Our charismatic hosts for the evening were Zadyn Higgins of Maryland and Nic Collier of Indiana. Between their comical banter and various other SCL skits peppered throughout the show, the audience was kept laughing and on their toes.
Maryland’s Ivy Carver enchanted us with her jazzy tunes, performing “JazzCL,” a composition of her own. Evelyn Shen from California performed a dance routine, gracefully moving to “Paint It, Black” by the Rolling Stones.
The SCL then came back on stage for a fun skit, donning antlers (as, of course, any “deer colleague” would) and pretending to play in World Series of Certamen. Keeping the deer theme alive, Maine’s Hayden Crane sang “Cervula” and played the ukulele. This original song combined lines in Latin verse with English lyrics. Sam Siceloff of South Carolina also charmed us with a vocal performance, singing Bob Dylan’s famous “One Too Many Mornings.”
Between these latter two acts, the SCL presented a humorous skit about the Indiana Olympia Committee (IOC), reporting on what they saw as some suspicious behavior surrounding Ludi cornhole. We also saw an advertisement for “NJCL — your home away from home at home,” introducing a satirical convention experience that would artificially simulate a real convention at home.
Georgia’s Hamin You then performed “The Red Violin Caprices” on the violin, awing us with his virtuoso playing. Then the SCL showed us their annual music video parody, this year a riff on Zara Larsson’s “Midnight Sun” called “Never-ending Convention,” featuring some spot-on 2016-esque visuals.
Afterwards, Ohio’s Deekshita Dirisinala danced to a medley of Indian classical songs. Ruthie Foreman of Ohio sang “Maybe Sparrow,” moving us with her melancholy notes and soothing guitar. After a terrifying trailer for a SCL parody of recent hit movie Backrooms, Blaise Barbier of Texas took the stage to perform “Hellenistic Rhapsody,” his original parody of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” His performance energized the crowd, with many singing along. Finally, Texas’s Chris Briones showed us his skating abilities as he rollerbladed across stage to music.
The prizes for this year’s show are as follows: Chris Briones received an honorable mention, Hamin You received third, Hayden Crane second, and finally Blaise Barbier first. After the hosts announced the awards, only one TE tradition remained: the annual “Brown Squirrel” dance, which got audience members out of their seats and shaking their bushy tails.
But one surprise remained in store for the night. Just as TE was ending, Blaise suddenly returned to stage and sang a reprise of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this time with all of the JCLers in attendance — including all of the previous performers — singing along. While TE woefully had to end, this hourlong show will be hard to forget. Queen (and Blaise) famously sing that “nothing really matters.” But here, under the glittering stage lights, everything mattered — we mattered — for a collection of sparkling moments. It truly felt like a never-ending convention.