Once upon a time kids spent a hell of a lot of time, and money, filling their eyes with pixels and their ears with beeps and boops at local video arcades, which were like heaven on earth to diehard gamers like myself.

Kids who grew up in the 80s often found everything their little hearts desired in arcades, from friendships to snack bars to prizes, as savvy owners cashed in on the trend that gave kids around the world Pac-Man Fever.

A fun new Flickr pool called Growing Up In Arcades:1979-1989 is helping gamers relive those glory days with photos taken at arcades, theme restaurants like Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and Showbiz Pizza Palace, and anywhere you could find "vintage games in the wild" back in the neon colored 1980s.

-Via Dangerous Minds

When you come from a land like Westeros, which is full of brutality, slavery and the threat of death by dragon or frozen zombie, you don’t have time to master the subtle art of the pick up line. You need a more direct way to meet members of the opposite sex, ways to cut to the chase and show your prey that you're hungry like the wolf.

Imgur user GarthAlgar has come up with some rather creative ways to woo the apple of your eye in a series called (appropriately enough) Game of Thrones Pick-Up Lines, which includes gems like "Are your clothes a slave? Because I'd like to free you of them" and of course "Hodor? Hodor." because Hodor.

-Via Nerdist

Dictators like Castro, Hussein and Gaddafi don’t seem like the kind of guys who seek comfort from  stuffed animals when they’re feeling picked on and unloved, but Chunlong Sun’s hilarious photo series “Celebrity” reveals their dark plushie secrets. 

These are the “forbidden portraits” of the infamous, the skeletons in their dictatorial closets that they don’t want their enemies to discover, the humanizing moments that undermine their ability to rule with an iron fist.

Sometimes you need an army to solve your personal problems, but sometimes all it takes is a little cuddle time with your favorite plush toy!

-Via Laughing Squid

Pixel art meets chainlink fence in these street art works by Urban X Stitch, who has been adding a bit of creative color to fences all over Lyon, France in the form of cross stitched pixel art murals.

Like Yarnbombing, the techniques used to create these soft artworks have their origins in the needle arts, and the simple existence of urban cross stitching seems to completely undermine the position by some that street art is created by vandals and criminals.

Urban X Stitch's works are full of colorful cartoon characters, and are sure to put a smile on the faces of those who come across these fence brightening cross stitches around town.

-Via DesignTAXI

When many people hear the name Coney Island they think of beachside fun, amusement park rides and sideshow acts, but personally the Warriors always seems to spring to mind, and then the whole place seems somehow terrifying.

Truth is, Coney Island is both entertaining and frightening, charming and creepy in a uniquely Coney way, and back in the day it was the go-to destination for many New Yorkers looking for a mini vacay, and boy do those vintage hotspots make for great photo ops!

The photos in this particular series were taken by shutterbug Aaron Rose in the 1960s, part of an exhibition showing at the Museum of the City of New York called “In A World Of Their Own: Coney Island Photographs By Aaron Rose”.

-Via AnimalNY

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There’s something about talk show host Graham Norton that makes people want to act the fool around him, which makes his show great fun to watch and often changes my opinions about certain celebrities based on their appearance on his show.

The stars of the upcoming movie X-Men: Days Of Future Past Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender hung out with Graham while he exposed them to semi-erotic fan art and strange fan fiction tales about the three men, Hugh exposes everyone to stories about running around the set naked, and then they get down to Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines.

-Via Geekosystem

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Frane Celak has the dubious distinction of being the luckiest unlucky man in history, and he has survived so many vehicular disasters in his day they ought to sign him to the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration!

Frane's amazing string of lucky escapes culminated in him winning the lottery, and now his story is being told in animated form thanks to this colorful short by This & That Visuals, with voice-over by John Block.

Animation seems like the perfect medium for telling Frane's tale, since his many escapes make it seem like he's living in a cartoon!

-Via Cheezburger

The Ninja Turtles have become pop culture icons since they were created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in the 1980s, and the various video game, movie, toy and comic book incarnations that have come out since cemented their place in pop culture history.

