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!”

The problem with only updating bi-weekly is that by the time I get around to posting, I have a bucket of links. I will, however, do you the service of not posting the flash game to which I am currently addicted, as it is nothing but a humungous brainless waste of time. If you’re going to think about video games, reading my articles about People in your WOW Guild and Video Game Drinking Buddies will be much faster, and much less addictive.

Anyway, this blog has been slightly less storied than my WSO blog, perhaps because at that time I didn’t have many links to share. Back in those days, I wrote about the various ways in which I’d managed to fail at cooking. But I’ve consolidated the best of those old blog stories into a single column. Back then, just out of college, was the first time I was out of work. It’s vaguely similar to what I’m doing now, only I had no experience freelancing, no resume, and few books under my belt. Still, even back then I was working on God To Verse. This week’s portion I think is a good example of what I’ve tried to do in terms of explicatory work; the bible is filled with passages like, “She was in labor for seven days with her son, so she named him Mohar”, and it doesn’t make sense unless you know that “Mohar” was Hebrew for “week of pain”, so I’ve got little parenthetical bits to explain all of that.

The big link of the fortnight, however, is the video contest I’ve recently entered. See, I’ve been doing a lot of rapping at local performances, but I don’t have any sound equipment. So when I heard there was a contest to win a free microphone, I figured I should enter. Annoyingly, I don’t think the rap I entered is as good as the freestyles I perform locally, but it’s still a video of me rapping so you should feel free to take a look. (Thanks go to the inimitable Daniel Beck for videography.)

Oh, and in case I forget to post again before then, my improv troupe will be performing on Saturday May 9th at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield. Come out, and I guarantee a good time!