It's Holiday Time

After seeing Under the Gaslight at the Metropolitan Playhouse, I was wishing to walk out of the theater and straight into Delmonico's where perhaps the piano player would continue, because even after 2 1/2 hours of listening to his nonstop musical score, I wanted more. Two things about this 1867 play make it historic: it invented the drama of being tied to train tracks and saved by the heroine (yes it was the man tied to the train tracks and the woman who saved him) as the train comes rushing by; and it was where Dreiser's Sister Carrie got her first break in the theater.
What I found in our local version of Delmonico's was not a piano player, but Santacon. I rather like all the Santas wandering around the world on a particular day, but by night they are rather drunk, and maybe not so Santa-ish.

The final note to a very spirited day was Phil Kline's Unsilent Night, which finished its chiming composition in Tompkins Square Park, with a pure holiday spirit and wonderful public revelry in music
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(Yes, this guy was making adult flavored hot chocolate on his Coleman stove in the park. I didn't hang around long enough for the hungry men who are usually loitering around these parts to discover his holiday gift.)