A phrase I often say after a string of non-successes, and pretty much how I’m feeling heading into 2021. It has certainly not been the best of years. Global pandemic health crisis, personal stomach health crisis, national political crisis… at least I’ve already taken care of my existential crisis long ago, and I won*.

I haven’t even been playing any boardgames of late to share here. I can share a couple recent columns about trying to find a job during the apocalypse, or how I spent 2020 Being a Homebody, but most of my writing these days is ghostwriting.

But in the spirit of the new year, I once again want to share my favorite New Year’s song from 11 years ago**, on which I have the final verse: Keep All Your Promises.

Bidding us all a better 2021 – stay healthy and try not to be a virus vector!

* Turns out the secret was just accepting existentialism as a positive instead of a negative, that if there’s no purpose to life I don’t owe the world achievement, only kindness. So, enjoy yourself, be kind. A reasonable bar for life, and not a bad resolution for 2021.

**By which I mean, my favorite new years song bar none, which also happens to be from 11 years ago. Although it is a fortiori*** my favorite song from 11 years ago that is a new years song.

***Definitely my favorite. Maybe even a fiftiori****

****I’m pretty sure that joke doesn’t work and is disappointing, but as my last joke of 2020, it seems appropriate. Maybe it’ll be funnier in hindsight. (insert your own last 2020 joke here.)

Two things I love. And two things that, perhaps, some of my readers also love? I sure hope so.

In the Board Game arena, I have recently posted a review of Eminent Domain, which is a neat little game that combines mechanics from some of my favorite games like Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, and Glory to Rome. While not quite as addictive as its cousins, it’s still a very compelling game, and the fact that you have a lot more control over your hand and deck than the aforementioned games means that optimizing gamers will likely appreciate the possibilities.

In the Hip-Hop world, I believe I may have mentioned that Torrentz had released a (free!) new album called The Big Kahuna.* Here’s a pretty neat update: The Big Kahuna recently received an enthusiastically positive review in Wired. Granted, they gloss over my solo song “The Big Cheese”, but at least they mention my guest verse on “I Like Cookies”.

And if you take a venn diagram of the gaming circle and hip-hop circle, the entire chart (but especially the overlap) will appreciate** my latest crazy idea: A boardgame review done in the style of a freestyle rap:

Rappin\’ Reviews: Belfort

The freestyle was easy enough***, but it took forever to take pictures and put together the slideshow, so I’ll probably only do rap reviews occasionally and mostly stick with written reviews. Still, this was pretty fun to make. Also, Belfort is a pretty great game; as I mentioned in the review, everyone at my game night immediately appreciated the high-quality components and great theme, and continued appreciating the compelling mix between worker placement and area control.

Speaking of compelling mixes, I recently wrote a North Adams Mayoral Election Guide for my fair city, where I repeatedly mixed up the letters in each candidate’s name to reveal the truth about them through anagrams. Granted, this may be of less interest to those of you not in the Berkshires, but ANAGRAMS ARE FUN. That’s why I AM ARRANGE SNAFU.

*Which you should download. For free. There’s a link in the review.

**This is, perhaps, over-optimistic. Might appreciate? Will not immediately flee from?

***Notwithstanding the mispronounciations, the time I said “arves and dwelves”, and the few times I started to get off-topic.