Shortly after we got tickets for the show at Penn State, I was informed by my friend Mike D. that weezer was coming to the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh.  I immediately told Mel2, who immediately swore for having bought the Penn State tickets already.  She was mad cuz instead of a 3 and a half hour drive, it would have been about a 20-30 minute drive.  I on the other hand, was thrilled.  Cuz now I'd get to see weezer TWICE WITHIN 6 DAYS OF EACH OTHER.  Ha!  :-)  Can't beat that...

        I decided that since I had been to the Cleveland show with Michelle, and the PSU show with Mel2, it was time to give Kim the experience.  Especially since she's been with me and my weezer obsession since day one.  The day I got the blue album, I'll never forget.  I had been shopping with my Nana, and she bought it for me cuz she knew I wanted it.  We went back to her house afterwards, and I played it in her house.  She didn't like it too much, and she offered to take it back to the store for me.  hahaha  She was like "Is it supposed to sound like that?  You still have the receipt right?"  So I guess Nana's not a weezer fan.  But I was hooked as soon as I heard it.  I later took it home and me and Kim [and Amy] listened to it in my playhouse out in the backyard.  We also discussed which band members were the cutest.  lol  Oh to be young again.... j/k  This was back in 7th grade.  Anyway, Kim never bought any of their cds, but she heard them enough from me (same for Michelle and Melissa2... but Melissa2 did get the green album).  So I called her up and asked her if she was interested, and she said yeah.  All set!

        This concert took place on a Monday night, and I had to be back in time for classes Tuesday Morning.  Mel2 offered to come pick me up from school and drive me home, and then pick me up at home after the concert and drive me back to school.  And Donnie (Kim's bf and my neighbor) said he'd drive us to and from the concert.

        I got home around 3:40 or 4:00, played with my dog for a while, spent some time with my family, ate dinner with them, and then Donnie came to pick me up around 6.  We talked in the car about how bad it would suck if we forgot the tickets, and we joked around about it for a while, listened to music, talked a bit, and finally we were in Pittsburgh.  Donnie dropped us off in front of Gate 5 and drove away.  About 30 seconds later Kim swore.  Can you guess what happened?

        We stood there for a few minutes, Kim was panicking and flipping out, and I was laughing hysterically.  I said, "at least we'll have a story to tell!" and she said that sounded like something Donnie would say.  But we knew this would happen.  Donnie didn't have a cell phone so we couldn't call him to tell him to come back.  It was all up to him.  Did he notice the tickets, still in the car?  We stood there for a while and about 10 minutes later, we saw Donnie's car driving back up to Gate 5.  He was waving the tickets in front of the window.  haha  Kim ran over, grabbed the tickets, and told Donnie she loves him.  And we're in!

        We ended up having seats for this concert cuz we procrastinated a LOT in buying the tickets.  So that sort of sucked.  But I heard the Pittsburgh crowd got pretty rough down in the pits, so maybe it was for the best.  Anyway, the seats were surprisingly not bad.  They were sorta far away, but not much farther than probably any other seats in the arena.  We were directly in the center, facing the stage, and we were in level E.  The level we were on is a balcony that hangs over the seats down in the front, so that's why we weren't THAT far away.  Kim and I were in the first row of that little balcony so it was cool.

        As soon as we walked in, the first person we saw was Kim's friend from college.  What are the odds of that?
I only got to see one of the 4 of my friends that I knew was going.  So that's like, 25%, whereas Kim got to see 100% of her friends that she knew was going.  I don't think that's very fair.  Oh well.  :-)  But yeah, I saw Ryan (listed in friends links) there, so that was cool.

        This was almost the same exact concert as the one at PSU (both of these concerts were from the Hyper Extended Midget Tour.. the Cleveland show was from the Extended Midget Tour), with minor changes to the set list.

    The show began, once again, with Ozma.  I swear, every time I hear this band I like them more than I did the last time.  Which is odd, cuz that's how I got addicted to weezer, back in the day.  I felt the same way about them.  I think Ozma's gonna make it big someday.  This was their second time touring with Weezer.  They toured with Weezer and The Get Up Kids about a year ago.  The Pittsburgh crowd seemed to like them a little more than the PSU crowd.  They actually got a few crowd surfers going during their performance.  That's the first time I've seen crowd surfers going for the first band... of course, I've only been to three concerts.  There was some dancing too.

        Intermission... Don't know how long... Probably about 15 minutes.  They played some weird music, dude.

    Time for some more Saves the Day!  I really like these guys.  I dunno whether I like them more or the same as Ozma.  It's a close call!  The lead singer of Saves the Day seemed to have a lot of energy for this show.  I mean, he did last time too, but he talked a lot more for this show.  There was a lot more interaction with the audience.  They did a really nice job.

        Next up... Weezer!!

        "Fried chipmunks.................. porque."

    Here's the Pittsburgh Crowd.  Purple arrow pointing to where we were.  It actually looks a lot farther away than it really was in this picture.  They seriously weren't bad seats.

        The set list was similar to the other two, except for the vast improvement of adding a third track from Pinkerton:  The Good Life!  The crowd went nuts for this song.  The songs from Pinkerton are so good.  Anyway, we had 5 from the green album, 7 from the blue album, 3 from Pinkerton, and 4 new ones.  So this set list was the best of the three concerts too.  Every weezer concert I've been to has been better than the last.  This can only mean one thing.  MUST..... SEE..... MORE.... CONCERTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

        Yeah this was, in my opinion, the best of the three concerts.  The sound quality was incredible.  The interaction with the crowd from all three bands (well, to be honest, I don't really remember how much interaction Ozma had) showed much improvement from the last concert, and the audience itself seemed way more enthused than at either of the other two concerts.  There was crowd surfing during all three bands, and almost the entire audience was standing through all of Weezer's performance.  There were lighters being waved around for the slower songs, lots of moshing during the faster songs, and plenty of dancing from the ground and the seats.  I'm going through withdrawal.  :-(

        After the show, there were people everywhere, so Kim and I ducked into a bathroom.  Most of the crowd was gone when we got out, so that was cool.  This was when we ran into Ryan, who was lost and looking for his friends.  Our next mission:  finding a pay phone to call Donnie.

        As it turned out, there's only one pay phone in the Mellon Arena.  Find that hard to believe?  So did I.  I wanted to look around for another phone (okay so maybe I really wanted to look for some people), but Kim wouldn't let me leave her.  hehe  :-)   Anyway, the guys behind us in line were saying how they just searched the place and that was the only phone.  Then we saw a girl walking with a security guard, and he was saying how that was the only phone in the building...  So who knows?  The line wasn't TOO long.. only about 10 people waiting.  Not too bad.  I played with my superball while we waited.

        That's about the end of the story, really.  Nothing exciting happened after that.  Except for all the people that kept walking up to us when we were standing outside waiting for Donnie.  Well, none of them actually came right up to us, but it was fun telling Kim they were coming to attack us.

        P.S.   I skipped Calculus the next morning cuz I was tired and wanted to sleep in a bit.  I didn't think it would matter cuz we never really do much in there besides take notes.  The same notes that are posted on my professors web site every day.  So I didn't feel the need to go.  I later found out that we had an in class, group assignment that day.  hah!  Oh well.  :-)
 
 

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