Author: King Tom

Rest in Peace, Mikey Welsh

Earlier today, former Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh died.

Mikey was with Weezer from 1998-2001. He replaced Matt Sharp during a time of uncertainty and inaction for the band. Within a few years and after a few false starts, Weezer (with Mikey in the fold) released the Green Album in 2001, bringing the band new success after a time when people thought the band had called it quits. He left the band in the summer of 2001, weeks after performing on shows like the Video Music Awards and Saturday Night Live.

After leaving Weezer, Mikey took up painting and started a family. He made a few appearances at some of the band’s live shows and recently joined Facebook, where he shared stories of his early years with the band.

I’ve written before about Mikey’s first year with the band, when Weezer struggled to rediscover themselves after the commercial failure of Pinkerton.  One thing I didn’t write about in that series (and something that wasn’t apparent until later) was how Mikey’s personality brought a new dimension to the band.  He was great with the bass, and his personality was refreshing, bringing out the best in drummer Pat Wilson.  In addition, he was a force to be reckoned with on stage.

My first time seeing him was my first Weezer show in Cleveland in August of 2000. He towered over lead singer Rivers Cuomo and was extremely animated (but without the histrionics of his predecessor).

I don’t know what else to say other than he’ll be missed. One of my favorite Weezer moments (music-related or not) is an interview he and Pat did with Rolling Stone in the fall of 2000. He looked like he was having fun.

King Tom

Answering the Skipper Dan Question

So I was checking out my Sitemeter log and noticed a lot of activity early Sunday morning (and by that I mean around midnight).

Pretty much all of the visitors arrived after Googling something to the effect of “skipper dan parody of.” They arrived at this page, an entry I wrote a few years ago about Weird Al Yankovic’s song Skipper Dan. But I don’t think I ever mentioned the song Al was paying homage to in the original post. To answer the question, Skipper Dan is a style parody* of Weezer’s song Pork and Beans.

I apologize for my poor blogging in the past and hope whoever was staying up late Saturday night win their trivia contest.

*More like Frank’s 2000″ TV : Anything by REM than Eat It : Beat It

King Tom

The Season Goes Pretty Quickly

I’m going to sound dim here, but I didn’t realize until today that it was the last full day of the baseball season.

Sure, I knew that the playoffs start Friday. And I heard on Yankees games a bunch of times this week the possible one-game playoff for the Wild Card could be held Thursday. But I never put it together that today was the last day of the regular season.

I’m used to having the last day of the season be on a Sunday, with playoffs starting Monday or Tuesday. This whole starting the division series on a Friday and ending the regular season in the middle of the week just seems unnatural.

It’s been a fun season for the Yankees, and I have to admit the close Wild Card races are definitely keeping things interested. I’m looking forward to the postseason, but I’m also wondering where the regular season went.

King Tom

No-Neck Visits the Optometrist

Well, it wasn’t laser surgery, but one of Hope’s favorite stuffed animals had some major eye work done.

Most of Hope’s stuffed animals have some type of eye trouble. They can’t help it. It’s not only how she gives affection, but also how she copes with teething.  Many of her stuffed animals have eyes that are plastic buttons sewn onto their faces. And Hope just loves to gnaw on their eyes. At first, the symptoms present as just some scratched up eyes. But in time, the fabric surrounding the eyes comes undone, leading to the eyes coming out of the head. Here’s Hope in action last week with No-Neck the stout giraffe:

The Civee and I decided poor No-Neck had enough. We took him out of service for a few days and The Civee sewed up his eye sockets. I’ve been told that this took some time to do. It seems to be working. Although there are a few other friends of Hope that need similar repairs done, and the problem is many of them have smaller (I’d say beady) eyes. At the same time, it’s probably worth it as we wouldn’t want her swallowing one of the small plastic eyes. And by the time the next stuffed animal is ready for some emergency eye surgery, it may even be my time to pick up the needle and thread.

