A few months ago one of the popular videos on YouTube being passed around was a commercial for a piece of exercise equipment known as the Shake Weight. The barbell like apparatus that is supposed to tighten and firm arm muscles and allegedly is quite a good exercise, however, it suffers from an unfortunate comedic effect for how it resembles more adult activities.

The original video was a bit suspect as to whether or not the Shake Weight was a legitimate product or not as no phone number was shown in the video in the spot where it would have been expected to be seen for ordering the product. There was even a second video for a larger Shake Weight aimed at being for men. So imagine my surprise when a recent visit to the local Target store had the original Shake Weight sitting upon the shelf. Now how long until the Shake Weight For Men makes it way to the store shelves?

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The year 2009 has really raced by way too quickly. It really seems like only yesterday the year just began and here it is so close to the end. While it’s been both a good and challenging year, Christmas time is the perfect time to take a moment out of it all to just think about family and friends.

This year, I kind of hit a milestone. This was the first year in ages that I’ve actually been in the mood to listen to Christmas music at Christmas time. I’d worked discount retail for far more years than I care to admit. Let’s just say Christmas time brings out the public’s worst behavior in discount retail stores and the non-stop playing of some of the worst versions of Christmas music non-stop during the month of December in the stores I worked in, I haven’t been in any mood for Christmas decorations nor Christmas music since the early 1992. I thought I’d never find the desire to hear another Christmas song at Christmas time again, but this year I actually wanted to hear some. It’s been six years since I last worked a Christmas in retail, so I’m guessing there’s hope yet for me to find the Christmas spirit again. It could take several more years, but I’m pleased by the sign of hope I had this year.

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If you saw my blog entry on October 29th, 2009, then you saw Jorge Cruise is offering a free Audiobook download for his Belly Fat Cure book that will ultimately be coming out in stores right after Christmas. The offer was originally going just to people who pre-ordered three copies of his book, but he’s since extended the offer down to anyone who buys one copy of the book. All you have to do is pre-order it from any book store online or off, and e-mail a copy of the receipt to 3bfc@jorgecruise.com.

To sweeten the deal for people purchasing three copies of the book, Jorge is adding more bonuses to to thank them for their purchases. In addition, to getting the audio download, people who purchase three copies of the Belly Fat Cure book also get a PDF of Chapter 2 of the book (this is the chapter that explains the program) and a video on how emotional eating effects can sabotage your ability to maintain or lose weight. But you have to act fast because Jorge Cruise is closing the opportunity to get the bonuses tonight at midnight in San Diego time.

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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 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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If you pre-order three copies of Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure book, Jorge wants to send you a free Audio download you can put on your iPod or other MP3 players or even burn to CD that will explain the program and help you get started right away. The book doesn’t hit stores until right after Christmas, but you can get the download right away. There is no official Audiobook version being recorded for the book, so the only way to get this file is by buying three copies of the book.

When you buy three copies of the book, you get one for yourself and two that you can give a couple of friends or family members that may also be interested in losing some weight with the program. Trust me, when the weight starts to come off, people will be interested in what you’re doing and it’ll be handy to have an extra copy of the book to give away. It’s the one thing that frustrates me most about having done so well on the program is that when I get asked about what I’ve been doing, I can’t help people get the book right away. They have to wait until the end of December.

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Tonight I met up for dinner with my good friend Vito Grandolfo, before we attended a screening of the classic campy film, “Mommie Dearest” starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford. The screening was part of the local FilmOut monthly movie series at the Birch North Park Theatre in North Park. Vito and I met up with some friends who were also planning to see the show. It seemed like a good and fun idea to go see a wickedly bad movie that definitely inspired some audience participation as fans of the movie shouted out some of the biggest lines from the movie back at the screen.

I had never been to the Birch North Park Theatre before. It was a nice venue for one as old as it is. It wasn’t too large and wasn’t too small either. It looks like the venue is able to be used for stage productions as well, tonight there just happened to be a huge screen parked on the stage. Before the movie began they did a raffle for a few prizes and even awarded one for someone who had come dressed as Joan Crawford. Additionally the screening had Billy Masters as an opening act. He came, shared some stories about the movie, how Faye Dunaway thinks the movie killed her career, and gave away some prizes. I’m not entirely sure who he is, but he was moderately entertaining. He said to watch out for his favorite part in the movie which occurs during the infamous wire hanger scene and the cleaning powder where Faye goes cross-eyed for a moment.

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Having literally just gotten off the plane from New York where I spent two nights with the real Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus as they presented the first English language performance of their musical, Kristina at Carnegie Hall, I took the opportunity to attend the ABBA Fab tribute concert at Escondido’s California Center For The Arts. As the author of the eZine article, “ABBA Tribute Bands – 8 Tips To Improve Your Show” I often like to check out ABBA Tribute Bands to see which ones are worth recommending and which ones are worth avoiding.

ABBA Fab bills themselves as “The Premiere ABBA Experience” on their posters for the event and on their website at ABBAFab.com as “The most amazing tribute show you will see anywhere.” which are some pretty grand statements for a tribute band that has never been seen or heard by me or any of the other ABBA fans I am in touch with around the globe. So I was a bit skeptical of their claim as I have seen some truly great ABBA tribute performances and some truly appalling performances as well.

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I love the Internet. My previous post about the Margaritaville Tailgating Grill that I had seen while shopping at one of the local San Diego area Costco Membership Warehouse stores was only supposed to be a one off post. I never in a million years thought I’d be writing a second blog entry about the grill and for that matter so soon. Click here to read that entry. But the nature of the Internet being what it is, my blog post was spotted by local tailgating enthusiast, Dave Lamm, of TailgatingIdeas.com and he decided to leave a comment here on my blog.

Dave wrote to say that not only does he have the Margaritaville Tailgating Grill, but he’s also taken it a step further and completely customized it with the team colors for the San Diego Chargers and of course, decked out the grill with the Charger’s logo as well. Dave has literally taken the grill from a novelty level of coolness to practically must-have level of coolness. Gone are the plain looking grey swing arm and the obnoxious lime green look of the original grill. In their place are the ultra-cool looking Chargers team Golden yellow swing arm, and Blue accent colors for the trim. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say the finished grill resembles a football helmet now that’s sporting team colors. It looks great. It definitely screams “Sports Fan” where the unaltered grill kind of screams “Yuppie.”

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In probably one of the most unique ways to express outrage at poor customer service, David Carroll has posted to YouTube the second music video of the three he promised United Airlines he would make after baggage handlers for the airline damaged his guitar and their poor customer service has done nothing to make amends for it.

As some of my readers will recall, I posted about his first video which garnered Carroll a lot of media attention for his unorthodox method of sharing his complaint with the airline to the world. Click here to read my original blog entry on the matter.

The new video is below. Be sure to watch to the end of it as there’s a really funny bit at the very end after the credits in the video.

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