I guess one of the problems with blogs and e-mail is that tone doesn’t always come across – so sometimes people take things in a different way to which they were intended.

Yet writers — good ones — can convey tone merely by the application of black words to the white. Maybe we’re all just horribly unpracticed in the craft.

I suspect this was a case of missing ‘tone’, although — to be fair — I’ve always drawn a sharp distinction between expressing dislike for something per se and casting aspersions on others because they like that thing one dislikes. It’s the latter I object to.

My fights with friends over the last 10 years have almost all been because I e-mailed something which has been taken in a way other than I intended, or vice versa. I don’t e-mail when I’m angry, upset or annoyed any more as a result. And I respond to e-mails which upset me by calling back to talk about it.

Hmmm, I do think there’s been a slight failure to note obvious signposts to tongue-in-cheek tone and lightheartedness in my comments.

And given Mel said:

“But not Linkin Park, who resemble saccharine dough stamped by a cooky cutter IMO ”

it’s simply not the case that he stuck to positives, so geese and ganders for the same treatment please.

Remember this conversation the next time some lefties are getting lampooned for not having a sense of humour- what’s sensitive to one person is innocuous and fair game to another. Anyway, sorry if I caused offence!

It’s the way he thought.

Michael Bay’s just learned that the really basic, totally corny stuff works. Steven taught him everything he knows. Spielberg, the only director who ever lived who could make a film about the Holocaust and end it with a group hug.

I don’t mind bad taste, as long as its defenders can make an interesting story out of it.

I’d agree entirely.

My musical tastes are reasonably varied and linger mostly around opera and classical music, but last year SL took me to see Linkin Park perform live in London for my birthday and I loved it. Have been listening to them ever since. This was actually revenge on her part because I’d dragged her to see Andreas Scholl (the german baroque countertenor) performing at the Edinburgh International Festival the previous summer.

Some people are such great musicians that you can enjoy them regardless of the style in which they perform. Excellent musicianship will out (as will really freaky vocal work like that of Scholl and Bennington). I think adding a filter of ‘authenticity’ to decide whether we are allowed to enjoy something or not is utterly bogus.

(Just don’t start me on the idiots who insist on opera being performed in its original language, regardless of the language of the audience – this is just an excuse for selling subtitling systems. Opera has plot and dialogue, if the audience can’t follow it their appreciation of the work is diminished rather than improved. You may as well sing the whole thing to ‘la’).