Ok, forget Superman Returns

Target has special edition guitars signed by Brian Bell from Weezer! They go on sale on Sunday the 26th of November in the year 2006 only at Target. Seriously. I must have one.

I know have only learned one song on guitar (a Weez song obviously), but I'm sure that this guitar will inspire me to learn the rest of Weezer's songs. Or at least the rest or the Sweater Song.

Music
In the last twelve months I have seen, in concert, Weezer, Dave Mathews Band, James Taylor, Hot Hot Heat, Weezer again, the Foo Fighters, and Ben Folds. As well as a couple of small bands at 321 Artspace in Kennewick: Good Luck Mr. Gorski, Car Scars, Thanksgiving, and others. All of these I like a fair amount of their music, and five of which I would list in my top ten musical acts (two are Weezer).

I went to see Ben Folds last Saturday at the Paramount Theater in Seattle. The opener was some guy named Chris Mills and he was pretty good. He went out there just with his guitar, and hopped around rocking out to his mad licks. I’m retarded.

After he was done and the intermission ended, the lights dimmed and some crazy sci-fi-sounding music started playing and the light guy went to town. Figuratively. He started turning on random colored lights at different intervals, making it seem as though the instruments were changing colors. And to this, Ben and his band entered.

They began with “Bastard” and went through the set list, at first playing only songs produced since Ben went solo, finishing the first part with a cover of a song done by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg titled, “Bitches Aint Shit.” Ben is such a great entertainer that he really pulls that song off well. He can really tap his inner gangsta, and just bring it. Dawg. When they finished that, the drummer and bassist left Ben and his piano to have some alone time with the crowd.

He then began playing some of the tracks from his old band, Ben Folds Five, as well as some of the slower ones from his newer albums, including “Fred Jones,” and “Gracie.” One of the songs was the crowd-involving “Army.” On the album that song has a part that has saxophones and trumpets, which Ben apparently forgot to bring, so he had the crowd sing the two parts.

After he we finished that song, the band came back and they played three more songs and left the stage. For the encore, they came back and played three more, and finished with, “Not the Same,” which again required crowd involvement for the background, “ah-ah-ah-ah” choir part.

It was an amazing concert, and luckily for me, I had fantastic seats. I was sitting behind Ben slightly, and five rows from the stage, so from where I was, I could see every crazy-quick keystroke, every elbow he dropped, and every rocking stomp he delivered to his piano.

Diabetes
The day after the concert, I went down to the Tri to run powerpoint for my church, cause all the high-schoolers were at winter camp. I got a call from Danielle at McDonald’s saying that they needed help covering a sick call. So I decided to do it, and after church I headed back to Yakima. A little before I got there, I started to feel kinda sick to my stomach, but they needed me, so I went in anyway.

It just got worse throughout my shift, and I ended up throwing up. Thrice. I went home and fell asleep and I was still feeling sick the next day, so I skipped school. I didn’t eat much that day even though I started to feel better in the afternoon. Not eating is probably the thing that caused what happened next.

I woke up around 9:15 the next morning to a needle in my right arm, blood all over my bed and right arm, and two EMTs and three firemen holding me down in my bed. I had apparently gone low in the middle of the night, and my roommate, Nate couldn’t get me up to go to class.

He had tried juice, and some “Insta-Glucose,” which is basically cake frosting, but I just refused and kinda fought him off. I was conscious, but not lucid. He called my mom to ask her what to do, cause she has dealt with it a fair amount, but the last time she had to pin me down to feed me something, I was probably five or six. She said if I wasn’t responding, he should call 911.

When the paramedics got there, they tried to get me to drink something, but when I refused they decided to push D-50. This wasn’t an easy task, as it apparently took all three firemen to hold me down to start the IV.

In about a minute, my blood sugar jumped from 35 to 430, and I was given a juice to drink and a peanut-butter sandwich to eat. One of the EMTs remarked to me, “Finish that sandwich, cause if I have to come back here, and that sandwich is just sitting there on your bed, I’m gonna be mad.”

Can you keep a secret? What am I saying?! You’re the internet, of course you can’t! Oh well, I’ll tell ya anyway: I only ate half the sandwich.

