A couple weeks after the concert in Cleveland, I got a call (or a message, can't remember) from my friend Melissa2.  She used to attend Penn State University before she dropped out, but she still seems to have a bit of a fondness for the old college.  She was checking their web site to see what bands were going there to perform in the next couple months, and she got in contact with me as soon as she heard.  The conversation went something like this:

                Mel2 -  Mel guess what band's coming to my school to perform!!!
                Mel1 -  weezer?
                Mel2 -  HOW'D YOU KNOW????
                Mel1 -  Cuz that's the only band that you know I'd care if they were coming to your school

        hehe

        So needless to say, we waited for the presale and got tickets on the very first day.  General admission.  :-)  The tickets were something like $35, which is mad expensive.  But I barely ever spend money so it didn't bother me all that much.  I think it's okay to "splurge" every once in a while.  Anyway, about a week later Mel2 got the tickets in the mail, and all was well with the world.

        Over Christmas break I had met a guy on AIM, Steve, who goes to PSU.  We decided to meet when we all went up there for the concert.  "We all" being me, Mel2, Bianca, and Dave Prichard.  Steve kept trying to give me all this information about where to park and where to meet and blah blah blah, but I had no idea what he was talking about (since I've only been to PSU once).  I sent him Mel2's screen name, and they became friends and made all the arangements and everything.  So it was all set.

        Mel2 was driving of course... she's always the driver!  We decided to leave on tuesday around 11:00am.  It's about a 3 and a half hour drive, and we wanted to have some extra time to hang out in State College.  Dave had never been there before and Melissa2 wanted to show him around.  I had a 9:30-10:30 class (Calculus) and a 1:00-2:15 (C++), but I decided to skip the C++ class.  That class moves very slow so I didn't think I'd miss anything.  Plus I hadn't missed a single class yet, so I didn't feel TOO bad about it.  So I got back from Calculus, changed clothes, and waited for Mel2 to get here.  They showed up around 11:30 (which is good considering how late Mel2 usually is hehe), and we headed out stopping only for food at Subway.

        We got there around 1:30 or 2:00 and walked over to the place where we were supposed to meet Steve.  I had only seen one picture of him so I was a little unsure about whether or not I'd recognize him.  We walked into the building and started heading for the restroom, when we saw a guy following us.  He said "going somewhere?"  We turned around and sure enough it was Steve.  By that time Mel2 was hungry so we all went to taco bell to get food and call our mommies to let them know we made it there alive.

        After walking around for a little, going to see Steves dorm, and riding a buncha different buses, Steve went back to his dorm, and we decided to go to Mel2's old room and see if her roommate was there.  She wasn't.  So we went next door to visit her friend Rita.  We talked to her for about an hour and then FINALLY it was time for the concert.  We got on another bus, which was filled with people.  A couple of people on the bus were talking about weezer so that was cool.  We got to the Bryce Jordan Center around 7 and headed to the doors.  Mel2 and Bianca had book bags with them, which they could not bring in, so they had to take them all the way back to the car.  Mel2 thought the car was a lot closer than it was, so Dave and I went inside and Mel2 and Bianca went back to the car.  First, we went to the desk to exchange our tickets for the general admission bracelets.  We were a little upset that we couldn't keep our ticket stubs, but we learned later on that we could re-exchange the bracelets for the stubs after the show.  We walked around for a while and checked out the merchandise and the crowd and just kinda hung out till the other girls got back.  They didn't get back until about 7:28!  The show started at 7:30.  So they got in and got their bracelets and we ran down to the crowd.

        I didn't realize it at first, but they were using a T barrier.  So we were actually a lot closer than we thought we were to the front of our little section.  There was about 8 rows of people in front of us.  There was plenty of room to move around and stuff, at first anyway.  It was pretty sweet.

