So lately I’ve been chatting with my good friend Lex Friedman (who is a very funny fellow right) about writing song parodies. Although you can see he wrote a parody song in his blog just recently in September, the fact is that neither of us are writing as many parodies as we used to. This is a shame, because back in the day we used to be known as “Leth & Sex”, and constantly collaborated on comedy.* We wrote many funny things including a number of songs together, the most popular of which was definitely our Michael Jackson parody: “Just Google”

However, life happens. We were recently lamenting the fact that we haven’t written as many parodies as we used to. But it makes sense because Lex has been very busy with many jobs and raising his kids, just as I’ve been busy with, uh…

Actually, I have no excuse whatsoever for my own lack of song production. Talking with Lex reminded me how much I love writing parody songs, and as he pointed out to me, I have the free time to do it. So today, I wrote a new parody song. I also, against my better judgment, recorded it. I say “against my better judgement” because my microphone has been broken for a bit, and I was too lazy to do production work to make it sound really good, but the thing about song parodies is that they are meant to be heard.

So, if you would like to hear my new song about Tiger Woods, with apologies to 50 Cent, then you should visit Ham-STAR’s MySpace page before I become too embarassed by the production values and take it down like I did with my Dr. Horrible tribute**.

Last week’s improv show was perhaps not my finest performance, but I was proud that I sang a blues song about logorrhea. This weekend’s improv show will be even better. I will make it so, because I’ve been doing some thinking about my duty as a citizen.

*We had a shared blog, a shared podcast, and a shared sense of humor.  We broke up when he tried to share my toothbrush.

**Which was, in fact, horrible.

I promised something awesome in December, right? Well, here it is:

My new music video: “Dump Stat“

This will be of most interest to those of you who enjoy either Dungeons and Dragons, Nerdcore, or watching me rap. My sincere thanks go to the inimitable Don Vito, for the beat and song production, Daniel Beck, for video production, all friends listed in the video, for being in the video, and all my friends not in the video, for generally being supportive.

The board games that I purchased on Black Friday have now all arrived, and we’ve already played five of them. Unlike my most recent batch of discount video games, many of which were sadly unfun, the board games are all fairly entertaining, with a few likely to become fast favorites. Speaking of Black Friday, I wrote last week’s column about it. And hey, I’m posting before the last day of December! I am on the ball this month. Improv shows this weekend (Pittsfield) and next weekend (North Adams).

Unrelated to any of that, I tend to refer to Rabbi Hillel a lot. I’m sure he had many accomplishments, but I mainly think of him as the guy who said “If not now, when?”. So whenever my girlfriend seems unsure about whether to do something, be it in real life or in a board game, I will often advise: “You know what Rabbi Hillel would say.”

So the other week, I’m having some leftover pie from Thanksgiving, and my girlfriend asks, “Should I have a piece too?” I, naturally, reply with, “You know what Rabbi Hillel would say.” There is then a five-second pause, and we both say in our best Rabbi Hillel voice, “Save some for me!”*

*Technically, we don’t have a Rabbi Hillel voice, but I wanted the sentence to make it clear that it was Rabbi Hillel, and not us, who was theoretically asking for pie.*****

**Technically, she said “Save me some!” and I said “Save some for me!”, but that difference is largely inconsequential, and would muddy the story.

***Technically, I didn’t actually say “Save some for me” , because as soon as I heard her start to talk, I stopped, and then was busy laughing. But I was amidst saying it.

****I guess this is how creative non-fiction works. It’s amazing how many footnotes of falsity I need for a dozen word portion of a true sentence.

*****And yes, he might also say, “Help, help, get me out of this box!”

That’s what day today is.

See, I told myself that I’d update this blog at least once a month. And since I’m ostensibly sending people to my website, it would be useful for me to look like I have new material no less frequently than once a month. Only, y’know, I sort of let October slip away from me. Back on my old blog, before I got WordPress, I had to hand-date all of my posts, so when this happened to me, I would simply date the posts like I did the title of this one. Sadly, with WordPress, they do the date for you, so you can see that it wasn’t actually posted on October 39.*

So what happened in October? Well, I played fewer board games than in September**, but I played more Magic, and Tom and I have recently invented a new dynamic format which has a slightly heftier dose of luck than some formats, but is highly entertaining. I also played fewer actual video games, but more flash games. This, I believe, is a trend for the worse***, which I hope to reverse in November. There were a few columns, and I also entered a SongFight contest. The latter I feel is notable if only because I interviewed the fine folks at SongFight a few years back for my first book. This particular SongFight was a non-traditional one, being run as a promotion for the Nerdcore Rising movie, but if you would like to go listen to my song, I will not stop you, even though voting is long since over and I was not anywhere close to victory.

