Tag: valentines day
Laughing Their Hearts Out
by John Downey '23 on March 3, 2022
A&E Co-Editor
Arts & Entertainment
Laughing Their Hearts Out
Six Gents’ Valentine’s Day Show
Grace Whitman ’22
Even though many students stayed up late last Tuesday night for the Providence vs. Villanova Men’s Basketball game, an impressive number of them came to the Smith Center to enjoy the Six Gent’s Valentine’s Day show at 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 16.
For each four shows that they have put on so far this academic year, the Gents wrote mini-acts to fill the transition time between different skits, ranging from mad libs that get the audience involved to some “top trending” Google search questions about each Gent. The Valentine’s Day show was no exception, featuring a few rounds of speed-dating, similar to the Celebrity Dating Show, in which a “mystery Gent” was paired with an audience member and both students were asked questions testing their compatibility and whether they would like to go on a second date. For example, the “contestants” were asked questions like, “what’s the most embarrassing text you’ve ever received?” and “would you be open to relocating to the Chicago suburbs for love?”
One of the night’s crowd-favorite sketches was written by Christina Charie ’25. The skit followed Coach Cooley as he lost Huxley somewhere on campus. “Cooley” (Aidan Benjamin ’23) is frantic about finding Huxley before the next game, but then finds out that Friar Dom let Huxley get hit by the Friar Night Life Shuttle out of spite because Cooley allowed Huxley to steal his spotlight as a new mascot five years ago. The most shocking plot twist, however, came at the end of the skit: “Cooley” and the audience learned that Huxley actually had not gotten hit by the Friar Nite Shuttle—he was just drunk at Brad’s.
Another memorable sketch was 50 Shades of Love. Written by Andy Belotte ’25, it starred Benjamin as Ben, a man hoping to win over a girl named Carla (Analisa Pisano ’23). When Ben is too nervous to shoot his shot with Carla, “Nate Watson” (Belotte) is brought in to give Ben his best tips for winning the girl over. “Watson” explains to Ben that he uses his TikTok fame as a selling point to impress the girls he’d previously struck out with. Abbie O’Connell ’22 enters the scene as Doris Burke. She, like “Watson,” tries to help Ben but fails, as Ben finally builds up the nerve to tell Carla his feelings only for her to confess that her true love is Watson.
The Family Restaurant sketch, written by Emma Harrington ’22, was yet another highlight of the show. It followed Benjamin and Sydney Cahill ’22 on a date at a family restaurant that takes a turn for the worse when they realize that they are in the middle of a Kitchen Nightmares episode starring Gordon Ramsay, played by Harrington in a spot-on impression. Over the course of the skit, the restaurant family and their strong personalities come out of the kitchen, yelling at one another. Pisano’s Italian accent, in particular, left the audience in shambles.
This past week, Six Gents had their spring auditions, so be on the lookout for new members at their next show!
Tiff and Earl
by trogers5 on February 10, 2022
Features
Dear Tiff and Earl,
My boyfriend won’t take me on a Valentine’s Day date because it’s too close to Super Bowl Sunday. Should I ditch him for Joe Burrow?
Sincerely,
Big Bengals Fan
Dear Big Bengals Fan,
Don’t give up on your man just yet! With a little creativity, you can have your cake and eat it, too. Combine your Valentine’s Day with his Super Bowl by serving classic game day snacks with a romantic twist—for instance, a seven-layer dip not of beans and cream cheese but of all sorts of aphrodisiacs—and by programming your TV to play slideshows of the two of you as a couple instead of commercials. No doubt you can come up with plenty of other little ways to remind him that he’s your special quarterback. Be ingenious! He sounds like he’s worth it.
Cheers!
Tiff
Dear Big Bengals Fan,
While I am completely in favor of you getting revenge on your football-fanatic boyfriend by ditching him for a man who can actually play the sport, why go for a Bengal when you could have the GOAT? Now that Tom Brady has officially retired, the man is going to have plenty of time on his hands. What better way for him to spend it than a romantic Valentine’s Day date with a college student? Maybe you could even bring a friend for a double date with Gronk.
Your even bigger Pats fan,
Earl
How to write about love, when you yourself are not in love:
by trogers5 on February 10, 2022
Features
Kathryn Libertini ’23
- Download Tinder and Hinge for inspiration.
- Scroll through the apps with your roommates, creating narratives and citing opinions that will most likely never materialize (but, hey, there’s a chance).
- Delete Tinder and Hinge.
