Author: Thang Nguyen 555

For a moment, I thought I had been back to the war zone. But it’s simply opening day of Journalism 101 at Penn State, University Park. Manual typewriters, manual typing. You know the sound of cheap unmaintained buy-by-the-bulk typewriters.

From there, “writers” went on to the Daily Collegian, and the lucky few, the Globe, the Post, the Times. The last half of the 70’s “What’s that sound, everybody going down”. Everyone’s freaked out! ohhhhhh freak out as “le Freak” that we were. My student film soundtrack was “Ape Man”, showing Trapper, recruited from down the hall, cruising top-down past the Wall, where “hair down to his knees”…Come together, right now.

Years before, I used to buy beers for my Dad, tall bottles – one per day. Half a Tiger (the brand) for lunch, put the cap back, and save the other half for dinner. From 2-wheel country to four-wheel, actually, I walked on campus – unlike LA people – jumping – not over bodies – unlike at Beaver Stadium’s Longest Yard – go Lions Hail Mary last second attempt), from tall to very short bottles of Rolling Rock off campus.

What I knew about America, I learned and experienced at that four-years college. Spring 79, I was in the thick of our crisis of the decade: Three Miles Island. And who else but my journalism roommate Tim, one of the three interns, packed up my days-worth of clothes and sent it on the station chopper (which would turn around with hard-earned hustled 3/4-inch tapes i.e. Governor Thornburg one-on- one for airing at night). Unlike my medic Captain brother, who hitched ride on leave from Nam via choppers in years previous.

Typewriters and walking, jogging, and running in-between classes. What, why, where, how and when. As I walked out of the Main library, winter 76, I froze before looking up to feel the tip of my tongue tinkle (I had never seen snow in previous 19 years of my earthly dirty life). Preachers were having a field day using snow-covered grass as visual aid for God’s blanket forgiveness.

Not just snow that was foreign. First dance – Big Band – was wild and first flick saw rain of rice from the audience (Rocky Horror Picture Show) while first black-tie was with our Raymond Brown’s Penn State Choir (at the Heinz Hall, Mahler number 5 conducted by the late Leonard Berstein).

The later swing of the baton brought tears and goose bumps to both choir and the audience alike. After all, who wouldn’t, knowing ultimately and intuitively, the highest hope is not “four more years”, or “another ride” along the trail of the city on the hill. It’s the Resurrection, of mortal and failing human. All things – you and I – must pass.

Go home, do your duty (our coach urged us on).

And I know journalism students of Penn State are still marching, typing and rushing as all interns do to meet deadlines and final grades. Heck, it’s gonna blow up. What blows up? The nuclear reactors, dammit. You have to use “might”, not “gonna”. We don’t know that yet for a fact. How about we have you, expandable intern, cover it live for final?

Who? Joe Pa was going to give a statement from his window.

Where? not the men locker, stupid.

What’s that sound? “Everybody going down”. The past is not even past.

When? when the kids were on campus for a tour. It’s a big place.

Diagonally, from one end to the other, you got to run your heart out those 20 minutes to make the next Speech class (back then even without laptops, textbooks – used or new – were sufficiently heavy). Only to sweat out and glance sideway to find the team (football) doze off.

Campus Crusade, campus gay, campus ROTC. Everyone recruited everyone else. We holstered our calculators on the side, pulling it out at cash register the way one would the phone today to divide equally frat house grocery bills.

Summer rental was cheap. Way cheap. So chip in. Four guys to an address, sleeping upstairs and eating downstairs. The Corner store. and alley bars that announced their last calls, empty bottles and egg rolls. They made those salty so bars can sell more beer (I am lying, learning this from Colonel Sanders cold calling experience).

Then the dressing up on campus for job interviews. Senior panic. La Vie, the yearbook. Featuring the journalism lab to fill up the pages and justify the prices. P.S. don’t forget to look up yours truly. 1979 grad. With an Electronic News photographer job offer that did my teacher’s mom proud (btw, Jimmy Cefalo did go on down to Miami from WNEP-TV). Penn State proud.

I love my America, at least, my early experience of America. It offers my mom a sanctuary, and a decade later, Pop too. Both survived in their Virginia cold and calm last days on Apple sauce. I no longer had to buy tall beer bottles for my Dad. From time to time, when spotting a wind breaker, I thought back of Joe Pa, first god, and Raymond Brown, our second god (breathe, think).

From the moment I had no more insulation from Happy Valley (logistically, it’s hard to get there, but once you are there, just stay put until you got kicked out). Cheap living in the summer tines. Subsidized flicks by Student Union, and THON Night at the HUB that raised millions. Talent all homegrown, performed at coffee houses.

And for drinks? you’ve got to go off campus, on Game Day. Push them back, push them back, way back. Students just jogged their restless nights away on Main st.

My Happy Valley was indeed safe and truly happy. I can attest to it. Now, may I take the Fifth, since I have been complicit – guilty by association – or just standing by as an observer of the times. From 1976 – 1979, we tried hard to forget (but hard to forgive) the “plumbers”, the choppers, and the bagman. We actually romanticized crime in the fictitious family of the Corleone. No wonder folks like Roy Cohn or Chuck Colson went on to notoriety and fame.

