Thang Nguyen 555

On Wake Island, our “Ellis Island”, we were given an A-number (A for Alien). Little did we know, it’s a life-time worth of chain documents, both analog and digital authentication and verification.

America, land of the free – often times, a mixed bag (from iron to plastic i.e. credit-card shackles to undocumented “alien”. Somehow, from Wilderness Ash to World Power it rises albeit lonely at the top,” Lonely Crowd” at the bottom, and a material-centric/data-driven middle class (you can have as many as you want, as long as it’s black – phone).

With 9 hours online (for teens), there is not much time left for real-life crowds (P T Barnum anyone), no outdoor nor sunbathing (vapor break while thumbing the screen acting busy), nor water-cooler gossip for non-smokers.

A nursing home visit is chore. Old folks once consulted e.g. to keep or not to keep the proverbial Coke bottle, now are living in isolation and irrelevance. Have you noticed a lot of Alzheimer drug, prevention and even movies featuring roles who got dementia (baby Boomer).

With billions online (Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law) our Crocodile Dundee will be “friending” back to his digital backwaters via recommendation software: “G’ day mate!” as opposed to climbing an NYC’s light pole to recuperate from face-to-face fatigue (then overload follows from on the street to online).

Once password-authenticated, we are cleared to sit back and relax; let “I-core” chips take over. Voila! The world is our oyster. News at our fingertips (only decades ago, would have made Dan Rather salivate).

No wonder criminals – often those with impetus for shortcut – have migrated online! high-tech and high-yield (FTX and Theranos).” Oh, I did click ‘Agree’ but did not read the whole disclaimer” … Very much similar to FBI Warning before the start of a DVD.

Back to when things were, no pun here, alien to us – new arrivals – even a STOP sign observed while on empty street, or a line formed at cash register (movies in the 80’s made fun of Russian new arrivals – whose bread lines had now been behind, only cashier line in front – being awestruck in an abundant American supermarket – tons of cereal choices).

Slowly then suddenly, we evolve i.e. one of 10 did not observe STOP sign when no one is around – albeit at snail’s pace – while the machine (hare’s pace): even Chinese restaurants are now using contactless toothpick machine (covid), next to cc payment machine. High tech high cholesterol with AI-generated fortune-cookie luck.

Our agricultural practice reaches near full automation. With 9 hours of spare time for kids (no need for child labor) we can then “amuse ourselves to death” (to use Mr. Postman’s title). NYC, Hollywood, Route 128 and Silicon Valley will be glad to fill our wishes. Even with just 140 characters, since in the age of AI (low marginal cost), everyone plays at the margin, with long tail and little reward.

On the silver screen, our protagonist often smokes, punches and makes love, with a view of the bridge. We can’t blame them. Films with outdoor settings (Ishtar) or in the city (Istanbul) present logistical nightmares, not to mention financial risks. We the audience by default are immerse in urban decay (only to escape spirally further down to numb our pain with pills). Catch 22.

Collaboration and teamwork in an agrarian community is now lost. Industrial smokestacks in “Rust belt” could only hope to rent it out to film noir crew. As of late, it’s Nippon Steel? (once Pittsburg). Samsung and Tesla in Austin. Good luck with dreaming of coming to drive a taxi.

From Xerox to Zoom, Industrial to Information Age, work itself morphs from 9-5 to anytime, from office to outdoor – during and because of Covid, from extinct Skype to Zoom on sale. Face to face “press the flesh” sales calls are as infrequent as seeing Santa on Christmas.

Thieving and stealing has always been a lonely act. Now, together with us (victims) they and we are together a Lonely Crowd. Hint! Career in store-loss prevention. One shouldn’t be surprised why younger folks prefer to text and multi-task (lack of empathy and engagement). A whole Silicon generation emerge, modified with force binary choice. Even voice, it’s Voice over IP (meaning quantization of the sound wave), plagiarizing, and click bait.

Japan experienced this shift first with their Generation without the Sun, before the trend finally made its way across the Pacific: AI doll (again, frustrated husbands can relate to this) and AI tatoo art.

