"Rabbit Hole" by David Lindsay-Abaire at Arden Theater, Philadelphia

Oh, yes, the Prof was socked in by the snow on Saturday, but made it into the Quakin' City the next day because he held a ticket to a play at one of his favorite haunts. The Pulitzer-grabbin' drama was *eh* s0-so, but it starred the luminous Grace Gonglewski, so it was worth tunneling through a snowbank.

Jingle Jammin' VI: Cigar Box Nation Christmas

Download this collection by bringin' the electronic rodent to this hyar link.

The Dean Delivers: Christgau on Monk

The Prof has been following Robert Christgau's music writing since he started reading The Village Voice in 1982. Here is one of his all-time best pieces, his latest "Rock & Roll &" essay at Barnes and Noble's site (which they really ought to call "Barnes & Noble &") on the new biography of Thelonious Monk by Robin D. G. Kelley. Like a great New York Review of Books piece, it opens up from the book under consideration and expands to include an overview of the artist. If you read the Dean's picks for Monk discs, just keep in mind that the Prof loves Monk's Music beyond all reason.

Jingle Jammin' V: Honest-to-God Carols

Jingle Jammin' IV: Mommy and Santa Claus

Jimmy Boyd started it with the hit song by Tommie Connor, a recording that combined cutesy with a creepy vibe and went to the top of the Billboard chart. Buck Owens improved somewhat on the concept and a whole lot on the music with his rockin' country favorite "Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy." (But George Jones cashed in with "I Saw Mommy Twistin' with Santa Claus," yeesh. Oh, well, he's in great Thumper Jones mode at least.)


Mack Rice (above) went one better with "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'" in which daddy does the singin' and the cutesy kids are relegated to bed. (I particularly like the stanza where Dad gets fed up with trying to assemble a bicycle and longs to get it on with Mom before the little cherubs awaken.) His version was as funky as you could get and since then other rockers, funkers, and bluesmen have taken a crack at it, most notably Albert King. (The Christmas Jug Band has a nifty zydeco flavored live version, and alterna-acapella group The Bobs penned a variant from the point of view of Mrs. Claus.)

Akim and Teddy raised the stakes deliriously with "Santa Claus Is a Black Man" which made the racial element in Rice's song explicit. This time the high-pitched child's voice is groovy rather than creepy.

The idea of Santa with a libido, especially an uxuriously yearning Santa, is amusing, but Clarence Carter took the idea further with a Lothario Claus in "Back Door Santa," whose ho-ho-hos are not only lascivious, but perhaps slyly triumphant about his Kringling cuckolding of the hood
("I ain't like old Saint Nick--he don't come but once a year." Hmmm.)

Pig Iron Theater's "Chekhov Lizardbrain" in Philadelphia

The Prof slithered into his seat at the Arts Bank and wedged his scaly self in between the other patrons in the sellout matinee.

Many thanks to Mr. Pink for the tipoff.

Review in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Christopher Isherwood's review in the NYTimes.

As the anonymous review from BroadwayWorld.com explains:

The performance draws from Paul Maclean's Triune Brain Theory. MacLean noticed that when the human brain is dissected, one discovers a "paleomammalian" layer that looks almost identical to a pig or dog brain; this layer controls breathing, sleeping, hunger, and the startle response. Cutting deeper into the brain, one finds a "lizard brain" in the form of the human brain stem. This area is responsible for emotions, connections between individuals, and territorial behavior. A thrid layer is the "neomammalian brain," our large neocortex, which contains the wiring for symbolic thinking,self-awareness, ambivalence and language. In her bestseller Animals in Translation, autistic author Temple Grandin proposes that her own empathy with animals comes from an compromised "human brain" and a compensating "dog brain" and "lizard brain." Templeton notes, "here's the really interesting part: each one of those brains has its own kind of intelligence, its own sense of time and space, its own memory, and its own subjectivity."

"Me and Orson Welles" Richard Linklater

Though he is well aware that the framing story (or is it the sub-plot) of the film is a bit wan, The Prof was nonetheless exhilarated by this account of the Dog-Faced boy, the incipient Falstaff of celluloid in his gloriest days.

The Prof enjoyed Klawans' take in The Nation and invites you to check it out.