You might not recognize Judah Friedlander's name, but if you pay any sort of attention to the glowing box in your living room (or your parents' living room), you'll probably recognize his face. Or his hats. Though best known for his role as Frank Rossitano on NBC's 30 Rock, the Gaithersburg, Md., native does a little bit of everything. He's hugged strangers in the video for Dave Matthews Band's "Everyday," played bit roles in films like American Splendor and Meet the Parents, and written a karate manual called How to Beat Up Anybody. Most frequently, Friedlander performs stand-up at venues across the country.

This weekend, he returns to the city where he cut his comedic teeth with a show at Sixth & I with Louis Katz. City Paper's Julia Lloyd-George recently chatted with Friendlander about his early comedic ventures, 30 Rock, and his multiple, and highly dubious, "world championships." —Caroline Jones

Interview by Julia Lloyd-George

Washington City Paper: How did you initially get involved in stand-up? What drew you to it?

Judah Friedlander: I always did a lot of art and draw my own cartoons and stuff when I was a kid, everything ranging from political figures to my own cartoon characters. A lot of it was comedy-based. I started making my own animated movies when I was in eighth or ninth grade, doing regular movies on Super 8 footage. I started doing actual comedy when I was 19, but I started writing jokes at 15 or 16. The first place I actually ever went to was Garvin’s, in D.C., before it closed and the Improv opened. I started finding out that there were actual comedy clubs, and so just went to an open mic night.

WCP: How did you get your career going?

JF: I started in ’89, when MTV showed a short movie I made on a couple of their shows, but it wasn’t until ’96 that I started getting actual TV work. I started getting cast in TV commercials  and with the combination of those commercials and the stand-up I was doing, I started getting too busy where I couldn’t do my job anymore. Then I just started getting bit guest parts on TV shows and little parts in movies and my acting career just built from there.

WCP: How do your experiences in TV and film and stand-up differ? What’s your approach to both?

JF: Stand-up is a lot more fun. In general, it will take 13 hours of filming to equal about three or four minutes of screen time. There’s a lot of waiting around and repetition. When you’re doing stand-up, it’s all live. It’s just action. But I like doing comedy in all different mediums. You can always kind of learn something in different areas that you can bring to your stand-up. Stand-up is where I feel most at home and where I feel most relaxed. Read more Judah Friedlander on Comedy “For Everybody” and Why He Doesn’t Do Racist Jokes

Even though the holidays are looming, this week's arts openings have managed to stay pretty nonseasonal. But this weekend is also heavy on short performances and shows—I can only assume because of the looming apocalypse. So get out there and enjoy a choreographed pillow fight and a scandalous French play while you still can.

D.C. choreographer and George Washington University professor Maida Withers' new show features four dances and lots of pillows. "Collision Course—a.k.a. Pillow Talk" is a dance/theater work that tells stories of love for the digital age, with an electronic-music soundtrack. The show runs tonight and tomorrow only, and takes place on a white-on-white stage. According to a press release, pillows will be "embraced, shared, relayed, and taped to the body like appendages becoming an ever-present friend and companion, a shield for protection, a burden, an instrument for violence, a suffocating handicap, a comfort needed for a soft landing." Runs to Dec. 8 at the Marvin Theatre at George Washington University, 800 21st St. NW. $22 general admission, $17 for seniors and artists, $12 students.

Keeping with the theme of love—but giving it a Desperate Housewives twist—Shakespeare Theatre Company continues with its much-anticipated run of Les Liaisons Dangereuses direct from Paris' Théâtre de l'Atelier. Directed by John Malkovich, the play is based on the 18th-century novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, but also features modern twists on sex, revenge, and the "decadence of the French aristocracy." Warning: nudity and "adult situations." Runs to Dec. 9 at the Lansburgh Theatre, 450 7th St. NW. $80-$100.

Read more Openings: Maida Withers and Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Christmas Rappin'

If you grew up on hip-hop, you know it's the holiday season when Run-DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" plays on the radio. Not only does it evoke Yuletide cheer, but it's arguably the most popular depiction of Christmas in a rap song. Now, the DMV's Low Budget crew adds its own voice to holiday hip-hop with the latest edition of A Low Budget Christmas, a 22-song collection of festive instrumentals, in which the producers blend recognizable samples with their own percussion. On "Donny's Carol," Roddy Rod reconstructs Donny Hathaway's landmark "This Christmas." Kaimbr's "Frosty" samples "Frosty the Snowman" and Oddisee's "Kissin Clause" makes good use of The Jackson 5's "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." It's unclear if Low Budget Christmas will be as synonymous as the Run-DMC classic, but it's still good enough to sip Hennessy and eggnog to. Maybe that's just me. —Marcus J. Moore

Sampling Tha God Again

Read more DMV Beats: Christmas Ish, Shades of Trel, and a Hat Tip to Curtis Mayfield

A 25-year-old prodigy pianist finding inspiration in a masterpiece written by a 20-year-old prodigy composer? Sure, that makes sense. But the connection between Yuja Wang, the renowned Chinese pianist, and Frédéric Chopin, who needs no introduction, seemed to go much deeper than that at the National Symphony Orchestra's performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat minor Thursday evening. From her fluttering fingertips to the steady pedal work of her spike-heel-clad feet, Wang radiated the Polish master's music.

