Breaking: Vampire Weekend’s Mothers Dress Them Funny

Christopher R. Weingarten | March 10, 2008 9:30 am

This weekend, Vampire Weekend cemented their superstar status, joining the ranks of such timeless acts as 3-D, the Tragically Hip, the Bus Boys, Timbuk3, and the Hothouse Flowers as musical guests on Saturday Night Live! There’s been a lot of talk about whether these guys are really Columbia douchebags or just playing up an image of Columbia douchebags and while there’ve been some salient points about the precarious position of class and race, we… wait a minute, what the fuck is that guy wearing? Really? A scarf the size of a tent? Indoors? He looks like Stuart Little after he curls up for a nap inside a shirt sleeve.

Well, to be totally honest, this guy is smarter, better-looking, richer, more successful and more fun than I’ll ever be. So maybe this is what well-educated, skinny, popular kids wear when they’re somehow fooling the world that they deserve to be much more than our generation’s Camper Van Beethoven. But something doesn’t sit right with me. I’d ask one of my friends that go to Columbia, but if I had a ton of friends who went to Columbia, I probably wouldn’t be trying to pay my rent by writing 400-word blurbs on Hydra Head bands. I feel lost, confused,,,,,,,[sic–that’s how little I care about an Oxford comma] and really old.

Seriously, do people wear this shit? Is there some uptown hipster keffiyeh community I’ve somehow missed? Is this some kind of Seinfeld-ian puffy shirt fiasco? Or is he trying to protect his neck from real vampires?!