O-weekers meet Vampire Weekend

Here's a thought: Let's make Vampire Weekend Hoover's official house band. Admit it: you think they're cute, right? They all went to Columbia University. They're freakin' Ivy Leaguers. Look, they're surrounded by a wall of books ! I mean, it's like they were manufactured to be loved by U of C students. They're like a boy band for brainiacs. Their music is a poppy, percolating mish-mash of lots of influences, a little bit Talking Heads, a little bit Jens Lekman, and, just like all the lazy music journalists and bloggers said, a little bit Graceland-era Paul Simon. The song M79 has a little bit o' string quartet thrown in, just to make it even more suitable to the type of college student who prefers chablis over plastic cups of beer.

But the thing that really makes Vampire Weekend Hoovery is their lyrics, where they refer to ion displacement and grammatical disputes and falling in love with English professors who teach the romantics. I mean, have they been listening to our conversations at the Hoover table?

Here's one of their songs, Ottoman. This widget only seems to work with Mozilla (not Explorer; I guess that Bill Gates isn't so smart after all).

Hooverlove: an advancement over Herbert Hooverlove

These well-dressed U of Cers, attacking a defenseless guy in a donkey costume, are NOT Hooverites. At least not in the sense we mean when we throw around the term. These are supporters of Herbert Hoover, the stiff-necked mid-20th century president who was behind the wheel when the country jumped the curb, crashed through the guardrail, and plunged into the Great Depression. Shame on them! Not for supporting Herbert Hoover (although, in retrospect, as a U.S. News and World Report survey found, he was an awful president), but for kicking and mistreating Donkey Man. That's not Hooverlove! Today's Hooverites would offer a hand to this costume-wearing victim. We would assume he was just on the way to a furry convention to spend time with other furries. No worries. Nothing wrong with that.

Making a little boy happy: Hooverlove in action

Hooverlove takes many forms. Sometimes, it means standing up for a little boy when his daddy is trying to make an implausible argument.

Jonah is a HUGE Thomas the Tank Engine fan. After all, who isn't? Thomas' morality is so straightforward: Don't get too big for your buffers and don't blow off steam. And always, always, always be a good friend. Hmmmm. Sounds a lot like Hooverlove, doesn't it?

Anyway, like most 2 and 3 year olds, Jonah loves buying little toy versions of Thomas and his friends. It's those 40 year olds who buy them, and leave them in the original packaging for resale on E-bay, that you have to worry about. For guys Jonah's age, it's all very normal.

Jonah wanted to buy Spencer. He's a strikingly handsome silver engine, with a coal tender. He's long and fast. In fact, that was the problem. Jonah's daddy thought Spencer was too long, because, in his assessment, employing his keen spatial and relational sense, Spencer could never navigate the turns on Jonah's wooden railway. Jonah thought Spencer wasn't too long. It was a deadlock. How can you resolve this type of conflict?

Well, we decided to ask a college student. Because, after all, college students are smart. So Jonah and his daddy went upstairs to see Hoover resident Christina Black. They showed Christina a picture of Spencer, and asked her to weigh in. Christina's answer was the purest example of wisdom and judiciousness. She said: "Spencer looks long, but not too long." So Jonah got his engine. And you know what? Christina was right.

Magical wish fulfillment

This the second Wizard of Oz themed posting here. Which is odd, because it's not like we are surrounded by reminders of the Wizard of Oz. At least not yet. Oh, OK, Barack Obama's mom was from Kansas. And he's been in the news. He lives in Hyde Park, too. Did you know that? The other day someone on MSNBC said Obama lived in the "exclusive Hyde Park neighborhood." And this is a fancy neighborhood. Even if the streets aren't paved with yellow stones. But a lot of campus buildings look like castles. Or Hogwarts. And that seems at least a little fancy.

Do you remember at the end of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy clicks the heels of her ruby slippers and wishes to go back home to Kansas? And it works! That's called magical wish fulfillment. There's a whole book about it called The Secret. I'm not recommending it. But it was on Oprah. She's from Chicago too, by the way.

What's our point? Oh yeah. The O-Book is now available. You can download it and get started becoming familiar with how busy you'll be here during your first week in town. The "O" in O-Book doesn't stand for Oz or even Oprah. It is an abbreviation for Orientation. You'll see that we use the abbreviation a lot. As in "O-Week" and "O-Aide." And you'll be so happy and so busy, you won't want to go home.