Meanwhile, our village elders are still toying with their first flip phones (like that proverbial coke bottle in the gods must be crazy). No wonder we see people get sent away on cruises, out of sight, out of mind, no cellular signal at sea. On board, ranting and venting are expected (retirees’ vineyard). Good luck with fighting over that Golden Corral last steak.

See me. Feel me. Touch me. Hear me. Whooooooo are you? A nickname with a string of zeros and ones? In real life, when dead, it takes grave markers 8 weeks to turn-around an order.

Survey indicated people would rather lose their wallets then their phones.

Fantasy (escaping time by losing ourselves in the moment) and reality itself have irreversibly traded places.

The self has also evolved, from Outer-directed to Inner-directed (courtesy of Mr. Reisman) then to a third dimension (bits) as it learns to engage with machine – remember this machine?

“hey, you’re logged in at a different place”…for security sakes, tell us.

We are lonely. Ever more so when the cursor stops blinking with a digital emptiness (while battery recharged). Looking inward, into our many selves (courtesy of Elizabeth O’Connor of the Church of the Savior, Washington D.C.). A SEAL urges us to “self-talk”, like an used-car salesman. “I like myself” ….

That virtual society – with A.I. doll a byproduct – always is learning and getting smarter (I am not advocating a Luddite U-turn). Gemini, Anthropic, Chat GPT etc….All this perpetuate and reinforce our fear and false notion that we are inadequate, unworthy and irrelevant (for missing out on the “latest and greatest?”). Alone together, we Occupy the Net (in bed).

Before long, we accept and adopt this UNREALITY as new reality. We are just Being There – Peter Sellers without Shirley MacLaine.

Blame it on divorce court (James Dobson), Hollywood (Tipper Gore), drug (Nancy Reagan), booze (Betty Ford), climate (Jane Fonda) and war (Putin). The “sinners” and the poor shall always be with us. The ominous “others”. Let’s just call them, for convenience sakes, alien.

The Church with roots in agricultural past (parish and priest) is having a hard time coping with technology. In a hurry and by over-compensated reaction, religion – and theocrat – piggyback on political hype, banking on candidates who symbiotically need to raise campaign money to hire technocrat – a marriage of online crowd and real-life flocks, of convenience.

Fareed Zakaria agrees with me on this point (politics fills the void once occupied by religion).

People always offer themselves as “solutions” to the ill of society (hence a de facto self-appointed platform and profiteer), without examining the underlying root “cause”. Perhaps it’s the times and system we found ourselves in (the new BOX). If only we could see all the wireless signals crisscrossing the continents or the unlit fiber strands underground, let’s say Ashburn, VA.

McLuhan was prescient in saying:” the medium – Internet – is the message”. In other words, it’s the system stupid. With it, payload and self-adapting learning to survive just like anything else in the evolution process. Vincent Cerf, co-inventor of “distributed architecture” says “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. It sounds like we are living in a perpetual Beta with us, as virtual “subjects – lab rats” of the information age.

Name it “Mechanical Turk”, AI or whatever else. Except this time, “sharing” means exploiting with our consent (I Agreed to the terms). Watch everything under the Sun, ads mostly.

Last Century, with clear eyes (after some hesitation and delay): the English, the Russian and the American, at least agreed on one legitimate blame: Hitler. If only it had been that simple and easy.

After Potsdam, arrived de-Colonization, Capitalism, Consumerism and Corporatism (CEO salary graph – a hockey-stick – says it all).

Now, it’s atomization and alienation (Alien Nation). The girl and guy with a Dragon tattoo, put on hoodies, headsets, earplugs, glasses, masks, gloves, nose and earrings, tattoos… any Fitbit wearables, to stay invisible e.g. personal shoppers, dashers etc… only to be briefly recognized during Covid as “essential”. Like a line in the Quiet American,” As a journalist, I don’t get involved. Reality is separated from me by my typewriter”.

