qboro: Arts, Culture & Living

The exposed brick, narrow cavern of Laughing Devil Comedy Club in Long Island City was filled to the brim on Friday night — for the club’s pre-festival event.

The festival began the following Saturday and will run until May 20. During the week-long stint, 100 comedians will compete in 22 shows for the winner-takes-all prize of $2,500. No. 1 also receives a week of work at the Laughing Skull in Atlanta and at Morty’s Comedy Joint in Indianapolis, 52 paid spots at Laughing Devil and entry into The San Francisco Comedy and Burrito Festival.

High-class stripping was not an oxymoron in the 1930 and 40s. The lady who starred in New York City’s sophisticated burlesque scene was Gypsy Rose Lee.

In 1957 Gypsy wrote a memoir about her rise to fame, which centers around her mother Mama Rose, who pushed her onto the stage. The book was later turned into a film and musical.

Luke Wright (Jason Statham) is a minor league mixed martial arts fighter who ekes out a living dumping fights in the Jersey suburbs for chump change. One fateful evening he decides that enough is enough and he knocks out a rival to whom he was supposed to lose.

Queens College, as part of its yearlong tribute to Turkey featuring several college hosted talks and art exhibits, is presenting a group show titled “Amulets, Nazars & Evil Eyes” in which 27 contemporary artists look at the evil eye.

Some cultures believe that a certain gaze, or an “evil eye,” can cause injury or bad luck for the person who gets the stare down. Through time cultures have created remedies and charms to ward off these curses.

The series, put on by the Guggenheim, is like any other day walking around Jackson Heights or sitting with friends in their apartment, except, well... you don’t know these people and at each location there’s an author or actor waiting with a story in mind to tell you.

Stillspotting NYC is a two-year-long project that takes museum-goers with a map in hand to city streets. They will hear stories from writers including poets, professors, a chaplain and a pair of rappers.

The Gingerbread Players of Saint Luke’s Church in Forest Hills should get a prize as the most child-friendly community theater group in Queens.

With their current production of the perennial favorite “Annie,” they continue their tradition of reserving an entire front row of preschool size chairs for the toddlers in the audience. At intermission, they sell freshly baked namesake cookies. Also the program comes equipped with an informative glossary of references made in the show that enriches the theater-going experience of the younger set.

Queens resident Pascal Imperato spent six years administering smallpox vaccinations in West Africa.

As the resident medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he worked with “medicine societies” where the political leaders would treat their people with spiritual and herbal remedies. Imperato needed to gain the trust of these leaders, who were all women, in order to vaccinate, he said.

The iceberg hit by the Titanic 100 years ago this Saturday didn't only fracture the great ship’s hull and spell doom for two-thirds of those aboard, it also fractured the comfort of the Edwardian Era, which then was shattered completely just two years later by the start of the First World War.

Named for the king who succeeded Queen Victoria on the British throne, the Edwardian period is marked in the public imagination today as a time of leisure for the wealthy and rapid technological innovation. Both notions are accurate, but they leave out the plight of the poor, who mostly worked ungodly hours in conditions that would be illegal today, and had yet to benefit from most of the era’s inventions.

Ella Fitzgerald praised her as “the best young singer in America.” Reviewers have said that her live performances are “overwhelming to the spirit and soul” and “drenched with such passion, the audience feels they’ve been swept up in a hurricane.” Fans of folk singer Janis Ian will get to experience that passion next Saturday as she will perform at Queens Theatre in the Park in Flushing Meadows Park.

“I’ve been performing since I was 15 and lived in the New York area so many years, I’ve never played Queens,” the singer said in a telephone interview.

Robert Moses, dubbed the “master builder,” was a visionary yet polarizing figure who pushed boundaries with his thought-provoking and often criticized ideology.

Firm in his ways to say the least, he went on to create a legacy for urban builders for generations to come, shaping how Americans to this day view a city’s infrastructure.