College--let the peer pressure roll

As someone that looks important due to his prime spot in the newspaper, where you can just see the headline after the crossword gets ripped out and the rest of The Chronicle gets ignored like the ugly girl in Tri-Delt who brings up the average GPA, Sir ELTON BRAND, PRINCE OF TENNIS is pleased to welcome the class of 2008. As a word of advice to freshman guys from someone who’s been there, offering your seat on the bus to a girl on the way to a party on Friday night won’t get you laid, but when you hit the speed bump you can totally lose your balance (flip-flops aren’t built for stability anyway) and fall into her (because you’re too innocent to do it on purpose).

Now SIR PRINCE knows what you’re thinking, SIR ELTON? PRINCE? What’s with the name referencing two of the progenitors of cheesy 80s music that no one would admit to listening to anymore? Well SIR ELTON is an international student and it takes a while for a new pop sensation to get out of Hollywood traffic, swing by that trendy new coffee shop for a latte, make fun of the kid that still has his collar down and board a plane for the less civilized parts of the world (and that’s just to get to the Midwest).

In any case, it’s no surprise that the PRINCE’s name is considered the height of fashion where he’s from. But where is that? BRAND’s name could be Russian, it could be Polish or it could be Madeup. SIR BRAND guesses if it was Russian, it would be Brandukov, and if it was Polish, it would be Brandowski, so that narrows down the choices. Yes, ELTON OF BRAND hails from the land of Make Believe (England? Peekskill? Japan?), just past French Guinea, where ELTON spends most of his time with Mr. Rogers and Peter Pan engaged in zany antics which will soon become the basis for a made-for-TV movie. Personally, he wanted to attract an older, more sophisticated audience and was shooting for a time slot on HBO right after Dennis Miller. What could be better than an audience whose only requirements of comedy are the use of overly long SAT words and snobbishly erudite references? SIR ELTON wouldn’t know because that’s all Duke students require.

Unfortunately, it seems that the land of Madeup is mostly inhabited by scantily clad full-bosomed vixens and best finds its place on Fox right after Temptation Island 5. On the bright side, the series could be filmed right here on campus and could replace the void in recruitment brochures left when Dawson’s Creek went down the drain. Because that’s the type of student we want here at Duke University: the kind that bases their college decision on the number of TV shows and movies filmed on campus. Fortunately, the school is currently in negotiation for the rights to sequels to Stealing Harvard and How High. Although, the Annual Fund has demanded that the first be changed to Giving to Duke and shown to every senior to avoid last year’s problems and ensure that there will be enough money to build a nice ottoman to complement the 2004 bench. And the Duke family has requested that the stars of How High 2 use tobacco instead of marijuana, although Betas have protested the move. They point to the humor of changing of the word Chronicle to Chronic on every newspaper stand as evidence that marijuana is inherently funny in a way that cigarettes aren’t, unless you think lung cancer is funny, you jerk.

Returning to the important issues (me), coming to America (SIR BRAND hears making references to hilarious Eddie Murphy movies makes this column hilarious-er) has been an eye-opening experience for him, and has given him way too much to write about, but his ramblings are reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and even though he hasn’t actually read it yet, he figures it’s a lot like this (really funny). Come on, he’s a stranger in a new land, Adams is a stranger in a new ummm space and land is an awful lot like space; the comparisons skyrocket from there.

How do you hitch a ride in space anyway? That reminds SIR BRAND of an episode of 3rd Rock From the Sun… oh sorry, he forgot exactly what happens, and how it relates to anything, but he thought it prudent to include a mid-90s TV show reference like Ramona Quimby. Now we can move on to bigger and better things, possibly in this millennium.

Like what’s the point of writing this? Comic relief? It could be like the scene in Macbeth with the gatekeeper, right before someone died, and Macbeth killed someone (that may have been the same scene). Anyway, that scene made me laugh uproariously, or at least my high school English teacher told me I was supposed to or I wasn’t “cultured.”

No. This is not desperate to entertain like a Kanye West concert on the eve of finals week. Like pirated music on the Internet asking to be downloaded, this is for “educational purposes only.” You better cite this correctly in your papers. APA mind you, none of that MLA crap they try to brainwash you with in Writing 20. As the SIR BRAND tries to brainwash you with inane blabber… disregard that last comment.