We wanted to be “Born to run” (remember the sax solo) B. Springsteen, absorbing Future Shock – Alvin Toffler while being equipped with two computers, the only two, on campus.

My memory of course was selective, cut/paste. The yearbook I never bought, the certificate which was sent over the mail and my class photo, in pimp suit still with PROOF on it, proudly displayed in my current living room (I went straight from Scranton internship to home in N VA, without attending Graduation.)

But might as well. Happy Valley was happy, fun, and full of memories: good times, nap times – even sleep catch up times on truck flatbed all exposed. Work study, work assignment and internship.

In between, a date here and there, le Freak, Ballroom Dance and top-up coffee at the Corner Room (Why don’t you ask Elein out, she is a nice girl!).

Thank you thank you thank you. If the clock could ever be turned back, now is a good time to change those typewriter’s ribbons, to white-out and delete, in today’s parlance, ready for posting those Least Objectionable Print.

Students used to the carry the Collegian and keep it in their dorm room. Corporate still recruit on campus. And snow still is falling outside of the library, I am sure.

Here we go Lion, here we go. We are. Have been. And will aways be. As long as Nittany Mountain still echoes its tribal rivalry sound in Happy Valley to announce tail gate time. It’s that loud and still around, lifetime long, once you’re there in person.

Can WXLR, soft rock station, put on something nice for parting, please.

Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” would do for an appropriate sendoff.

Right on. get set, go! Elton’s piano keys. bang bang: one-arm pushups: one, two, three,

In Cinema Paradiso, kids couldn’t wait for the opening credits to start dreaming. In my case, there were tons of kids, in open seating on open graves with projected images on neighbor’s wall. The alley zigzags and the screen was kind of slanted. Since my cousin’s home movies were a rare treat, beggar can’t be choosy. His work for our National Film Department afforded us VIP movie premiere and sneak peek for the entire hood of District 3, back then Saigon.

Since those showings were sporadic, during the week, I sneaked in, free admission, to our uncle’s cinema for additional fix: blind sword man, Woodstock the movie, and Alain Delon. Local movies were rare, so Viet films featured Thanh Lan (her cautious step into the slippery pool causes loud banging on cinema cheap wood, Kieu Chinh, Doan Chau Mau, Le Quynh and Loan Mat Nhung, our Jean Paul Belmondo in our own “breathless” scene).

And so it went. My Cinema Purgatory. No adult mentor, no role model. Kids ran amok. Smoking on the roof, in the alley and God knows where (cigarettes sold in open pack). Find something to amuse yourself with. Stop hanging out with the Franco-Vietnamese girls. Here, the guitar.

“Oh! mon amour écoute-moi. Déjà la vie t’attends là-bas. Non n’ai pas peur il faut me croire. La vie est belle même sans mémoire. Tu sais je te raconterai. Avec le temps tu comprendras“. Vinh Loi cinema was hang out place for French gay men.

Dreams. Projection and self-projection. Mirror and screen. A dissolve or slow pan, then sideways swipe at the speed of light… 50 years from screen Left to screen Right. Purgatory isn’t long, after all. In slow motion. In the cloud or in one’s head.

All off-line memories will soon be lost when we are no more. (btw, AI is external, outside our heads, and its recommended patches of memories weren’t without motive i.e. you are what you own). Now a word from our sponsor to reiterate the underlying theme: own more, live better.

Time. Elapsing. Calm and courant. It’s up to you to be, become more fully and independently. With privacy, legacy, inheritance, identity as an individual or a group. Even the cinema as a genre tends to morph and bleed into “dinner theatre”. For fear of being irrelevant in the heap of history, rich people donate to keep their good-and-buffed-up names going e.g. foundation, grant, scholarship, sponsorship, donorship and dedication e.g. Tobacco princess, Railroad king, Cotton King etc..

Of late, films are impatient for fear of extinction too (partly due to our ever-shortened attention span, partly due to over-supply). As Peter Thiel said “we wanted flying cars. Instead, we got 140 characters”. Time and traffic in films are compressed e.g. jump cuts to car pile-up or foreplay scene. Roy Sneider and Steve McQueen, all cops’ chase. Cars used to be made of Pittsburg steel.

Boom! Right after “Directed by…” to establish the context. First scene would show shaky hand-held medium shots of couples making out and making love, under and over the sheets.

Heaven can’t wait in Euro or American movies. In post Reality TV and real time TikTok, no one wants to produce Jeremiah Johnson (the late Robert Redford) wandering in the wilderness, eating out of his hunt (comment by its producer Sydney Pollack).

I watched Sugar Hill last night, to my amazement and on the eve of MLK Day (only Wesley Snipes could get away with pimp-looking purple suits).

Early 80’s (“Who am I to disagree??”) saw on and off-screen instances of Yellow Peril, from Detroit to the Gulf States, from Rising Sun to Gung Ho, with Michael Keaton carrying his goldfish instead of Bankers box when his Japanese-run factory job was no longer.

