A Projo round-up, evening edition…

Maybe you saw them at the super-sneaky WaterFire on Friday night–Big Nazo, a Providence puppet troupe making “giant monkey goblins, intergalactic star slugs and a truckload of trolls” is set to lead a puppet parade at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The fleet of Jabba the Hutt look-alike puppets and a group of 70 volunteers heads to frosty Canada on Friday. Hopefully they’ll be back in time for a College Hill encore.

Rhode Island House Speaker William J. Murphy is expected to give up his post soon and hand over the reins to House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox.  This leaves the identity of the replacement majority leader, a subject of much “intrigue,” left to be determined, with Nicholas Mattiello, D-Cranston, and J. Patrick O’Neill, D-Pawtucket, being the primary contenders.

Rhode Island incumbents U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse face uphill re-election battles, according to a recent WPRI-TV, Channel 12 poll.  Kennedy, with only 35% of respondents saying they’d vote for him, looks particularly vulnerable.

An Evening with Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich
8:00 p.m.
Salomon 101
FREE, entrance is first-come, first-serve

Sondheim is nothing short of a god to anyone who’s ever been in a musical, thought about being in a musical, seen a musical, thought about seeing a musical or had a theater arts concentrator roommate freshman year. Frank Rich is one of my all-time favorite NY Times arts reviewers (although he’s doing political commentary these days). Word on the street is this will be packed, so get there early if you’re serious about worshiping at the altar of Sondheim.

Speed Dating/Mixer/Game Night
8 p.m. – 11 p.m.
55 Angell Street (RISD Tap room)
Come to mingle and/or meet other Brown and RISD students in search of Valentines.

Brown Campaign for Burma Comedy Show
8 p.m.
List 120
$2

In honor of Burmese comedian and activist Zarganar, imprisoned for 35 years for speaking to foreign media about Cyclone Nargis, this show uses humor to address issues surrounding Burma’s military dictatorship. Proceeds will go toward humanitarian aid in Burma.

GLOW
10:00 p.m. – 2:00 a.m.
Delta Tau
$3 door, $1 drinks

If you’re a freshman girl, or you want to hook up with a freshman girl, you probably already have plans to be there. For the rest of us, DTau apparently got Super Mash Bros to create 45 minutes of original music for the party, which I’m more impressed with than I’d like to say.

— Anne Speyer & Suzannah Weiss

Ursa! Ursa!

Proving that if we can’t learn from the past, at least we can laugh at it: it’s blorgchiving.

1954 —  Betcha didn’t know Alma Mater had a big hunk of rock named after her hanging around in outer space. 1570 Brunonia 1948 TX is a “minor planet,” now known as “small solar system body” (thanks a lot, IAU) — but you probably would know it better as an asteroid, and one small part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Doesn’t it give new meaning to your short time here to know the school has a namesake space ambassador, ready at any time to threaten us all with Bruce Willis and Liv Tyler? But we shouldn’t feel too special — the asteroid belt isn’t exactly a country club, judging from this list of minor planet names. We’re looking at you, 48650 Kazanuniversity and 9704 Georgebeekman. For more random things named after Brown, check out the entry for the Brown University Glacier in the Encyclopedia Brunoniana.

After the jump, twin terrors: neckties in the Ratty and blow-up lizards on Wriston! [Read more →]