Disqus - Latest Comments for John Baker

Re: The Album of No Return

John Baker — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 05:44:30 -0000

Revolver was seminal, no doubt about it. But these things happen incrementally, don't they. We'd already had Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man and In My Life on the Rubber Soul album. So Revolver, with the startling Eleonor Rigby and the innovative Tomorrow Never Knows were not a complete surprise.
OK, the signs were all there, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but could anything have really prepared us for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?

Re: The Departed

John Baker — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:51:56 -0000

Sounds like one to miss, then? I haven't seen a better film than Volver in the last twelve months.

Re: Bob Dylan: Spinnin’ Those Cool Records

John Baker — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:25:16 -0000

Listening to Dylan, his old songs, new songs, his voice wrestling with other people's songs, the sporadic interviews, the guy playing at being a religieuse or a dj, it's like hunting down jettisoned parts of our own past or potential.
There is an unconscious and residual hope that he'll still speak the word. He keeps telling us he wasn't there, that what we saw and experienced was an illusion, and inwardly we nod knowingly, accepting the inevitable, but hope is the last of our witherings.

Re: Characters Searching for Authors

John Baker — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:16:17 -0000

Tom - the other thing I was trying to get at here is the way that what is written takes on a life of its own - Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, comes to mind - but there are other examples. Your metaphor of parents and children might be apt; that children grow up and achieve a kind of independence, make themselves free of their 'creators'.
Some writing, the very best, can travel so far away from its origin that it almost transcends authorship altogether and becomes part of a culture, even the mainstay of a culture.

Re: Characters Searching for Authors

John Baker — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:07:49 -0000

I'm reminded of the famous quote from Raymond Chandler: "There is no 'good art' or 'bad art.' There is only art, and precious little of it."
But I believe we can only judge an artist by the work. Adding Scott-Fitzgerald to The Great Gatsby does not make it a better or worse book. We don't even know who Shakespeare, the man, was - at best we have a series of guesses - but, incontrovertibly, we have an important masterpiece in Hamlet.

Re: Miami Vice and the 3 a.m. Soul

John Baker — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:02:11 -0000

For Fitzgerald the idea of 3-o-clock in the morning, day after day, contained that idea of eternity. The interminability of things. Relentless immensity. A novelist's sensibility is to be caged in time. Give us this day regular working hours and the ability to sleep through the night.

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

John Baker — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 10:44:06 -0000

Ten out of ten for the right answer. But how will we know when we're scraping bottom? Feels very much like that to me right now. On the other hand, after taking a peek at the commentary by St John of the Cross, I worry that the real Dark Night of the Soul could last a whole lot longer than any of us expect. Could be something like Bush's war: once it's been won, then the violence and the killings begin . . .

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

John Baker — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:35:37 -0000

Thanks for the comment, Kathleen. You are right in so many of the things you say. Let us hope that you are not wrong in the hope that opposites converge.
Also, it's good to hear something positive, though difficult after an evening of celebrity-led self-indulgence and cringing banality.

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

John Baker — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:35:30 -0000

I can buy the Santa Claus thing, Ralph, if you're really sure about it but I'm not gonna be bullied into abandoning the Easter Bunny . . ..

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

John Baker — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:54:23 -0000

I went to have a look at that pink palace of opinionated-ness and got stuck. It's pretty pink, there's no getting away from that. Disconcertingly so for a man. But all those pictures and comments and opinions drew me in and after a while I started to think . . .

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

John Baker — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:58:07 -0000

If there's one thing that actorÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s know . . . other than that there werenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t any WMDs . . . it's that there is no such thing as best in acting. Sean Penn.

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

John Baker — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:11:55 -0000

Jennifer, I don't want to stifle free speech or stop anyone from expressing their opinion. I only want somewhere to escape from drivel from time to time. OK, it's not possible, but a guy can dream . . .

Re: What Price ‘Info’

John Baker — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:08:21 -0000

I can't say I'm terribly worried by Conservapedia, feeling much the same as the other commenters on this thread.
It's good to note what you have to say, though, B Tween. A rebellion, eh? Lovely.

Re: What Price ‘Info’

John Baker — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:29:56 -0000

How hard do you have to try to make conservatives look silly?
On the other hand you might be right. What if, no, I can't believe it, but . . .what if some liberal-faggot-atheists have been messing with the text . . .

