Say it ain't so

Karyn and I saw Weezer at Blossom last week. It was my first time ever seeing the quintessential "geek rock" band; it was Karyn's first time in over a decade. At one point in time, many years ago, Weezer played important roles in both our lives. I got very heavily into the band my junior and senior years of college. They were actually most important to me for the fact that they served as a gateway to my Ozma fandom, and I subsequently became completely obsessed with Ozma, and Ozma played a major role in my and Cara's friendship. But there was definitely a time when I considered Weezer one of my very favorite bands; there are few bands I've ever loved more that I still haven't seen in concert.

Karyn had an even stronger connection to Weezer than I did, which is probably why she now has a "love/hate relationship" with the band, which basically means she used to love them and now seems to despise them. Here's the thing about Weezer. Their first two albums, 1994's Weezer (a.k.a. "The Blue Album") and 1996's Pinkerton, were masterpieces. They've released nine more albums since and, although there have been good songs here and there, every one of those nine albums has fallen somewhere in the range of mediocre to terrible, with more of a tendency toward the "terrible" side of that spectrum in the last decade. I stopped caring about new Weezer albums a long time ago and am happy to still occasionally listen to the old ones, so I guess I have more of a "love/indifference" relationship to Weezer, but Karyn seems to get viscerally angry at the fact that the band continues to release more and more bad music. Since I had never seen the band live I decided I'd like to go, knowing the setlist would be heavy on the old (read: good) stuff. Karyn begrudgingly agreed to join me and repeatedly said she couldn't believe she was going to see such a garbage band, but it was all in good fun (I think!).

Karyn showing her enthusiasm for Weezer with the "flying W."

So how was the show? I enjoyed it, but it was a very different experience from any other concert I've attended. The setlist was 20 songs in length. Three of the songs were covers. Of their own music, Weezer played six songs from their first album, two songs each from albums two through six, and a whopping one song total from their last five studio albums - that is, one song total that was released less than ten years ago. And those six songs from The Blue Album (to reiterate, a band with eleven different studio albums played a set in which over one-third of their own songs that they played came from the very first of those eleven albums) were quite obviously the ones most members of the audience most wanted to hear. At least the band is aware of this and not in denial about it. And don't get me wrong, I loved seeing and hearing and singing along with classics like "Buddy Holly," "My Name Is Jonas," "Undone (The Sweater Song)," and "Say It Ain't So" that were such a part of the soundtrack of my life. But at the same time, I found there was something almost profoundly sad about a band that has put out so many albums and here they are playing a show where the real reason most people are there is to hear songs from the band's very first album that is now 24 years old. (Indeed, if I had looked up Weezer setlists ahead of time and seen that their typical shows were heavier on new than on old material, I absolutely would not have attended the concert.)

I did, of course, say that the band's first two albums are masterpieces, and I was also very happy to witness a live performance of "El Scorcho" from Pinkerton, but did the second song Weezer played from that album really have to be "Across the Sea" or should I say the creepiest song ever? Okay, yes, I loved the song thirteen years ago, but I was also basically still a kid lacking any experience with dating or relationships. Here are some lyrics from the song, but first, bear in mind that this song was written by a 25-year-old Rivers Cuomo about a teenage girl from Japan who sent him a fan letter:

They don't make stationery like this where I'm from
So fragile, so refined
So I sniff and I lick your envelope
And fall to little pieces every time
I wonder what clothes you wear to school
I wonder how you decorate your room
I wonder how you touch yourself
And curse myself for being across the sea

Looking back on those lyrics as a more mature adult, they're undeniably creepy, but you know what's even creepier? Those lyrics being sung by a 48-year-old man! (Rivers Cuomo is very strange. Karyn has met him and said he's just as awkward in person as his songwriting and stage persona would suggest. That strangeness is likely a factor in both the brilliance of his early work and in the incessant unsuccessful attempts to recapture that brilliance in the years since.) Karyn and I looked at each other, covered our faces in embarrassment, and laughed.

I'm glad I went to the Weezer concert. Overall, I definitely enjoyed it. Yet as I said, there was something sad about the whole thing. I concluded afterwards that one time seeing Weezer was enough for me. The night before the Weezer concert, Karyn and I saw Arcade Fire in Pittsburgh, my fifth time seeing the Canadian indie rock band, and it was a fantastic concert as usual. Admittedly, as with Weezer, the Arcade Fire songs I was most excited to hear were from their debut album (2004's Funeral), especially always incredible crowd singalong show closer "Wake Up," but I was also very excited for songs like "Sprawl II" from 2010's The Suburbs, "Afterlife" from 2013's Reflektor, and "Creature Comfort" from last year's Everything Now. And that's how a concert should be. I also saw a great War on Drugs show at the Agora on Friday. I can only imagine the Weezer-crazed me of 14 years ago being told I'd see a Weezer concert and it would be my least favorite of three shows I'd attend that week.

