For further evidence of how hopeless I am at looking into a camera and smiling when someone says my name, we take you once again to the studios of WETA, where I was delighted as always to join Around Town host Robert Aubry Davis and Washington Post arts writer Jane Horwitz last week for ultra-concise discussions of two shows I recently reviewed for the Washington City Paper. We covered Synetic Theatre's fresh adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and Old Trout Puppet's Workshop's surreal Famous Puppet Death Scenes.
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Ooooooh, D'Angelo just returned from exile with a surprise album dropped online in the back half of December! Big deal; I do that every year. This one, The Yule Analog, is my first release in twelve months. Kindly react with due awe.
One thing remains as apparent as ever: I am obsessed with old shit. The Yule Analog – Vol. 9 in my apparently unkillable Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable series, subtitled Cowboy Santa Claus – is imbued with the music and radio and pop culture of the 1940s through the 1970s. The last song I chose – a song I loved the first time I heard it on KCRW in 2001 and then forgot about for years until I heard John Hodgman play it at Aimee Mann's Christmas show at The Birchmere last night – is just barely from the current century. My mixtape makes a few reluctant sops to the present day, but only a few. I am The Ghost of Christmas Long, Long Past.
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We take you once again to the studios of WETA, where I was delighted as ever to join Around Town host Robert Aubry Davis and Washington Post arts writer Jane Horwitz for on-message discussions of two shows I recently reviewed for the Washington City Paper. We covered Theater J’s production of Tony Kusher’s latest play, the exhausting (deep breath) The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, as well as Arena's square and satisfying production of Fiddler on the Roof – my first. That's the one I'll be sending my folks to see for Christmas.
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