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,….

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!”