Random quotes from the New Yorker's article on Vampire Weekend "School of Rock," published Jan 4 (because I forgot to forward my mail home over Winter Break):
The band members say they are surprised to be accused of being so calculating. Batmanglij, the band's keyboardist and producer, justified their lyrics with the write-what-you-know defense. "I remember when Ezra first played me this song he'd written with the lyrics 'Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?,'" he said. "He had just discovered this Facebook group called Society for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma.
(I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. Probably 'cause I'm in the group.)
In his sophomore year, Koenig took a class called Imperialism and the Cryptographic Imagination, taught by Gauri Viswanathan. The class read Kipling's "Kim" and, Koenig said, talked about "the ways that relationships between imperial powers and colonized peoples could involve lots of codes." He liked the cryptography class so much that he took another postcolonial literature class, Plagiarism, Parody, and Postcolonialism, which examined the works of African novelists who'd been accused of plagiarism by British and French literary critics.
(This band is like a parody of a Columbia student.)
In the van, Tompson played Sudoku, and Baio read "Snow," by Orhan Pamuk. Tomson asked the driver, "Can we stop at Whole Foods?" He and Baio got out to buy pizza and almonds.
(Why I think this is mind-numbingly hilarious, I don't know. Pamuk? almonds? Whole Foods?)
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