Hilarious.

The Ivy hierarchy is totally....silly. There's really not another good word for it. On the one hand, Ivy Leaguers are so totally cool: they're totally on the New York indie scene, they've definitely read Rushdie and Yeats' "The Second Coming," and they could probably chat with you on the intricacies of Colonization in Southern Africa, 1884-1969. On the other hand, they're pretentious cocks, and I admit guilt on both counts, though I'd like to think I'm as yet unmarred by too much pretention or cockitude.

The hierarchy is silly because it isn't based on anything other than rumors, hearsay, and the US News and World Report. People consider Harvard the best because A. it is the most selective, B. it has the most money, C. it has the most illustrious grads, and D. its profs are world-renowned for their obscure research. Thus, we have all the people of the world, all 6.2 billion people, who have probably heard the word Harvard at one point or another in their lives, and consider it to be the acme of higher learning.

But all the people of the world don't concern me as much as the few thousand who are associated with the Ivy League, but not with Harvard. One school's narcissistic drive towards purely mechanical output has led to an entire culture of statistic-grubbing and assholery.

This year, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard, and Cornell enjoyed a sizable drop in admissions, and much self-congratulation ensued (I'm not quite sure why yet, but maybe I'll understand that some day).

Unfortunately (and I say that with my tongue stuck firmly to the inside of my cheek), Penn and gasp Princeton's admission rates went up! This, after years of assurances that I wouldn't get into any colleges because the class of 2009 was just so huge and competitive...

On its own, this isn't a very interesting or shocking statistic. Penn, after all, only increased by .1%. Yet. Yet, the comments on the Daily Pennsylvanian article would have you think that Penn's admit rate was up around 50%: "I guess this means I got a lousier education than I thought," says one comment. This, allegedly from "alumnus," means that after four years (and very possibly more) at one of the premier universities in the world, they considered a rise in admissions a sign that their education wasn't very good. Please pause here and re-read that sentence, then take a deep breath and continue.

Still, overall the comments on Penn's newspaper's website are more concerned with the cogency of the "interactive graph" at the beginning of the article. Now, where the comments really are flipping insane is on the Daily Princetonian.

Princeton saw a .54% increase in admissions this year, and you would think the sky has darkened permanently in Princeton, NJ. "BRT" sums up the position of most of the commenters, albiet a little less vehemently: "Well...that's just embarrassing." The comments, all 267 of them, are mostly '09ers, '10ers, and a whole lot of alums who are straight-up PISSED OFF. They are actually mad. They offer solutions ("fire [admissions dean] Rapelye") but mostly just rant about how Princeton is going downhill. A few '13ers (and soberminded '09ers, '10ers, and alums) try to jump in and state the obvious, that Princeton is still an insanely good school and many would die for this opportunity, not to mention that having a sub-10% admission rate makes them titty-twistingly competitive...

I don't get it. I applied early to Yale using those three indicators of Ivy status: rumor, hearsay, and the US News and World Report. Rumor and hearsay were that despite its number two or three position, Yale had the best undergrad program in the nation and, most importantly, I wouldn't want to either kill myself after my first class (Harvard) or kill myself after meeting my new roommate, Ralph Lauren (Princeton). Maybe I just haven't seen it yet, but I chose Yale because I don't want a bunch of whiny assholes complaining about loss of prestige. I'm sure I'll see it at Yale and I'm sure that not everyone at Princeton and Harvard are intolerable, but it's the impressions that lead to a school's image. If I were a junior on my college search, I'd be disgusted by what I saw on the Daily Princetonian. To me, it screams pettiness, arrogance, and lack of world-view. And to think that it was juniors, seniors, and ALUMS saying most of it made it all the worse.

To get back to what I was saying originally, this hierarchy based on selectivity is simply silly. I would venture to say that all of my TASP friends (with possibly one or two exceptions) had better grades and standardized test scores than me. They were better writers, more well-rounded, more diverse than I. And yet not everyone who applied to Yale got in. Does that make me better or smarter than them? Absolutely and resoundingly not. Hell, one of my friends got rejected from Stanford and Cornell, and then was admitted to Harvard. Does that mean she is smarter than those of us who got rejected from Harvard? No. It doesn't.

It's so easy to get wrapped up in minute percentages, median percentiles, and GPAs that I think those of us in the HYP crowd often forget what makes up a good education. It's a dedicated group of professors with not only a smart, but also a creative and motivated group of students. Just because Yale and Harvard had sub-8% admit rates doesn't mean that Cornell (19.1%) shouldn't be an Ivy League school. I am absolutely certain that there is marginal or no difference between a Cornellian and a Yalie in terms of competence and intelligence.

Don't be a dick, Princeton. Alums and current students are going to make a much stronger impression on prospective students than percentages. If you're so worried about losing your prestige, then it only goes to show that you have very little.