However, their geeky fame is nothing compared to the overall popularity of the iconic artworks created by Norman Rockwell, who is generally seen as one of America’s greatest painters.

Well, it was only a matter of time before someone brought the Rockwell look to TMNT, and that someone is illustrator Bryan Lee, who has created a geek-tastic series that captures the look and feel of Rockwell with mutant turtles as the stars of each piece. Classic Cowabunga!

-Via GeekTyrant

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Life is like a dream or a box of chocolates, life is hell, beautiful and golden, but if your life is like a video game then you probably have some pretty interesting stories to tell!

However, a video game based on real life has the potential to be quite boring, unless it’s something like the everyday found in SUPER LIFE, a video game inspired animated short by Eben McCue.

SUPER LIFE has all the ingredients of an average lifetime- a baby crawling out of the hospital, confusion and cooties on the playground, a football scholarship that leads to a job with a tech company, and finally a good old fashioned seaside burial.

-Via Gizmodo

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The creative animators at DisneyShorts have done a really good job of bringing Mickey Mouse back for fans young and old, and trying to get us all to forget about that awful looking called Mickey’s Clubhouse, which features some downright terrible CGI.

Since the release of the Mickey short Runaway Brain in 1995 the DisneyShorts division has succeeded in getting fans of that most famous mouse back on board, and Get A Horse! (2013) began a new wave of Mickey shorts with a snazzy new look.

Their latest short is called Fire Escape, and it continues the new old school series while retaining a lot of the comedic charm people have come to expect from Disney animated shorts.

-Via Kotaku

(Image Via Imgur and Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

(Images Via Imgur and Jerod Harris)

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Comedic actor Michael Cera has a very familiar face, and he has stated in interviews that he gets mistaken for other people on the street all the time, but what is it about his face that seems so familiar? Is it those gentle eyes, that pert nose, or that soft, downy moustache he sometimes sports in public?

It’s hard to put your finger on why Michael Cera looks so familiar, that is until you see this collection of Women and Children That Look Like Michael Cera (and one entire Michael Cera looking family), put together by those fun-loving folks at BuzzFeed.

There’s a common misconception that young folks don’t care much about the past these days, since they’re too caught up in tech gadgets and social media, but teenager Annalisa Hartlaub aims to change that misconception with a school photography project where she imagines herself as a teenager from every decade over the last hundred years.

Her era specific photos find her as a mainstream teen on the left and a counter-culture teen on the right, and in addition to being a project about self exploration the photos also do a great job of showing how little styles have changed over the last hundred years.

-Via 22 Words

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Muscle Dancing is one of those strange videos that makes you wonder why the heck it was ever made, or what the stars were hoping to accomplish, besides driving the ladies wild!

Muscle Dancing is a unique video clip to say the least- it was taken from a Winnipeg public access show called Winnipeg Babysitter that aired back in the 70s and 80s, and even though it is virtually devoid of muscles, and the dancing looks like the trailer park version of Magic Mike, you gotta applaud these two cavalier fellows for their high self esteem and winning smiles! *grin*

-Via The Soup

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The Talking Heads are often best remembered for hit songs like Burning Down The House and Psycho Killer, and that music video where David Byrne wears the suit with the ridiculously large shoulder pads, but they had to put in quite a bit of work touring and performing before achieving mainstream success with these popular songs.

They played 130 shows in 1978 alone, an epic year of touring that they admit left them "feeling pretty uninspired", and even though both of these concert videos were recorded in New York that year it's hard to tell that they're burned out on touring, because they put on an amazing show!

-Via Gothamist

It appears practitioners of the mystical arts are getting started at a rather early age these days, and thanks to accessories like these Disney Tarot cards by DeviantARTist D’Morte, the Arch-Druid of Tinver Moor, they can divine the future in animated style.

These colorful Tarot cards feature the major players in the world of Disney cartoons as each of the 22 figures in the Major Arcana, including Goofy as the Hanged Man, Pinocchio as the Fool, and Sorcerer Mickey as (what else!) the Magician.

They’re the cutest way to anger your ultra-religious parents, and a colorful way to get kids playing with a totally different kind of Magic cards.

-Via Boing Boing