More academic comedy

A letter from my files (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

David B
Technical Director
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213


Wednesday, January 08, 2003

In re: June Black & The West Coast Drama Alumni Clan Achievement Awards

For the life of me I cannot understand why June Black would ask me to recommend her for a WCDAC Award. As a prior award winner (undergrad production 1990) I can think of nothing that would devalue my own award more than recognizing her.

June has been a cancer to the department for four years now. Every single thing we do is made more difficult merely by her presence. When she applies herself, then things can become truly miserable. For her entire time here she has demonstrated to the entire faculty that she feels she has nothing to learn from us, that we are all stupid, and not worthy of her respect. She is the only manager I have ever – in my entire career – heard tell a director to “fuck off” right to their face in a rehearsal. June has consistently asked to be excused from every single department requirement. When she does deign to lower herself to our level, she frequently forgets assignments and is absent constantly with “outside projects” – hooking or something, it’s not like she tells me.

I also need to tell you that this past semester June went out of her way to irritate a venerable member of our faculty, and my own personal hero, Dan Maranowski. For some reason, this little undergrad bitch thought she should be instructing a tenured full professor how to teach his class. Unbelievable.

Also, it has been my understanding that the Clan’s preference was to target these awards toward students expressing a strong interest in film. This is certainly not the case here. When June said “I just don’t understand film at all, The Godfather would have been so much better as a Broadway musical” I was simply flabbergasted. To her, film and television are despicable. Truthfully, she doesn’t even respect theatre as an art form. She’s more like one of these pompous performance art pukes. This is not a student with an L.A. career goal.

I swear if you give her this award I will just have to shoot myself.

Sincerely,

David B

Do you think that is what she had in mind? Should have seen her when I showed it to her prior to sending the real one.