Later deeper into the story, our anti-hero found himself inconspicuously entangled in a love triangle, he then – with a blush face:” How I wished there existed someone to whom I can say I am sorry”.

The movie ends with its anecdotal line: “When first arrived, everyone thinks he can understand the country (Vietnam) in just a few days, only to find out much later that one can barely scratch its surface” (my para-phase).

The same thing can be said about our current predicament. No single person is to take the credits (Al Gore’s Information Superhighway) or the blame (Josh Hawley howling and belling out at Zuckerberg: “Have you offered an apology!”). Blame it on FTX, TikTok, Instagram, those “Senior lawyers” in the case of Jenna Ellis’ ill-vetted and irresponsible filings or Cambridge Analytica and counting.

It just happened. Something happened. Even when we couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Lonely, vulnerable (Tesla lay-off) and insecure (not just the job’s) we feel, even when we sit inside our protected fence (real life) and firewalls (inbox still filled with “priority” spam mail and text).

Awash in all types of communication, we found ourselves more paranoid and isolated with “nothing to watch” (the Happiness bell-shaped curve). Sitting in a food court or church? One might get shot or stabbed (Australia and Michigan).

Our only wish (after saying a prayer) is for business to be usual…not to have hackers hold us ransom or chips malfunction even at 99.999 self-healing reliability.

We all need American Express” Don’t leave home without it” with digits pre-stored for autopay.

“Welcome to HAL” says a digitally pre-recorded voice.

” How I wished there had existed someone to whom I could say I was sorry”.

It’s an Alien Nation, foreign to both native and naturalized, from Wake Island to Ellis Island to Digital Island.

Not good enough!

There were a 19 and 17 years gap between my siblings and I.

At times, I wanted to scream: ” So you just want me to measure up and end up in the grave with you?”

Not a death wish or ill will, but the logic held. I could never “win”. Not with that wide a gap, different circumstances and rules of engagement..

Then arrived the spouses, who immediately and intuitively leverage their differences/strengths e.g. cooking or closer-knit family (as oppose to mine) to always have the final say. Happy wife, happy life. Never win an argument, so far.

All men live in quiet desperation. Or like Blake :” A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, Marks of woe”.

At the Amusement Park, I noticed the “rejects” per lack of height or age – accident at birth- or had failed at inflating their age with a straight face.

Remarque, in Shadows in Paradise, had one of his German-Jew characters using forged papers (like Jason Bourne) first in France, then in NYC and finally out West (Hollywood), with anglicized names, like Theodore, Henry etc…

Most notably and ironically was when one of his friends (Jewish) ended up with a role of a Nazis. It’s just a movie. Viet Thanh Nguyen also mentioned similar irony in his “the Sympathizer” ( the likes of Apocalypse Now, using extras hired from the refugee camp, to play the other side).

Actors cannot irreversibly hide their eyes shadows and bags. First, everyone wanted to be older to get on rides, then younger to get the part ( Mr. Saturday Night).

I have lived with older family members most of my life. Hence, I associate strength with charming and charismatic role-models with a tat of machismo to beat back the bullies, or to drive a tank in war.

Christopher Plummer, Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones came to mind. (The Package or The French Connection, where that bearded cunning antagonist with an umbrella in one hand, and the other, waving to his pursuers from inside a moving subway train.)

We’re living at a time when “Not good enough” has also aged ( along with its faithful subscribers). Netflix is expanding overseas, Cinema focuses on specialty, and Spotify is raising its rates. Decades of “planned obsolescence” has come due ( over-production of goods and services e.g. cosmetic surgery and Nike’s sportswear.)

Florida used to be known for sandy beaches and a slightly older population but genteel (snowbirds from CANADA?).

Sun-bathed second-home owners now push for monolithic and homogenous community. Why not consider Amish country to go all the way? or year-round cruise-ship?

Not good enough. Never good enough. 300,000 dollars for beach sand to protect property. Then, puff! half gone.

Nature has its last say by sifting ( no pun), and extracting pearls.

