Today being the last day of April, I have just written my 30th poem of National Poetry Month 2014. Or technically, 31st poem*, given that in the middle of the month I wrote a Raven parody about how social media means nobody has time to read. It’s what I like to call “meta-true”, since I posted it on Facebook and only 2-3 people seemed to read it there, although many more people have time to read a haiku; here’s one I wrote this month but didn’t put on Facebook:

The difference between
genius and insanity
is retroactive

Earlier in the month I went to perform some food-themed poetry at a meat market, which was interesting, and performed some comedy at an open mic where I mainly told people how depressing life was. Only, y’know, in a fun way. Speaking of fun, this month we returned to some of our old favorite card games we haven’t played in too long, like Race for the Galaxy and Eminent Domain. I also have a new review up for Lords of Vegas. On the videogame front, Hearthstone and SolForge have been joined by Starbound, accurately described by two BGG friends as “SNES to Terraria’s NES” and “Terraria in space”. Terraria, in turn, has been described as “2d Minecraft with more fighting”. And Minecraft has been described as “completely pointless” and “totally awesome”***.

Also this month we grilled some Reubens**** (or as I like to call them “The King of Sandwiches”) and they were pretty dang tasty.

*Or technically, 33rd, given the two poems I wrote for the food slam mentioned in the following paragraph, but who’s counting**?

**Hopefully a purple muppet vampire.

***Actually, a lot of totally awesome things are completely pointless. Sadly, most completely pointless things are not totally awesome. For example, this footnote.

****Whenever we grill Reubens, the deliciousness thereof becomes a moral issue. It is not uncommon for me to invoke Rabbi Hillel in explanation of why a most delicious Reuben is of utmost importance.

Today is April 1. APRIL FOOL! It’s technically April 2. Unless you’re west of my time zone, in which case DOUBLE APRIL FOOL! It’s still April 1. I’m not sure how the holiday progressed to saying false things as a form of entertainment*, but I think eventually I get to the point where I’m saying things like, “I didn’t eat a lot of delicious soups last month or receive a lovely gift book about psycho-linguistics** – APRIL FOOL!”, and I think the form has overridden the function — just like dropping your taxes on the top row of your keyboard.

April is National Poetry Month, which means that I (as well as a few friends and a vast plethora of strangers) will be participating in the 30/30 poetry challenge to write a poem every day during April. Lots of people’s poems (including mine) will be posted at 3030Poetry.com, brought to you by the fine folks who run WordXWord. If I write one I’m particularly pleased with, maybe I’ll post it here on this blog. I’m participating in a food-themed poetry slam in Great Barrington on April 19th, and last month I was honored to be named “Haikuster of the Year 2014” after emerging victorious from the Rambling Poets Haiku Head to Head. Many of them were impromptu, and consequently I cannot recall them precisely, but one of them was something along the lines of:

marijuana fans
took over Colorado
with their own “high coup”

All this lovely poetry, but what about gaming? Well, I do mean to get back to working on my boardgame book, and thankfully we’ve finally started playing boardgames more regularly again. The newest review I have up is for Mad City, a quick little city-building game that surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. Still, my preferences tend more towards the epics***, which is why getting back to playing behemoths like Through the Ages and Caverna has been so much fun.

Oh, and although April is here now, it’s still not too late to read my column about The Ides of March.

*Although to be fair, that describes half of my career. Even if I’m usually more proud of the half that involves saying true things as a form of entertainment.

**Appropriate, since many people have mistaken me for a linguist or a psycho.

***This also holds true for opening packs in Hearthstone.

So, on Tuesday the famed Gloria Steinem came to speak at the local college, and I got to attend the lecture and ask her a few quick questions afterwards. And while I could mention how she made a lot of excellent points, or talked about the importance of intersectionality insofar as anyone fighting for women’s rights needs to be fighting against racism as well, or how I can’t believe she’s been doing this for so long, the main thing I want to say is that a few days before the lecture I wrote a column I am pretty happy with. So I present you with:

Gloria Steinem (Anagrammed)

Now that we’re past the dreaded month of February, things are looking up*. I wrote a poem yesterday to read at the open mic tonight before running it in a poetry slam next month, and I think I finally have 3 small sections of my book past the primary editing stage and ready to get reactions from a few test readers. Then once I’m convinced those chapters are fully ready, I begin the difficult task of hunting for an agent**. So if you are or know anyone representing non-fiction authors, especially authors that do odd cross-genre stuff, please do let me know.

*Also I’m looking up things, to do research for columns and books and so forth.

**Duck Season! Agent Season! Duck Season! Agent Season!

February is a short month. Here’s a short post.

Although no longer weekly, my column now appears in the Berkshire Eagle roughly every other week. Here’s a column about my delightful neighbors. And one about Valentine’s Day.