- Tell your roommates Valentine’s Day is a “Hallmark Holiday” incentivized by capitalism.
- Watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and 27 Dresses.
- Question what “love” even is.
- Download Tinder and Hinge for a reality check.
- Delete Tinder and Hinge for a reality check.
- Question what “reality” even is.
- Call your therapist back.
This October Beach
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Poetry
by Marelle Hipolito ’22
Tuck my hair behind my ear, just one more time
Before we leave this October beach behind
Let’s look for one more shooting star
Before you go and break my heart
Take a hundred pictures of me in front of a blue sky
Before you drop another goodbye
Tell me you love me, just one more time
Before we leave this October beach behind
Skip a few rocks, just one more time
Before we leave this October beach behind
Write me a letter, with a Valentine’s rhyme
Before signing it “this is goodbye”
Call me up in the middle of the night
Confess you miss me, that you’re not alright
Send me a playlist, make it John Mayer
Then text me “listen to it all,” then call me later
Become my world and flood my life
Before we leave this October beach behind
First Place
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Poetry
by Sam Ward ’21
Love is strange, strangers turn
To best friends and back again
When the feeling is less intense.
Still, you left a mark on my heart
Like an indent, and we typed the keys
That codified the sequence.
“The sun still sets in paradise”
Even butchered Maroon 5 lines
Reflect memories of moonlit eyes.
Tell me why, tell me why.
Finally home but feeling withdrawn,
Take my hand, lead me too far.
Where has it gone? Where has it—
They had me living in a pit
I have one lofty wish:
Fix this glitch, fix this glitch.
One day an eternity,
From two to three, all for just five,
That I wish you’d spend with me.
Opened like a locked box,
Trifled for my jewels,
I gave it all away, I’d give it all away.
This heart heals quickly,
The brain feels forever.
Conditioned to take it with me,
Where there’s always never.
Sabotaged to start with,
Finish line or just quit,
Ego death or panic,
I am losing and I’m in first place.
For Better, For Worse
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Portfolio
by Ellie Forster ’24
Margaret never liked when people made a fuss about her anniversary. Harold had been gone for almost a year now, and they hadn’t been a festive pair when he was alive. To act like that day was any different now just seemed silly. All she wanted was for Tim and June to come over, to have lunch like they always did, and be alone. It was just a Wednesday. That was all. Old friends would call, and she’d let the phone ring. Didn’t need reminders of a day fifty years ago, a day that no one else even understood. Only the ones who stood up on that altar could understand. Them, and them alone.
June and Tim rang the bell at 1:15, same as they always did. They let themselves in, and Tim went to the bathroom. June stood in the kitchen, the light surrounding her, touching her figure so gently it was like it was afraid of her. She wore a blue button-down tucked into an old pair of jeans. Her hair curled softly, and she had a yellow bandana holding it back. She turned to see Margaret standing there, a dish towel in her hand. The old friends smiled at each other, and when Margaret walked over, June took her hand and squeezed it.
The two couples had been best friends for 60 years, since middle school. They were each other’s best men and maids of honor. They bought houses on the same street, and the houses were one another’s. So much of the furniture in Margaret’s house had been picked out by Tim, they had just given him his own room to decorate. That parlor was the best room in the house, everyone agreed. Neither couple had ever had children, and nothing else could’ve possibly severed the bond they shared. They were inseparable.
June and Margaret sat in the parlor when Tim came in. He sank into a chair and smiled.
“I miss him.”
The women smiled and each took one of Tim’s hands.
“So do I,” said Margaret quietly.
Tim’s eyes shone, and his chest rose. “He’d be so embarrassed of me right now. He’d hate this.”
“Well, he’d definitely have some remark, I’m sure we can all agree about that,” June said with a laugh. Margaret looked at her, and her face flushed still, the same it had when they were kids. That laugh shattered her chest into a million pieces and offered her heart up, praying it would be taken.
Tim wiped his face and smiled. “That he would.” Then the old man took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and slid it across the table.
The women looked at it and saw the letter M written in elegant script.
Margaret looked up at Tim. “No.”
“It’s from him.”
Her heart sank. “For me?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. She lightly took the letter and a knife from the table. She took out the small piece of paper and saw seven words in a familiar, soft handwriting.
Margaret,
I can’t thank you enough.
H
Margaret felt the tears come, and she felt her friends come to her side, Tim’s hand on her back as he, too, wept, and June pulling Margaret’s head to her chest, running her hands through her hair.
