Bare Knuckles: Tina Fey has Madness in her past

It's not as if I'm a regular reader of Vanity Fair, but Tina Fey on the cover of the January issue was bananas, so I felt it was my manly duty to investigate the Maureen Dowd interview. Besides, gamers usually like the ladies with a scar or two.

But I digress.

Did you know that Fey, the

30 Rock

creator, Upper Darby High School graduate,

Saturday Night Live

actor, and awesome Sarah Palin impersonator, once did voice-overs for a pinball game?

Feel free to file this under fairly useless information, but Fey used a Southern drawl, an "Ellie May Clampett voice" she told Dowd, in a game called Medieval Madness by Williams Electronic Games in 1997. The audio sample is floating around the Web if you are interested.

If you have played Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within, or Jagged Alliance, chances are you've heard Michael Rudder. The Canadian actor has provided his voice for characters in those harrowing entertainment affairs.

Now Rudder has had his own harrowing experience, and it's all too real. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Centre, the actor was shot three times as he was dining in the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai last week during the terrorist attacks. He feigned death until the attackers left the area, and is expected to make a full recovery from his injuries.

Microsoft is pumping the PR machine hard after hearing from retailers. It announced the Xbox 360 outsold Sony's Playstation 3 by 3-1 on Black Friday.

"We entered into the Black Friday sales period with cautious optimism, knowing that dollar for dollar, Xbox 360 offers more social entertainment value than any other console on the market," said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, in a company release.

While no numbers have been published yet, it is no mystery as to why this happened. The cheapest Xbox is now $199. Cheaper than the Wii by $50 and cheaper than the PlayStation 3 by more than $100.

For the frugal, which is just about everyone, it was really a no-brainer.

Sony is probably more concerned with the lack of enthusiasm for the Blu-ray technology (the PS3's biggest original draw over the 360). Couple that DVD-playing technology with $150 Blu-ray players on store shelves, and PS3 console sales might decline.