Jeffrey Immelt Likes To Salsa Dance...

... so much so, that he insisted during my weekend stay at his beach hut in Montauk that we all call him Fernando... Fernando Immelt.  Being in the content creation business, you would think that someone taking on a fictional personality wouldn't bother me at all - but when Jeffrey gets that crazed look in his eyes like Colonel Kurtz and says "call me FERNANDO", it can really creep you out... and absolutely terrify you.

Jeffrey is a very powerful man in the media world (much less so over the past few horrible months) and it was just bizarre to see him leading a "salsa jam" on the beach with Mort Zuckerman, Alice Cooper and Meg Whitman.  Very strange indeed.  I'm lucky I am still recovering from last year's ankle injury and wasn't even remotely available to join in even after the Montauk 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 in my youth.  I followed the Dead with Richard Fuld (disgraced former head of Lehman Brothers).  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.  I was in San Francisco with 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').  It goes on and on and on.

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 still has enough powerful media contacts to pull it off.  I just wish he didn't wear that thong.

Khan Manka, Jr. - Chairman & CEO - Manka Bros. Studios - The World's Largest Media Company