Levi-Strauss***** died recently. And it’s that type of thing where the name is so famous, one forgets that such people are still alive. At least, er, until they aren’t. It reminds me of being back in college and not knowing that friends of mine were dating until they broke up. My finger is in a different county than the pulse of the zeitgeist or the real world in general. People attending my comedic events keep coming up to me afterwards to inform me that they greatly enjoyed my performance (yay!) but that I made a small factual error (boo!). Where by “small”, I mean “singing an entire song about the beautiful island of Peru when Peru is in fact a mountainous South American nation bordering Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile”.******

It has been too long since I have produced something really awesome. Hopefully I will rectify this in the next month or two. Something is in the works.

*Although it totally was. If you just keep counting in October, today would be the 39th. Or okay, technically 40th on the east coast by now, but everyone knows days of the month end somewhere in the 30s.

**Although given that September was Alphabetical Boardgaming Challenge month, that’s hardly surprising.

***Although I’m a sucker for Clockwords, if only because I don’t know any other games you can win by swiftly typing in either the Gettysburg Address or the lyrics to your favorite song.

****Although there’s no fourth footnote, I really ought to learn how to start footnotes with a different word.

*****As you know, Levi-Strauss was the inventor of blue jeans designed specifically for waltzing.

******This is not always the error I make, just an example. It would be sad if my comedic performances were consistantly marred by my insistance on referring to the island of Peru.

You’d think I would be. After all, I’m nothing if not a gourmet, or at least a gourmand. We’ve acquired a rice cooker and make our own Sushi, cook greek food like Moussaka and Pastitsio, Thai food like Pad Thai and Red Mango Curry, and pretty much anything else I could want to eat. Life is good, especially culinarily speaking. But old habits die hard*. And that pretty much explains why I was ill last weekend. Confused? You won’t be, after you read my most recent humor column.

Speaking of unwell Feds, Ron Paul doesn’t like the Federal Reserve. If you’d like to know why, you should read my book review of “End the Fed” in the USA Today.

“Not Well Fed”  is an anagram of “Letdown Elf”, which is inaccurate if it refers to the Elf in Scepter of Zavandor, a boardgame where the Elf character has propelled me to victory in my past two games. It is perhaps more accurate if it refers to my failure to play many RPGs lately, because I’ve been busy with other work. And, okay, boardgaming.

“Not Well Fed” is also an anagram of “Deft? Well, no.”  And this describes how I feel much of the time, especially recently with my failure to create any new raps in the past few months. I have ideas for another rap song or two, and I’ve got some lyrics written, but these things take time, and the goodwill of busy unpaid collaborators. Still, I hope to have at least something new in the rap arena before the end of the year.

Also, God to Verse online is now done. Over the course of a year, I posted all of Genesis, so it’s all there for you to read if you’re interested. The full five books will likely be published in print form at a future point in time, but that’s all that’s going up online. Meanwhilst, if you’re around North Adams on October 17th, you could see my improv comedy troupe perform at the Main Street Stage, where I “Often Dwell”.

*Thankfully, so far, so do I.

Not that it went anywhere. But I use “returns” in the noun form above, meaning that I have recently gotten some lovely* returns from my work for RI.

First of all, two weeks ago there was an article in the Projo about a new Rhode Island book, and the author was kind enough to give my book a positive mention. And speaking of the Projo, it’s been a while since I had any poems there. But I got word that the people in charge might not be averse to a verse, so I sent them a song parody about the recent Disney buyout of Marvel. If you’re familiar with “Under the Sea”, then you should definitely read “Bought by Disney”.

A while back someone who read my RI book asked me to do some work on a tourism guide for part of the state. I did, and it was a fun project. Well, she sent me an email last week to inform me that she submitted the tourism guide to a national competition and it won Best Tourism Guide. So that’s sort of cool. Incidentally, you should all visit Rhode Island, because it’s great.

