went to redeem the loyalty punch card for my free sandwich. I had collected the necessary ten stamps from the purchase of ten sandwiches over the course of the last couple of months. I have to admit I love these kind of gimmick programs as I find the collection process of the program nearly as much fun as the redeeming aspect of the process. It’s almost like a mini-goals card, and each punch brings you one step closer to that free prize, in this case a sandwich.

When you think about it, it’s really a good deal for the restaurants or other businesses that offer these kind of loyalty programs. In the case of Which Wich?, the value of a completed card is the price of a single sandwich, here in the San Diego area, that means a full card is worth $5.25. But in order to get that $5.25, a total of $52.50 needs to be spent. That’s just the bare minimum that must be spent, that doesn’t include the chips, cookies, or drinks people may buy in addition to the sandwiches. Which Wich? even takes it a step further and adding an end of the year deadline for the punches to be collected and redeemed. This card when full expires on December 31. Any unredeemed cards or ones that didn’t collect enough punches are voided and the whole process starts over on January 1.

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Tonight is the night that Xanadu returns to San Diego. No, it’s not the fantastic stage musical that was here for two months last year. (That’s actually opening up tonight as well, but further up the road in Costa Mesa.) Tonight, it’s the Original Motion Picture version of Xanadu starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly that is playing here in San Diego.

The movie is notoriously known for being a bad movie, as it has a very loose plot, but despite the fact the movie bombed originally, it’s soundtrack was a massive hit for the record label. The collaboration between Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) and Olivia Newton-John (ONJ) on the title track, Xanadu has made the song one of Oliva’s biggest hits. Filling out the rest of the album are more fantastic songs by ELO and ONJ. Wisely, the songs weren’t put on the album in the order in which they appear in the movie, they were placed so that one side was the ELO side and the other side was the ONJ side. As the both acts draw different audiences, it made sure the fans of each artist could enjoy the work of their favorite if they weren’t as big a fan of the other.

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When Susan Boyle knocked the socks off Simon Cowell, she soon after stated that one of her dreams was to sing a song with her idol, Elaine Paige. Within days of the hubbub, Elaine Paige, who is not nearly as well known appeared on US Cable Network, CNN’s, Larry King Live program and gave an interview about Susan Boyle and said she would be open to singing with Susan. Now that dream has become a reality.

Sadly, the duet does not appear on Susan’s recently released album (which gets it’s name from the song Susan sang on Britain’s Got Talent, “I Dreamed A Dream”) but made it’s debut on UK television. The song selected for the two ladies to sing together is hardly an original choice, especially for Elaine. The duet selected was “I Know Him So Well” from the musical CHESS, which was a hit for Elaine Paige and her original duet partner Barbara Dickson way back in 1984. In fact, the song still holds the record in the UK for the longest running #1 song in the UK charts sung as a duet between two women. The song is a staple for Elaine whenever she goes out on tour and it’s a special song for ABBA fans as well as the song was co-written by ABBA’s song writing team, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus along with lyricist Tim Rice.

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One of the latest additions to my blog site is plugin that automatically generates a mobile version of the website for mobile phone browsers. The nice thing about it is that it doesn’t require pointing people to a different URL. My site is now able to automatically detect if you’re on a mobile phone and will show the version optimized for mobile phones.

The new mobile version presents my blog in an easier to read version for mobile phones. Instead of showing a zoomed out version of the main page with microscopic text when you first visit RyansIncredibleWorld.com, the new mobile version presents the ten most recent blog entries on the main page showing just the title, date of the blog entry, and the image that I lead the entry off with. All you have to do to read an entry is click on the title of the blog entry and it’ll take you to a mobile version. In order to keep the bandwidth per page down, the blog entries are broken down into multiple smaller pages of text to allow for easier downloading in smaller chunks of data. The blog entries will also allow you to check out the comments and even write your own comments. And there is even a search box so you can find your favorite entries. And there’s even an option to switch to the regular web version of the blog if you want to view it as the blog appears normally.

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Last night I attended an “Ugly Sweater Party” at the home of a local friend, Mike Kurtz. The premise of the party is that you’re suppose to find an ugly sweater or sweatshirt to wear to the party. You have the option of buying something new that’s hideous or comb the racks of the local thrift stores to find something ugly. It’s just a fun excuse to have a great theme party.

The party is also a pot luck of sorts and I brought some cookies. I didn’t have time to make some sugar free ones so I just bought some pre-made cookie dough packages from the supermarket and baked those up for the party. Pretty quick and easy. Some people did some creative things, such as one person brought a whole plate of olives that were creatively stacked and stuffed with some carrots and cream to look like penguins. Mike and his partner Ian had wonderful meatballs for the party.

To compliment the theme of ugly sweaters, one of the worst television holiday specials ever was screened. It’s the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s so bad that George Lucas has said if he had the time and a hammer he would track down every bootleg recording of it and smash it. And yes, it was horrible. I’m amazed they got the original actors to consent to making this steaming pile of crap holiday special. The sets looked terrible. The costumes were pretty bad, especially the Wookies that made up the rest of Chewbacca’s family. Even the animation for the cartoon segment introducing Boba Fett was bad too.

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One of my favorite parts of the holidays is Egg Nog. And because I’ve been on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure program all year and have eliminated high amounts of sugar from my diet, it meant it wasn’t looking good for having Egg Nog this year, well at least not the store bought variety. It didn’t help any when Jorge did a video with tips for surviving the holidays and his answer to Egg Nog was to just avoid it in general. Although it was meant as a tip for at holiday parties where it Egg Nog is being made by other people.

Not to let the season pass by without any Egg Nog, I went on the hunt for a recipe and came across several, but some seemed more complicated than I wanted to make it. Some called for Egg Nog flavored syrups that are sweetened with Splenda which is simply not an acceptable option for me. I tried a couple of recipes on a small one serving batches to try them out, but wasn’t really pleased with any of them. I did find one that seems to work the best. I found it on About.com. It also has a variation for those who don’t want to use eggs. The recipe calls for alcohol which I don’t always like in my Egg Nog and I decided to borrow Cinnamon from another recipe for Egg Nog I found and have liked this one the best.

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