I had a teacher when I first entered college who claimed he had a PhD from Yale or some place, in theatre. He had been hired based on that credential. The University of Cincinnati had a small theatre department, but one of the reasons I went there, initially, was so that I could have a double major, which UC allowed.
I always knew I was going to move to NYC, and after I got accepted at NYU, I moved there for my Junior and Senior years. Many of my credits didn’t come with me — only some of my English and French credits, so I had to go for an extra half year. I also discovered that the GPA in my minor (Journalism) was not high enough. I really hated journalism and wans’t good at understand the concepts. I was too complicated and journalism is about simplicity. The simple, well written sentence.
Anyway, I chose English because NYU didn’t do double majors and that was a good thing. But I heard later that Larry Myers, the teacher I was talking about, had been fired from UC because he hadn’t, in fact, obtained a PhD. He was a fraud. After firing him, U.C. took what was left of the department and absorbed into its much more successful and vaunted CCM (Cincinnati Conservatory of Music), which spat out Broadway stars writers like there were too many of them. One, in fact, was my music partner in Men’s Glee, who went on to become a Tony winner: Stephen Flaherty.
But Larry Myers was now in New York, supposedly teaching at Johns Hopkins in Jamaica, (although you can never quite tell) and over the years he’s just become one of the most insane and vainglorious people on earth. He continually makes up identities so he can comment on issues in the New York Times and it’s always the case that what he writes, as this other person, never has anything to do with the article. Over these 30 years or more, I’ve come across probably 20 to 30 “comments” in various places and in various disguises.
I used to see him when he lived on Commerce Street (I lived nearby) but the last time I saw him he looked terrible — stricken — and he was walking down the street and seemed to be in a daze. He made up a story about having two laptops stolen at Port Authority, but there was police footage showing that he didn’t have laptops when he entered the building. He called it a senior moment.
But the real fraud for me was that I had been taught by this shipwreck of a human being for 2 years — and nothing he said was true. We had a book in which we studied ever play in it, EXCEPT for the black writer: Amiri Baraka, which Larry said was “just a black anger play.”
We used to go see his performances, but Larry would laugh the loudest at the jokes because he said it got others to laugh. I finally decided not to go anymore, because I didn’t like him. He remains one of the worst teacher, if not the worst, that I have ever had and although it was decades ago and he’ll never talk about the people he misled from that part of his life, it’s a damn shame our paths crossed.
I have Covid by the way. Almost no symptoms except fatigue. No fever or cold or flu. Somewhat achy neck and upper back.