Ramblings of a Marketing Mind

Today I got invited to speak in front of the kids at the place where I attended my first two years of grade school: the Simon Bolivar Institute. It all came about because it turns out my youngest boy’s teacher at another school is the daughter of my own 1 st grade teacher. It’s a small world (after all!) Stand me in front of 400 movie theater managers and put on me an X-Men First Class Professor Xavier’s light-up helmet (yep, true anecdote, worthy of another blog by itself), and I’ve got no problem. But talking in front of children… that’s a whole different ball game. I remember a few months back when I had to attend my own kid’s school to tell a Halloween story and sing songs to his class. Now THAT’s a tough audience to keep entertained for 45 minutes. Whoever knows me, knows I’m not comfortable writing down speeches. I don’t usually put down on paper what I’m going to say, I just subconsciously make notes in my head and then let inspiration take over as I go along. Makes it easier...

After a long, long time, I've decided to start blogging again. And for no particular reason, I decided to begin with this recent anecdote. Anyone who knows me knows I love supernatural themes and horror stories. Since I was a teenager, I’ve searched for opportunities to experience strange occurrences, without success. When I lived in Miami for six months in the early 2000’s I had an experience anyone else would have attributed to restless spirits, but which I am fully convinced was the result of a very stressful period in my life. We were renting an apartment in Fountainebleu Boulevard and I recall going to bed and hearing a woman’s voice calling my name from the bedroom door, and one night when I lay facing the night table, I felt what I thought was my wife embracing me from behind. Only the embrace suddenly turned into very violent heaving and shoving (and it was not my wife, believe me!). Both times I rationalized I must have been suffering from stress and was probably half a...