Alex Grubard's Comedy All Nighter - White Eagle Hall 1.13.24
Saturday, 1.13.24, was the fourth installment of Alex Grubard’s comedy shows at the illustrious White Eagle Hall in Jersey City.
The line-up was great. The crowd was hot. The night was a blast. Kudos to all involved.
Brainstorming the logistics of the night.
What a spread!
The greenroom has lots of great photos from past shows at White Eagle.
“Free beer?!” – Connor
The crowd beginning to…
Exclusive Cover Reveal: We Mostly Come Out at Night ed. by Rob Costello
Today on the site, I’m delighted to be revealing the cover of We Mostly Came Out at Night, a YA anthology edited by Rob Costello and releasing from Running Press Books on May 21, 2024 that’s the perfect intro to spooky season! Here’s the gist:
An empowering cross-genre YA anthology that explores what it means to be a monster, exclusively highlighting trans and queer authors who offer new tales…
Having recently read Thomas Costain’s The Black Rose, I have now also finished another Costain historical fiction novel, The Moneyman. To (very) briefly summarize, The Moneyman is the story of a real-life figure, Jacques Cœur, a merchant raised to the nobility by King Charles VII of France and made the king’s chief finance minister and one of his closest advisors, only to be disgraced and exiled after a false accusation of murder is laid against him by that same king. As I mentioned in my last post, The Moneyman is supposedly GRRM’s favorite of Costain’s works, so I was very intrigued to see if GRRM would borrow any ideas or character models from The Moneyman for his Westerosi works.
Unfortunately, once again I find very little to parallel with ASOIAF. The titular Moneyman himself might be as rich as Littlefinger, but the charges of embezzlement falsely levied against Cœur would be all too accurate if laid at Littlefinger’s door. Indeed, Cœur's deep, honest, but not sycophantic loyalty to Charles VII - a willingness to tell the king the truth coupled with a desire to look out for the best interests of the kingdom - could not be more alien to Littlefinger, whose selfishness and dishonesty are central to his personality. (In fact, the closer parallel to the Moneyman might be someone like Enguerrand de Marigny of The Accursed Kings.) I suppose you could compare Cœur to say, Davos Seaworth - the honest common man raised to the nobility by a grateful king - but Cœur is, well, defined by his substantial personal fortune in a way Davos obviously is not (because he has none, of course), nor can Charles VII’s petty jealousy of Cœur's wealth (and his subsequent willingness to condemn his devoted servant on trumped-up charges) be compared to anything in the relationship between Davos and Stannis.
Now, is it possible that GRRM took a bit of inspiration from Cœur's trial at the end of the book for Tyrion’s trial at the end of ASOS? Maybe. Just as Tyrion was falsely accused of poisoning Joffrey, Coeur is falsely accused of poisoning Lady Agnes Sorel, the beloved mistress of King Charles. In both cases, the author makes very clear that the accused was not in fact guilty of the crime by setting the reader in the accuser’s point of view at the time of the supposed poisoning, while simultaneously using circumstantial and/or outright fabricated evidence to make the case against the accused seem that much more damning. (Nor, indeed, is an explanation lacking in either case: the author makes clear many times, through Cœur as well as other characters, that Agnes Sorel is too sickly to live long, while Littlefinger explains the Joffrey poisoning plot to Sansa in pretty plain terms after the Purple Wedding.) Just as Tyrion’s physical proximity to and post-murder handling of Joffrey’s wedding cup helped sell the testimonies to his guilt at his trial, so Coeur’s administration of medicine to the dying Agnes Sorel is used by the prosecution to portray Coeur as a fiendish poisoner. Too, much as Taena Merryweather falsely testified that she had seen Tyrion pour poison into Joffrey’s cup, followed by Shae's false testimony as to Tyrion and Sansa’s allegedly conspiracy, so on the stand at Cœur's trial Jeanne de Vendôme fabricates an elaborate story of poisoning which she supposedly witnessed firsthand. Additionally, just as Pycelle (correctly) reported that Tyrion had taken poisons from his stores in order to falsely suggest that Tyrion gave poison to Joffrey, so one witness at Coeur’s trial - a doctor whom Cœur privately derides as a “great windbag … pedantic and opinionated and yet at the same time servile to all forms of authority”, not too far off the mark from Pycelle himself - seizes on Cœur's real, though harmless, mercantile association with the East to falsely link Cœur to the “Eastern poison” which supposedly killed Agnes Sorel. Cœur also offers to confess to a crime he knows he did not commit, in order to save his alleged co-conspirator (though he later rescinds this proposal); somewhat similarly, Kevan offered, in vain, to have Tyrion confess in exchange for permanent exile at the Wall (an offer that I think was genuine on Tywin’s part).