Fifty years earlier, four people stood on an altar as Harold and Margaret held hands. They said the words the priest told them to, and they were pronounced man and wife. Behind her new husband, Margaret saw Tim smile, and Harold turned to him as the crowd cheered. The men met eyes and grinned. Harold grabbed Tim’s hand and turned to face his wife. A hand squeezed Margaret’s shoulder from behind her, and Margaret turned to see June standing there, the sun intimidated by her glow. She hugged her, and as June laughed, she felt her chest burst. As they left one another’s embrace, Margaret kept June’s hand in hers. Then the happy couple shared a kiss.
Lightning Love Stories
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Portfolio
Ellie Forster ’24
She was a girlboss millennial, he was a Republican. Can I make it any more obvious?
Kate Ward ’23
He put down his pen, hand trembling from the writing and rewriting of words he couldn’t find to describe her. Placing a hand over his heart, he was finally able to find the words, hidden deep within his love.
Sarah Heavren ’21
What started as a joke grew into endless joy. It was love at first laugh.
Fiona Clarke ’23
John Donne, the man I loved and bit, will go down in history—and I, only as the vehicle for a metaphorical marriage between him and another. And yet—and yet—I contain more multitudes than the blood cells of two lovesick goops—love bites, indeed, but so do fleas.
Anna Pomeroy ’23
“He loves me, he loves me not…” the six-year-old girl said as she plucked the petals from the single rose she received from the boy standing in front of her.
Grace O’Connor ’22
He rested his hand gently on her back, his thumb rubbing the silk on her dress as he looked into her dark blue eyes. He slowly lifted her face to meet his as he touched her soft lips, feeling calm and terrified all at once.
Twin Flames
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Poetry
by Mariela Flores ’23
You are not the other half of me.
You are not a better half of me.
You are not a nicer half of me.
You are not a half.
Love, you are the roots of old pine.
Love, you are a perfect cadence.
Love, you are the spine of my favorite books.
Love, you are the streaks of light that blind me while I drive.
Love, you are the color green.
How lucky are we, to coexist at the same time, in the same place, in the same life?
How lucky are we to have met each other, lost each other, and found each other again?
As we grow and move through this timeline I hope just one thing,
you will find me again, wherever we might begin.
As two wholes, two flames,
you & I.
Jamestown, VA
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Poetry
by Angie Nguyen ’22
falling in love with someone you shouldn’t is like an ending is written before the beginning. you don’t listen to the bells, warning you of the heartbreak and the tears and the way the sparkle in his eyes dulls eventually because you’re so enraptured by the i-love-you’s and the morning kisses and the midnight adventures in his foreign car (a toyota is still foreign to me). we were only running on borrowed time.
how could i be selfish enough to lay claim on your eyes and their haunting depth—the way they changed with your moods. i never realized dark, brown eyes could hold so much feeling until i looked into yours. how could i think that a piece of your heart was reserved for me? that heart is as wild as a stallion, and i thought i’d harnessed you, put you into my stable. how could i even begin to think that laugh was meant for me and only me? you share your joy so effortlessly—i even envy you at times.
i know you said you were mine but that’s like trying to claim the oceans and its waves, the forest and its wolves. the way you move, the way you carry yourself, the way you think—it was never mine, always yours.
i always thought love meant surrender. but i’m so tired of trying to make myself a home in your amazon. i don’t want to be a colonizer of your lands. i cannot confuse breaking you with appreciating you.
but when you tell me you love me, when you kiss me and hold me, for a split second, in this wild world, you are mine.
When Least Expected
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Portfolio
by Taylor Rogers ’24
Cupid’s thin, heart-tipped arrow strikes my skin at approximately 10:00 a.m., attacking me while I was suffering through yet another pointless Zoom call. The sneaky little bastard hit me when I was most vulnerable, as he knew I could not defeat him in my lethargic state. Lazily, my blood falls from the wound on my forearm, staining the precious notes and drawings scattered in my notebook. Thankfully, my fellow classmates and professor are unable to see my distress, nor hear my animalistic cries as I pull the stubborn god’s arrow out of my flesh. Once the arrow is laid on my desk, I find myself drawn to the object, its white coloration one that reassures me that yes, Cupid was the one who shot me, not my roommate who’s been reading The Hunger Games a little too much lately. This sacred arrow has an intricate scrawl lazily written along its base, the Latin impossible for me to understand. Thankfully, Google Translate exists, and I type the words into the search engine, eyes widening at the words’ meaning. “Love will come when unexpected?” I ask myself, too stubborn to attempt to comprehend this confusing meaning.