Just this very hour, I found out some amazing news. Billboard has released the Hot 100 Singles of 2005. This is the first year they even made the chart and Weezer's "Beverly Hills" is number 20! Only 19 other songs were more popular than it was on radio stations that I don't listen to!

Some, myself included, have said that this is not nearly their best song, but it led them to a great year, a cover story for Rolling Stone, and for only the second time in 12 years, Weezer has gone platinum with a CD. So I think Bev has worked hard enough for us to make her an honorary Weez Classic.

On February 8th, the Grammy Awards will be broadcast on CBS, and Bev is up against the Foo Fighters, U2, Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay for Best Rock Song. With big names like those there is not a large chance of Weezer winning. However, the highest any of those other songs got on the Hot 100 was Coldplay's, "Speed of Sound" at #57. So there is some hope, however slight.

So this week has been pretty awesome as far as music goes! I went to the Hot Hot Heat/Weezer/Foo Fighters concert Wednesday (which was the best concert ever, by the way). And then tonight, I went to 321 Artspace with my brother, Adam, and we saw this guy named Nick Klein playing in his one-man-band, Good Luck Mr. Gorski. His soft voice and melodic guitar were very soothing and it was great to finally get excited about this guy who Adam had talked about so much. There were two other bands that played there tonight, the first was just beat-poetry, which I don't like very much, and the second was another one-man-band called Thanksgiving. He seemed like he would have been pretty good, if he hadn't done as many drugs and messed up his brain. He was pretty creative, and had a good voice, but he couldn't even remember the words to his songs, and some girl who had seen him play before had to remind him of the words.

I got home from this mini-concert and watched about 8 minutes of "The Longest Yard," which my roommate had rented, and Adam called me. He said that Ben Folds was on TV, so I went over to Adam's house to watch that. I caught the last couple of songs and then another guy that I like, Ray LaMontagne, came on and played a few songs. And I thought PBS was just good for Sesame Street!

So, in a four day period, I saw my favorite band in concert with two other bands I really enjoy, discovered a new artist that I like, and saw my favorite solo artist and one other artist that I like on TV. I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow!

Well, two Weezer concerts in six months, and they were both awesome. The one last April was no where near as exciting as the one yesterday, but great for a first Weez concert. I was down on the floor in general admission with my friend Alec, and there were only three people between us and the wall in front of the stage. When Hot Hot Heat came on, everyone got excited and pushed to the front and it was just a little tight in there, but as time went on it just got worse. We ended up getting off the floor and going up into the stands a little over half-way through Weezer's performance and that was much better. Mostly just cause I didn't keep visioning my self being trampled, but also because I wasn't getting as much of other people sweat on me while I was in the stands

Rivers Cuomo (the lead singer) was very animated last night, and walked back and forth all over the stage and he seemed to be having a lot more fun than he did at the last concert I went to. He is generally pretty stiff and just stands at the center of the stage and rocks out. But tonight at points he gave up the lead guitar duties to a nameless dude standing toward the back of the stage, and Rivers just had fun running back and forth on the stage. I was excited to see so much action from him.

Weezer did a lot of cool stuff on this tour that they have never done before, which was exciting to see. First was obviously Rivers only singing without playing his guitar at times. The other three guys each sang a song as well. Pat came back from behind the drum set and traded places with Rivers to sing "Photograph." Brian sang "Why Bother" while he played guitar and Rivers played keyboard, and Scott sang lead on "Don't Let Go."

After Pat finished "Photograph," he launched into Blur's "Song 2" (the "woohoo" song), and Brian and Scott joined Rivers and just banged on the drums for the last part of the song. They all walked off the stage at the end of the song, and after a few minutes, Rivers came up on a small stage set up inside the "Sound Booth" on the other side of the arena and played solo singing "Island in the Sun" and "rocking" the acoustic guitar. After that, Scott announced that they needed a volunteer to play "Undone: The Sweater Song" and some lucky guy named Johnny got to go up on stage and play with the whole band!

They played a couple more songs, and finished off with "Buddy Holly" and at the end four cannons of confetti shot off and a bunch of confetti with Weezer symbols fell all over Key Arena. A great ending to a fan-freaking-tastic concert.

Not being able to breathe at times, having more sweat from other people than from myself, and driving a total of 8 hours was definitely worth that concert.