Carl Icahn Called Me Last Night...

... to inform me that he was going to wage a proxy battle for control of Manka Bros.  The first thing I needed to do was get out of my mud bath.  The second thing was to find out what a proxy battle was.  As Chairman of the World's Largest Media Company, this was something I should probably know about.

I told Icahn he was out of his mind and most likely forgot to take his medication.  I said, "I'm sorry Book Club didn't go better but this is ridiculous.  We're just a humble giant media company trying to make our movies and television shows in peace." 

He said that he had taken his medication(s) and was doing this because he feels Manka Bros. is grossly undervalued (which is true) and grossly mismanaged (which is not true!... with the exception of the Theatrical Group - but Robin Rafe knows she's on thin ice - or, at least, she knows now).

At this point, Carl Icahn started blabbering about shareholder value and profit margins and blah blah blah.  I just plugged my ears and said 'la la la la' at a high volume.  When he was finished I simply told him:  "Carl, do realize what this studio has been through in the last 90 years and we're still here today?"  I then gave him a laundry list of hardships Manka Bros. has endured over the years.  These include:

• The Great Mud Slide of '22

• The Great Cyclone of '34

• The Great Burbank Tornado of '84

• The Great Giant Rat Infestation of '92

• The recent Great Los Angeles Earthquake of 2008

• Complete Fire Devastation in 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, 1934 (2), 1935, 1941, 1948, 1954, 1958, 1968, 1977, 1984, 1996

• My uncle Simeon Manka even wrote in his autobiography Family Secrets that there was a tidal wave in Burbank that hit the studio in 1920 (but he was crazy so we don't really believe that one).  He died in 1958 on Hollywood Boulevard wearing only a sandwich board that read "Benny's World Of Beef."
  

• There was the Fatty Arbuckle Lifetime Contract in 1922 that almost sank the studio before it really started
  

• Louis B. Mayer planted landmines all around the Manka Bros. lot in 1938 (we believe some are still buried around the lot today especially near the main TV building)

• My uncle, the great Khan Manka (Sr.) was shot, stabbed, strangled, run over by several cars and kidnapped... and that was just in 1935
  

• The studio has been near bankruptcy 25 times including most recently in 1984 where we were forced to produce Suzanne Somers Thigh Master informercials just to stay afloat
  

As I was about to tell him of the grizzly bear attack I survived in my office, Carl Icahn cut me off--

"But you won't survive me.  No one beats The Icahn!"  He hung up.

I got back into my mud bath.  I just wish things were settled like in the times of my father and uncles.  If someone wanted something, they just fought over it with boxing gloves as in the time my Uncle Khan boxed Carl Laemmle for the movie rights to Frankenstein.

I guess those days are over.  A proxy battle it is.

Khan Manka, Jr. - Chairman & CEO - Manka Bros. Studios