Conducted by Houston Symphony Music Director Hans Graf, the National Symphony Orchestra performed Chopin's concerto as part of a Polish-themed trilogy, with Chopin's work capped on either end by Witold Lutoslawski's "Musique funèbre" and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3 in D Major, known as "Polish" for its inclusion of the polonaise as a theme.

Lutokowski wrote his "Funeral Music" in the mid-1950s as a tribute to Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, whose works had been shunned by the communist regime that began to unravel when Stalin died in 1953. Its soft melodies encase a spirit of thinly veiled suffering, creating an eerie effect (there are seven string basses) that leaves the listener peeking over his shoulder for the knife-wielding psycho who, of course, isn't there. "Polish" is as lovely as anyone would expect a Tchaikovsky piece to be, but with five movements instead of his standard four—two of which feature Polish folk music themes.

Read more The National Symphony Orchestra with Pianist Yuja Wang, Reviewed

Pittsburgh’s Black Moth Super Rainbow has a way with names. The group’s song and album titles pretty much sum up the music’s gooey mess of electronic psychedelia. There are the LPs, with names like Falling Through a Field and Dandelion Gum and EPs called Lost, Picking Flowers in the Woods and Drippers. BMSR’s latest full-length is Cobra Juicy. Tom Fec, who also performs under the name Tobacco, is the band leader and Cobra Juicy is entirely his creation. The “cobra” part of the name gives clues as to this record’s new bite, in the form of crunchy guitars. Thanks to the six-string addition, some of the album’s tracks don’t sound too distant from the glam rock of T. Rex.

The updated sound isn’t the only thing different about Cobra Juicy. Released on the band’s own Rad Cult label, the album’s creation was funded in part by Kickstarter. The crowd-sourced fundraising website listed a variety of awards for contributions: A $25 contribution earned the backer an exclusive t-shirt, stickers, and high-quality downloads of the new album and other BMSR music. For $10,000, Fec would have thrown the backer a rollerskating party in Pittsburgh, complete with pizza and ice-cream sundaes, but no one stepped up to claim that reward. In a month, 2,032 backers helped the band raise $125,634, far surpassing the band's initial goal of $45,000. With the money, BMSR released the album in several formats, including on vinyl with a 3-D lenticular cover and as a wearable latex mask like the one on the album cover,  with a tooth holding a USB drive filled with the music.

Fec brings a full band to U Street Music Hall tomorrow. I recently spoke with him about the details of his Kickstarter project and his decision to end an email-only interview policy.

Washington City Paper: Have you fulfilled all the rewards and made everything [from the Kickstarter project]?

Tom Fec: We are actually still doing that [laughs]. It’s been so much work, and then we had to go on tour for three weeks. We got the posters in, so we’re still doing—probably still have like 200 more to do.

WCP: Is it more [work] than you expected? Do you think it’s worth it?

TF: It’s way more than I expected and still trying to figure out if it’s worth it. But actually, at the end of the day, I actually lost money.

WCP: Really?

TF: Yeah. Like three grand in the hole on the project.

WCP: Even with $125,000, you still lost money?

TF: Yeah. They take out a percentage, and then all the people who don’t pay you, so I actually made $112,000 and then the cost of the whole record with shipping everything out was $115,000.

Read more Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Tobacco on Kickstarter’s Shortcomings and Why He Dislikes Touring

Just about every ballet company worth its salt puts on its own version of the 120-year-old two-act ballet The Nutcracker. Why? Well, force of habit, perhaps, but also ticket sales: Some productions of Nutcracker can rake in enough to float a troupe’s entire season. Good thing ballet lovers never seem to tire of Tchaikovsky’s score or the Sugar Plum Fairy’s pas de deux with her cavalier; in fact, the toughest decision for local dance fans probably isn’t whether to see The Nutcracker, but which one to invest in.

So here’s a guide to the area’s Nutcrackers. Some, like the Washington Ballet’s, have assumed a comfortable place in local tradition. Others, like the GW Ballet Group’s, are a little more off-the-cuff. Some are so affordable, you may not even have to choose just one.

Read more Mixed Nuts: Choose Your Own Nutcracker

HO HO WHO: HAHA-YO, a novelty rap group from West Chester, Pa. Think of these dudes as Das Racist, if Das Racist were a few dolts from the Philly suburbs instead of a few wise-asses from Brooklyn. Though, judging by the group's previous recordings—middling joke songs like “Jimmy Buffet” and “Sundress”—even a Das Racist comparison might be generous. It's kind of like four bros saw Andy Samberg's “I'm On a Boat,” and thought “Hey! We could do that, too!” but then... couldn't.

