If you were to travel back in time and ask my highschool self what career I would have in the future, “Underpaid Rapper” probably would not have been in my first hundred answers. But sure enough, here I am, frequently rapping for insufficient remuneration. I suppose between my epic* limericks and my songs with Lex, the fact that I kept rhyming makes sense.

As with most things I do, it started largely as a joke.  I wrote an email to my favorite rap group at the time (Blackalicious), and ended up making a silly rap to send them. But then I ended up joining an online nerdy rapping community, and started rapping a lot more. I put up a myspace page and began writing raps for posterity. I started freestyling everywhere I went, from a humor conference in Ohio to the streets of San Francisco. The rap video I posted two months ago ended up winning a little contest. Last weekend my improv troupe was performing in Providence, and our most popular game is one I invented where we do the whole scene in rap form. Tomorrow I’m doing stand-up comedy at a local bar, and I generally end my set with a freestyle rap.

I’m still trying to freestyle about the news every week on my rap podcast, News In Rap. And later this month I’ll be heading out to a national nerdy hip-hop festival, to meet other nerdy rappers from that aforementioned online community and around the world. Somehow, rapping has become a large part of my life. It’s perhaps an odd place for me to end up, but I have to admit, I’m enjoying it.

(this column has nothing to do with rap. God to Verse, on the other hand, could certainly be performed over a rap beat if someone wanted to.)

* by which I mean many stanzas in length like an epic poem, rather than epic in the modern internet parlance that means full of win**

** although they were also full of win

RBIT is all over the place in June. Yesterday we were performing on Lark Street on Albany, where I was reminded why our improv works much, much better inside. Also, I accidentally got the entire street crowd booing me. See, I was taking suggestions for my freestyle rapping, and someone yelled out “Red Sox”, so I rapped about how I grew up watching the Paw Sox in Pawtucket, which rhymed with what the Yankees can do… and then when the booing started I remembered that Albany isn’t in Massachusetts.

Anyway, this coming weekend (June 13th) we’ll be performing at Dottie’s in Pittsfield, and two weeks after that (June 27th) we’ll be performing at AS220 in Providence as part of the Providence Improv Fest. And then Great Barrington in July and Springfield in August.

Meanwhile, I’m fairly pleased with my column about sports, and while my abortion column from last week doesn’t seem to be online, I just finished writing a column about same-sex marriage that amuses me, which will run this Friday.

On the boardgaming front, I’m still waiting for my long-ago placed pre-order of Dominion: Intrigue, but passing the time with plenty of Power Grid, Race for the Galaxy, and Caylus, the latter of which may still be my favorite game that makes use of the worker placement mechanic, because the provost mechanism (where players can influence which spaces activate after placement occurs) is so fascinating.

I can’t believe May is almost over. Wasn’t it just April? Well, if you want to ring out the month in style, come down to Main Street Stage on May 30th, and catch the last local improv show of the season. It’ll be a good time. Which I think 4:16am isn’t.

It’s a shame I’m not in an aristocratic court of 15th century Italy, because it would be nice if I could somehow convert my propensity for impromptu rhyming into a career.* Meanwhile, I posted a new episode of News In Rap. An old highschool acquaintence I haven’t heard from in well over a decade just commented about it on Facebook. Which is sort of neat. If people I haven’t heard from in forever are going to find me again, it may as well be while I’m doing something useful.

I wrote a political column last weekend, which ended up not quite as funny as I’d like. This weekend’s column will make up for it, I promise. Also, God To Verse will be updated tomorrow, because I am too tired to do it now. Goodnight.

*Besides, I look really good in a jester hat.

Not birds. Not even me. I mean my website. Apparently my hosting company decided to migrate it, so if you wondered why you saw three “Hello World I am a new WordPress user” posts over the past few days, that’s why. Also, if this never shows up in the RSS feed, I’ll know why. Knowledge for everyone: This is why I was a philosophy major.

Actually, I suppose I will be doing some migrating this summer. My improv troupe is finally starting to tour more widely, with performances scheduled not only around our local area, but in Springfield, Providence, and Albany. Locals should catch us at Main Street Stage on May 30th, because after that it’s a while before we’re performing in town again. I’ll also be migrating* to Florida to meet some other nerdy rappers, but more on that in a month or two.

May, meanwhile, has been a very good month gustatorially speaking. In addition to the usual stir-fries and soups, we’ve made sushi (california rolls, inside-out rolls, and nigiri), pastitsio, spanakopita (fused with steak and onion pie), raspberry mango chipotle chicken, fish tacos, and a dozen little pizzas including the “Margherita” (Fresh mozzerella, fresh basil, fresh tomatoes, well-behaved chicken), the “French Classic” (Pear, Goat cheese, Onion, Sliced Almond) and something I like to call “Invisible Emu**” (Apple, Cheddar, Bacon).

