by Katy Knapp
Daily Lobo
Imagine your grandfather leaves you $5 million in his will, but you can't get near the jackpot until you join the old man's college fraternity or the Marines. Doesn't sound too difficult, right? Well, it is if you are Kurt Stafford, the main character of the book Fubar.
He's a 26-year-old who has never held down a real a job and spends most of his days getting high and stealing money from his rich mommy's purse. There's no way this waste of space is going to make it in the Marines, so he opts to con some guys into letting him join Sigma Omicron Lambda.
There's another catch. If Stafford can't hack it in the frat, his adopted cousin Lyman gets the money.
After cheating his way into the College By the Sea in Santa Monica, Calif., Stafford quickly realizes he isn't going to get into this fraternity easily.
People don't like him. In fact, everyone hates him. The active members of the frat don't want to let him in. The pledges despise his presence. Only two guys see any redeeming qualities in him, probably because Stafford's so eager to get them stoned.
Oh, and I should mention, his cousin Lyman is also pledging, not because he is interested in keggers and philanthropy, but so he can make sure his loser cousin doesn't get his $5 million.
Author Ron Carpol leaves no space for the reader to sympathize with Stafford - even while he is getting robbed at a check-cashing place at gunpoint.
The guy craps in his pants, but we still hate him. I mean, he is in the check-cashing place to get his car out of the tow yard so he can hightail it back to the university to bribe his economics teacher into giving him a better grade. He does a lot of blackmailing. He really is a jerk.
The misadventures of Stafford might make a person wonder if there really is such a thing as karma. He uses an ex-prostitute to bribe his fraternity brothers and members of the administration. He steals money from his parents. He ridicules people and puts them down - everyone - whenever the opportunity presents itself. Yet things keep working out for the bastard. He schemes his way out of everything.
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Well, almost everything.
Despite all of this, I couldn't put the book down. While I was reading it, I felt offended almost 100 percent of the time. But I just kept reading, perhaps because despite the crude terminology and jerk of a lead character, it was funny.
And I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell for laughing.
