Friday Video: Africa

Toto's 1982 hit Africa is a fantastic song. For some reason, the song had seen a resurgence over the past few years. It seems like some of this may be related to its placement in Stranger Things. Some of it may also be ironic, though I don't understand why. Regardless, Africa is one of the biggest songs of 2018. This tries to explain it:



While I'm terrible at creating titles myself, someone must be able to write a headline that doesn't start with "Local Girl," "Local Man," etc.

Anyway, it appears that Weezer first played Africa live on Jimmy Kimmel Live in June with assistance from Toto's Steve Porcaro.



Rivers Cuomo looks a little unsure playing this song and seems to be reading the lyrics from the computer screen. He looks more comfortable now as Weezer is playing Africa on its tour.





And yes, this song will stay in your head all day (and that's a good thing)!

Motown Philly Back Again

As part of my 2006-2007 sports adventure, I traveled to Philadelphia on Saturday for the Flyers-Islanders hockey game. Here are some notes from the trip:

* Even though I listened to CDs on most of my drive to and from Philly, I heard Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” three times on various radio stations. Can you say monster crossover hit?

* Of course, I also heard Toto’s “Hold the Line” (love isn’t always on time) twice, so maybe they are making a comeback.

* Philadelphia fans have a reputation as being some of the roughest and toughest in sports. From my sampling of one hockey game in Philadelphia, I was disappointed. There were a lot of fans dressed as empty seats. To be fair, the Flyers are terrible this year, plus it was an early game. I will give credit to the fans who booed the team with about 2 minutes remaining as the Flyers could not get the puck out of their zone.

* The song that played when Flyers came out for their warm-up: Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend.” This seems like an extremely random song. Actually, since many of the players are Canadian (like Loverboy) maybe this gets them pumped up.

* I had a cheese steak, and it was good.

* The Flyers showed a feature on the scoreboard of Simon Gagne and his Lamborghini. It seems to me that a Lamborghini would be a useless car to drive around Philadelphia. There are a lot of narrow streets and he could never go that fast driving on I-95 at 4:30pm on a Thursday evening. Does Gagne take the Lamborghini to the grocery store?

Next on the sports trip:

Tuesday: Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Washington Capitals at the Verizon/MCI/Phone Booth

Wednesday: Boston Celtics vs. Orlando Magic at the “new” Garden.

In case you were wondering, the Islanders won 4-3.