Next presser, can we arrange for a flock of grackles? I can attest from personal experience that they are very, very effective. In my student days, Rice University was infested with them yearly; it was really very sad, because inevitably they suffered some sort of epidemic infection and died in great numbers. But before they did so, they “decorated” a lot of students and faculty… yes, including me, once right on the top of the head. We learned to carry umbrellas, especially near sunset, even on cloudless days.
]]>Such events are inevitable, and response is everything. Sir Thomas Beecham, confronted with a horse (some say a camel; some say an elephant) pooping onstage during an operatic production (some say “Aida” at Covent Garden… hey, the tale is probably apocryphal; make it anything you like), is purported to have turned to the audience and said, “A distressing spectacle, ladies and gentlemen, but Gad, what a critic!”
Bush, on the other hand, tolerates no critics, human or avian. And for all his immense ego, Beecham, unlike Bush, could actually lead.
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