=w= reviews

Road Worriers, Twenty-four hours with Weezer (Details, Jan. 1995)
By Rivers Cuomo

A couple of months ago, I thought it would be a good idea to write a description of a typical day in the life of Weezer. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of the lamest days of my life.

8:00 A.M. The Allen Park Inn, Houston, Texas. I'm awakened by telephone. "It's 8 A.M.," says a soothing recorded voice. "Have a nice day!" It's one of those lovely computer wake-up calls. I wish it would say something less pleasant, like "I hate you. Get out of bed."

8:02 A.M. After a brief of reflection, I decide that it's much too early and go back to sleep.

8:20 A.M. The phone rings again. "Where are you?!" It's Karl, our roadie. "You should have been in the lobby five minutes ago." Slowly, through the thick haze of exhaustion, my senses return to me. We're flying to Seattle today. The most important radio station in Seattle has offered to fly us up for a heavily promoted free Weezer concert. This means I have to get up now, so I can pee and brush my teeth. I flip on Barney the Purple Guy for background music. Barney is singing about "dancing away the blues" while a racially balanced group of mutant children twitch arrhythmically behind him. And you wonder why rock stars throw TV sets from hotel-room windows.

9:30 A.M. The driver, a full hour late finally arrives to pick us up. At precisely the same moment, our plane, in a freak display of punctuality, takes off for Seattle. We drive to the airport anyway.

10:00 A.M. Yep. We've missed our flight.

10:20 A.M. "How many emotional outbursts are we allowed?" asks Pat, our drummer, on the shuttle to another terminal. I give him my estimation: one major irrational outburst per 250,000 records sold. Although this means we haven't even earned our first outburst yet, Pat says he's going to go ahead and freak out now. He throws his backpack on the ground repeatedly, screaming. We all join in, singing a rousing chorus from "The Sweater Song". This, by the way-as much as we truly love the song-is a form of self-punishment. Basically, we're very upset that (a) we missed our flight; (b) we have to wait four hours for the next flight; (c) there's a stopover in Denver; (d) we will most likely perish when the left engine inexplicably switches into reverse, causing the plane to dive sickeningly out of control until it slams with incredible force into the earth.

3:00 P.M. Minutes before our long-awaited departure, Pat follows through with his "irrational outburst" threat and leaves the airport to visit his wife and in-laws, who happen to live in Houston. Somewhat flustered, we abandon the idea of going to Seattle as we watch the plane take off with our luggage.

4:00 P.M. We're now on a plane bound for Albuquerque-except for Pat. Apparently we're going to have the night off. Unfortunately, now we're convinced that this plane is going to go down.

5:00 P.M. In mid-flight, I look across the aisle to discover Bobby, our new tour manager, talking on the Airfone. He looks extremely pale. This worries me because Bobby is black. Apparently he's been talking to our personal manager Magna, who, having just landed in Seattle, is a little upset. Whoops. Enjoy your stay in Seattle Magna.

9:00 P.M. We've been in Albuquerque for a few hours now. I would probably be having a lot more fun if my luggage weren't in Seattle. But perhaps this is some weird sort of consolation to the angry mob of Weezer fans: At least our toiletries are with them.

Midnight. I'm now certifiably insane. For the past hour I've been reading the Book of Leviticus. Before that, I attempted to watch Terminator 2, the movie that popularised the Spanish phrase "Hasta la vista, baby" At least Leviticus has more sex and violence. The Lord tells Moses, for example, that "if a woman approaches any animal and mates with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal." Cool. That's great, I'm going insane.

1:00 A.M. Brian and I practice French verb conjugations to kill time before Sleep, that fickle wench, condescends to rescue us. I wish I were an alcoholic.