    Ozma took the stage.  I hadn't heard much from these guys, but a friend of mine was really into them, so I was pretty sure from the start that I'd like them.  I had downloaded a couple of their songs prior to the concert just to see what they were like.  I really liked what I heard.  They kind of remind me of weezer in the way they sound.  Every time I listen to them I feel stronger about that.  Dave described them as sounding like "old school weezer".  These people are fairly entertaining to watch, also.  The keyboardist chick seemed a little stage shy, though.  She kept starting to dance and jump up and down, and then abruptly just stop and look kind of embarrassed.  I give her credit though, cuz I'd never be able to dance around knowing thousands of people are watching!  Anyway, Ozma's definately on my list of CDs to get.

        About 15 minutes of intermission......

    Next up... Saves the Day.  These guys are awesome.  The quality of the music was great, and they all seemed to really get into it.  They seemed to really be enjoying themselves quite a bit which I thought was very cool.  The lead singer danced pretty much the whole time he was singing, which helped maintain the level of entertainment.  Saves the Day had a lot of energy.  The crowd began moving forward and getting a little bit tighter, but still not too bad.  Until their last song.  Everybody started pushing forward and Bianca and I got separated from Dave and Mel2.  We didn't mind too much though cuz we got pushed closer to the front.  By this time there were about 5 rows of people in front of me.  The bad thing about this was that the two gentlemen right in front of me were about 10 feet tall.  :-(

        Another 15 minutes or so of intermission... I'm not sure exactly how long this intermission was cuz I couldn't move my arm up enough to see my watch.  That's how tight the crowd got.

     Finally my boys took the stage.  :-)  At first I was just happy to see them (what little I could see of them with the two giants in front of me), but my happiness was put to a stop when a jerk of a guy pushed his way up next to me.  If it's any indication of how much of a jerk this guy was being, he had 3 other guys (2 of them being the giants in front of me) threaten to beat the crap out of him if he didn't quit being an @$$hole.  He kept shoving everybody really hard and jumping up in the air and purposly landing on people's.... well, MY feet.  Because of this one kid, I got a sholder in the face, an elbow in the eye, a nearly broken toe, and several elbows in the stomach.  Not only was he disrupting EVERYBODY, but he also managed to pull all his friends (along with himself) up in front of me.  When you add a jerk like this to the heat (which was so bad that the security guards were pouring water into all the front people's mouths during the other two bands' performances), the density of the crowd, and the fact that I couldn't see over the other two guys in front of me, I was ready to kill somebody.  At first I would just let myself get pushed back and forth cuz it was kind of fun.  Yeah, it hurt a little at times since I'm so little and everyone around me seemed about a foot taller than me... I got crushed... But I didn't even care until this kid showed up.  He wasn't out to have fun.  He was out to hurt people.

        Oh yeah, just as a side note, the heat was bad, but there was a nice cool breeze.  The problem is that I was too short to feel the breeze cuz the breeze was at everyone elses head level, whereas I was at everyone elses armpit level.  So not only was the air hot and thick, but also smelly.  At one point I felt like I was half dead, and I rested my head on the guy in front of me's back (trust me, he didn't even notice.. it was that packed...) and closed my eyes and prepared to die.  Okay, so maybe thats a little extreme.  haha  I wasn't actually ready to just give up and die.  I came close, but I would never let myself die during a weezer concert cuz I'd be too afraid to miss something.

        I noticed that Mel2 and Bianca were a few people in front of me, which upset me even more cuz I couldn't get to them.  Being short really sucks.  I got really sick of the jerk and started shoving him back.  I was mad at that point, and didn't care about being nice anymore.  He elbowed me in the boob, I punched him in the back.  I finally got in front of him, but the two tall guys were still in front of me, and the jerk's friends were still in front of me.  Mel2 looked back and saw how miserable I was and said "Mel!"  and I said "What?" and she said "Uh.... Come here!" and I said "I CAN'T!!!!!!", and the tall guys heard me and stepped to opposite sides leaving a space in between them.  Then the jerk's friends looked back and saw me and they too stepped aside in opposite directions.  So there was this heavenly path leading me up to where Mel2 and Bianca were!  I couldn't believe it....  :-)  I moved up to the front and Mel2 moved to the back.  She said she was in pain and her back hurt and she needed a drink and stuff so eventually she left the crowd all together.  If it weren't for her I might never have made it to the front.  I love that girl.

