A literary moment

In high school we read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. There were days and days spent on this particular Eliot piece. Not a stanza passed without a thorough dissection and discussion. On day one, we loved Prufrock. By day 900 (okay, i'm exaggerating a bit) we wanted to personally hunt down J. Alfred Prufrock and flog him mercilessly into literary submission. He was quite the nuisance, to the point that I'd find myself wandering the halls sing-songing these lines out loud:
"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."
JAP was like a giant mosquito wriggling about on the flypaper of our brains. urgh. But in retrospect, all that tireless analysis served a purpose. I actually remember the damn thing. It made an impression. I learned. And remembering this long proves I didn't kill all my brain cells in college after all. College. This brings me to today and why Prufrock is making this special blog appearance. I came across this: The Closest Jay Comes to a Love Song. It's J. Alfred Prufrock...adapted for frat boys. It's a damn entertaining spoof, if only because of my long history with JAP.

Here's a little taste of the original:

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And an excerpt from ode de frat boy:

Let’s go babe, you and I,
When the night’s straddling the sky
Like a passed-out drunk guy.
Let’s walk down frat row.
Yeah, let’s go
And remember our night in the HiHo Motel
And that wack restaurant with bad oysters. Hell!
Frat row that flows like a stream of spilt beer
When the keg is empty
To point us to the question…
But don’t ask “Where’s the other keg?”
I’d rather sit here and fondle your leg.

At the rager the chicks come and go
Talking about art or something, I don’t know.


I am so completely amused right now, it's downright scary.