Liebster Award

| xeyeti

Apparently I’ve won an award of some sort.

Usually, I don’t really pay any attention to these. I’ve received three or four of them since I started doing the daily sketches, and generally just ignore them. But I decided with this one to go ahead and post it. Why? Dunno. Whimsy, I guess.

Anyway, reader starscrapper99 nominated me for this one. I’m apparently supposed to nominate other blogs for this thing, so I guess I’d go with:

1. http://culturaltrash.wordpress.com
2. http://everyrecordtellsastory.com
3. http://normsonline.com
4. http://karenbjones.com
5. http://scottspinks.wordpress.com

I’m apparently supposed to notify these folks, but eh, they can figure this whole business out for themselves, I figure.

The rules (or whatever) are:

1. In the post, include the logo plus thank and put a link to the blogger who nominated you.
2. Answer the questions you have been given, then create any number of questions to give to your nominees.
3. Nominate 5 or more bloggers, and notify them that you have done so.
4. Sit back and relax.

Anyway, here are the questions I’m supposed to answer.

What do you think about home-educating?

As a teacher, I usually frown on the idea. Being a teacher is pretty darn difficult and requires a fair amount of training and effort to get good and effective at it. That being said, I’ve met some folks who were home schooled and turned out pretty good, but most of the people I know who were home schooled had educators for parents. That probably skews the data a bit.

If You Could Be Anyone On The Planet, Who Would It Be?

It’s a bit of a cop-out, but I’d be me. I mean, let’s all be honest, I’m pretty awesome.

Do You Prefer Writing or Reading? Why?

Tricky. I do more reading than writing, on average, and will sit and read for hours on end if given the opportunity. That said, I also love writing. If I had to give up one, it’d be writing, so I guess I prefer reading.

What Foods Do You Think Make People Fat?

Honestly, after talking with my wife’s nutritionist, I think it’s less what one eats and more how one eats and how much. My wife spent the best part of a year eating steak, food cooked in butter and olive oil, and drinking heavy cream in her coffee. And she lost weight. That being said, processed food seems to be pretty horrible in general, so I’m gonna say processed food is the devil of fatness.

I’m now at the point where I make up my own questions, so here they are:

1. What are your Top 5 Albums of all time?
2. What’s the most poisonous aspect of the current American political climate?
3. If you could hang out with any figure in history, how would you mess with them and attempt to alter the future?
4. Who’s your favorite Doctor (Doctor Who, that is)?

The Gaslight Anthem – Handwritten

| xeyeti

I’m always excited when a new Gaslight Anthem album comes out. American Slang was one of my favorite records the year it came out, as was The 59 Sound before it. So I had high hopes for Handwritten, their debut on Mercury Records.

Then I found out Brenden O’Brien was producing it.

Brenden O’Brien is the guy behind several big-name records from the past fifteen or twenty years, including Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising and the Wallflowers’ Rebel, Sweetheart. And while I really enjoy both of those records, O’Brien has a tendency to make the production of all the records he does sound the same. They’re bright, shiny rock records, with strummed acoustics, chiming and chugging electric guitars, and deep drums.

And really, what we get here isn’t exactly bad: the band are all excellent musicians, and there’s definitely craft at work in these songs. But the writing doesn’t seem as sharp, the choruses don’t seem as catchy, and everything sounds smoothed out and rather murky. It’s glossy, arena-style production, and the already-weak songs suffer because of it.

It’s odd that everything ends up sounding so same-y, because O’Brien helps the band bring in some new instrumentation to fill out their sound. There’s organs and pianos in several songs, and many feature acoustic guitars more prominently (granted, the band’s used acoustics before, but never quite this much).

There are some decent songs here. “Here Comes My Man” is a ’60s girl-group song that swings and rocks all at once; “Keepsake” is standard Gaslight Anthem, but stronger than much of the other material on the album. “Howl” is pretty solid, and “National Anthem” shows quite a bit of promising growth for the band.

The bad, though, is mostly just bland and uninspired. “Handwritten” is standard fare for the band, but doesn’t do anything particularly well. Several of these songs – “Handwritten” chief among them – feel like leftovers from other albums, lesser versions of songs we’ve already heard.

Ultimately, Handwritten is a bit of a letdown, not because it’s bad but because it’s not as good as it could be. This is an album that doesn’t live up to the promise of its predecessors. Hopefully they’ll turn it around for the next album.

Sketch a Day, Day 306

| xeyeti

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Seriously, all I wanted to do was drink a beer and read Machiavelli. But no, the couple down the bar from me had to have the world’s most inane conversation about smartphones. At least the beer was cheap and the bartender was a decent fellow.