Principal’s Staff Rock Out, Secretly, in The Darkness

In a continued effort to engage the faculty in the strategic planning process, Principal MacFarlane convened a meeting of the principal’s staff only to discover that three of her staff, Dean of Students Melissa Mischke, Director of Studies Brooks Moriarty and Chief Financial Officer David Hanson, are former members of the British glam-rock band The Darkness, famous for songs like “Love on the Rocks with No Ice” and “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

Though some faculty have expressed cautious enthusiasm for the principal’s staff’s former music careers, many faculty believe the administration’s ties to The Darkness is reason for celebration. “I remember running into Dean Mischke on the way to faculty meeting one morning. She was wearing a pleather jumpsuit, retro square-framed sunglasses and absorbent cotton-polyester blend wristbands. All black,” said Nick Unger, Chair of the Classics Department. “That’s when I knew that I wanted to be the teacher formerly known as the lead singer of Doom Grinder. Latin only goes so far.”

Prior to her involvement in The Darkness, it is believed that Mischke, not John Deacon, penned Queen’s best selling single “Another One Bites the Dust,” complete with its subliminal backmasking. When asked about this rumor,  Mischke responded, “That’s ridiculous. I’m a drummer. I didn’t write the song, I just like to play it on repeat in the office.”

Principal MacFarlane told reporters that the news of her staff members’ former glam-metal careers will only enhance the school’s mission. “I’m not really hung up on their pasts” said MacFarlane. “I’m looking to the school’s future and how even experiences that feel so random can unite to form the noblest character, and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind.”

According to members of the English department, colleagues began to suspect Moriarty’s proximity to The Darkness after the former guitarist and backing vocalist derailed a discussion on course numbering with a long, rambling defense of the use of ellipses in The Darkness’s title to their second album, “One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back.”

“We couldn’t confirm anything, but we all suspected Brooks’s involvement in the band,” said Lundy Smith, English Instructor. “It wasn’t just the ellipses.”

Other faculty members corroborated Smith’s suspicions. “Edgar Lee Masters wrote, ‘The earth keeps some vibration going/ There in your heart, and that is you./ And if the people find you can fiddle,/ Why, fiddle you must, for all your life,” said Todd Hearon, instructor in English. “I’m just sorry I didn’t know sooner that Mr. Moriarty was shouldering this secret—all this dark matter. It’s what feeds his soul.”

David Hanson, Chief Financial Officer, and former producer for the band said that commissioning the spaceship and giant galactic sea creatures for the music video of the band’s hit “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” was “costly,” but that that the decision ultimately “paid dividends.”

“We had to manage the risk of putting our lead singer in a hot tub in space, regardless of the new chroma keying technology, a.k.a. green screen,” said Hanson. “Even though Justin Hawkins wasn’t in space, the risk was that he looked like he was in space.”

Meanwhile, Moriarty maintains that the use of a summer sausage instead of a microphone in the music video was his idea. “It just felt more organic.”