Re: What Price ‘Info’

John Baker — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 18:49:35 -0000

Ã¢â‚¬Å“To this day, most Protestant countries reject the Copernican theory.Ã¢â‚¬Â
That's a real beauty, capped only by the ending to the article on Jesus:
"believed by Christian followers to be God's dad, who came to earth as a human c 2 AD. However, God has recently revealed on His blog that Jesus is actually His nephew, not His son."

Re: What Price ‘Info’

John Baker — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 05:47:06 -0000

I still like the John Stuart Mill quote, despite what you say, Dan.
But politicians have understood that voters have an allegiance to a certain party and that they don't, usually, think about it very much, and have taken advantage of it frequently.
One of the best examples is Tony Blair, because his 'natural' party would have been Conservative. But instead of going with them he changed the name of the British Labour party to New Labour and pushed its policies to the right while retaining the traditional labour party voters.

Re: The Festival of Mediocrity

John Baker — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 14:35:12 -0000

There's nothing wrong with the form of the film. Art happens in stranger places. Theatre is also a collaborative form and that has not stopped it from realising artistic ambitions from time to time.
OK, not much good has come out of Hollywood in recent times, but independent film-makers all over the world have been coming with good examples of film-as-art.
We'll always be swamped with macaroni and cheese and the stuff that MacDonalds exports, but there's no reason, because of that, to say that no food can cut the mustard.

Re: Kill All the Lawyers? No, Kill the Fiction Writers

John Baker — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:45:38 -0000

The concept of suppressing bad writers has not entered my neck of the woods yet. And my experience suggests that if someone really wants to write, you wouldn't be able to stop them anyway. The urge is often all-consuming.
Having said that, I do believe that there are at least some objective criteria by which we might judge a certain kind of goodness and a certain kind of badness.
And I also think that all writing, apart from obviously formulaic stuff, is experimental writing. But is it all art? A tentative answer would be, no. Writing is a craft. It sometimes aspires to be art and there are certainly some novels which are works of art. But only a small proportion of written narratives can claim that distinction.

Re: Thinking Blogger Award

John Baker — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 05:09:33 -0000

I dunno, Jerry, no one can promise you'll get an easter egg. But most of us are agreed you deserve one. I've got my fingers crossed for you.

Re: Kill All the Lawyers? No, Kill the Fiction Writers

John Baker — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:23:12 -0000

Ã¢â‚¬Å“There is no Ã¢â‚¬Ëœgood artÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ or Ã¢â‚¬Ëœbad art.Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ There is only art, and precious little of it.Ã¢â‚¬Â
Raymond Chandler.

Re: On The Road With America

John Baker — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:58:09 -0000

Tom, is the two-paragraph quotation from The Road?

Re: The Seafarer: Best Damn Play All Year

John Baker — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:22:12 -0000

Interesting play. I saw it last year in the UK. My review is here

Re: Untitled Document

John Baker — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:02:46 -0000

I want one of those. USB converter, is that what it's called? Where do you get such things? I've got tons of old stuff I haven't heard for years. Did it cost an arm and a leg, this white box? Does it have a name?
Oh, yeah, and by now you'll know . . . does it work?

Re: Customer Service Hell!! T-Mobile…Hot Spot? NOT!!!

John Baker — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 11:13:02 -0000

I'm not in the least bit surprised by any of this. Ringing support at any of these companies is an act of desperation, at least an act of last resort.
You will almost always be connecting yourself to the least paid and the most junior person in the organization. Or more often than not you will be connecting yourself to someone, similarly, badly paid, who has nothing to do with the organization who supply the product or service for which you need support.
(lack of) Support stories are legion in modern technology. Whatever happened to you, someone else will be able to cap it.
But keep them coming. This one, in particular, was great. I'm gonna link to it.

Re: Automattic Stats for Self-Hosted WordPress Blogs

John Baker — Wed, 09 May 2007 03:43:25 -0000

The figures I get from automatic stats bear no resemblance whatsoever to figures I get from Google Analytics or from Webalyzer or Counterize II. Total page views are out by more than 100%; top posts seem like total gobbldeegook when compared with other stats programs.
I'm not sure I can use the figures that automatic stats throw up. There must be something wrong with the way it collects data.