All threw darts at that decade’s new “bad guys” (65’s Watts had been behind, then came the 70’s with Black visibility and resurgence in the person of Lionel Richie: “All night long” with Prince Phillip at 84 LA Olympics closing ceremony.)

In Carter’s term, malaise: “buying things we don’t need, with money we don’t have to impress neighbors we don’t like”.

In contrast, Asian automobiles (remember the Datsun), Asian fishermen (Viet refugees) and Japanese tour via Beverly Hills on route to Las Vegas… (tons of folded maps, showing homes of the stars, only to get a glimpse of Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk). Due to asymmetrical exchange rate, the yen enabled Jap’s buy-off sections of Wilshire Boulevard, where hotels turned Telco co-location data centers (and DJT worried about Real Estate down slump in NYC, on Today’s Show, talking to an audience of at least 60 million – the other runner up was Good Morning America, another LOP – least objectionable program).

Bachelor parties in lay-off Detroit? Hit him son. The bottom fell out in Detroit for father and son.

Both instances, My Lai and Vincent Chin (who wasn’t even Jap), perpetrators got away with little time served. A slap in the hand and a slap in the face of justice. I save that for another day.

Just want to acknowledge Chinese American from laundromat and Hell Kitchen (yours truly know a little bit about Chinatowns throughout the US due to my stint at MCI International) to literature (Ha Jin’s Waiting) to film (Rush Hour), from Bruce Lee to James Hong, from cuisine to chip manufacturing, as Harold Evan coins it: from Steam engine to Search engine (on this note, watch out for Chinese AI).

When a minority, one gained strength in numbers, lumping nearby ethnic groups into a monolith voting bloc (they can’t kill us all!) e.g. Hispanic Republican? or like earlier European emigrants inching alongside Blacks and Jews earlier comers. Then the children of their children refuse the label. Mainstreaming and live streaming, 140-character tweet and daily podcast. Technology-enabling and equalizing social effect on social media. From mass media to atomized mix use “phone” in the hands of the “people”. All stove pipes. Alone together again, by design.

We’re the people. We’re the world. We’re the children (of whom?). Million-men march? Even then and there on the National Mall, everyone who protests would be looking at the small screen via livestream. It was wild. Unthinkable. Out there (protest tends to happen in January freaking cold) one has to climb the electrical pole for a better view, like us, kids, at Cinema Purgatory tomb.

It’s been fair to say, Vietnamese American, although late to the party, have had a hand in many pots, even the melting pot: engineers and dentists, MIA’s and MBAs (married but available….). We don’t dance, don’t fabricate IEDs on Iraqi roadside (improvised explosive devices), and certainly don’t stuff ourselves with fast food (except for Costco pizza). Just working two shifts Silicon Valley electronic assembly to send our kids to Med school and pharma school.

Always buy by the bulk. Always loyal to clan-man ship, temple and church, Tet Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival, following the footsteps of previous waves of “Asian American”. Lots of literature as we cannot wait to tell our untold tales (Unwanted? the Sympathizer). Numbers don’t lie. Just look at remittance over half-century! Out of the goodness of our hearts, we make sure folks back home don’t dumpster dive for food.

If you scrolled down to my other blog “Our secrets”, you would find my mentioning the Deer Hunter. On this side of the Pacific, blue-collar vets also suffered PTSD, albeit taking it in stride, if the job and spouse were still waiting. Other times, jobs were out-sourced then compainies “in-sourced” immigrants to take “white” jobs. (Swing vote, Kevin Costner).

“Hey, if you need help tonight…(on John Savage wedding night), don’t’ hesitate to call”, says Cazale (his fiancée in real life, Meryl Streep, played the bride maid in that flick). the Deer Hunter.

Asian banter too. We just keep a low profile often times mischievous and incognito. See the Quiet Vietnamese, my other blog (many felt right at home behind a mask during covid). Don’t make waves. Don’t dance and don’t go to bar for Bachelor party. Not in today’s Minneapolis or Detroit. Mistaken identity happened before and will more than likely to happen again.

If you made movies e.g. “Who killed Vincent Chin”, be sure to work from your characterization out, one layer at a time. Use flashbacks in black/white, “Asian” ancestors working the railroad line etc…. dissolve to the present while reflecting on mirror, with make-up and special lighting (various skin tone reflect light differently). IP man, Crazy Rich Asian and Gangnam will fade out. Good characters and story lines endure e.g. Shanghai Triad.

Just know how hard and how long it has been for Bollywood to trek to Hollywood. In Rush Hour or any hour.

My advice. Just drop it. Some technologies are too risky and capital intensive. Films are trekking on its last leg (decline phase of product cycle i.e. empty AMC dinner-theatre). Good riddance to John Yang of PBS weekend. Nice work of journalism and public service.

Rest of us and rest of the time. Until we prosper and are more confident, with critical mass of a buying club e.g. Swiss privacy, Amsterdam liberal, Taiwanese chip, then only then, the group would achieve bargaining power.

Even without the hood/mask over our head/face. Another earlier group already claimed IP rights to it (knight in white hood). Just check with Asian American in the early 80’s, in Detroit or Gulf Coast. BTW, yours truly was so clueless, that upon re-entry from Relief work in Asia, hearing “sweet dreams are made of this”, I auditioned for the role opposite Ed Harris (who plays a Klansman in Alamo Bay), with our own Le V Khoa playing a provincial and protective priest.

