Wednesday March 16th, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL/Chicago, IL Jerry Lewis turned 85 today. What a life that guy has had. I was never a big fan of his as a kid, even though a lot of my school friends loved him. I’ve since grown to tremendously respect him as I get older, and I think the man is a flat out creative genius, like him or not. He tends to polarize people, but so do I. That’s exactly what good entertainers do. Their fans adore them and their detractors abhor them. Either way, everyone seems to be talking about them and that’s the whole idea. Lady Gaga is the most recent one I can think of, but Charlie Sheen seems to be running hard to win the warped attention derby these days too. The accomplishments of Jerry Lewis are quite remarkable. People may not like his style or him in general, but the sheer volume of work he cranked out is impressive. Movies and live performance with or without Dean Martin and even the telethons all require ability. The problem is, he always seems to angry about everything when I see him interviewed. There’s always that layer of angst close to the surface when he talks about anything and it bothers me to see it. Maybe it’s because I had or still have it myself. I feel like I’m getting a lot more mellow as I get older, but Jerry Lewis seems to be going the opposite direction. I can’t speak for Jerry Lewis, so I won’t try. I’m happy with the direction I’m headed at this time, and intend to keep going in it. Jerry Lewis has an awesome body of work to fall back on, I don’t. That was the focus of my day today. I need to crank out some products. For breakfast I met with Cathy Rubino, an ex student who’s wonderfully creative and a sharp lady. She volunteered to help me create products, and I will let her. She has a lot of solid ideas, and we threw a few back and forth to get started. I can’t do all of this myself. Finding places to make stuff and getting prices and comparing notes with other places takes a lot of time, effort and patience. I don’t have any of that right now, so I’ll delegate it to Cathy to work on. We had a productive meeting and at least the ball is rolling now. Lunch was with Marc Schultz, and he took me out for a birthday treat at an Italian joint called ‘Cuzzin’s’. I’m used to the Milwaukee sub sandwich chain called ‘Cousins’, so my bearings were a little off. Magician Dennis DeBondt joined us, and he’s always a treat to hang out with. He’s very funny onstage and off and we all sat around laughing and eating. After some errands, I had a dinner at Boston Market with Todd Hunt. I still think Todd is THE top guy to model for marketing, and that’s where his background is. His products are stellar, and he has a system of mailing updates to customers and just runs his business with total efficiency. If you need a business speaker, go to www.toddhuntspeaker.com. I hit the trifecta for meetings today, and all three others bought because of my birthday, but I know that won’t last. I’ll gladly pay next time, and at least things are getting going, if slower than I pictured. That’s life, but at least I’m headed in a productive direction.
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