The words from the “divine” creature stick in my mind all day, causing me to ponder whether my potential soulmate is currently watching me while I walk around my campus, the snow below my feet making this task difficult to accomplish. His words plague my inner thoughts as I do my laundry, and I can’t help but glance around the empty laundry room, hoping my lover is here at the same time I am. I peek around every corner whenever I walk, hoping to see a pair of eyes that will make butterflies burst from my stomach or a smile that forces gibberish to fall from my chapped lips. As I diligently stare at the words on the paper, I can’t help but glance up from my notes, wondering if my soulmate opted to study in the nearly desolate library as well.
“What’d you do to your arm?” my roommate inquires as I enter our shared space, their indie music blasting from the tiny blue speaker neither of us could fathom living without.
“Got shot by Cupid’s arrow,” I bluntly respond, my words causing them to laugh. I take a seat in my precious blue bean bag, then gesture for my roommate to talk, since they most definitely have something to say about my “joke.”
“What are you, stuck in your Roman mythology phase again? That stuff doesn’t happen in real life,” the stubborn human elects to respond, and I decide not to press him on the whole “soulmate” concept that’s been playing tennis with the other thoughts invading my mind all day.
“Neither do zombie apocalypses, yet that doesn’t stop you from keeping an apocalypse survival kit stashed under your bed,” I point out, causing them to go silent. They select a new song to listen to. Eerily calm music streams through our plant-filled habitation while we begin slowly reviewing homework for the Zoom classes (for which we happen to pay $60,000). Silence fills the room, then my easily distracted roommate points to something on my desk. “Someone left that for you, by the way.” Curious, I rise from the beanbag, and walk over to the desk, immediately grabbing the small note. The complex calligraphy on this scroll is instantly recognizable, and I grin at the words written. Is this what Cupid meant by unexpected? “I’m gonna go talk to the person who left this for me, I’ll be back,” I assure my roommate, who seems to be too focused on the newest episode of The Walking Dead to pay attention to me. In seconds, I have made it to the elevator, ready to meet the person I’m destined to love forever.
“Shoot, maybe I just got Rick-rolled,” I realize as the song “Never Gonna Give You Up” blasts from somebody’s dorm room above me. Despite what the note claimed, not a single person is under the biggest oak tree on campus, nor are there any hints of a person in a giant, red hoodie. “I knew this was too good to be true. I guess I was expecting the person to actually show up, which went against what my arrow said anyways,” I say aloud, not caring if anybody spots me talking to myself. As I stand outside, Mother Nature playfully opens the clouds above me, small droplets of snow beginning to litter the ground around me. Cursing, I decide that today isn’t the day I want to get hypothermia, and I begin the brief walk back to my dorm. Each step feels wrong, as if Cupid’s bow is using me as an arrow, slowly drawing me back to the tree where nobody awaits me. However, I resist the tree’s strange pull, my efforts to get away causing me to bump into somebody.
I expect the heavens to halt, for the snow to suddenly stop falling, but nothing happens. Why did I think the person I collided into was going to be my soulmate? “Sorry,” I curtly say to the person, making eye contact with them briefly. Nothing happens, and I quickly look away from the person, who nods before continuing on their journey. I do the same, still wondering when Cupid’s going to magically work his magic and show me who I’m meant to be with for the rest of my life. The snow around me continues to fall, seeping into my blue, oversized hoodie that adorns my small frame. Yet, for the first time in a while, the cold air doesn’t wrap around me like a blanket. Instead, the snow seems to warm my cool figure, and I glance up at the calm, gray sky above me. As if giving me a thumbs-up of approval, the clouds stop sending snow at me for a second, then continues its merciless storm yet again.
Instead of returning to my dorm, I decide to wander around my campus, the divine above granting me warmth as I rediscover the school I fell in love with the first time I toured it. Snow artfully falls onto the buildings, dancing to its own music as I begin to do a dance of my own, skipping on the sidewalk and admiring the “gloomy” day nature has presented to me. The blue fades to black as my day goes away, and the rainbow of LED lights streaming from dorm windows begins to light my way down the twist and turns of the sidewalk, making me wonder if my soulmate truly is a person. With a smile on my face, I decide to slowly head back to my dorm, not wanting to leave the comforting embrace of the world around me. Snow joins me on the walk down the path, and I know this won’t be the last time I fall in love with Earth’s wonderful gifts. I find myself cured of the soulmate dilemma that threatened to destroy me earlier.