        Anyway, now there were about 2 or 3 rows of people still in front of us, but that didn't last too long.  Everytime a crowd surfer surfed over our heads everybody would get shuffled around, and before I knew it, I was up in the very front.  Right behind the people against the rail.  This was definately good enough for me.  I was also right in the center directly in front of Rivers.  I could see PERFECTLY.  The purple arrow is pointing to where I was at.

        I managed to stay there throughout the rest of the show.  The only bad thing that happened after that, once again, had to do with that jerk.  Normally when a person would crowd surf, we would all pass them to the security guards, and they would take them down and send them to the back of the crowd.  Well, a couple of the jerk's friends decided to crowd surf their way to the front, and then call his name (the jerk's name that is) so that he could pull them down in front with him.  This resulted in me getting kicked in the head twice (by two different friends of his).  By the end of the show I was in a lot of pain.  But it was all completely 100% worth it to get kicked, shoved, squished, elbowed, and suffocated to be able to see all of weezer's faces in person while they played after 6 and a half years of just hearing the music.  I much prefer general admission over seats.  And I much prefer live concert music over mp3s, cassettes, cds, or records.  It's so much better live.  I never would have believed it had I not been to my first weezer concert back in December.

        Rivers decided to ditch his glasses for this concert, and he had a full beard.  It was kinda cool seeing him like that, cuz it shows that they don't care about the "image".  Ever since they got big again, people show up at their concerts and stuff wearing those glasses and trying to look like the band.  The glasses sort of became Rivers' identity to his fans in a way, and he just kicked it out the window.  I think that's cool.

    The setlist had somewhat improved over the last concert, in that they played 2 songs from pinkerton this time.  One of which being my favorite song, Why Bother.  :-)  They played 6 songs from the green album, 2 from pinkerton, 7 from the blue album, and 4 new ones.  One thin gthat was kind of cool was that they played Death and Destruction with lyrics.  When they played it at Cleveland, it didn't have lyrics yet.  It was still instrumental.  So it was kind of neat to hear the song evolve.

        At one point Rivers announced that they were going to play El Scorcho, and then they played Don't Let Go, obviously just to tease us. haha  It was cool though.  I like it when bands have fun with their concerts.

        There was a girl up in front of me who made the following comment to her friend:  "oh i just thought of a weezer song that i heard before!  That one that goes 'oh wee ooh i look just like buddy holy."  People like that should not be up front.  She obviously wasn't even a fan if that's the only song she could think of by them.  She probably just went along with her friends or something.  She should be in the back of the crowd somewhere.  People who have loved weezer for years and years should get to be up front.  Oh, and short people.  All short people should automatically be up front. :-)

        They had the same effects for Only In Dreams that they did at the last concert, and the same encore.  Still very effective.  The crowd loved it, and it was even more powerful being surrounded by all the people on the floor dancing around and just going crazy... It was incredible.

        I didn't see anybody I recognized at this concert, asside from the people I was with, but I later found out that my friend Matt (listed in my music links page, and my friends links page) was there with some of his friends.  He wasn't too far from me in the crowd, but we missed eachother.  Dave saw Jo, one of the guys that Matt went with, though.  Also, a few days after the concert (or it might have been the next day.. I can't remember) I met a kid online named Brian who was at the PSU show, front and center, right up against the rail.  So he was probably right in front of me!  Weird.

        We had some difficulty getting home at one point because of the snow.  It was blowing so fast and so hard that we couldn't see anything outside the car windows but white.  We pulled over for a few minutes - at least we think we pulled over.  We couldn't really see the road to tell whether or not we were on or off of it.  We ended up following a truck for a few minutes until it stopped in the middle of the road.  After that, we went around it and drove for a few more minutes and then the snow stopped almost completely, and we could see fine.  The whole snow storm thing probably only lasted about 15 minutes.

        I had a LOT of fun at this concert.
 
 

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