Started to figure out who the heads of the departments are. I wrote letters, cold calls. Rejection is nothing to cry about but to score just once, means the world – like the time Canada Council enabled my Italian tour. I played North and South, none of the famous cities, no Rome, Napoli or Florence but Cosenza, Bari, Udine, Frosinone and 7 others. It was like I played the Winnipegs, Saskatoons and Trois-Rivi\u00e8res of Italy which was my speed anyway. Jerry Lewis wrote me back when I was a kid, I blame him for starting me believing in letter writing. Which older person encouraged me to try, I don’t know but it must have been the idea of one of them and there it was, in the mail one Tuesday, an autographed glossy 8 X 10, stunning. I didn’t realize he was also a polished asshole that never acknowledged his daughter and left her to suffer homelessness. So many people aren’t what they seem, so much everything isn’t what it seems. Bell wants to talk about mental health, Scientology is a religion, at Ford quality is job #1. Even though you’ve been doing it more than thirty years, how could you possibly teach improvisation or songwriting without a piece of paper proving you are an expert? To my pal Bob: All good wishes, Jerry Lewis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"