It'll take the whole holiday weekend to get through this issue.Loves Music, Loves the BronxA spotlight on local WFUV DJ Darren DeVivo: "DeVivo’s love of music, especially of that famous Liverpudlian quartet, began so early that his mom wrote down 'Favorite Music Group: The Beatles' in his baby book when he was still an infant."Ballroom BlitzGetting in on the ballroom dancing craze: "So you’ve watched actors and amateurs waltz their way to stardom on reality shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance—and it looked fun, didn’t it? Well, you’re in luck. There is a slew of local studios willing to teach you the steps, the twirls, the dips, and the kicks of these famous cheek-to-cheek dances."Yankee IngenuityWhy "Yankee Swaps" are better than other gift-giving gimmicks: "You don’t have to pick out a present for a specific person, so there’s no dread that you’d be stuck with figuring out what to get a man who doesn’t golf (my perennial present dilemma. And there’s something sadistically pleasurable about ripping a great gift out of the clutches of someone you know really, really wants it. Now, that’s the Christmas spirit!" A Kinder, Gentler PhantomMy review of a local production of the Kopit/Yeston Phantom: "Kopit and Yeston actually started work on their musical version of the Leroux novel before Andrew Lloyd Webber but, when he beat them to the stage in London, their version, like the Phantom himself, fell hidden into obscurity. It was later revived by the 'Theatre Under the Stars' in Texas, and has found great success in regional theater ever since; in 1992, when the Westchester Broadway Theatre first staged the musical, it ran for almost a year (the longest-running show in WBT history) and attracted 120,000 audience members who wanted to see the Phantom story told by someone who wasn’t responsible for Cats."Arts & EntertainmentAimee Mann, Symphony Space, and More
