An elf with a touch of Grinch makes this 'Santaland Diaries' bleakly funny

If unalloyed "Miracle on 34th Street" Christmas cheer suits your holiday mood, then "The Santaland Diaries" may not be quite your cup of eggnog.Laughter-filled though it is, there's more than a dash of bitters in David Sedaris's 1992 radio essay-turned-solo-theater-piece about working as a Macy's Christmas elf. A kind of hip irony is the dominant tone -- that of an outsider-humorist taking bleakly funny notes on the American consumerist animal at holiday time.