If you went to the Weezer concert and loved it, I don't want to rain on your parade or say you're doing music appreciation wrong. I also can't fault Weezer for continuing to earn a living by giving their fans what they want at concerts. And as I said, I enjoyed the concert and I'm glad I went. But I'm more glad to be a fan of a lot of great bands who are continuing to make vital and wonderful music today rather than having to rely mainly on a single breakout album over two decades old.

In the blink of an eye

Last week on Tuesday afternoon I got an email at work informing Cleveland Clinic employees that there had been a serious automobile crash at the intersection of Carnegie and E. 105th and it was causing traffic delays in the area of the Clinic campus. At the end of the afternoon I left work and, as I do every work day, walked across that intersection on the way to my parking garage. There I saw two very damaged vehicles. I also saw that traffic on Carnegie was very backed up.

I walked the rest of the way to the garage, took the elevator to the roof (the 9th level of the garage), and was surprised and dismayed by the sight that greeted me as I completed the walk to my car. Cars waiting to exit the garage were backed up all the way to the roof! I'd never seen anything like it. After I got into my car it soon became apparent that the line of cars was basically not moving at all. I began to wonder how long it would take me to get out of the garage. A half hour? An hour? And I began to feel very irritated.

Looking at the faces of the other drivers I could see from my vantage point, it was clear I was not alone in feeling irritated.

But then a thought came to me. I was going to be delayed in leaving work. It was annoying, but it wasn't anything more than annoying. It was a very minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. There was no reason for me to let it ruin my day. The people who were in that crash? Their days had really been ruined. A delay in leaving work was really not that big a deal. I put some calming music on my car stereo and basically just chilled out for the rest of the wait, which ended up being a little more than half an hour in length.

Not surprisingly, I observed that a lot of the other drivers were not nearly as chill. There were some angry faces and gestures when people disagreed on whose turn in line it was. Of course, we all see this all the time on our journeys by automobile.

I later learned that a 49 year old woman had been killed in the crash. The crash was caused by a man speeding and running a red light.

Later last week, Karyn had a scary incident when she was driving and had to swerve to avoid someone who was... speeding and running a red light. She related to me how the driver had been going at least 50 mph in a 35 zone and had sped through the intersection seconds after the light had changed to green in Karyn's direction.

It really puts things in perspective, doesn't it? Maybe we shouldn't let being stuck in traffic bother us so much. It could be a lot worse.

And it occurred to me that there's a connection. We've created this society where the ability to speedily get from point A to point B in an automobile often takes precedence over almost everything else. And so we feel entitled to that ability to speedily get from point A to point B in our automobiles. And so when something interferes with that ability we tend to get frustrated and angry. And so also some among us feel so entitled to that ability to speedily get from point A to point B that we take risks and skirt or ignore rules - and horrific injuries and deaths are the result.

It's absolutely crazy if you really think about it. Automobiles are deadly weapons. And so many people are so neglectful of the responsibility that should come with operating such a deadly weapon. A human life is an incredibly precious thing. How could saving a few seconds on your commute possibly be worth risking ending a life?

I've seen many times, in gun control arguments, that when someone in favor of stricter gun control brings up the fact that guns kill over 30,000 people per year in the United States, someone will counter with that fact that cars also kill over 30,000 people per year, so should we have car control, they ask rhetorically?

The obvious response is that those deaths are an unfortunate side effect of the primary purpose of cars, transportation, whereas causing death is the primary purpose of a gun. But over the last few years I've become inclined to say that actually yes, we do need better car control.

It's absurd the extent to which our society has prioritized fast automobile travel over so many other things that are so much more important. We know for a fact that faster speeds lead to more deaths, and yet we keep raising speed limits on highways. We know that we could make our roads safer with speeding and red light cameras, and yet here in Cleveland we've done away with those cameras. We know that SUVs are much more likely to kill pedestrians than are normal cars, and yet bigger and deadlier SUVs continue to increase their share of the auto market. (I want to give a shout out to my friend Angie Schmitt who has done a lot to raise my, and hopefully a lot of other people's, awareness on these issues with her writing on the website StreetBlog - here's a good post about SUVs, for example.)

Not to mention texting while driving...

What can we do about all this? Raising awareness can only do so much. There's probably some element of human nature that causes that impatience in traffic that most of feel, but it's something that has undoubtedly been amplified by the structure of the society in which we live, a structure that was created by choices people made over the years. The way things are is not the way things have to be. A functional society does not require over 30,000 traffic-related deaths per year. If commercial airline travel was as dangerous as automobile travel, the airlines would go out of business because people would be too afraid to get on planes. And yet with cars we just take it for granted.

A woman died next to my workplace last week because someone flouted the responsibility of handling an automobile and it was barely a blip in the news because it happens all the time. Something to think about the next time you feel annoyed about being stuck in traffic.