NEWS: A John Waters Christmas

His show material teeters between a loony adulation of red and green joys and a perverse pleasure in true-crime Christmas stories. "I'm fascinated by the lengths it drives people to," he said. "It puts huge emotional pressure on people."

Maybe he is not ready to join the Rockettes at Radio City - this is, after all, a man who wrote in "Crackpot," his 1986 collection of belles-lettres, that "the mere mention of a stocking stuffer sexually arouses me" - but Mr. Waters is in San Diego today, at the Bowery Ballroom in New York on Wednesday and in Washington on Thursday.

As you might expect, he has received some curious gifts over the years. A cherished adolescent memory was the carton of Kools his mother put in his stocking. One fan outdid himself, making a painting of the wallpaper in Mr. Waters's 1974 film, "Female Trouble." Other favorites: a taxidermy rat; a pair of brass knuckles; an eight-and-a-half-inch ruler, a promotion giveaway for Fellini's "8½"; a portrait of Don Knotts.