Gratuitous Literary Posting (TM)

In our efforts to cover the waterfront, bringing you the Tastee Bits (TM) like toasted rats on a stick, we sometimes dwell a leetle too long in one place. I like to avoid this where possible. So since we already have a Babe-o-liciousness post out there today, I'm not going to dwell on Dr. Rusty's latest Angelina Jolie/"Good" Lesbianism post, but instead point out that today is the anniversary of the death of George Bernard Shaw in 1950, easily one of the wittiest playwrites, essayists and critics of the English language. Shaw possessed in full measure whatever that indescribable combination of deadpan and divilment is that makes the Irish so damned funny and he used it mercilessly.

Among other things, Shaw served as a music critic in London and was a great champion of Mozart in general and Don Giovanni in particular, which Shaw thought the greatest opera ever written. Here is an interesting little essay on Shaw and Mozart that finishes by quoting a very Shavian letter to the Times regarding G.B.S.'s experience attending a performance of Don Giovanni by the famed Enrico Caruso at Covent Gardens one evening:

Sir, - The opera management at Covent garden regulates the dress of its male patrons. When is it going to do the same to the women? On Saturday night I went to the Opera. I wore the costume imposed on me by the regulations of the house [...] Not only was I in evening dress by compulsion, but I voluntarily added many graces of conduct as to which the management made no stipulation whatever. I was in my seat in time for the first chord of the overture. I did not chatter during the music not raise my voice when the opera was too loud for normal conversation. I did not get up and go out when the statue music began. My language was fairly moderate considering the number and nature of the improvements on Mozart volunteered by Signor Caruso, and the respectful ignorance of the dramatic parts of the score exhibited by the conductor and the stage manager - if there is such a functionary at Covent Garden. In short, my behaviour was exemplary. At 9 o'clock (the Opera began at 8) a lady came in and sat down very conspicuously in my line of sight. She remained there until the beginning of the last act. I do not complain of her coming late and going early; on the contrary, I wish she had come later and gone earlier. For this lady, who had very black hair, had stuck over her right ear the pitiable corpse of a large white bird, which looked exactly as if someone had killed it by stamping on its breast, and then nailed it to the lady's temple, which was presumably of sufficient solidity to bear the operation. I am not, I hope, a morbidly squeamish person, but the spectacle sickened me. I presume that if I had presented myself at the doors with a dead snake around my neck, a collection of blackbeetles pinned to my shirtfront, and a grouse in my hair, I should have been refused admission. Why then is a woman to be allowed to commit such a public outrage? [...] I suggest to the Covent Garden authorities that, if they feel bound to protect their subscribers against the danger of my shocking them with a blue tie, they are at least equally bound to protect me against the danger of a woman shocking me with a dead bird.

Okay, I'm done. You can go over to Rusty's now.