November 2012 is the official release date for my newest book about Rhode Island, but you can order it on Amazon now. (At the time of my writing this, it’s on discount, but that tends to fluctuate.) Unlike my previous Rhode Island book, this is a more serious historical book, covering historical events in Rhode Island from the founding of the state to the sewing of the World’s Biggest Sock.

Okay, so it's not all, like, super-serious.

But my point is, while my previous book about Rhode Island may have been about random silly things, and filled with whimsy in the form of pun-laden captions and ridiculous limericks, It Happened In Rhode Island is a more scholarly tome. Not, I should hasten to clarify, that this book is particularly academic, or high-minded. I just mean that I had to do actual research and write up historical events that happened in Rhode Island, and then the hardest part — leaving out all the puns, rhymes, and dumb jokes that I might have been tempted to make.

That being said, the book is still surprisingly entertaining. Which is to say, when I got my proof copy, after having written it and forgotten about it, I was surprised how entertained I was to read it. Granted, it’s easy to surprise someone with a terrible memory. But having stepped away from the research material for a bit, returning to read these little summaries of events was actually quite interesting. The book contains some “traditional history” that talks about the Great Swamp Massacre, Burning of the Gaspee, and some slightly more esoteric historical tidbits like General Burnsides.

But it also has more modern “historical” events, which include things like Babe Ruth’s first home run, and the moment when Bob Dylan put down the acoustic guitar and picked up the electric guitar instead. And of course, no book about Rhode Island would be complete without some stories of ridiculous RI politicians. Because they are ridiculous. Anyway, this is my newest book, and you should buy a copy for yourself to put in your bathroom along with Rhode Island Curiosities and Think You’re The Only One?, because it’s a bunch of interesting little 4-page stories, and they’re all true.

Just back from performing stand-up at a Chocolate Festival. This marks the first time I can recall where there were so many kinds of chocolate to sample, I became full before I’d even tried half of them. I definitely hope to go back next year, especially since the stand-up went well too. Here’s a joke I didn’t think was good enough to tell: I used to have blackberry bushes in my backyard, but then I found out my soil was contaminated with lead. So I tore out the bushes because I couldn’t stop eating the berries anyway. In retrospect, I could have used them to make Pb+J.*

So, my set was funnier than that. Speaking of food firsts, June also marks my first time making nime chow at home, a delightful experience I hope to repeat often, because yum, nime chow. My most recent local restaurant review was of a new Austrian place, and while I found it only mediocre, I’m pleased with my headline for the review.

Speaking of headlines**, my column this week was about Headline News, basically headline jokes the kind you might hear on a talk show. And the week before that I explain that my endeavors in comedy stem largely from the fact that I am seeking approval.

Game-wise, a friend lent us Through The Ages, and we have been playing it obsessively. As in, sometimes 4-5 times a week, which is a lot for a 3-hour game. We haven’t played a game this much since Goa. At some future point, I’ll have to review it, but I’ve only played a single multi-player game so I’m still holding off. Meanwhile, it’s an incredibly compelling 2-player experience, and always leaves me thinking, “Next time I’m going to try…”, which I believe is often a sign of a great game.

* Making puns about “lead” is very difficult in writing, since the pronunciation as “led” screws up a lot of the possibilities.

*** Which is another joke I decided to cut from my stand-up this time around.

All the stuff I was working on last post is now done. So that’s good. And now I have some inconvenient poetry for you. What does that mean? I’ll explain. Perhaps you’ve heard about the case at Cranston West, where a young student asked the school to take down a long-standing prayer banner, and a large kerfluffle ensued. Well, I wrote an epic limerick about this event, which was recently published in the Providence Journal. Unfortunately, Projo.com has recently removed their editorials from one-click access, so in order to read it you’ll need to go to the ProJo e-Edition, then go to the back issue for Sunday 2/12, and then jump to page B10.

