When I suggested in a column two weeks ago that people should resolve to make their lives better by embracing new entertainment options, I did not anticipate how popular this idea would be.

The suggestions just kept rolling in.

Apparently, many readers appreciate the notion that life can be made better and successes can be increased by replacing limiting beliefs with empowering ones.

In this case, limiting beliefs could be something like, “I only eat things with crisp bacon on them, listen to music that has been used to sell pickup trucks and see movies that were reviewed positively by Michael Medved.”

Empower yourself in 2010 by trying new things, some of which may or may not appear below.

Video arcade

I have accepted that video arcades were long ago supplanted by home entertainment systems, but if you are a person of a certain age, video arcades may loom large in your memory as the only place where you were ever truly happy.

Or some less melodramatic version of that.

In an arcade during its heyday, there was (non-dangerous) danger and (fixed-position) adventure around every corner.

A fiver got you a couple of hours of entertainment, and you wouldn’t even look at the clock until your pockets were empty. Plus you were in the company of all these kids who were as equally amazed as you were that video games existed.

As advanced as video games get, kids will never be as amazed by them as we were when they appeared out of nowhere with their eye-popping monochrome vector graphics and mind-blowing 10 KB of ROM code.

Anyway, someone has opened a video arcade at Georgetown Square on State Boulevard called Fun & Gamz, and it is packed with the sort of old-school and new-school games that will make you want to skip school.

Not that I would condone such a thing.

Radio programming

“Midday Matters,” a public-affairs program that debuted last spring and airs at noon weekdays on WBOI-FM 89.1, sounds every bit like everything else on NPR talk radio, and that’s a high compliment. The issues are local and the experts are local, but the high gloss and lofty level of discourse are indistinguishable from national.

Each program is devoted to a single theme (current events, finances, health, horticulture and arts), and all are excellent.

However, I must risk giving the impression that I am singling something out by singling out Thursday’s “Outer Spaces.”

I am not especially interested in gardening and landscaping, which explains why my lawn looks like it inspired Cormac McCarthy to write “The Road.” But “Outer Spaces” co-host Ricky Kemery is hilarious.

Kemery is the Allen County horticulture educator with the Purdue Cooperative Extension service, so he’s clearly got the requisite expertise, but he’s also droll and funny and fascinating to listen to regardless of your pre-existing interests. You can also read his column today in the Home section of The Journal Gazette, where he appears every other Sunday.

Art gallery

Amber Recker of the Fort Wayne Derby Girls e-mailed me to recommend Charley Shirmeyer and his Northside Gallery at 335 E. State Blvd.

“He is doing amazing things for the art community, including hosting a series of ‘Meet the Artist’ open houses,” Recker wrote.

I hadn’t spoken to Shirmeyer in years when I walked into his gallery last week. In fact, it had been at least a decade.

He didn’t remember me, which I didn’t take at all personally after I had retired to the restroom to sob and stare at my reflection in the mirror asking, “Why?”

Shirmeyer was once the drummer in a now-defunct but much-missed band called Rushville Whig.

In the ensuing years, Shirmeyer attended college with the intention of joining his dad’s construction business, decided construction wasn’t for him, started a framing business, got married and then bought the building in which he lived and framed.

Now Shirmeyer is committed to helping local artists.

There are certain people whom you talk to in this town who make you think, “This is a big-city guy/gal. We’re lucky to have him/her.”

If the person’s really charismatic, you may even forget to choose a pronoun.

Shirmeyer is just one of those magnetic personalities from whom one expects big things.

“Charley is one of the brightest lights to shine on the Fort’s art scene in some time,” artist Terry Ratliff wrote in an e-mail. “He knows his art, has amazing energy and can hang an installation in the blink of an eye.”

In the most recent Fort Wayne Newspapers Readers’ Choice Awards, Northside won second place in the art gallery category.

It was beaten out by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the opposite of a fly-by-night operation, so that makes this award one of the more prestigious runner-up honors ever bestowed.

Shirmeyer says he hopes to ramp up his exhibition schedule so he plans to host eight to 10 a year with corresponding opening-night events.

“I want to get Fort Wayne artists out there in various ways,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere. My roots are here; my family’s here. So I want to do what I can to grow the scene.”

Upcoming concert

Local musician Lee Miles wrote to put people in mind of a concert coming to Fort Wayne – sometime in 2010.

It’s a Swedish folk musician who goes by the title The Tallest Man on Earth.

“He’s by far one of the best songwriters around these days, if not the best,” Miles wrote.

Tallest Man, aka Kristian Matsson, is definitely coming to the region, according to the artist’s Chicago-based booker Adam Voith. But he cannot yet confirm where or when.

Miles thinks sometime in May. I apologize that this is so frustratingly vague.

Rest assured that I will be all over this like a simile on a Web site of Southern colloquialisms. Until then, whet your appetites with Matsson’s wonderful work on YouTube and Vimeo.

Local singer

Stephen Best, one of the local nightlife/food/style experts whose suggestions I depend on to enrich my free time, wrote to recommend folk and pop singer Dan Smyth.

According to Best, Smyth plays “Billy Joel, Muddy Waters, Conway Twitty, The Flaming Lips, Johnny Cash, and classic rock song book (not my cup of tea) with a bit of Madonna! Thanks Dan!”

Best believes Smyth is optimally enjoyed at Dickey’s Wild Hare while drinking an amaretto sour and eating a slice of the restaurant’s carrot cake.