MORE WAYS TO LOVE TCD

Although not a household stand-up name like Jerry Seinfeld or George Carlin, Jim Gaffigan is one of the funniest, strangest, most acerbic and affable comedians on the circuit today – which is probably why the Pabst Theater took a risk in booking him as the featured act on New Year’s Eve (the December 30 date was added when demand became high) instead of some hip young musicians like last year’s party with cult rock group Cake.

As teenagers, they learned that musicians get girls. Still embracing that high school mentality as adults, The Response “keep[s] getting older,” but their fans “stay the same age,” says bassist Mikey Blanchard. More playful than pedophiliac, the four-piece has a sense of humor that will surely inspire all kinds of journalistic inaccuracy as they make press for their overdue debut LP, releasing this month.

Artist Kenn Kwint goes bonkers when he sees his first name spelled incorrectly. I’ve know him for 20-plus years, enough to know that he whines a lot, but who cares? This chap is a “painter’s painter.”

I hate sounding like Scrooge, but my memory bank is filled with nights-before-Christmas spent assembling toys for my kids. If you’ve ever tried finding a minuscule screw in inch-high shag carpeting, you know what I mean. There were endless batteries to test, a parade of dolls (Chatty Kathy, Baby Wets, Raggedy Ann) and, atop our [...]

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at a time when there was a new focus on our growing human family and the plight of the poor. It was also a time when the urban Christmas tradition had started to lose meaning. Although a century or so has passed, A Christmas Carol still reminds us of the importance of charity and love for humanity that’s especially pertinent this time of year.

Formulating predictions for a new year can be ironic — they usually revolve around the roadblocks we couldn’t bust through in the previous year. What license are we issued to move the immovable just by the setting and rising of the sun one more time, one more bout of shuteye, one more flip of a shiny but flimsy paper calendar?