It’s been a pretty good month for my songwriting.

Last weekend I was invited to WordCamp Boston to rap at the conference (along with my friend 3rr0r). While pre-written songs were going to be fine for the lunch hour, the conference organizers wanted something special with which to end the opening remarks. And so, I wrote a custom rap about WordPress specifically for the conference. Said rap was performed the morning of the conference, but sadly due to some technical difficulties, the simulcast was not very clear. For that reason, I have now posted my WordPress Rap.

Speaking of new rap songs, this month also marked the release of Rhyme Torrents 9, the latest installment of new nerdcore music from the Rhyme Torrents community. The good news is that like all Rhyme Torrents releases, these albums are completely free and available for download in mp3 form. The bad news is that like all Rhyme Torrents releases, the songs vary wildly in quality. The good news is that because it’s all a free download, you’ll find it very easy to grab the full album, toss what you don’t like, and end up with some new, free, catchy mp3s for your audio collection. I hope that one of the ones you keep will be my contribution to this volume, “The Big Cheese”, which is where I profess my love for cheese in rap form. It’s on disc 2.

And just in case you thought that the only songs I write are raps, I’m still working on parody songs as well. Our recent senate special election in Massachusetts seemed to attract a national audience. And while I went out and voted against Scott Brown (for the reason I explain in this column), that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to celebrate his victory. Naturally, I figured the best way to do this would be by submitting a song in his honor to the Providence Journal, so regardless of whether you like or dislike Scott Brown, I think you will enjoy singing along with “Voted for a Centerfold”.

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!”

Last week I was pretending to do some shopping, and was comparing prices between various stores. While walking through the parking lot, I was mumbling to myself, “Alright, so that one costs twenty. Twenty dollars.” And I passed another man who happened to be mumbling to himself, and just as I was mumbling “twenty,” I overheard him mumbling “Twenty-four,” and I thought to myself, gee, he’s off by four.

I really enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers. Turkey/stuffing/cranberry/sweet potato sandwiches are quite tasty, because the bucket of food theory still holds. My post-Thanksgiving column is also leftover food.

BestDangGames seems to have changed hands while I wasn’t looking. No matter; I was doing my Black Friday shopping at Fantasy Flight regardless, since they had a crazy discount sale. Although I really need to stop buying board games now. That, or acquire another room in my house that consists mainly of shelves.

Anyone local can catch my improv troupe in Pittsfield or North Adams in December. But I’ll have another more exciting post in December too. Just you wait.

Also, this cool lady that does make cool book also made this cool blog post with game with four. Read that post. Then, your next move? Seek that book. Some good read!

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.

People always talk about Good Friday, but most people prefer Saturday. My Saturday was particularly good, because we discovered that you could make bibimbap* in the rice cooker, and then my improv troupe had a show which was probably one of the best we’ve ever done. This is probably unrelated to the fact that I half-mooned the audience as a plumber, served as another member’s parachute and binoculars, and sang about having ice cream and sex.

I’ve gotten too lazy** to post all my columns to this site, and the Transcript site hasn’t been posting all the recent ones, but you can still read my column about clouds. Aristophanes had nothing to do with it. An observation that reminds me that sometimes, I am too educated for my own good. Last week I was asked to do a user review of a site where people keep an online tally of what places they’ve visited. Asked for how I’d describe it, I said it was the apotheosis of conspicuous consumption, and then I realized that I am a giant egghead and people asking for site feedback don’t want to hear about the sociological theories of Thorstein Veblen***.

Having used up all my online boardgaming credit on my last order, I knew it was time to stop buying board games. But it wasn’t time to stop trading for board games, and so for the past week and a half, I’ve been eagerly awaiting a package from Canada containing a number**** of games. I’ve been checking the tracking number every day, and the blasted thing is still in Montreal. That’ll teach me to trade internationally. Although it’s silly that Canada is international. We’re all North America, so we should just be friends. I mean, Alaska’s not international, and it’s further than the rest of Canada is.

* Of course, I think of the hot clay pot as the key ingredient in bibimbap, and we don’t have that. But the slightly crisped rice, the bulgoki (korean-style beef BBQ), the egg, even the hot sauce, we got it all. And wow, was it tasty.

** Not that I wasn’t already very lazy. But I’ve also started thinking maybe I shouldn’t have everything I write online. Maybe I should just keep a few best-of columns up, and take down the rest, in case I want to do a book of them later. But I haven’t taken any columns down either, leading me to believe that in fact, I’m just lazy.

*** Even though he was totally right. Seriously, tourism as conspicuous consumption is already pretty obvious given the focus on photos and knicknacks. And then a site launches solely so you can brag to others where you’ve been, and how can you not bring up conspicuous consumption, right?

**** Ten. Including a game that combines complicated strategic programmatic movement with a wind-up toy. I can’t wait.

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.

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.

Last week my improv troupe had two performances in South County. During the Saturday performance at Barrington Stage, there was a game of Quotes* where I was playing a mad scientist**. For this reason, with no other prompting, I decided to threaten my enemy with a giant gorilla robot. Sadly, my invention was not perfected, and the robot stalled out and did not attack. A minute later in the scene, my partner picks up a quote and reads “Get your stinkin’ paws off me, you damned dirty ape.” Needless to say, I was overjoyed to have proof that my evil gorilla robot was functioning after all.

Note to self: Never try to describe improv to people who weren’t there.

In other news, my column is about board games, my freestyle rapping is about the news, my friend’s new fantasy short story is about Odin’s ravens, my rhyming version of the Torah is about due for a shot at publication, and my bedtime is about now.

*Quotes is a game where we get our audience to write random lines of dialog on scraps of paper before the show. These papers are folded and not looked at. During the scene, actors will pull out random quotes from the audience, read them, and work them into the scene.

**Yes, I know, typecasting.

My column from yesterday was about cliches. Yes, there should be an accent, but I’m too lazy to find it. For professional correspondence — and this is a trade secret — I tend to use Google to find a page with an accented e, and then just copy and paste that at the bottom of my document, to use whenever I need it with more pasting. But it’s 2am and right now, I’m not feeling professional.

The latest episode of my non-professional freestyled reporting is now available at www.NewsInRap.com. Tomorrow night (well, okay, technically tonight) I’m performing with the Royal Berkshire Improv Troupe at the local theatre, which is also not technically professional. And although I’m not a professional board gamer, I probably spend as much time gaming as one. My latest addiction is Dominion, which we acquired barely a few weeks ago. We’ve already played two dozen games,

Today I ate a pizza at a restaurant called “Hold the Anchovies”, and roughly 10 minutes after I ordered, while sitting at my table, it suddenly hit me: I can’t believe I didn’t order anchovies.