If you like political poetry, I also wrote some sonnets about various pieces of legislation proposed in the past year. These are available in a single click at The Transcript, but will probably be taken down within a day or two, which is also inconvenient.*

Eventually I am going to do another boardgame review rap (which is a kind of poetry), but I have auctioned off the choice of next game, and the fellow who won chose some games I don’t have access to, so I am waiting for another friend who owns them to move back to town so playing said games will be convenient. In the meantime, I have put up a review of Homesteaders: Second Edition, which is a cool little auction game that avoids some common complaints/pitfalls of auction games.

And finally, it occurs to me that I have not written any new slam poetry in many months. Perhaps with my newfound free time, I should get around to finishing the poem I started a while ago. But I am no longer in the same mental space. How…inconvenient.

*If it’s any consolation, my more recent columns about Heroes and Valentine’s Day should be up for another week or two, respectively.

Seriously, you’re not.

My editor at the Transcript? He’s the boss of me, and I just finished a column for him so you can read my wisdom on things like The Secret of Happiness and The Republican Primaries.

My editor at the Eagle? She’s the boss of me, and today (well, technically yesterday) I finished an interview, which will be added to the restaurant review I have due this week.

My editor at Globe Pequot? She’s the boss of me, and it is for her that I have been working non-stop for the past few months, so I can get the draft of my next book in on deadline.

You? I didn’t promise you anything in exchange for money, so if some of my writing is going to be short-changed, guess where.

More here in February, I promise.

Let’s start with food*. Labor Day weekend was delightful for me because I got to eat tasty food with a variety of old friends. But the biggest food news this month is a new hip-hop album. Torrentz, the rap supergroup I sometimes work with, has released a food-themed album called The Big Kahuna. I’ve got verses on a couple songs. Every track on this album is food-related hip-hop, and the whole album is free to download. Which means if you don’t hate hip-hop and food, you should give it a listen to see if you like it.

Finances are tricky. Mine, naturally, remain sub-optimal**. But I wrote an epic limerick about the crumbling finances of America, which was recently published in the Providence Journal under the title of Debt Be Not Proud.

Still, I’m mostly trying to focus on having fun***. September is our annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, which we’re currently right in the middle of. By far my most anticipated gaming event of any year, and one of my favorite events of the year overall. For those of you wonder if having to write about games as a job has diminished my enjoyment of board gaming: Nope.

Speaking of fun, I’m still enjoying the other comedic stuff I’m doing. My most recent humor column was a Back to School Glossary for the young and old. And between working with my improv troupe and doing stand-up comedy, I have a number of performances coming up — including a fundraiser for some folks in Williamstown who were displaced from their homes due to Hurricane Irene and the associated flooding.

Sometimes it’s hard to write a good conclusion****.

* If I had a nickel for every time I said this, I’d be a wealthy man.

**** If I had a nickel for every time I said this,….

No, that’s not a typo. I don’t make tyops.* I’m talking about Woe. As in, Woe is Me. Or to explain more accurately, Mug of Woe, the hilarious new book of true embarrassing** stories, includes a story by yours truly. Also, their website has a spotlighted contributor each week, and this week it is me. So go take a look at the site for Mug of Woe, and if you’re looking for a “Chicken Poop for the Soul” sort of book, consider getting yourself a copy. (After you buy all of my books, if you don’t already own them. Priorities.)

Anyway, we’re now in August. I’ve always liked August, but I have to admit, August is a weird month. One of those months in the middle you sort of skip over in planning, because it’s neither summer nor fall. Well, I didn’t skip over it entirely. I played lots of board games. Yet more Scepter of Zavandor (a favorite), some Gates of Loyang, and some Nightfall. Speaking of boardgames, I am still writing both boardgame strategy and boardgame reviews.

But I’ll admit, I’m excited that we’re only one month away from the Fourth Annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge. Related to gaming, but unrelated to boards, I just have to say the announced always-online requirement for Diablo III significantly reduces the chances I’ll end up buying the game at full price. When I play D2 and BNet keeps dropping me, I can still play single-player instead. Worthwhile purchase. Without that option… not so much. (RMAH, on the other hand, I do not care about.)

Also I like cheese. The other night my partner made dinner and told me, “Yo dawg, I heard you liked cheese, so I put some cheese on your cheese…” I am a lucky man.

