weezer (and OMG! Chloe O'Brien?!)

So I've been feeling a little insecure these past couple days (Happy Birthday to Tom Cruise, by the way). I'm not really sure why, so naturally when I get to feeling teenage-y, I get to thinking about weezer. Aw weezer.

Weezer is good now, but there was something... more about the Matt Sharp days. Pinkerton is what I'm talking about.

Okay, let me back track here. The Blue Album blew my mind. I fell held over heels for Rivers Cuomo. No. Joke. And I had three friends Vicki, Jenny and Michelle who fell for Matt, Brian and Pat respectively. SQUEEEEE!!!!

Vicki heard El Scorcho, the new single on the radio before any of us making her the luckiest person TO LIVE! After several calls to local radio stations, of which I think Jenny got on the air, we all heard it, too. It was awesome. It still is awesome. Right?

Okay, anyway, when Pinkerton came out, Vicki and I were at college in Denver. There was a record store on campus and we ditched class to run over and buy the cd the moment the doors opened. I might have exaggerated that last part a bit, I think, for dramatic effect but, dude, we were stoked! I don't think we slept. Honestly. We were obsessed. They were our soul mates and here was even MORE proof.

We rushed to the Ogden Theatre to see them in concert. Sigh. We met them after the show. We almost drove to Salt Lake City, their next stop. Rivers talked about veggie hot dogs and boxing. He had to tell someone he wasn't in The Rentals but signed the album anyway. Michelle ran across the street and bought him a Pepsi 'cause he said he was thirsty. We met Matt back by the tour bus. Michelle kissed him on the neck. Actually, Michelle started hitting on ALL of them, which almost caused a complete breakdown of all things Manhands (the name of our band that we were going to be famous with once we learned instruments).

Now, I'm not going to rat out anyone else (ahem) but I did write a fan letter after meeting Rivers. I've never written one before and I've never written one since. But it's true. And I've thought about it ever since. It's silly, but it's sort of also totally rational to me that I thought he would read it and go "Oh yeah, totally soul mates".

Well, 12 years later. I'm not married to Rivers. But 2 years ago this month, Vicki and I went to a Rentals show here in L.A. at Spaceland. We still giggled and talked about Denver days. We did so with Matt Sharp.

He smiled.

He knew.

Soul mates.