Hi, I’m Meathead. Hey, remember when Weezer was cool? Or at least it was possible to say “Weezer” without immediately feeling your breakfast try to bail from your stomach like an angry gay flight attendant from a JetBlue plane? Those were the days, huh? Bill Clinton was still in his first term as our “first black president,” only rich assholes had cell phones, and Kurt Cobain’s corpse was still in the early stages of decomposition. Now, in the year of our Lord 2010, we have a real black president, assholes of all social strata can own a cell phone, Kurt Cobain is in all likelihood just a skeleton by now (somebody go check), and Weezer has officially turned into the “your dad” of rock bands.
Hot off the heels of their last record, 2009′s horrible-in-every-conceivable-way Raditude, and its accompanying Snuggie promotion that missed the comedy bus by about a year, the Weezer guys decided, inexplicably, not to issue an apology to what’s left of their fans and commit ritual seppuku, but instead to record and release yet another album less than a year later, with its own desperate plea for acceptance from the young, hip crowd, like a beached trout trying in vain to flop its way back into the lake while some young children poke it with sticks.
The fifth or sixth or eighth or whatever Weezer album, due for release on September 14 (only three days after the anniversary of another American tragedy), is called Hurley. Yeah, like the token fat guy from the overrated TV show Lost. Except it’s not “like” him, it “is” him. They named their new shitty album after that guy. Why? Because they’re Weezer! They’re just so wacky and unpredictable! You never know what rapidly-fading pop culture meme they’ll latch onto next! Of course, Lost was taken out behind the barn and shot back in May of this year, so I guess this time Weezer was a little closer to jumping onto a fad that’s still at the height of its popularity. Maybe next time, dudes!
Apparently, if the photo on the left is to be believed, the obviously-40 Rivers Cuomo met “Hurley” (a.k.a. Jorge Garcia) at some spacetime-warpingly lame party somewhere recently, and seeing a golden opportunity to once again grasp for that elusive Holy Grail of hipness, decided it would not only make for a hilarious story to tell his preteen Asian girlfriends, but would be a totally epic title and cover for another one of his famous batches of embarrassing songs. Rushing home to his computer, he demonstrated his mastery of the Photoshop™ Crop tool (gosh, what can’t you do, Rivers?) and with approximately the same amount of effort that goes into writing his songs, he created what will undoubtedly be an unforgettable record cover for the ages, right up there with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and King Crimson’s In The Court of the Crimson King.
“We struggled super hard trying to come up with an album title, trying to find some kind of phrase that summed up the whole aesthetic behind the album: ‘Heavy Mental,’ ‘Smaller Than Life,’” Cuomo says. “I was coming up with all kinds of stuff, but ultimately, we just went with some random word that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything.”
Yeah, well, once you name a record “Raditude,” I guess it’s all downhill from there, right? Congrats on actually thinking up a title in the first place, though! What, did you run out of colors or something?
As if all this isn’t wacky enough for you, Weezer is checking to see if they still have fans asking their fans to submit their own versions of the aforementioned Rivers/Hurley photo. The winners (if that’s what you want to call them) will be hand-picked by Rivers (gross) and their pictures will be autographed and mailed to them. Wow.
Fair warning to anyone entering the contest, however: My entry (below) is most likely going to win, so you’re probably just wasting your time. But go ahead and give it a shot, if you insist. Good luck!