Now, while Cœur is not allowed to offer any defense on his own part (much as Tyrion was not at his trial), Cœur, unlike Tyrion, actually gets exonerated for the poisoning allegation, thanks to the testimony of an honest doctor who identifies the flaws in the case against Cœur. (Though Cœur is convicted of what Costain asserts were equally ludicrous charges and forced into permanent exile.) Of course, Costain didn’t invent the idea of trumped-up charges and patently untrue accusations in a legal trial (and Costain himself clearly states in his introduction and epilogue that he has, so he believes, adhered as closely to the real history of Cœur's downfall as possible), so it’s not that I think GRRM is uniquely indebted to Costain for Tyrion’s trial. Rather, while I think both are borrowing the same old tropes for similar stories, I can also acknowledge that this specific usage of those tropes may have been part of the inspiration for GRRM.
Camden Pulkinen (USA) - SP: A Different Kind of Love by Son Lux, choreo by Marie-France Dubreuil
Nikolaj Memola (ITA) - SP: Adios Nonino and Inverno Porteño by Astor Piazzolla, choreo by Andrea Gilardi and Corrado Giordani; He will be keeping his FP from last season.
Kyrylo Marsak (UKR) - SP: “Pale Yellow” by Woodkid, choreo by Monica Lindors
Andrew Torgashev (USA) - FP: “Void of Madness” by Muse
Nikita Starostin (GER) - SP: "Disco Inferno" by The Trammps; LP - "I Want It That Way” and “Larger Than Life" by the Backstreet Boys
Women
Starr Andrews (USA) - FP: Being Good Isn’t Good Enough (from Hallelujah, Baby!)
Wakaba Higuchi (JPN) - FP: “Fix You” and “Paradise” by Coldplay
Mone Chiba (JPN) - SP: Les Yeux Noirs (Dark Eyes), choreo by Misha Ge
Yujae Kim (KOR) - SP: Flamenco, classical guitar; FP: Avatar soundtrack, choreo by Yaeji Shin
Sonja Hilmer (USA) - FP: Avatar: the Last Airbender soundtrack by The Track Team and Samuel KimS; choreo by Sonja Hilmer
Pairs
Grace Hanns / Danny Neudecker (USA) - FP: Bram Stoker's Dracula soundtrack by Wojciech Kilar; choreo by Natalia Mishkutenok
Ice Dance
Klara Kowar / Thomas Schwappach (USA) RD: “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS; FD: No Time to Die by Billie Ellish
Nadiia Bashynska / Peter Beaumont (CAN) - RD: “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS and “Wild Boys” by Duran Duran
Hannah Lim / Ye Quan (KOR) - RD: Prince
Isabella Flores / Ivan Desyatov (USA) - FD: West Wide Story, choreo by Kaitlyn Weaver
Marjorie Lajoie / Zachary Lagha (CAN) - RD: “Thriller” by Michael Jackson
Holly Harris / Jason Chan (AUS) - RD: "Material Girl" by Madonna; "Express Yourself" by Madonna; choreo by Sam Chouinard
Sofia Val / Asaf Kazimov (ESP) - RD: Top Gun Soundtrack
so our graduation pictorials are happening this saturday, and I've been so damn worried about what to wear for the creative shot because i was all out of ideas.
i can't do lyanna stark (don't have a blue gown, and i can't order one in time), i can't do morticia addams (same situation, black gown), i can't do MCR's helena (many tears were shed when i realised the dress was custom-made), and i can't even do a captain hook cosplay.
eventually, i planned to settle for an audrey hepburn getup (breakfast at tiffany's), and meant to borrow a black dress from my mother—but to our shared horror, the dress didn't fit. in a strike of pure luck, i remembered she had a pink silk bridesmaid gown.
my first thought had been, oh gods a shae costume and the silk is so flowy, but then realised something even better.
I LOOK LIKE MY HP DR MOM . fuck i am in tears,,, when i say i screamed you can damn well hear me two houses down the road (it's an echoey place here).
the best part is that it's not just the dress. it's complete with the earrings and the makeup—everything except the eye + hair colour. and I'm just,,, kinda freaking out because I've been having dreams of her and that man named thomas gaunt and Ffffffffff