We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this important announcement: Asher Roth? Really? For the love of crumbcake, Concert Board, what did I ever do to you to deserve such treatment? Are you all "Dark Knight" (2008) fanatics or something?
Early this semester I became familiar with the horrible dirge entitled "I Love College." Well, it's not really a dirge, though it does make me wish I was at my own funeral whenever I hear it. Let's disregard the fact that the guy can't rap; his attempts at stringing words together into semi-coherent statements are so pathetic that they border on the parody of a white rapper. Let's ignore the fact that the track has the production quality of something I might have made in my basement in high school. Let's ignore the fact that that his voice sounds like that of a pampered eunuch who has just finished gargling sour milk for two hours.
Go look up the lyrics. Or listen to it. Or, if you are brave (or mindless enough), watch the video (personally, I think "2 Girls, 1 Cup" is more watchable than this). If your eyes and ears don't recoil in pain not imagined since Marquis de Sade wrote "The 120 Days of Sodom" (1785), keep those "lyrics" in mind as you read the rest of this column.
So this is what college is to this guy? Bad pizza, worse beer and getting girls "completely naked?" (Lucky, dude, my friend can never get that left sock off.) While I enjoy hedonistic indulgences as much as the next guy, that's not college. Maybe to someone who rhymes "two, um" with "shoes on" and most likely flunked "Rocks for Jocks," it is, but let's show some standards, people. To this monstrous parody of a bro, college boils down to drinking and women. I'm pretty sure you can get those in many other places. I'm also pretty sure that we're not paying thousands of dollars a year so we can have the privilege of playing beer pong with Miller Lite. Asher Roth's depiction of college sounds exactly like what that naïve, aggravating prefrosh thinks college is going to be like.
What bothers me about this song? Perhaps that it's the gross celebration of the anti-intellectualization of America. God forbid that perhaps we actually care about learning. Nope. Classes are to be skipped and ignored. We "party!" and that's it. We will revel in being dumb, drunk, fat, horny slobs who are compelled by nothing more than our stomachs and genitals.
I know I sound Puritanical right now. I know you all like your stomach and genitals. Can't we include the brain in that trinity? Come to think of it, I'm not asking, I'm telling. Anyone who says "no" can get off of my campus right now.
I can't believe that my money is going to pay Asher Roth. That mindless, talentless, conceited [insert obscenity so horrible it defies imagination] is going to get thousands of dollars for his performance, some of which will be mine. I suddenly understand the cries for endowment transparency. I want to know where my money is going before they make the choice.
That my last spring fling will be stained by his act makes me simultaneously despise college, rap, music and the English language. I feel violated. I feel enraged. I thirst for justice. And you can bet your lit-theory reading, Vergil-quoting, Marlowe-analyzing keister that I'll be heckling him come Fling, loud and for everyone to hear.
"Do something stupid?" You already did that, Concert Board.
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Devin Toohey is a senior majoring in classics. He can be reached at Devin.Toohey@tufts.edu.
