You all, my readers, will no doubt remember that I talked about sending out a farewell letter to my former classmates and a select few teachers at the place which shall not be named.  You will also bear in mind that none of the classmates wrote back within 24 hours (or have yet to, truth be told).  This, of course, lowered them on my mental scale of loyalty from “work friend” to “acquaintance”.

Now, today I received an email from one such acquaintance (We’ll call him “Dippy”.).  Dippy was the one director in our group of writer-directors that chose to shoot his scene without the boom mic, which cost him his sound.  Before the silence I received from Dippy in regard to my “final email”, I was ready to either dub new sound for him, or even come out and re-shoot the parts of his video that I was previously in… as a favor… for a work friend.

Now, work friends won’t pick you up at the airport or drive your pregnant wife to the hospital or even help you move (mostly), but they will help you with things that pertain to work.  (Work, in this case, being the “college” work we were doing for that place.)  If an acquaintance asks for even work-type help – well, he can go suck an egg, because you don’t know him like that.  This is the situation that Dippy found himself in when he wrote asking for me to come out yet again (We did this the first time.) to a Manhattan location to shoot some doofy character he wrote (which I had to help with, so that my lines wouldn’t be utterly ridiculous) – and again, for free.

Well, you know what?  When I was in school, you maybe could’ve gotten away with email-dissing me – I get it; we’re peers… we’re “busy”.  But when I’m not in school, guess what?  I’m talent… and talent (especially good talent) gets paid.  You want me to do something for free?  Then you’re asking as a friend, and if you haven’t shown yourself friendly, then guess what?  You don’t have your talent, and your piece that had one spark of creative awesomeness in it (me), is back down to your run-of-the-mill crappy film school clip.

I told him so in an email sent just to him (because I’m not some “Reply All” jerk)… in a Godfather voice.  That scene at the beginning of the first Godfather pretty much summed up the entire tone – I left it to him to decide whether it was worth apologizing and proving his mettle as a friend to me.  Dippy’s been oddly silent since.

He had insulted me with his silence, and he lost standing.  That’s the kind of person I am.  I feel slights of loyalty very deeply.  If someone betrays my trust, they will likely never regain it.  And if you’ve insulted me, don’t ask for my assistance unless you are ready to make amends.  That’s how men treat other men in this world.  You want to be a sniveling baby douchebag like the rest of the “men” in this world?  Fine.

But get off my lawn… I’m expecting important company.