Oh well, back to the screen, but not in open seating in open air on someone’s grave. Unlike that Italian lonely kid who was shown around by the town projectionist, we had our unforgettable times at Cinema Purgatory (even eye-witnessing the burning monk a few blocks away) very noisy anticipating the start of cheap home movies. For a moment we forgot the reality of death to cheer and wow at wedding vows, my cousin’s, on screen.

25 years later, I returned to visit that same cousin. With time passed, he told me (like a movie director he wished to become) to swing by the elementary school, the neighborhood and the alley. He just stopped short of laying the same Cinema Paradiso soundtrack for my return visit. They cleared the long tombs for crowded living space. Then when my cousin got a tourist visa to see America, I reciprocated, driving him and his wife on a tour of where else but the Hollywood sidewalk.

At Cinema Purgatory, there was no admission tickets nor indulgence. No mass conversion like at a Billy Graham stadium crusade. Only entertainment, on mass graves free of charge.

Nowadays, the price of admission is attention and interruption for programmatic and predictive AI ads, showing chirpy, flickery images of 1s and 0s reproduction of Breathless, whose actors read out loud Faulkner’s closing: “between grief and nothing, I chose grief”.

At AI cinema, unlike Cinema Paradiso, nor Cinema Purgatory, we see no kids around, watching at will, any time, all alone, again, naturally.

CV or Eulogy version?

Who and what are you? …so, this is Christmas…and what have you done? Giving or taking, contributing or exploiting?

In “This is for Everyone”, Tim Bernes-Lee recounts his discovery (HTML) that places platform in everyone’s hand, “solidly” and “intentionally” (not just grab everyone’s attention to monetize).

What a romantic and a necessary notion. I love his snippet when Vint Cerf elbowed him: “You are holding up lunch” (Tim’s Turing-Award acceptance speech went a bit overtime).

People do good and do well both at the same time. It doesn’t have to be an either/or zero-sum society. Christmas celebration in Gaza? Yes. The homeless got a meal, the lonely got invited and the orphan found a home (for that matter, a Messiah got a manger).

Abraham obeyed. As a result, we got succession, continuity and lineage down onto David, the King, and from then the Messiah. Sure, the world needs messengers and mouth pieces. It needs thinking soldiers, thinking AI’s and thinking taxpayers. Hey, you spent our public dollars for your own gain (Bag Man).

Three cheers for Mac-Kenzie Scott who gave billions. Our new “civic” trickle-down economy propels the engine of commerce, for continuity and progress.

Medicine-sans-frontiers enables longevity and reduces infant mortality. When they grew up, needing food, education and yes, guidance, we turned away from them, failing to instruct as to what and what not to take (not a knife to kill your parents, a gun to shoot on campus) and how to learn long to eventually draw up somewhat of a CV version on LinkedIn. Be all you can be i.e. honor, decency and loyalty.

From potato chips to graphic design chips, the physical layer (Born to be wired as in Softbank’s data center investment) allows us to thrive by extracting the fruits of bots’ labor, finding answer to the right question, preventive or corrective. Rodin portrays the Thinker; Hopper shows our “Night Hawk”. Aristocrat’s spare time: sitting, sipping and pondering about life, liberty and love. Billions can now afford the fear of missing out thanks to the app layer (private) which built on top of (public) military-industrial-complex funding and university researching.

Will there be light? Necessary for course-correction. Abraham, it’s me.

Let sons, and daughters too (those who got early-childhood vaccines) go to college, gain some knowledge and thrive in the Age of AI. I am old enough to remember the Tylenol scare, the Oil Embargo and the Iranian Hostage crisis, then later Dr Fauci on Nightline, talking about the AID scare. Old enough to remember (even eyewitness) the burning monk and the pissing marine (his excuse to disappear behind the embassy stairs for absolute last chopper exfiltration).

Crises constitute life. All the singing and shooting. Recording and replaying, MP’s and MP3, “so this is Christmas….and what have you done”. In the early 80’s, shooting celebrities was the in thing e.g. Lenon, Reagan and Brady. Today, this has morphed into mass-shooting as cause-célèbres.

Do your part in advancing the race, our human race in view of Big Data. Shame it not and certainly not the One who made you (who live among the wildflowers and in a world which cannot stop talking (TikTok). Come to think of it, one needs a Messiah, more than mouthpieces except for a notable few, Tim Berners-Lee among them, who are lucky to be a byline, a footnote in tech when zooming out – way out.

CV or Eulogy version?

Have you noticed first slowly, then suddenly, certain things just disappeared? Hardback, softcover, large print, vinyl and boombox…just to name a few.

Monuments stay. Libraries and cathedrals stay.

Millionaires used to leave behind endowments for library to spread and strengthen literacy and civic education.

On this note, I call on Tik Tok, Meta and Netflix to start giving back as a form of voluntary reparation for the crime of mass neuro-cide. The same mass they have “hooked” with self-inflicted race-to-the-bottom i.e. globalized content of the least common denominator- to maximize and monetize eyeballs (16 billions viewing trash talks, body parts and cheap comedy).