*I like that this is one letter away from “tyoops”, which makes me think someone is in the middle of typing a quick thank-you to someone when they accidentally knock a pile of papers off their desk.

***I would prefer an Otto-spell-checker, wherein a German man with a big bushy moustache looks over my shoulder and points to each mistake and says, “Das ist wronk!” (I am presuming that “wronk” is German for “wrong”, based on my knowledge of German that comes from bad action films.)

June seems to have escaped me. Which makes me feel lame because it should not be that difficult for me to make one post a month. And yet, here we are. I suppose I could have done some backdating* and pretended I was on time, but June just flew by and I have to admit it.

To be fair, part of the reason is that I spent the last week of June in California at my brother’s wedding. You could read about my anticipation of the trip or even some of my trip highlights. But basically, the weather was consistently nice, there was copious tasty Mexican food, and my brother got married.

Now it’s back home, and trying to catch up on everything I’ve fallen behind on. Thankfully I managed to write the latter column while on vacation, and had finished my June submissions to the About.com boardgame site before I left, but I still feel like I wasn’t done with June yet. June could get 40 days, and that would be okay**.

Meanwhile, it’s not as if I’m starting July yet. Coming off the tail of a flight, I now have friends from afar in visiting for the 4th of July festivities.*** So it’ll probably be mid-July before I settle down and re-engage with the world around me. But in the meantime, there are copious amounts of food, friends, and fireworks, and two out of three ain’t bad.

*Not to be confused with Back Dating.

It’s a shame I was out of town for Spring. See, I’d gone to visit some friends on Friday, and it was suddenly a beautiful Spring day, after many months of winter and then a week of rain. And then when we returned two days later, it was 86 degrees outside and blazing hot summer sun. Basically, the Berkshires only gets a few days of Spring each year, and I’m sorry to have missed them. But no matter; enjoying the month anyway.

So tonight we’re sitting on the couch watching an action-packed movie with various things exploding and heavy gunfire in the middle of what is supposed to be a tense action sequence, and I realize that my partner and I are having a conversation about Spanish etymology.* This is indicative of something, which I had initially suspected might be the lack of acting talent** in the film we were watching, but which I eventually decided was simply the fact that my life is awesome.

Case in point: I’m now officially a Board Game Reviewer for About.com. For those of you keeping track, that means I now am a professional reviewer of board games, books, and restaurants. All I have to do is wait for someone to pay me to review my friends, and I will officially be a professional reviewer of everything I love.

Sure, it may not pay very well, but there’s something to be said for job satisfaction. I enjoy having a humor column where I can write about Tolstoy and truth if I feel like it. Or, if I’m feeling sillier, I can write about my propensity to consume questionable food. I’m pretty much living the dream***.

When I was young, I told myself one day I’d be fabulously wealthy and live in a house with a big room filled with food, and a big room filled with games. Well, here I am in a tiny victorian house, but it does have a pantry filled with food, and I do have a room filled with many, many boardgames. And heck, if one considers my friends rather than my finances, I would even account myself wealthy.

Of course, that kind of wealth doesn’t pay the bills, so don’t forget to buy my books.

****

*”Fuego” meaning fire, not only as in the sense of burning flame, but also in the sense of “to fire a gun”. This seemed like an odd coincidence to us. But the word “droit” in French means not only “right” as in the opposite of left, but also human rights. So maybe these bizarre connections are the same between languages sometimes. Then again, “watch” in French is “montre”, which means “show”, which is the opposite. So who knows. I suppose it’s possible the movie just used a crappy not-in-context translation. Or maybe fuego is like droit. I don’t know.

**Sylvester Stallone is probably not someone who springs to mind as a good actor. But then again, he did a quite decent job in comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger. I guess when you’re making a film where the budget all went towards explosions and car chases, acting talent and non-sucky endings fall in the category of the Expendables.

***And not that one where you’re late for your final exam and also you forgot your pants.

****This footnote isn’t related to the entry, just closes it, but I wonder if all blogs have to either end up self-absorbed or talking about politics. Maybe next month I’ll write about politics. I suppose I could share rejected jokes with you, like my friend who talks about anime all the time who I call “The Last Earbender”.