And triple chocolate rootbeer floats.

One of the sites I wrote for, Gameist.com, recently went under, so I wrote this column. Then I saw my first movie in theatres this year, Star Trek, so I wrote this other column. Then I just finished a less funny column before posting this, which is sometimes what happens when I get political, but that column doesn’t see print for a few days, so you don’t have to worry about reading it accidentally yet.

*I suppose technically, that’s all more like visiting and not migrating, and that anyone nerdy would know that.

**The first apple cheddar pizza I ever made also had emu*** on it, and it was so good that all other apple cheddar pizzas for the rest of time will want emu.

***Ground emu meat, that is. Not a whole emu**** or emu hair.

****Emu is a pretty fun word.

The problem with only updating bi-weekly is that by the time I get around to posting, I have a bucket of links. I will, however, do you the service of not posting the flash game to which I am currently addicted, as it is nothing but a humungous brainless waste of time. If you’re going to think about video games, reading my articles about People in your WOW Guild and Video Game Drinking Buddies will be much faster, and much less addictive.

Anyway, this blog has been slightly less storied than my WSO blog, perhaps because at that time I didn’t have many links to share. Back in those days, I wrote about the various ways in which I’d managed to fail at cooking. But I’ve consolidated the best of those old blog stories into a single column. Back then, just out of college, was the first time I was out of work. It’s vaguely similar to what I’m doing now, only I had no experience freelancing, no resume, and few books under my belt. Still, even back then I was working on God To Verse. This week’s portion I think is a good example of what I’ve tried to do in terms of explicatory work; the bible is filled with passages like, “She was in labor for seven days with her son, so she named him Mohar”, and it doesn’t make sense unless you know that “Mohar” was Hebrew for “week of pain”, so I’ve got little parenthetical bits to explain all of that.

The big link of the fortnight, however, is the video contest I’ve recently entered. See, I’ve been doing a lot of rapping at local performances, but I don’t have any sound equipment. So when I heard there was a contest to win a free microphone, I figured I should enter. Annoyingly, I don’t think the rap I entered is as good as the freestyles I perform locally, but it’s still a video of me rapping so you should feel free to take a look. (Thanks go to the inimitable Daniel Beck for videography.)

Oh, and in case I forget to post again before then, my improv troupe will be performing on Saturday May 9th at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield. Come out, and I guarantee a good time!

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!)

Well, I’m back from my week-long sojourn in Western lands. It rained for at least half of the time I was in California, which was sub-optimal. Still, it was a pretty good vacation, and I even wrote a column about it. The column doesn’t mention that I went back to Chinatown and got steamed BBQ pork buns from as many bakeries as I could. So tasty; I may have to learn how to make them.

In other news that transpired while I was away, some people in India are working on a new soft drink that sounds udderly ridiculous. Don’t believe me? Read my other column.

Last night was our improv show at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. Although a concurrent  local comedy show stole some of our crowd (our previous show there was nearly a full house), I still thought it went quite well. We debuted a new game I invented called “Rap Psychiatrist”, where I am a rapping psychiatrist who helps other troupe members with their (audience-suggested) mental issues. I think it went quite well, and once the other folks in the troupe get better at rapping, I think it will quickly become one of our most popular games.

Finally, people sometimes ask me why I play board games all the time, and why I’m happy all the time. Well, the answers may be linked.

Well, the good news is that I am feeling healthy again. If you want to know more about why I might have been sick, feel free to read Friday’s column. There has been a lot of illness going around, though. Many friends of mine have been feeling under the weather.* I’m just glad I’m getting better before my upcoming Horace Greely-inspired** journey.

Things here, meanwhile, have been entertaining. I’ve been focusing less on my rapping, and more on my poetry*** and comedy. And of course, by “focusing”, I mean “paying attention to for the hour a day when I’m not playing games”. But my constant gaming is to your benefit: Here’s a new guide for how you can become a better Settlers of Catan player.

Meanwhile, if you happen to be near Pittsfield on the evening Saturday, March 7th, I believe there will be an improv show for you to catch.

*Then again, if they were over the weather, they’d be gods.

**I looked up the quote to check, and apparently the original quote is by John Soule. But Greely was the man who popularized it, and so I maintain that is by him that the journey is inspired. If you disagree, Go Soak Your Head, Young Man.

***Monthly local poetry slams have started up again. I wrote a new poem for the last one. It won.