Two fun things happened here in the country this weekend. Surprise!

The first fun thing was a show at Williams College. Vampire Weekend played.

The show was in a dining hall and I think the band was on the floor. I couldn’t see them, and I was terrified of squeezing myself into the crew of waify girls and beefy thick-necked boys to try to get a glimpse. During the show I realized that as much as I joke about it, I actually do not look nineteen. College kids — they’re young! I felt like an old weirdo in the back of the room nodding along to “A-Punk” while the kids danced up a storm. From across the room we spotted two other thritysomething-looking fellows who eventually came over and introduced themselves — we had met them at an N+1 dinner at the Pink Pony a few (!?) years ago and they were en route to Albany to visit family. I still can’t remember their names, but one was a professor to one of the kids in VW and showed a sort of parental pride when they took the stage.

The second fun thing was the so-called Bollywood Dance Party at MoCA, during which DJ Rekha played deafeningly loud bhangra tunes and everyone danced.

A huge, otherwise hidden (to me, at least) south Asian population suddenly emerged in this otherwise extremely white town. Giant projectors showed classic Bollywood clips. The press material included a cringeworthy item about one being “sari” if they missed the party, but it actually was fun. The evening concluded with large pitchers of PBR at an old man bar across the street from MoCA.

Pretty good, for the country.