No? Oh, we’re just tech platforms. It’s up to Congress, section 230 etc… who couldn’t regulate Chinese content (no one reads nowadays, much less Chinese).

Opium and opioid for the mass. It makes for easier control and to manipulate. Lots of data to back up Ad billing claims. It used to be a tossup for marketers in analog broadcast eco system. Next morning Neilsen rating and ranking to find out if the show aired the night before was a hit. Now, the mass begs: “please hit me with your few-seconds-blip”. The subliminal is elusive, so self-evident and expected like toll at the toll booth.

We are willing creatures of conditioned reflex and response. Even response in the absence of stimuli. Brain dead. Neuro-suicide. Water-dripping torture.

With this slow-boil effect, suddenly. “I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary said to me…Let it be”. Tolerate it. Live with it.

Trillionaires today sell dreams on Mars, sacrificing today’s generation for a future nobody can stay around to verify.

Just to make sure you are not a machine. Can you commend so I know those eyeballs are from real – people with emotion and in motion.

We need a new generation, with a new explanation not zombie nation, whose citizens are well-oiled and mechanically sold out (AI is doing the selling, and we the taking).

We need Black Sabbath, not Black Friday. The globalizing of the grotesque. Who cares about learning (actually it is lifelong unlearning since edu-care means to bring out from pulpits what’s hidden inside) when things are readily available, cheaper, faster and better (sewing machine for fraction of yesterday’s cost).

All of a sudden, no longer do we jump, hop or frog-leg as should be. All tranquilized, narcotized and anaesthetized. A hyper-ill online “community”, albeit globalized (currently with little oversight – all distributed, blame or otherwise, leaving responsibility to self-regulated, self-correction in scale).

With minimum requirement for admission, an internet connection, then you’re in. MP3, MP4 etc…with no MP’s to guard the gate (against barbarian). The neuro-dead nexus of inter-subjectivity.

8 billion stories and counting. To get noticed, with the help of AI. It’s the best and worst of times. With hidden punchline and bottom-line: we’re hooked on it as new habits and norms. No twists of plot, no nothing. Certainly not hardback, softcover and vinyl. All 1’s and O’s.

Oh! talks of the town now involve a guy, at his own request, was beheaded while he was jerking off live online to troll. Masturbation and “kill me” for hire merged into one. A story that begins and ends in a close loop. No plot. No moral nor guardrails. Ecstasy and nihilism, violence and victory (of the platform that laughs itself to the bank).

Inadvertently, we are globalizing the ill which used to stay within walls; border walls or firewalls. Improved Gong Show is now re-open for business, wide open and welcoming the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The last seems to get dignified by more Likes (fake news got around the world while real news barely finished tying its shoes).

Back then, around the Great Depression, people were in line for soup and bread, not at Tiffany, nor 84 Charing Cross Road. What was that device called phone? Without the benefit of seeing forward, little did they (1929 generation) know, today’s kids anywhere and everywhere, AI-assisted, could google and no one knows and can control content.

Good luck Tiffany Gore.

Much is given, much demanded. C’mon, Tik Tok, Meta, Netflix and Nvidia. You have reaped the benefits of write-offs. Isn’t it time to give back, just a few books (instead of cooking the book). Or if preferred, an occasional free content that elevates the mass (positive reinforcement). Help the truth and the good to tie their shoes, literacy vs ill, scholarship and mentorship instead of quick Prime “free” shipping (pickaxes, shovels, and sieves in today’s digital Gold Rush).

Millionaires in the past used to donate to library to lift up the mass, the huddle mass. Like vinyl with revenge but not return, certain things slowly then suddenly vanish without a trace. Have you ever wondered why?

In ancient times, messengers/couriers had to run distance, arrive exhausted and get killed . Message-received more than often turns out different than message-perceived. Try it the next time you have a party, after a few drinks. Start a gossip, see how it takes on a life of its own unrecognizably at the other end.

Even in our age of Tera-bite broadband, lightning-fast fiber and millions of podcasters, we still haven’t done a good job at communicating. Folks like Reagan, Noonan, Gergen, Psaki hard-earned their money. In their capable hands, message-intended has higher chance of getting passed audience’s pre-conceived notion.

“The President said…”, he intends and means this and that. Please do not misconceive or prejudge.

Rephrasing and repeating.

In modern times, Press Secretary got fact-checked all the time at once. Not killed, just “fired”. Unknown unknowns.

Right before April 30, 1975, Dr Hung Nguyen held a press conference, paid for out of his own pocket, plus some pocket change from a sympathizer. The embassy staff of SVN had already fled, after cleaning out the safe.

The WH itself held a press conference, announcing that the war was over, and ALL personnel had been evacuated. No fact checks. Turned out there were a contingent rear guard troop on the Embassy roof (at that tail end of the war, people looted and burned oil drum worth of US currency).

