In Brief: It's February Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• The unspoken heroes of the Presidential Inauguration were the 7,500 Port-a-Potties of Hope receiving the Waste Products of Change. Someone should put Etta James's At Last as the soundtrack to the slide show of these dedicated portable toilets. [DCist]


• Bruce Hodges has some unbelievable stories about bad audience behavior at a concert he attended. [Monotonous Forest]


• Is there a new sheriff in town? A certain Milan-based blogger calls out Terry Teachout. [Opera Chic]


• Opera Chic, of course, is no longer on Terry's blogroll, but happily, according to Terry's List of 25 Random Things about himself, he doesn't hold grudges (#9). Terry might relent and link to Opera Chic again, but don't count on it. Ionarts has been banned since 2005. [About Last Night]


• Cecilia Bartoli will bring the Malibran Van to this side of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Washington is not on the schedule of performances. [Playbill Arts]


• Alex Ross draws some much-needed attention to the affordable side of classical music. Washingtonians are particularly lucky because of the large number of free concerts and reduced-price programs, which we regularly point out in the Ionarts concert calendar and in my weekly agendas for DCist. [The Rest Is Noise]


• Was anyone else struck by the coincidence of the death of John Updike and that of the Washington Post's Book World? [New York Times]

Image courtesy of Obamicon.Me