I’m not going to say that Hope hasn’t noticed anything different. We think she’s going through a teething phase now and seems to be chewing on everything (or trying to). But new eyes or not, she’s still taking No-Neck everywhere she goes.

King Tom1 Comment

Phone Chuckin’

In a previous life, I used to work off-air at a TV news channel where our studio was also the newsroom. I was often in the background of many a live newscast. On one evening broadcast, a sports reporter was doing a voice over for that night’s live show. All of a sudden, his phone (or it may have been a pager) went off. As he was giving his voice over, he unclipped the phone from his belt, and in one motion, chucked it clear across the newsroom, where it shattered against a wall a few feet away from me.

My previous phone gave me plenty of reasons (mostly releated to its speed, or lack thereof) to chuck it across the room, although I never did.

I’ve had my new phone for three months and today came close (which is to say not really at all) to chucking it against a wall. I was at lunch, looking forward to the opportunity to view some websites and send some e-mail, when I took out my phone and saw it was downloading a forced update, rendering it unusable for five minutes. For a split second, I was frustrated by the timing. Then I thought about my old phone, which never had an update (as it was probably obsolete the day I bought it), and remembered the phone chucking story.

Then, when the phone finished updating, I wrote (or should I say am writing) this. Something else I couldn’t do on the old phone.

Although, now I’m tempted to dig out the old phone and find a brick wall when I get home.

King Tom

Weezer’s No One Else: And if You See Her, Tell Her It’s O-hey-hey-hey-hey

I first got Weezer’s The Blue Album sometime in December of 1994. I was already a fan, having heard and enjoyed both Undone and Buddy Holly earlier that fall.  But listening to the CD was an eye (or ear) opening experience.  Opener My Name Is Jonas was a solid melodic rocker. The second song on the album was even better.

No One Else sounded like the perfect rock song. At first listen, I knew an album with songs like this, Buddy Holly and Undone was special. And I was right- the rest of the album was great. All these years later, No One Else is still electrifying.

The reason I’m writing about this today is that 19 years ago today, Weezer first played No One Else during a show at the Coconut Teaszer in LA. As Karl Koch explains in the Weezer Recording History:

Unfortunately no recording has turned up for this show, which was in my opinion , a turning point for the band. They played tighter than ever before, had a better sound, and (after internal debate) debuted “No One Else”, a song that started to steer the band in a previously invisible direction.

A few years back, I e-mailed Karl to ask what he meant about the debate and new direction. Karl replied; “Rather than sticking with a heavy Pixies-influenced sound, “No One Else” was one of the first songs to have the band wondering whether they were going in a “‘pop’, [or] too ‘commericial’ sounding” direction.

It is easy to see a slight Pixies influence (and a much heavier one in the band’s earliest demos) in Weezer’s material. But while that influence is still there, Weezer is much more melodic and pop-friendly than the Pixies.

(I always got a kick out of that unofficial video)

No One Else was played regularly by the band through 2002.  My favorite live version of it comes from the summer of 2000, where for a few shows, they began the song with an extended intro. I was lucky enough to be at one of those performances and later get a recording. Even though the quality is suspect, you still get an idea of the intro in from this recording of the Cleveland ’00 show.

No One Else was eventually shuffled out of the band’s playlists in favor of singles and more current songs (although it has enjoyed a bit of a comeback during the Memories Tour). Even though it’s no longer in the band’s current repertoire, it’s nice to know they made the right choice all those years ago on September 15 at the Teaszer.

King Tom3 Comments

Rivera the Great

Out on the West Coast late last night, Mariano Rivera collected his 600th regular season save. He’s only the second pitcher to reach that mark, and with a handful more saves, he’ll be the games all-time leader in that particular category.

Now some (namely, cranky former Yankees closer Goose Gossage) have said that today’s closers don’t work as much as those closers who had to walk ten miles to the ballpark (barefoot, no less) and therefore, they claim, the modern save has no value. To a point, they’re right. Most modern relievers are coddled arms that rarely pitch more than an inning. And most of Rivera’s recent work has been of the one-inning variety. But Rivera is no ordinary closer (or pitcher, for that matter).

