2005-04-29 - 2:16 p.m.

Up late watching TV, flicking between Kenny Vs Spenny with the sign language guy going nuts in the bottom corner and the music channels. Ever since a techno-genius friend of mine told me you could see what video is coming next by pressing the otherwise irritating red button, I've been obsessively flicking around with a spastic urgency so I don't miss the chance to tape something cool. So after seeing some incredibly sexy videos from Jamie Lidell, Antony and the Johnsons (and I thought the Dears were the gayest band in the world!), Super Discount 2 and Karl Bartos, you can imagine my excitment when I saw that the new Weezer video, Beverly Hills, was about to be screened. What a fine way to see out the evening! Oh, how wrong I was.

What Rivers Cuomo has done to himself and his band is absolutely repulsive. I didn't think things could get much worse than Maladroit, but somehow he's managed to sink even further into the soulless MTV quagmire of hollow, shitty nothingness. I watched in horror as camp drummer Pat Wilson takes a phone call from Hugh Hefner inviting him to a party at the Mansion. Cheese oozes from the screen as Pat says "Suuure, can I invite some friends?" It only gets worse from here. Over a moronic riff that sounds like the demon spawn of We Will Rock You and Puddle of Mudd, Cuomo, looking like Woody Allen's retarded younger brother with a guitar stapled to his infant frame, sings about how he can't get girls because his car is "crap" and his clothes are "whack". Seriously. In fact, here are the torturous lyrics, which fans of goatse might find disturbing:

Where I come from isn't all that great
My automobile is a piece of crap
My fashion sense is a little whack
And my friends are just as screwy as me

I didn't go to boarding schools
Preppie girls never looked at me
Why should they?
I ain't nobody
Got nothing in my pocket

Beverly Hills
That's where I want to be
Livin' in Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills
Rolling like a celebrity
Livin' in Beverly Hills

Look at all those movie stars
They're all so beautiful and clean
When the housemaids scrub the floors
They get the spaces in between

I wanna live a life like that
I wanna be just like a king
Take my picture by the pool
'cause I'm the next big thing

Beverly Hills
That's where I want to be
Livin' in Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills
Rolling like a celebrity
Livin' in Beverly Hills

The truth is I don't stand a chance
It's something that you're born into
And I just don't belong

No I don't
I'm just a no-class beat down fool
And I will always be that way
I might as well enjoy my life
And watch the stars play

Chorus

Rivers Cuomo is a 35 year old millionaire. What's most distressing about this abomination of a song is that Weezer used to be really good. This is the guy who'd start off songs with lines like "Goddamn you half-Japanese girls, do it to me everytime". He wrote songs like Only in Dreams, Across the Sea, Tired of Sex, My Name Is Jonas... What does a man profit if he gains the world and loses his soul? He gets a bunch of cookie-cutter kids making stupid "W" signs at the camera, a Hitler Youth too stupid for Kiss. I'm all for wasted potential, but Cuomo needs to get a fucking grip. From one of the best songwriters of the past decade to MTV Mallpaper for the Paris Hilton generation, the tsumani of shite crushing any vestige of wit or art. Matt Sharpe probably doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. How long do you think it took little Rivers to write that pathetic pile of scrapple? How long does it take to cut out pages of your high school diary? Or did he just shit it out between rounds of Dungeons and Dragons and painting his room black? What a jerk.

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