Those of you who know me know that I tend to accumulate free T-shirts. Those of you who don’t know me, first of all I’m surprised you’re reading my blog, and secondly even you might appreciate my School Survival Guide.

Finally, as I mentioned in my previous post, last weekend was the Second Annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, so if you’re a gamer and want to read about how I spent my weekend**, you should definitely click through for the full report.

*albeit, alas, non-lucrative

**if you are not a gamer, and you believe that you want to read about how I spent my weekend, it is probable that you are mistaken.

…but summer seems to have come and gone almost instantaneously, regardless. At least I don’t have to go back to school now.* Still, I’m sorry to have the summer so swiftly ended. It seemed short, perhaps because it rained almost every day and never really felt like summer except for a week or two. But we quickly go from being over-heated to being freezing cold, and again I wish for some method to send heat into the future.**

Still, at least I have something to look forward to in September. For this coming weekend is the Second Annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, a momentous occasion on which I compete with my girlfriend in 26 boardgames (one for each letter) over the course of a single weekend. Last year the first day tally was 11 to 8 in my favor, but the second day was marred by a lack of boardgames for letters like X and Z. This year’s acquisitions have filled those gaps***, so we’ll be playing 26 games and keeping score. I’ll post again in a week and let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I recently learned that a book review I wrote a while back is up on the USA Today website, so if you want to read about how discount culture is ruining America, feel free. At least this time, nobody seems to have confused my summary of the book’s points with my personal views, as has happened to me before.  Last week I got to read an advance copy of Ron Paul’s upcoming book railing against the Fed, so when that review runs, we’ll see what happens. I still really enjoy reviewing things, and I feel I’m getting pretty good at it.

While I could never professionally review a book where the author is a friend of mine, Stick Figure Hamlet is finally available in (comic) book form, and a must-read for any Shakespeare fan. And as long as we’re linking, there are only two more weeks left in God To Verse before Genesis is done.

*I could, mind you. But I don’t have to. Volition is my favorite thing.

**Aside from a really inefficient heater. Although if a useful method actually existed, the resulting entropy would probably screw up the planet significantly anyway.

***Although due to bad planning, I traded away my only E-game because we didn’t like it****. So we technically will play 25 of our boardgames, and then an E-game which will either be a) borrowed from a friend, b) a print-and-play game I found online today, or c) Elbow Hockey.

****It’s surprisingly hard to find good 2-player boardgames that begin with E. For the most common letter in the English language, there are very few games beginning with E. And the ones that look most interesting (El Grande, E.V.O.) all seem like they want more people from the reviews. We also only have a single game beginning with X, which I acquired mainly because it began with X. This leads me to believe that at some point, I should invent a good game and market it by giving it a name beginning with X, just to appeal to obsessive gamers like myself.

Okay, no it isn’t.*  But I totally want you to look on my works, ye mighty.**  Of course, there’s the usual weekly updates for News in Rap and God To Verse. But I’ve also got a new book review up at USA Today, about a new book discussing the pleasures and sorrows of work. It’s a view of the workplace through fresh eyes, and I fear my mental desire to compare it to a foreigner like de Tocqueville looking at American democracy through fresh eyes may just be rooted in the fact that this author also has a French de-noted name (de Botton). Still, it was a neat read.

(Also, I got the manuscript version rather than the book version, which was weird for me as I hadn’t had a big packet-format object like that to read since college. I think I prefer actual pre-publication books to review, although reading a manuscript does remind one that the book doesn’t really exist yet.)

But most importantly, of course, is board games. My latest shipment arrived (using up the last of the credit I’d accumulated selling my Magic cards), filled with wondrous games like Small World, Yspahan, and possibly my new favorite, Le Havre. Le Havre is the sequel to Agricola, and while the play time is a bit longer than ideal, there’s a lot to tinker with, and I’m looking forward to tinkering with it more.

Speaking of board games, I have a new article up on the Best Dang Games Blog about Luck in Board Games. If that sort of thing interests you, or indeed if you play board games at all, it’s a very short read and something I think is worth considering. But then again, I’m probably biased.

