Oh-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore

"Ooh-wee-hoo, I look just like Buddy Holly"

You hear those words, and you think of Weezer, the great band led by Rivers Cuomo, and named so because Cuomo's father thought that young Rivers reminded him of Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins from The Little Rascals. 

Contrary to popular belief, Cuomo did not have asthma as a child.  In those films, Wheezer Hutchins was always running after the older kids, all out of breath, so that's where he got the nickname. Apparently Rivers's dad thought his son was that way, too. 

For all their great songs ("Buddy Holly", "Island In The Sun", "Hash Pipe", "Beverly Hills" and dozens more) Weezer has attracted a ton of great fans. And their fans express their devotion in unique ways...

Way out west in the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray, Utah, a man named Cory Winn, CEO and founder of the Lucca International t-shirt company, spent his own excess money to rent the billboard at 5800 S. State Street.

And on that billboard, he had emblazoned just one word:  "WEEZER" in Comic Sans font, all caps.

Those of us who obsess unendingly about fonts take a dim view of Comic Sans unless it's used in an ironic sense such as this.

Anyway, he put up the billboard in June, and here, four months later, the band replied, with a message on another billboard.

Winn told KSTU-TV that he and his business buddy Creed Stump came up with the idea to salute Weezer in the "worst font ever."

One of the t-shirts Lucca sells shows a cartoon image of the members of Weezer with the words "I Love One Direction" below the picture.   

The billboard has now received a response from the band itself, with a new billboard being erected about a mile away with the message: "Thanks to whoever bought the billboard down the road. -Weezer."

 

Winn said, "Never in my wildest dreams did I think that just putting 'Weezer' on a billboard would warrant a response from the band themselves. It wasn't even a call out to them."

And the joke will go on. Winn is planning a new message to replace the original greeting on the billboard he rented. 

"[We'll] likely exchange the panel we already have there, but I'd like to keep this little text message thing going with them, see how far we can take it," he said. "We have a message prepared, ready to go right now, and it'll get up ASAP."

What I love about the USA is that we always find time to be polite.