THE HENNESSY-SPIKED EGGNOG: Well, "Holiday Song” manages to be uniquely irritating despite its total lack of originality.

THE DRY OL' FRUIT CAKE: Novelty rap doesn't have a really high bar, but even so, this foursome is grasping for it. In a ploy as bland as advent-calendar chocolate, the boys don their best self-aware mugs and rap aggressively about silly stuff. But hold on, if lines about kegs of hot chocolate don't have you shaking like a bowlful of jelly, they also wear ugly sweaters and throw money at the camera. Get it? It's incongruous! Despite rave reviews from the always discerning YouTube commentariat, we doubt this attempt at a viral video will even catch on with the CollegeHumor/Funny or Die crowd. For more nuanced Christmas entertainment, better just cue up that dancing-Santa robot your aunt bought at RadioShack.

CHEER FACTOR: 1/10. We may not be on the nice list, but we still didn't deserve this.
Read more The Sleigher: HAHA-YO, “Holiday Song”

According to early Italian film theorist Ricciotto Canudo, cinematography is the “seventh art,” behind other forms like sculpture, music, and dance. But while it’s younger than the stuff of the Greeks, movie photography has made dramatic and numerous strides in a relatively short period of time. “Focus!,” this weekend’s film event presented by the French cultural center Alliance Française, looks at the way video art and short film overlap. Read more >>> The screening begins at 6:30 p.m. at Malmaison, 3401 Water St. NW. $10. (202) 234-7911. francedc.org. (Cristina Kladis)

EAT THIS

Union Market is hosting a holiday happy hour today and every Friday through Dec. 21 from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The festivities include live entertainment, holiday inspired drinks from Buffalo & Bergen as well as Rappahannock Oyster Bar, and food items from some of the other vendors. The Grinch will also make an appearance from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. for photos. Union Market, 1309 5th St. NE; unionmarketdc.com. (Jessica Sidman)

OH AND ALSO

Saturday: The last time I saw Pittsburgh’s Black Moth Super Rainbow, the band brought out a guy in a gorilla suit and gave him a microphone. It was their idea of a joke. But Gorilla Man wasn’t actually singing, even though he pantomimed a vocal performance; Tobacco, the band’s leader, instead sat on the floor as he performed, and sang every song with a vocoder. Which is just the sort of band Black Moth Super Rainbow is. (Alan Zilberman) Read more >>>

Read more ToDo ToDay: Cinematography! Black Moth Super Rainbow!

Standout Track: No. 2, “Cluck-Cluck,” the title track on Talk It’s debut EP on Teen-Beat Records, the longtime Arlington indie-pop label now based in Cambridge, Mass. Emily Rickman’s twinkling Fender Rhodes keyboard starts things off; soon, the band revs its engine and locks into a groove. John Rickman’s steady drumming helps smooth the tune’s transitions while Emily Rickman and guitarist Andrew Beaujon trade off melodic threads. The sound isn’t easy to pin down, but John and Emily Rickman (the pair is married) settle on calling it krautrock.

Musical Motivation: The band formed two years ago when a friend persuaded the Rickmans to collaborate with Beaujon—John’s former bandmate in Eggs—to open a show for the friend’s band, Mostly Dimes. For now, Talk It is taking a casual approach to making music. “It’s fun, it’s relaxing, you feel good at the end of the practice,” says Emily Rickman.

Ear Worm: “Cluck-Cluck” is the only song with vocals on the EP. With little more than a minute left, the band’s three members pause to sing: “Cluck-cluck/turn it up, turn it up/yeah.” And repeat. When Beaujon needs to remember a new melody, he puts words to it, says Emily Rickman. (Disclosure: Beaujon is a former City Paper managing editor.) For this song, the nonsense chant stuck. “I think there’s a hint of playfulness in our music and we’re all kind of silly when we get together,” John Rickman says.

Read more One Track Mind: Talk It, “Cluck-Cluck”

"I was in the pool!"

Dispatches from E.D. Sedgwick's winter tour through Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

We leave our Soviet-style hostel and begin the second day of our search for laundry.

A hurried consultation with the promoter from Usti Nad Labem reveals that there is a laundromat in Hradec Kralove, the next difficult-to-pronounce town we will play, but that, like most things in the Czech Republic, Hradec Kralove's laundromat closes at 5 p.m. We drive semi-frantically, hoping to arrive to the laundromat in time, and do. However, we find that the laundromat isn't really a laundromat, but an industrial laundry that, it seems, washes sheets and towels for hospitals and hotels. After a discussion about the possibility of leaving a load with the non-English speaking staff, we opt to do laundry at our host's house and dry it on the radiators.

The show is at "Klub 4," a small bar with a small stage on a cobblestone street near the center of town. We played at a similar small small bar on a similar cobblestone street in the same town little more than a year ago. The show goes well, and we make about 200 euros. At the merch table, people buy T-shirts, but not records, and not very many of them. This seems like a bad sign, but of what, I'm not sure. Read more E.D. in the E.U.: Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic