Posts Tagged ‘George Bernard Shaw’
The Fighting Phalanges!…
Finger wrestling has been used in the Alps as a method of resolving disputes since the 17th century. Now, dueling with digits has become a sport.
Two contestants sit facing each other across a large table, with their fingers threaded into a strong strap. On a signal from the referee, the contest begins, and the competitors pull as hard as they can. The winner is the competitor who successfully pulls their opponent across the table, using just their finger.
In Bavaria, the home of finger wrestling, it’s serious business. Competitors train their fingers for the intense strain (and pain) of competition, by squeezing tennis balls, holding their body weight on their competitive finger, and doing one-finger press-ups… While wrestlers are free to use any finger they wish, the finger of choice is, of course, the middle finger.
Read more about finger wrestling, and see video of the recently-completed 35th Annual Finger Wrestling Championship, at The Sun.
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As we flex our phalanges, we might send prodigious birthday greeting to G.K. Chesterton; he was born on this date in 1874. The author of 80 books, several hundred poems, over 200 short stories, 4000 essays, and several plays, he was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. Chesterton was a columnist for the Daily News, the Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G. K.’s Weekly, and wrote articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica. Chesterton created the priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared in a series of short stories, and had a huge influence on the development of the mystery genre; his best-known novel is probably The Man Who Was Thursday.
Chesterton’s faith, which he defended in print and speeches, brought him into conflict with the most famous atheist of the time, George Bernard Shaw, who said (on the death of his “friendly enemy”), “he was a man of colossal genius.”
George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton
Going out gracefully…
Twenty-four more valedictions at Buzzfeed’s “The Last Words Of 25 Famous Dead Writers.” And many more parting shots– like Oscar Wilde’s “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go”– at Wikiquote’s Famous Last Words.
As we rehearse our final scenes, we might spare a tuneful thought for trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Dewey Davis III; he died on this date in 1991. Davis was a pioneer of a number of jazz forms– bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion, among others– but was perhaps even more influential for the musicians he launched in his bands (an extraordinary roster that includes Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Elvin Jones, and Jack DeJohnette) and for the bands and musicians he influenced (and equally amazing list that includes Lalo Schifrin, Tangerine Dream, King Crimson, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Duane Allman, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Lydia Lunch, Jerry Garcia, and Prince).
It takes one to know one…
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare….
– George Bernard Shaw
Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
– Noel Coward
A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
– William Faulkner, on Mark Twain
The gifted can be so… ungenerous to each other: from Examiner.com, “The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time.”
As we consider that this may in any case be better than log-rolling, we might recall that it was on this date in 1982 that a member of the Hollywood nobility– two-time Oscar-winning actress, model, and anti-war activist Jane Fonda– released her first exercise tape.
Building on the success of her workout book, published the prior year, the tape helped Fonda popularize workouts for women, workouts in groups, workout videos, and indeed aerobics in general (a family of trends on which Richard Simmons, Judi “Jazzercise” Missett and many others have ridden). Fonda invested the proceeds of what became a fitness empire into the Campaign for Economic Democracy, an advocacy group founded by her then-husband Tom Hayden (of Chicago Eight renown). Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1989, and Fonda retired from the spotlight (though, of course, she has returned to the movie screen in the last few years).
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