On the boardgame front, I have a new review up for Bremerhaven. And for the first time in too long, we got a few games of Power Grid in. On the videogame front, I’m playing my way through the Gothic series of games, and just finished Gothic 3. On the crossover front, Hearthstone is pretty damned good.

And at home we’ve been eating all sorts of delicious food, and generally I make up songs about it while I’m in the kitchen.* After a rocky start**, this year is finally back on track. Now I just need to make some progress on my book.

*Including “I like baked spuds and I cannot lie”, “Always the latkes are frying, always the onions and crying”, and “The most beautiful sound I ever heard, Tortilla, Tortilla, Tortilla, Tortilla”

**Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!

Admittedly, the year did not start out particularly great for me. Part of this is because I’ve been sick, courtesy of some New Years Eve Party Favors. And part of this is because the North Adams Transcript, the newspaper in which my award-winning weekly humor column has run for the past 10 years, is ceasing production to be absorbed into the Berkshire Eagle. And part of this is because although I cannot officially disclose anything, if I were in a beta for a game that rhymed with Shmelder Shmolls Shmonline, I would have been downloading many gigs of patches and updates over the past three days and still be far from a full progress bar actually letting me play the damned beta.

So those are some things.

But it’s not all bad news. In the past two weeks my partner has cooked for me delicious dishes from around the globe, ranging from African fish stew, to Carnitas, to an actual Haggis.* And towards the end of last month I put up a review of Caverna: The Cave Farmers, which is easily one of the best new games I played in 2013. (It would be tough for me to choose between that or Terra Mystica as absolute best, but I think they’d be the top two.) And while I don’t make New Years Resolutions per se, even before Jan. 1 I had already resolved that by the end of this year, I will finish a draft of my next book, which will be about games. Here I am making a public statement about it, so you can all hold me to account: By the end of this year, I’ll have a draft of my new book about boardgaming.

Now I just have to get some more gaming in, for inspiration.

* “It wasn’t totally offal,” she said. “I love ewe,” I replied.

Sorry, I meant my boardgame reviews on BGG, which are conveniently gathered on one page for you to peruse. (My older reviews for About.com are, alas, not so conveniently organized.) As expected, finally got a review up for Asgard’s Chosen, as well as two others. Maybe next year I’ll get around to reviewing Twilight Struggle*. And speaking of awesome board games my partner really dislikes, I read that 1960:TMotP** is now out of print, so maybe someone wants to buy my copy. My shelves are still filled with wonderful games that are never going to get played here, and my wallet is empty. Heck, I don’t even have business cards in there. I really need to fix that; I am not good at the networking thing.

Which is probably why social networking is hard for me, but at least last weekend I was social. Some of my dear college friends were in town for Homecoming, so even if they’ve all had children in the past few years and refused to use my ultimate baby-naming algorithm, I was still very happy to get to see them and hang out briefly. Coambulation*** is a wonderful thing.

Coagulation is a wonderful thing too. My visiting college friends joined me for dinner at two of my favorite local restaurants: Sushi House and Espana. There’s nothing that cheers me like the combination of good food and good friends. And tasty desserts; as the A-Team’s Hannibal often said, “I love it when a flan comes together.”

Thanksgivukah is only a few weeks away. And if (you/your friends) were doing any holiday shopping for people of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, I’d certes be thankful if you decided you wanted to (gift a copy of/share the link for) God To Verse.

*Or maybe nyet.

**The Mellower of twilight Permutations*

***meaning “to walk together”, a favored word and pasttime of mine.

Well, I feel okay now. I didn’t for a while; I spent a week being sick, which I wrote about in the style of Ogden Nash. I really like Ogden Nash; I have a 6-volume hardcover set on a shelf in my office, and various of his other books scattered around. He was one of the poets I grew up on, along with Frank Jacobs*, which probably explains a lot about my poetic sensibilities. It was only later that I got into hip-hop. I’ll be performing somewhat less doggerel-esque poetry this Saturday at Greenfield’s WordFest.

To continue briefly from last entry, one reason so many reviews are positive is that in order to properly review a game, you have to play it a few times. So far this month, I’ve played three new-to-me games, but only once each. One I loved (Terra Mystica), but don’t know when I’ll get a chance to play it again. One I liked (Asgard’s Chosen), but need to try it with more players before writing up a fair review. And the one I didn’t like (Chicago Express) was not a review copy, nor is it a new game, so my motivation to play it a second time is minimal.

I think about food a lot. Not just because my column this week was about the Wrath of Grapes, but I am just someone who really enjoys good food. My latest kick is inspired by Larb**, but as I’m too lazy to grind rice or chicken, I’m using crushed peanuts and shredded chicken, which over rice and lettuce, with a chili lime fish sauce, is pretty danged tasty. I guess you could say I’m a Larb guy.***

*The Maven of Mad Magazine, who wrote many brilliant parodies of which the one that most sticks in my mind is “Quoth the Reagan”.

