On May 21st, Google celebrated the 30th Anniversary of Pac-Man. For those not present in the early 1980′s Pac-Man was a phenomenon that took the world by storm. Arguably the first video game since the invention of the format that created a pop-culture frenzy. Pac-Man machines were all the rage, everything from traditional arcade machines, to cocktail table machines, and even home machines modeled after the arcade model and even appearing on popular home gaming consoles at the time like the Atari 2600.

Pac-Man was hitting pop culture by storm, appearing everywhere such as t-shirts, lunchboxes, board games, toys, and several incarnations in the arcade including the very popular Ms. Pac-Man. The popularity even spawned the creation of a Saturday morning cartoon series based on the game. If people were excited about Pong, the first video game, Pac-Man was the equivalent of Beatlemania taking it to a whole new level. Pac-Man was so popular it even inspired a song entitled “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner & Garcia and it even incorporated sounds from the popular video game. If you’re interested in hearing the song, I’ve included a YouTube clip containing the song at the end of this blog entry.

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To get ready for tomorrow’s book launch of the Belly Fat Cure, Jorge Cruise has prepared a series of “Ask Jorge” videos on YouTube to answer the most common questions people have about health and wellness. Jorge also invites you to visit his YouTube Channel to submit your own questions on fitness, wellness, motivation, nutrition, and health.

Jorge will be drawing from the submitted questions for future Ask Jorge videos. So if you have a pressing question about the Belly Fat Cure or health in general, then just click here to visit Jorge’s YouTube page for “Ask Jorge” and click on the big red “Submit A Question” button. I personally find YouTube’s page for the Ask Jorge videos a little annoying to navigate so I’ve gone ahead and provided all of the Ask Jorge questions so far and put them in order and you can check them out below. If you’re interested in picking up Jorge Cruise’s “Belly Fat Cure” book from Amazon, just click here.

We’re starting with Video # 22 because of the way YouTube is set where the most recent video is the first video you see, so the Introductory video is labeled # 22, and Jorge’s first 21 Ask Jorge Questions appear below it.

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I’ve been checking out some of the Sirius XM Satellite Radio stations I’ve never really checked out thanks to their new iPhone app which means I now have a radio on me all the time instead of my Sirius Stiletto radio which I leave at home so it will record the early morning programs that I want to listen to that are on while I’m at work. One of the stations I’ve been enjoying lately is the Raw Dog comedy channel.

On the talk stations I usually listen to the commercials are all the same kind so I was under the impression that commercials are pretty much the same on all the talk channels, but I encountered a commercial that I thought was a fake comedy commercial but turns out to be a legitimate commercial. It was for a website called “Cougar Life” an online dating portal for older women who want younger men. So the ad was soliciting men to sign up for these sexually mad cougars to ravage them. I was laughing at the commercial because I thought it was fake. So imagine my surprise when Google actually results for Cougar Life and links to multiple pages on their site, and short of signing up for it (as I’m not interested in the site) I checked it out.

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If you’re in the market for a witty greeting card, you may want to try a card from Smart Alex, Inc. I came across a small selection of their cards in a local shop here in San Diego, and I wasn’t even intending to purchase cards that day, but ended up leaving with the perfect card for an upcoming birthday for a friend.

As illustrated by the image with this blog entry, I was highly amused by the card depicting a box fan and a vacuum cleaner with the fan taunting the vacuum with “You Suck” and the vacuum responding “Blow Me.” I literally laughed out lout at the sight of that card and had to have it for a friend of mine. The inside of the card read “Happy Birthday from your biggest fan. Hope your presents don’t suck.”

They had several other great cards in the shop, all of them just a little bit edgy and borderline risqué, all of which appeal to my wicked sense of humor. Probably my next favorite card features some older ladies at a card table in a retirement community. One says to other, “They say women outlive men.” The other lady replies, “So that’s why there’s no men around here? I thought I was in the lesbian lounge.” Click here to see the card.

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If you were a child of the 1980′s like I was, then you probably either had one or had a friend who owned a Speak & Spell toy from Texas Instruments. It was probably most popular after it’s role in the film, “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” as one of the components used in the communicator built for E.T. to “phone home.”

In probably the first time I’ve actually turned my television to see anything being broadcast in over a year, I passed by either MTV or VH1 and caught sight of a Speak & Spell unit in the video for “Fireflies” by Owl City. This sparked a Google search and I read about the history of the device on the Wikipedia page for the Speak & Spell units. And probably a highlight of my search was an online emulator.

According to the website for the emulator, the flash program was inspired by an eBay purchase of an old Speak & Spell unit, which unfortunately wasn’t in a working state when he obtained it. So his emulator is able to recreate the sounds and some basic functionality but not all the various modes of the device. The Speak & Spell was a revolutionary toy at the time as it was the first time an educational toy utilized speech that was not recorded on a tape or phonograph, it was built into the solid state electronics of the device.

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Priceline.com can get you the lowest possible prices on hotels, if you know how to play their “Name Your Own Price” game. But how do you know what to bid in the hopes that it’s accepted but also the best deal available?

Travel tips expert, David Rowell, offers a four part detailed guide on how to get the best possible hotel deal on Priceline. David writes about it on his blog site, “The Travel Insider” and he suggests doing a little research. As the old saying goes, the best deals go to those willing to invest the time to research. He recommends a couple of sites to do the research which shows what prices people have gotten for various hotels for the same time frame as your upcoming trip. He also offers some really interesting ways to creatively use Priceline‘s site to narrow down and make rebidding easier when you want to narrow your selections down to specific classes of hotels.

David’s advice also offers a practical checklist of the pros and cons of using Priceline‘s name your own price system, so that you can determine if that option is the best for you. Check out all four parts of his very helpful advice by on how to get the best possible deals on Priceline.com by clicking here and then click on over to Priceline.com by clicking here to get your best deal for your upcoming trip.

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If you haven’t checked out the special “Webisodes” at the website for Bryer’s new Smooth And Dreamy Ice Cream, you should head on over to SmoothAndDreamy.com to check out the fun little mini-movies they’ve made. The webisodes as they’re called, star Jane Krakowski of 30 Rock (and formerly of Ally McBeal) and they playfully allow her to step into classic movies from today’s perspective. The first one they did was a very witty take on “Gone With The Wind” and they’ve recently added one of “King Kong.”

The website even includes behind the scenes footage to show how they’ve taken modern day Jane and inserted her into scenes from the classic films. And you can see some of the outtakes in the behind the scenes footage. I think they’ve brilliantly cast Jane as she’s a riot on 30 Rock, she fearlessly goes for the laugh no matter what. She’s very much like a modern day Lucille Ball.

Additionally, the website has a fun little area powered by oddcast.com which allows you to upload a photo of yourself and get inserted in to a scene from each of the webisode clips. I tried out the King Kong clip and found it absolutely hilarious. Especially since the photo I uploaded features me wearing a Xanadu baseball cap (as you can see in the photo above.) I’ve included the clip here so you can enjoy the full bit of it. Keep in mind this is just a small clip from the webisode, be sure to see the full thing.

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