Lucky for Kissinger, who lived well into his old age. In contrast to ancient times when rulers did not have to abide by the Rule of Law. In today’s charged atmosphere, having a heart in the right place is not enough. One has to be a diplomat, politician and a press secretary all at once. Don’t say “genocide”. Too violent and offensive. Don’t say “murder of innocent children.” (mass shooter).

Those are just two examples of how emotional language could stir. It’s there in the dictionary, but once it’s sent, received and perceived. oh boy oh boy, there is no stopping. I did not say staffers at the SVN Embassy “embezzled” to start their new lives in America. Had I written “staffers stole from their struggling country’s coffer whatever meager money for rice run”, I would have stepped on toes. It’s ironic that as a victim of war, I now have to be more “diplomatic” than the corrupt diplomats themselves.

Somebody did something to someone. And that someone died, unable to send any message from the grave.

Yet in front of the multiple mikes, I phones, watching eyes and notebooks, we have to restrain ourselves. Let Karma and the Court do their work. Justice grinds slowly but surely. There will be apprehension and compensation (hopefully with interests).

There will be punishment for crime committed. That’s what jails are for.

All I want is to have clarity of thoughts, warmth of heart and empathic language to convey my sense of sadness and sorrow. Good intentions and speed of delivery are never enough. Message-intended more than often gets mis-perceived.

In Asia, it’s not what you give, but how you do it.

Today, we’re all un/disqualified as a messenger. Where is your pouch, bike and helmet!

Let AI do the job. Can it do the job? In Joe vs the volcano, Tom Hanks’ supervisor from Hell keeps repeating himself over the phone: ” He gets the job. But can he do the job.”

Only when its (AI) heart is in the right place. Like Reagan’s City on the Hill, Noonan’s Characters count, Gergen’s the fire in next gen, and Psaki…. let ‘me be clear….

Repeat, reframe and even then, message from the heart still gets misperceived once received.

It’s been fifty years since, yet that US-shaped cake with red-white-blue icing still lingers somewhere in my memory: all typewriters stopped, and all Child Welfare staff joined in “Happy Birthday”. Placing unaccompanied minors into foster care to them was just a job. To show me, unpaid interpreter, some humanity was extra.

The 322-22 highway curved along the Susquehanna River to lead the way. My first time away from home. Alone. To face destiny. Everything, everyone and everywhere looked utterly alien.

My mom stayed back in the camp, like a mother hen, guarding the fort of Indian town Gap (yet we had a heart to pick up a hitchhiker). My sister’s family of 6 got group sponsor down to Northern Virginia. My guitar brother had, without missing a beat, restarted his US pharmaceutical career in New Jersey. Voila! 4 different zip codes.

We’re almost out of the woods or so I thought. Maslow scale? No sweat. Starting at the bottom and working your way up the food chain aka the American Dream.

Balls of various shapes and sizes tossed and thrown at us: straight and curve, hit and miss (Playboy centerfold smashed in my face for instance). Threats behind e.g. hot war, Cold War and nuclear war, then war from within: doubt, death and fractious families/nation.

Naive and eager, I rolled up my sleeves: toilet flushing, floor mopping and sandwich-break on night shifts. You probably read about Steve Job’s notorious 3rd-shift demotion per poor hygiene and low social skills. In my case, back then, what “social skills?”! By wiping down really good, I thought this could somehow by way of penance scrub away our collective sin (just finished a book by my classmate: Rain on the Red flag. Could have been my story).

Fast forward to today, with declassified materials, we found in Kissinger a perfect scapegoat, whose politics of backroom dealing undermined the war.

After being washed and dry, sterilized and bleached, immersed and sprinkled – emerges an old Oriental at the gym. “You’re from Vietnam?”. So, it’s still my fault? (a walking sad reminder of a sorry time).

In America, one must first “find oneself” (individualism), live for the moment (without an inkling of the past) before self-effacing phase (world citizen) – the personal before the universal, I before We e.g. shaved head and painted face chameleon (like Woody Allen’s Tron lookalike in Sleeper, or in his Blue Jasmine – “yep, we were very civic-minded,” says the like of Madoff’s wife i.e. Cate Blanchett).

“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”, with given fine-print disclaimer (never in Large Print).

Suckers are losers. He who finishes with the most chips wins. It’s always been a numbers game/winner-takes-all society (what else to be there, given predictable and planned obsolescence e.g. fuel, hybrid, electric and Toyota’s recent hydro power, Wayne’s world to Waymo.

Breathe in.

Things will change again in 50 years e.g. hot or cold war, post-cold war, globalization then Monroe Doctrine 2. 0., the China card, Russia card and soon India one. Good luck to citizens of small nations – take heed: per Napoleon’s “whichever side got more ammo wins”. Hence, DoW (department of War).

That said, it’s time to take stock: my mom passed, my dad passed, my sister passed. It’s she who said “It’s finished” at our father’s funeral- while my dad seemingly and reluctantly complied, in limbo and in transit from the Western world to the afterworld.

This was quite consistent and characteristic of him who took the whole decade to join us in the US – someone who once had been in the employ of Air Vietnam yet could barely get a seat on the plane. His dictionary was Larousse. Mine, Merriam-Webster, an office parting gift to kick off a lifelong word search and soul search. Half-life living, in infinity, father and son, ignoring headwind on wings of wax, with occasional reminders of certain end.