Our improv show in Great Barrington last weekend went very well, which was nice because my family had driven up from RI to be in the audience, so I’m glad they could see me at my best. Our next show is at the Majestic in West Springfield on Wednesday August 12, and then we’ll finally be back in North Adams on August 22nd. Come watch!

* Although if my first name had been Robert, I’d totally want my middle name to be Ozymandias. Because then my name would be Rob, and my initials would be Rob. Also, Ozymandias is a pretty cool middle name, if a bit unwieldy for a first name.***

** Despairing is optional.

*** Or, I guess, an only name.

Yes, it’s soon to be April 15th, which means it is tax time once again. I still have to finish filling out some forms, but at least I finished paying my 2008 No Car Tax last weekend. Or I guess technically, two weekends ago, since last weekend I was briefly in RI to perform at the Catch a New Rising Star in Lincoln. With only a 5-minute slot though, it wasn’t much show. I figure those who like my rapping can catch my weekly podcast or my guest appearance this Saturday at the Red Room, while those who like my comedy can come to one of the monthly comedy open mics here, or catch a performance by my improv troupe.

Anyway, I know I probably sound like a commercial, but perhaps that’s because I recently reviewed a book about the infomercial industry. I must say, writing for the USA Today is interesting. Because they have so much to cover, they tend to like their articles very concise, and so I often find that my articles end up edited down quite a bit. Still, I’ve been told to write what I think the book merits, so I’d rather overwrite than be too brief and force editors to make up whole paragraphs.  Regardless, writing reviews is something I’ve always wanted to do, and now I’m doing it, so yay for that.

Apparently there’s recently been a large kerfluffle over at Amazon, where a number of GLBT-related books had their sales ranks removed. This was originally theorized to be an attack on homosexuality, but more recently Amazon has called it a “glitch” and some online troll forces have claimed responsibility, noting that they did it for the “Lulz”.  I was going to “comment” on this, but after the previous “sentence”, I got too entertained by putting “certain” words in quotes. I guess I’m easily “amused”.

Although it may lack the charm of the Sales Guy vs. Web Guy video, if you are interested in Management vs. Marketing brain differences, you should check out my latest book review in the USA Today.

Speaking of marketing, one of these days I should really re-design my website. Sadly, I no longer have whatever program I used to create it originally (possibly dreamweaver?), and lost the list of used fonts and colors, and fear it would be a large undertaking with dubious value. But not only do my links need to be updated, but my columns page is woefully out of date. Also, back when I built this site, it was mostly on a lark, so the “donations” link was funny. Now that I’m using it as my professional site, I feel like I should probably remove it, but I’d have to redo the whole header. Maybe I can get some federal bailout funds to do so. I kid, I kid.

Besides, I think there’s a bigger bailout problem Obama should be worrying about. I’ll even tell you about it in my most recent column, which I am almost ashamed to admit was inspired by a post a while back on Ephblog* asking about the demise of the joke.

I could swear there was something else I was going to mention when I started writing this post, but I got distracted again. Oh, I remember! If you have any affinity for video games, you might enjoy these articles I’ve been writing for Gameist.com. I like video games because playing them a little is fun, but playing them all day is a sign of depression. I think that’s sort of neat. And I’m going to go play video games.

*A blog where Williams alums discuss various tangentially-Williams-related things, albeit mostly how Williams should be running things. I used to read it frequently when I was still more connected with the college community, now I read it infrequently.

Okay, I’m probably never going to be bad-ass enough to be thought of as a renegade. But this week is my best shot. I reviewed a book for the USA Today called Career Renegade, about quitting your job and doing what you love. And hey, it sort of resonates.

Meanwhile, my column rails against the very popular Facebook, because we renegades rail against things that are popular. And things that it’s popular to rail against, like the bible? That we re-write in rhyme.

Because after all, we know that rhyming is the province of renegades.* Only a bad-ass gangster would bring you the News In Rap, right? And only a 1960s renegade beatnik refugee would be planning to perform at a poetry slam this Thursday, which you can see by showing up at The Alley on Thursday night around 8ish.

And now it’s time for the big renegade move: Ice Cream For Lunch. Yes, rebellion can be delicious.

*Roses are red, Violets are blue,
Renegades often ignore the rules of rhyming.**

**But not when you expect them to.
(To rebel in season is not to rebel, suckas!)