The Boys' Book Club Reads a Young-Adult Fantasy Novel Set in...Larryville! / Also: Pitchfork Reviews the new Vampire Weekend Album

Readers, perhaps you remember our own ill-fated fantasy series Harry Lupus, which followed the teenage sexploits of one red-blooded American wereboy as he navigated his way among Larryville's hipsters and hippies. You all hated it, and we never scored the book contract we so dearly wanted.

Well, we may have failed, but Larryville writer/illustrator John Ralston has succeeded. His work, The Secret of Invisibility, "follows a 10-year-old boy named Thomas Wax who moves to Lawrence from Kansas City and discovers a mysterious scroll in the attic of his new house" (Lawrence.com).

In a typically condescending interview, Lawrence.com writer Gavon Laess.g asks Ralston about his use of Larryville as a backdrop for the story's adventures and receives this explanation:

"It's not a Bizarro Lawrence but an Earth 2 Lawrence. The main characters, for example, get scared and run away at one point and end up in a slummy area that Lawrence doesn't really have."

Chip: "Obviously, Ralston has never visited East or North Lawrence."

Ralston seems like a smart-enough fellow, but Laess.g's heart doesn't seem to be in the interview, as he is more interested in writing articles about his own experiences, such as this week's exhaustive report on his recent chest-waxing, which features the following (graphic) photos:











Chip: "It's just weird to see a hairless hipster.


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Most hipsters predicted a major sophomore-slump (if not a total disappearance) for the band Vampire Weekend, but this is proving not to be the case. Their follow up, Contra, is even earning raves from Pitchfork, which bestows a very-high 8.6 on the record, calling the band "more digestible than Dirty Projectors but also more exciting than the relentlessly sophisticated Grizzly Bear."

Here's an excerpt from the review:

"Ezra isn't writing about college or Northeastern geography anymore (terrific), but the loud nouns are still there. Take "California English": "Sweet carob rice cakes, you don't care how the sweets taste/ Fake Philly cheesesteak but you use real toothpaste/ 'Cause if that Tom's don't work, if it just makes you worse/ Would you still lose all of your faith in the good earth?"

Chip: "What the fuck is a 'loud noun?'"

Richard: "I was planning to interpret those lyrics in a hilarious manner, but I truly don't understand them enough to make fun of them properly. I'll stick with the relentless sophistication of Grizzly Bear."