In Other Colored, Orhan Pamuk wrote: “Everyman’s death begins with his father’s death”.

In my end, my beginning. While I appreciate being “sentient “and all, that alone could not predict my destiny. His journey consisted of constant uprootedness.

“Oi coi tau nhu xe doi long” …” if you missed the train I am on, you’ll know that I am gone…. you will hear the whistle blow a hundred miles”.

Although I did not leave camp by train, it sure feels like something that runs in the family: urban dwellers turned nomads. Whether it’s in 1954 or 1975 time passes all the same: like a blink of an eye.

From zero to 1. Disruptive behavior e.g. move fast, break things. West Coast upending East Coast, Palo Alto Rte 128. Tear-off jeans displace upscale jeans. “Stop-out” is the new “drop-out”. Who needs college! College? it’s where they teach you to question where technology is heading, whether it’s serving the need of humanity (the majority) or just follow through with humanistic and/or mechanistic rogue train.

When Singularity is here, when machine is more spiritual than man, and we shall all be more like (Greek) gods. Living forever, from head to toe with nip and tuck everywhere in the middle part (organ transplant anyone?). I am not sure I can afford the experiment, nor can I find things to self-occupy should I outlive my natural expiration date. But one must admire MIT (East coast) and revitalized Mission district (SF – West coast). H.G. Wells would be proud.

Between 2010-15, we witnessed another wave of tech revival: successful entrepreneurs turn around to help the likes of Gu’s Upstarts, solving a critical problem: the unbank. Everybody was into disintermediation, from Carvana to Casava, from Uber X to Lyft premier. At Nvidia, itself is its worst enemy. It’s the Nvidia way. Imagine waking up, brush your teeth and say to the reflection “today, you’re my worst enemy”. Yet its stocks show some truth to it. We’re full of blood and illusion (King Midas) and there is no need to be reminded.

It’s an exciting time to try and fail. Failures are badges of honor. It’s like the opposite of Russian Army in occupied territories (where there was no turning back). In the late 70’s, there in the Valley (silicon), people arrived in drove – driving up prices (of garages), to the tune of 2,500 dollars per square foot – to be barefoot and be disciples of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Hardware and software.

Public right to know vs privacy, net neutrality vs networking. Data is in. Dating is out. Who has the time. We will someday become gods. Or sexless angels. Keep the apps coming. Finally, I understood those Fortune Gods in Chinese restaurants: gourmet and gyms don’t mix. Eat the grease and enjoy life eternal.

Singularity is near. We earn so much money dropping out of college, we can always afford nip and tuck. First, they tell me I have to grow up. Then to thread carefully for fear of breaking things. Then they tell me to “move fast and break things” (no regrets). Now, Daniel Pink found out about “the power of regrets”. oh boy, opioid. So confusing. Peter Thiel often recommends students to drop out. In today’s climate of student loan and student visa restriction, perhaps one should put equal weight to that fork on the road: “To enroll or not to”.

To take the second option is to bet on something like Home Brew and Whole Earth Catalog can happen again in our productive lifetime. Some bets pay off. Most times, in the age of AI, one can still lose one’s shirts. Never become a graduate nor a god. In the valley or at the mountain top. The Greek sought wisdom, the Jews signs. “Give me a sign…hit me one more time”. When the Emperor gives a thumps up, gladiator lives. Down, dead. Binary world we live in, always zero or 1. Keep going down that path, zillions of forks on the road. I once… was blind…but now I see.

Paul Tournier said, “Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets”.

Those moments when we felt more like Fredo than Michael Corleone. Fredo, played by Cazale, half Irish, half Italian was at one time in a relationship with Meryl Streep (also in the Deer Hunter where she played a Vietnam draftee’s bridesmaid in a Slavic shotgun and send-off wedding who in a spur of the moment, accepted Christopher Walken’s proposal – best man and bridesmaid coupling).

In real life, Streep stood up for Cazale so he could finish his production contract. With cancer – unplanned but manageable – he came across feeble, hence a bit ill-suited for Nam (missing out on those Russian roulette wagers, a script originally pitched for Vegas).

Also appeared in Sydney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, Godfather 1 & 2, the Conversation, Cazale was made for second-fiddle roles. Our water boy. “Stop playing around with that (handgun) – here, Nam’s Russian Roulette wager “click” – sweat or blood).

Like a Jim Croce’s line “every time I tried to tell you, the words just came out wrong “; he couldn’t quite defend himself, physically or verbally – not a quick wit – more than often he froze, on a hunting trip or bank shoot-out, terrified with gun – Carbine – to the side).

Subdued and weak (swirling around on a tiny moped in Gene Hackman’s confine sound lab – in the Conversation), he was more a sound man than cameraman (often taller like Michael Douglas in Three-Mile-Island prescient role).

Chris Cuomo of CNN was furious when called “Fredo”. DJT was also mentioned in the same breath when he grandstanded (the Divider pg. 137).

I turned one when both siblings were in college: hence, chores for change. Why not! Someone had to off-load my busy mom.