**What is Larb? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more. Larb is a dish that originated in Laos. I’ve got nothing but Larb for you, baby. If you want to know more, hey, you’re on the Internet. Larb conquers all.

***And I wish you would say it out loud, because Larb Gai is chicken larb, but that joke doesn’t work well written.

This largely describes how I try to be, as a reviewer. I really like reviewing things, because I feel like I do a good job of objectively laying out pros and cons. My favorite evidence to support this opinion is the fact that numerous times, after writing a boardgame review on BGG, I’ve had people respond to the same review with opposite reads. Someone saying “I agree with all your points, this game was missing the wow factor,” and someone else saying, “I agree with all your points, I love this game.” Or another review where someone replied that the review convinced them to buy the game, and someone else replied that the review convinced them not to buy the game. While I’ve enjoyed reviewing books and restaurants as well, I feel like I especially excel at analyzing games and picking out what people will enjoy or not, and so I really like reviewing them.*

If any of you know much about the review world, or the game world, then you know that there’s a lot of cases where reviewers are pressured to give strong reviews to weak products. This is most obvious in the video game world, where there are stories of all sorts, including a reviewer being fired for being one of the only ones to give a bad review to a game that most players agreed was bad. If it often seems like a reviewer is positive about everything, it may be because there’s the very rational fear that if one gives negative reviews, the review copies will stop coming.

I’m certainly not saying that’s the reason why most companies have stopped sending me review copies of board games — I’m pretty sure my removal** from About.com’s game subsite is the main reason for that –but just to note that many reviewers feel like they have to give only positive reviews. I pride myself on giving fair reviews, which means some of them are glowing, some of them are eviscerating, and most fall somewhere between the two. And I’ll admit, the first time I posted to BoardGameGeek a really scathing review of a boardgame I’d been sent a review copy of, I wondered if I’d stop receiving review copies from that company. So far, that hasn’t happened, even after a few more negative reviews. It’s not that I like being negative about games. It’s that I have to.

That way when I say good things about them, you know you can believe me.

*The games, not the people. I could probably offer objective reviews of people as well, but that seems somehow distasteful.

**A while back, About.com decided to lay off all 72 of their subsite associate editors, so while I don’t take the removal personally, it still was an annoying loss of platform. Sort of like that Super Mario level with the donut blocks that drop.

To be fair, given that the only readily-accessible* option is usually death, it’s always a great time to be alive. But I have to say, I really enjoy living in the era of the free and open Internet. Obviously, previous generations didn’t have Internet at all, and between Verizon and SOPA and various other things threatening Net Neutrality and free access for all, it’s unclear whether the next few generations will share what we have now.

But just a minute ago I was thinking, the old green-eyed monster has reared its ugly head, and I wonder what would best fight it, and after discarding the Yankees**, I settled on a yellow power ring, and a quick search for “yellow power ring green lantern” brought me to the Wikipedia page for Sinestro, and then I link-hopped for a while until I reflected that it’s a glorious time to be alive.

Granted, I also enjoy the Internet because it lets me tell you that my comedy show on Friday went well, and point you to my latest boardgame review (Downfall of Pompeii), and my latest column which is about bus-riding veterans, and hey we’re approaching the holidays so it’s never too early to buy gift copies of From God To Verse.

But basically, I enjoy having the Internet, and so I think it’s a great time*** to be alive.

*Dude, Where’s My DeLorean?

**Who fight the Green Monster.

***2:04am

Well, September is game month for me. In addition to once again completing the 26-game gauntlet that is my annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, this weekend I am off to the Boston Festival of Indie Games (free admission!) to showcase my hip-hop card game Legend of the Cipher. I will admit, while I’m in the tabletop area, I’m also hoping to meet Carl Chudyk (designer of some of my favorite card games, Innovation and Glory to Rome) who will be there showcasing his new game Impulse.

WordXWord was totally awesome, and I am really glad to have gotten to be a part of it. That’s two intensifying adjectives in a single sentence, so you know I’m serious.* Did some poetry at The Mount for their WordFest the other week, and at the end of the month I’ll be doing a stand-up comedy show again for the first time in many moons.**

Speaking of comedians, my humor column this week is about the misattribution of Internet forwards to famous comedians. So if you’ve recently seen a John Cleese terror alert or a George Carlin homily, take a look. And if you haven’t, just stop this crazy weather, because 63 degrees to 90 degrees to torrential rainstorms is too much for me to handle in the span of two days.

*As in, containing veracity. Not containing gravitas, obviously. I don’t really do a lot of gravitas. I think that’s why I like root beer floats.

**It’s lunacy.