Over the past 17 years, he has a record of regular- and post-season success that is unmatched (Tom Verducci did a much better job of running down the numbers here than I could). True, Rivera didn’t play during the days of the Yankees bullpen Datsun, but he has a better record than any reliever (including Gossage) did back then.

Five and a half years ago, I wrote about Rivera’s first game with the Yankees. How, as a starter, he was horrible.  That was before he developed his signature cutter.  It’s hard to believe the odds that that pitcher would develop into one of the most reliable pitchers ever.  And it’s hard to believe that he’s been doing it for 17 years.

King Tom

Hope, the Wagon and the Dance Break

We’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about what’s up with Hope. And there have been some comments (mostly from the grandparents) that there haven’t been enough Hope videos lately.

Well, Hope has been running around a lot.  Whether inside or outside, it’s tough to catch her doing just one thing. Unfortunately, this has led to a lot of pictures that are either blurry or only have half her body in it.

The other night, Hope spent quite a bit of time moving her wagon around the house. She put a bunch of stuffed animals inside the wagon and would occasionally stop and rearrange them before moving on (unfortunately, No-Neck the stout giraffe was too large to make the trip).  I caught her at the end, right before she stopped pulling the wagon to take a dance break.

The lighting isn’t perfect. I tried fixing it with YouTube’s video editor but you should still get an idea of what was going on.

King Tom2 Comments

Finishing Up The Farmers’ Market Haul

Over the weekend, The Civee, Hope and I went to a local farmers’ market.  We’ve been there a few times before, but it’s not like we’re regulars. Most of the good stuff sells out early and the place gets way too crowded on hot summer days.

Despite the drawbacks, we picked up a lot of peaches, stringbeans and tomatoes.  We ate a few peaches used some beans over the weekend, but had a bunch still left to eat.  Tonight, looking at these fruits and vegetables, I realized if I didn’t use them now, I would not have the chance later.

We were having salmon for dinner.  The beans were easy- they would be our vegetable. I could make the tomatoes into gazpacho. But we had six peaches, which I was drawing a blank on how to use. Then The Civee suggested I just use them with the salmon. Actually, it was a rather easy solution. Both are similar colors. Both go well with brown sugar. So why wouldn’t they go well together?

I sauteed the peaches and salmon separately, then added them together at the last minute. And it was good.  I have to say everything went together well.

Hope had some of everything. While she wasn’t really into the gazpacho, she did enjoy the combination of the peaches and salmon. I tried getting a picture of her eating, but I couldn’t get a good one. Instead, I’ll share this one taken at lunch today:

King Tom

The Fool and The Fool Who Follows Him

This weekend we decided to go to a local community event.  It was in an area of Columbus I’m not too familiar with, so I Googled directions before we loaded into the car.

We got to the address where the event was being held, but no event.  Turns out the official address of the place is actually the back entrance, which was not open to traffic. We weren’t the only car there, as there was a car ahead of us and a few behind us who seemed as if they were looking to go to the event too.  There was a person giving out directions and after the previous vehicle (a black SUV) drove off, I stopped, rolled down my window and asked the person how to get to the event.

“Just follow that car,” she said, pointing to the black SUV.

I rolled up the window and proceeded to follow the black SUV.  I think she gave similar directions to at least two other cars, as I could see there was a convoy slowly forming behind me.

So we were the second car in the convoy, and I was trying to keep up with the black SUV as it turned on to a main street, went about a mile, then turned into a subdivision and wound its way through the maze of streets.  All of a sudden, the black SUV stopped and pulled into a random driveway and the driver got out and went in to the house.  I pulled off to the side about a block up and the cars behind us stopped short of the driveway.  I’m sure they did exactly what we did- consult their cell phones (or GPS units) to see what to do now.

Luckily, the main entrance was around the corner and another mile down the road. And we got there without any incident. But the next time someone tells me to just follow another car, I’m going to have a backup plan ready just in case.

King Tom