On the eve of Christmas Eve, jazz masters Ben Sidran and his son Leo Sidran played a show with Paul Daugherty and Louka Patenaude at the Café Montmartre. One of the highlights of the performance, though, featured another guest of the Sidrans. This was Zorba Paster, a local physician and health talk host on Wisconsin Public Radio. The doctor read from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss, accompanied of course with a jazz foundation. The reading was introduced by the senior Sidran, telling the crowd, "I'm coming down on the side of the Grinch tonight."
The live concert video cum book reading introduction follows below.
How did Sidran begin? He said:
I told you everything that's wrong with society, and today everything that's right with it. We have some special guest preachers that are going to come up. We want to encourage you to ignore us, go about your business, have drinks, have food, talk to your friends. Pay no attention to the men and the women behind the curtain. That's the way we like it. When we want your opinion we will give it to you. Just enjoy yourselves...Sidran went on to introduce The Grinch?, telling the partygoers they hoped "to maintain this good feeling of grinchiness." After reading the first part of the book, Paster read another section of the Christmas classic, also available for viewing. Originally published in 1957, Theodore Seuss Giesel's The Grinch Who Stole Chrismas will be passing the half-century mark next year.
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