I’ve got more, but this has drug on long enough. Shooting for a Sin Police update on Monday.

In the SantaLand Diaries, David Sedaris mentions the parents that insist on their children seeing a Santa of some specific ethnicity. Thus, we have Klanta Klaus, making sure your holidays are merry and bright white.

He also describes one particular Santa who takes his job way too seriously, staying in character even when nobody else is around. Code-named “Santa Santa,” this man has an established routine with his visitors. At one point in the act, he asks them to tell him what they plan to leave for him. One little girl was unfamiliar with the practice of leaving cookies and milk for Santa, and gave him a confused look.

“He said, ‘Something round? To eat?’ and she said, ‘A potato?'”

Something about a big fat Idaho spud with a glass of milk sitting on the hearth is really funny.

Hope you liked the sketches. If you get a chance to see The SantaLand Diaries performed, or you get a chance to read the story, available in Barrel Fever and Holidays on Ice, you really ought to check it out. Very funny stuff.

More SantaLand Diaries sketches today and Friday, then hopefully back to the real stuff next week.

Before Crumpet got his elf job, he pitied the poor souls forced to walk the streets in costume, handing out pamphlets. During the interview process, when asked about his hobbies, he expressed an interest in whittling, in spite of the fact that the only thing he ever whittled was a bong. After the interviews, he was sent to a room with other waiting candidates, where he took a seat beside a female dwarf. “This, I thought, was a good sign.”

Last week of school, so that means a few more days of sketches before the Sin Police and Grandpa Sex Machine start up again.

Crumpet, the reluctant Christmas Elf from David Sedaris’s The SantaLand Diaries, had a lot to say about his fellow employees, including the Walrus (the self-proclaimed stud), Flakey (the “artist” that covered clocks and telephone recievers with human hair), Snowball (the tease who leads elves and Santas on), and the woman with the swarm of plastic barrettes who, during training, asked if she could work as a Christmas elf year-round.

More sketches Wednesday.

Grandpa Sex Machine is on temporary hiatus until things calm down at work. In the mean time, here’s another look at my sketchbook.

So, the SantaLand Diaries, available in stage form or as a short story in Barrel Fever and Holidays on Ice, tells of David Sedaris‘ own experience working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s Dept. Store in NYC. At one point, Crumpet (David’s “elf name”) notices the obvious anagram in the name “Santa,” and begins imagining a Satanland, “…where visitors would wade through steaming pools of human blood and feces before arriving at the Gates of Hell, where a hideous imp in a singed velvet costume would take them by the hand and lead them toward Satan….”

“Father Christmas or the Devil- -so close, but yet so far.”

No end in sight with the end of the school year craziness. Check back next week for more sloppy rough sketches.

Remember when I mentioned the potential downtime a couple weeks back? Well, it’s happening. Just so I’ve got some sort of content updating, I’ve decided to post some stuff from my sketchbook. Lemme give you a little background:

David Sedaris is a really funny writer. I saw him do a reading a few years ago and it was a lot of fun. Anyhow, his semi-autobiographical story, SANTALAND DIARIES, has a stage version, adapted by Joe Mantello. Last December, I was in the play, performed at the Lemming Armada. Early in the rehearsal process, the director was thinking about some art on the proscenium and possibly for slides, based partially on the content of the play and partially just on a slightly twisted idea of Christmas. He ended up going with a cleaner/simpler idea, but I had all these sketches that I wanted to show off.

The little stuff on the right would’ve been on the proscenium, and the one on the left…well, I was picturing that as a Norman Rockwell sort of piece, maybe to hang behind the bar of the theater.

More sketches Friday.

Technorati Topic Tags: webcomic, david sedaris, santaland diaries, theatre, theater