While I am fortunate that Debbie and I remain relatively healthy and happy, the past few months have been sub-optimal even aside from the cold weather and global pandemic. So far, 2022 is not winning any prizes*. But, here we are, I’m still writing things and playing games and life goes on.

Probably my favorite column I’ve written so far this year was this bit of Political Theater, although since I never know if people are actually seeing my columns, sometimes it feels like I’m just talking to myself. In an attempt to change that, and beat the Facebook/Twitter algorithms in order to get my column into the hands (eyes?) of people who want to read it, I’ve started a tiny newsletter. So if you’d like an email every couple weeks with my latest columns and other writing and thoughts, you can sign up here:

https://tinyletter.com/RisingPun

I haven’t, uh, actually written a newsletter yet. But once there are people signed up I’ll feel pressured to do so. And ideally that will make me send updates more often than once every month and change, not that I’m comparing to anything in specific. *glares at blog* *blog glares back at me* *Friedrich Nietzsche glares at abyss*

Anyway, not much boardgaming aside from a couple games of Goa the other week, but on the videogaming front I played through a few runs of Griftlands and found it a surprisingly compelling mix of RPGish story and Slay the Spire-style roguelike deckbuilder.

My blogposts so rarely have those clever punchline endings like my columns do. I wonder if there’s a way for me to fix that… the Aristocrats!

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* aside from possibly, “Second Place, 2020 Look-Alike Contest”. First prize went to 2021, naturally.

As some of you may know, and the rest of you are about to find out, I have co-written (with my old friend Samuel Hammersley, and my new friend Thom Mesrobian) a musical called “Simpleton: The Legend of President Trump”. This is a parody of Hamilton, about what would happen if Trump won the presidency. And it opens this weekend (May 19th) at the Orlando Fringe Festival.

Early previews have been filled with lots of positive buzz, and apparently the media and festival staff gave the show a standing ovation at the big tech rehearsal. Our first actual review was fairly positive, saying:

The lyrics by Mesrobian, Samuel Hammersley and Seth Brown hit more often than miss and have a healthy number of zingers. The cast, too, has energy to burn and spits out the rhymes with gleeful enthusiasm.

So I am pretty dang excited about this show. Writing it was an absolute delight, especially as Sam and I were very often on the same wavelength, and together we created something I’m really proud of. It’s a very limited run for only the 10-day duration of the Fringe Festival, so if you know anyone who will be in Florida from May 19th-29th, please do encourage them to get tickets while they can, and go see our show.

I don’t have much in the way of other updates, because also I just moved houses, so everything has been a whirlwind of chaos. Although I guess letting you know I just moved is an update. See, my brain still isn’t working.