Princeton: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/04/01/23213/comments/?p=2

Penn: http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2009/03/31/News/Admit.Rate.Rises.To.17.1.Percent.Interactive.Graph-3688972.shtml

From the top of my head...comin' out of the water...

Grizzly Bear rocks. There are no two ways around it. They're so deliciously weird, so totally different, yet still entirely listenable that it makes me want to clap my hands and jump up and down. Then it occurs to me that that would be totally lame.

There's something decidedly haunting about their music; make no mistake about it. It's not exactly the fist-pumping shit you put on before a tennis match or a heist, but damn if it doesn't feel good in that no-matter-what-I-do-my-legs-are-moving-of-their-own-accord. Not to say that it's dance-y, by any means, but simply that they're the sort of band that slowly seeps into your ears, crawls down your external auditory meatus, slips past your ear drum, and then fucking explodes in your hypothalamus.  

Their latest album, Veckatimest, is truly an experience. Southern Point, the opening track, just kind of drops in on you--jangling guitar strings and taps on the Chris Bear's ride cymbals feels like more of a middle-of-the-album slowdown type song, until around 1:00. The guitar and drums slowly build, pause, and then come crashing out. Never once does Dan Rossen stop his fingers from performing their intricate dance around his guitar's fretboard. He lets loose with "in the end/you'll never find me now" sounding like he's trapped in your shower upstairs while simultaneously pouring your mother a glass of Shiraz, telling her that she'll never "come to him." I think this speaks for Grizzly Bear as a whole--their music is truly a conversation with the listener. Sure, it's torturous at times, but it's because they actually mean it.

And then you meet the alter ego of Grizzly Bear. Fittingly enough, the second track on the album, Two Weeks, gives you just that. When I saw them perform last year, I was most struck by the fact that Chris Bear, their drummer and producer, was perhaps the most unique and musical of the lot. Having been a drummer for many years--and a depraved egoist for many more--I've always had a beef with the fact that drummers, while entirely integral, never have as much creative joy as the other instrumentalists. Chris Bear proves me wrong. Two Weeks  is probably Grizzly Bear's best song, and Bear is more than a minor influence on that. His drums dance an odd-military march meets art-house syncopation. It's as though he learned to play on pots and pans strewn around the kitchen, and adapted this model for the kit. At their show, he played without a kick drum. I was agog. The kickdrum, the literal heartbeat of the set, and he managed to do without. Beautiful. Anyway--Two Weeks is thus foundation-ed by Bear's snare chops. The roofing of this metaphorical palace is simple enough--a synth made to sound as a slightly flat and tinny piano, followed by a beautifully minimal Rhodes organ providing support columns. (I'm sick of the house metaphor.) But, but, but--the most fucking important and glaringly obvious aspect of Grizzly Bear's music are the voices. Two Weeks is sung, actually and completely sung, by Ed Droeste, founding member and lead man extraordinaire. His voice is a mellow and haunting baritone, almost burlesque-meets-opera. Droeste also does part of his backup vocals, providing a fascinating counterpoint to his voice during the pre-chorus. He is introduced, met and matched by a ghostly choir of Rossen, Bear, and Chris Taylor (multi-instrumentalist...I've seen him play bass, guitar, clarinet, and just sing). They harmonize so fucking well. It's really a jaw-dropping experience. Despite the cliche of admitting cliche, this band makes me want to cry I love them so much. (I forget which one, but one of them admitted to a lot of stupid fights over harmonies during the making of Yellow House.) 

That statement of amour may seem trite in the arms-crossed crowd of Indie music, but there's no denying that a band like Grizzly Bear, with a song like Two Weeks, is at once magnificent, heraldic, and simply sublime. They're impossible to label; maybe that's what draws me back. 

The rest of the album returns to type-A Grizzly Bear, heavily reverberated guitars and the Dan-Ed duo, softly beating drums and dark tones out of the bass, until, like in All We Ask, the paint is finally thrown on the canvas and the stage lights up. It's at once folky and kind of hardcore. There are other highlights on the album (the pulsating, driving beat and old-school sci-fi tones of Ready, Able; the Spanish-guitar-influenced About Face, and of course; While You Wait for the Others, one of my favorite songs of all time), but more than anything, it's a stellar album in that you have to sit down and really listen to it. It's good for reading to, writing to, thinking to, and grooving to, but it's not the type of thing you can go all the way with while you are driving or trying to entertain guests. Sometimes the folksy and depressing tunes found in the middle of the album can drag a bit if proper attention isn't paid them, and sometimes Grizzly Bear just doesn't fit the mood. But fear not: after your first listen, there's nothing that would fit the mood besides Veckatimest. 

(What exactly that mood is, I couldn't say. Just buy the fucking album already.)