Normally I would deal with the arrival of National Poetry Month by writing some sort of poetic blogpost, but frankly, I’m already writing enough poems at the moment. See, if you live in the Berkshires, you may be familiar with the annual WordXWord Festival in August. Well, the organizers of that festival have put together a blog and for National Poetry Month, they’ve asked a few different poets to write a poem a day all through April. And yes, I’m mentioning it here because I’m one of those poets, and I’m mentioning it now because I’m pleased with my most recent poem. But you should look through all the days, and all the poets, which include names you might have heard of like Taylor Mali, and names you might not have heard of but whose poetry you might quite enjoy nonetheless.

External accountability is a good thing for me. I’ve noticed that without it, my default is perhaps not to be very productive.* Left to my own devices**, I play a lot of games and don’t write as much as I perhaps ought. That’s why I’m delighted to have appeared in some publications this year. One of my poems appears in the first issue of Moral Relativism Magazine, which is a great joy to me since it lets me pretend that my philosophy degree is finally coming in handy. The poem itself is not readable online, but since 30 of my poems will be on the WordXWord site linked in the previous paragraph, I don’t feel too guilty.

And, while I very rarely write fiction, one of my short stories appears in the new Damn Faeries collection of short fantasy. So all of that is sort of nice for me, since it allows me to point to things I’m writing out in the world. Sure, I still have my local humor column, but I fear I may have alienated some of my readers with my April Fools column, a joke that ended up going slightly further than I thought it would.

Oh! And I almost forgot the exciting news — I’m now a contributing board game writer for About.com! The past few weeks here have been crazy, but going forward you can expect to see new articles from me on a weekly basis, on topics ranging from Settlers of Catan Strategy to Battleship Rules. At home, of course, we’re still playing all sorts of new board games, from Mines of Zavandor to The Golden City. So now in addition to thinking about games in all my spare time, I’ll be writing about them occasionally as well.

And I can’t help but end with a quatrain
Since it’s poetry month, after all,
And for four-lined rhyme schemes I have got brain,
Even if my metrical sensibilities were largely influenced by the work of the great Ogden Nash, whose metaphorical and versical presence over my work simultaneously casts a great light and an occasional pall.

* Last week I was very productive, but largely what I was producing was phlegm.

** Or even a single device, if that device is the Internet. “De Internet is device,” say the voices in my head.

Given how small Rhode Island is, it’s amazing how much stuff is packed in there. The same could be said for my book:

America's best city-state

Sure, my new (as of 2007) book has a few things everyone knows about, like Waterfire and the Big Blue Bug. But there’s also some history, some cool events you’ve never heard of, and a whole bunch of fascinating people.

If you are in Rhode Island for any length of time, you are going to come across something from my book, even if it’s by accident. But if you buy my book, then you’ll know. Maybe you’ll have read up about who brews the Yacht Club Soda you bought at the farm. Or maybe when you run into the Coupon Queen over dinner, you’ll recognize her.

But Rhode Island Curiosities also contains things you would never come across on your own. And for some of it, that would be a shame. This book could entertain anyone, but naturally it will be of most interest to two groups of people: Those who live in Rhode Island, and those who might visit Rhode Island. The former group will be glad to see some of their favorite things in here, as well as learn about cool people or events just down the road, which you might catch in the near future.

As for visitors, Rhode Island offers a unique chance to see a whole bucket of cool stuff in a short time. You could pick any three places (aside from the annual events and world-travelling professionals), and easily catch them all in a day trip. Heck, there are dozens of things to see in a few hours just walking around Providence. My point is, unlike those travel books that list a hundred things to see of which you’ll realistically only catch two on any given vacation, you can find everything in Rhode Island.

Compared to Think You’re The Only One?, this book has a bit more of my voice. Rather than sticking to a purely fact-based reporting of my findings, I’ve tossed in my own opinionated commentary, a few limericks, more than a few puns, and often a whole lot of excitement about the topic. Why? Because Rhode Island is really cool. And once you read my book, chances are, you’ll agree.

(this post exists outside of time)