So Jeffrey Immelt Likes To Salsa Dance...

July 28, 2008 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

... so much so, that he insisted during my weekend stay at his beach hut in Montauk that we all call him Fernando... Fernando Immelt. You would think that wouldn't really bother me that much. I mean, I work in the content creation business - fiction and fictional names are our bread and butter. But this is a very powerful man and there is just something strange about him leading a "salsa jam" on the beach with Mort Zuckerman, Alice Cooper and Meg Whitman. Very strange indeed. I'm lucky I have a broken ankle and wasn't even remotely available to join in even after the Mudslides began to flow.

Don't get me wrong. I was a wild man in my late teens and early 20s. I was the son of a movie mogul - the great Harry Manka. I was out of control. Marlon Brandon and Wally Cox took me under their wing when I was 13 and brought me to all the best Hollywood orgies (Walter Matthau's house was like the freakin' Chicken Ranch). It was a great time. A few years later, I went to San Francisco and joined up with my long time friend Paul Krassner and the Merry Pranksters and licked sheets of acid as though they were Bomb Pops (or what we would have called them back then - 'No Bomb Pops, Man').

So I am definitely not one to judge my colleague Jeffrey Immelt. If he wants to be a 'salsa god' (as he called himself more than once), I think he has enough powerful media contacts to pull it off. I just wish he didn't wear that thong.