I know what’s it like to have my Fredo moment. heck, Fredo life. I once was in tears at a friend’s father’s funeral – to a fellow Penn Stater’s surprise. Perhaps I used the occasion to offload my pent-up loss i.e. my father was left behind in Vietnam for a good decade while my friend’s dad “wasted good wine”, hitting tennis balls, in State College.

Other time, a TV producer talked shop jokingly to have me cover Three-Mile-Island melt-down live (an intern was supposed to be expandable = like that sound man in The China Syndrome, fiction incidentally, released a few weeks before real life). When my brother got married again: “Your turn to take care of Mom” (family first). But, but…. (no “but”).

It’s settled – by the new Godfather (that) Fredo does Vegas. Spined-off to outer “Siberia”, his first self-determination to stand on his own feet in the desert on behalf of family (mafia) interests, then fell prey and seduced by a sense of false belonging (indulgent and decadent sub-group – his new “family” sense of belonging, whose “Sinatra” figure face down on the massage table.

Fredo, our outer most electron, experienced “de-individuation” (that stripping process that molds a neglected household member into a cult member, reinforced by mob behavior and herd instinct). The Stockholm Syndrome.

Strong men are quite magnetic. After all, they are “anointed”. the Othering = the weakling. We “are pre/destined” for bigger dreams. F*** the fear (foul language was intended to shake loosed old ethics and stoke his rah rah Mad Max base).

“No one listens until and unless we take up arms.” “Shoot ‘m. (Thailand toddlers at a day-care). Rape them, rob them (Thai pirates on Boat People). Results? record-high guns death. Killing as a way to get attention and be immortalized (9/11 martyrdom?).

This is for all lonely people on our lonely planet and On-line: faster connection, fewer commitment and minimum accountability (spam and hacking). Attention-starved and all spread thin. Before the internet, it’s existential loneliness (TV screen).

After the internet, it’s exponentially existential (myriads of “others” – just popped up per software recommendation – always and mysteriously “suits” our propensity and temperament without algorithms like Fisher Temperament Index in match.com).

Petabytes of personal data on X and Meta, Twitter and Tik Tok. Don’t ever call me “Fredo”. It’s the “n-equivalent”, like “gooks” and “illegals”. He who dies with the most “like” wins.

When I am weak, I am strong. Go ahead and call me “rooky gooky”. Strong” Saul-turned-“weak” Paul – a 180-degrees U turn – from “righteous kill” to “love is kind”. No wonder those in a lower caste empathize more – for the meek will inherit the Earth. Beggar shows beggar where (stale) bread is. At this edit, R.I.P. Pope Francis, Jesuit and champion of the downtrodden.

Meanwhile “Genius”, forsaking their stewardship, tend to exploit and extract, from Mother Nature and others – even in the name of Manifest Destiny – for personal gain. “Screw it, let’s do it”. Of all the money, at times borrowed, poured into building bombs, a tiny fraction finally is, unintended consequences, in the hands of common folks, taxpayers, in the form of ARPANET and GPS. Yeah! The equalizer 3.0.

Cazale was in four films that I am aware of. We don’t often think of him as an Oscar-winner for Best Supporting Actor or Meryl Streep’s boyfriend. He ‘d just “done time”, sweated and bald, slumping on the floor at the bank corner or ride in the front seat (Dog Day Afternoon).

We want Robert De Niro (or Michael the Marine) to return and save his fallen friends. Rambo-like. John Waye as Jesus. Revisited and white-washed history in Honorable Exit (or a banker who “saved” 113 Vietnamese, getting a kick and taking his time during “fifteen minutes of fame” e.g. obtaining intelligence from a hooker’s relative).

Yet, our uniform-clad hero hunter had his sudden “Fredo” moment, just like all of us (as he leaned back and hid out of sight in an airport taxi, skipping his own Welcome- Home party – feeling awkward and undeserving: “Johnson, how many babies you killed today!”). It’s one thing to pull a prank by taking on a dare i.e. running naked in the snow; it’s another to see or cause Kim Phuc running from real hot napalm like a Berkeley nude jogger.

In the end of The Deer Hunter, our decorated veteran, tried re-entry i.e. got a deer in crosshair. Unlike his subsequent failed Russian Roulette rescue mission, he got a choice: enough killing already! (My Lai, Song Thang, Song Be with napalm/agent orange). Recreational sporting once enjoyable, now self-projecting. Heroes got secrets too! Can’t get his friend back but he can let go the deer! Imago Dei. All creatures great and small.

So Catavina fades in on Clairton hillside, early 70’s scene. The feel and the fear of being seen as dim-witted – unlike 1945 Times Squares iconic kissing sailor and the nurse.” I feel a distance, far away”, he uttered to Meryl Streep, who was cleaning up after a no-show party. The last few inches are hardest, especially when she happened to previously pick your best friend over you (only to see him went AWOL).

Out-takes show congenial Fredo getting slapped around, tossing and throwing empty lunchbox in the air like Blue-Collar cap.

Every day is Graduation Day at the School of Steel. “This is for all the lonely people, thinking life has passed them by…” All the “Stevies” of Vietnam.

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.