Yet we live on, practicing variations of the game: I am better than you: with less cholesterol, and more cotton. The power players themselves , once on the receiving end, got a lifetime worth of abuse. Then the DNA, the script, the code and the embedded information seek formation and new expression.

You connect the dots. It could be anywhere: from spelling bee contest to Senior Beauty Contest. From clothes to car, zip code to zip loc (preferably Trader Joe’s tote bags).

This morning, appeared on the View was Stormy, who no longer associated with her former lawyer ( the only one who stepped up and charged a nominal $100 fee for a high-profile case).

We are living in a different time, when “not good enough” now applied to lawyering and higher courts. In short, the pissing contest in school yards has morphed with “gentrified” grievances. ( I suffer more than you, albeit a higher income level).

In this zero-sum contest, one might as well throw in the towel ( as oppose to stay and hope someday, the pie will expand so everyone will get a bigger piece). Ask your Uber driver, or the Airbnb homeowner.

That kind of game ( zero sum) only ends in one way: a duel in High Noon, and not everyone is a Gary Cooper.

Next life, I wish, dog plays with dog, lion lies beside the lamb, and music is in the air spotifying-ly, like another Woodstock, with Walt Disney grown-ups and measured ups (you’re in, no cover charge). Where every night is New Year’s Eve, when people are anticipating and accepting. Like a human family, with no need for a psychologist. Just musicologists and gynecologists (since it’s too positive not to have more children).

And the only game that is absent is “Not good enough” (no need for greed to grease the wheel). That’s when we wake up and shred the role of an apologist (for all the wrong done to one another). Spell check? the machine now does that. That left nuances, empathy and compassion, say, for the most recent wounded in Moscow, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti (where Barbecue’s gun is bigger than yours)

Not having good credits? don’t worry. Some high-interests agency will lend you (btw, that’s how future pie is shrinking). There is no need to validate yourself with FICO scores, Facebook likes, or football scores. Or pay DMV for a name change, since there will be no shadows in Paradise.

You are good enough, just because you are intrinsically and inherently valuable, with eyes, ears, hands, feet, nose and mouth. Recent Massachusetts General operation ( pig’s kidney transplant) was cheered, and rightly so.

But back to us, human being, we are an occasion for cheering as well, if not just for our extractable kidneys (tell this to the families of abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria, held captive for ransom, and just now released).

Game people play. To cut the line, to zigzag through traffic, to win (at football) per Vincent Lombardo. Yew! How did we buy so easily into that spirit of warring, only to kick ourselves waking up lonelier than when first started.

He/she who dies with the most stuff and spent cases wins.

Sounds like a showroom logo. Not what you need, but always what (somebody else wants) you to want to belong. The Culture Industry and its worn-out propaganda (a season ahead of current trend) with Social Media on steroid (ironically, there were competing lessons on mediation and zen, almost out loud saying ‘the other guys lesson is not good enough”).

Hang on to your purse, your dignity and time here on Earth, before embarking with me (not to sell you the dream) someday, to where people are people, always measured up, and accepted/accepting. I know, I know. It only happens in dreams, and not in life (not since Western society attached a number to everything, like force ranking and marketing data set acquired through a series of incongruent questions.

And I am not the only one. I hope someday, you’ll join us.

I will leave you to “measuring up” to whatever has been nagging at you and demanding your devotion: spell-check, smell check, security check. No wonder how you cut it, it’s always a bit short, no slacks (btw an author, on Amanpour and Company, mentioned in his book entitled “Fluke”, that at some point in time, (the tipping point), we are to say what’s enough is enough).

That’s his book. Meanwhile, you are good enough, in my book. No games.

And you are not ” Mr. Saturday Night”, dying to get in front of an audience to rehash for the nth tie those rehearsed lines ” Oh, that man looks like New Jersey in pants?”

That man, c’est moi. C’es tu. All of us, at some point. Can’t hide our age, not with those Tommy Lee Jones’ eyes bags.

Per David Hume Kennerly, TIME White House Photographer, the high-fived high-power Cabinet were heading toward the ” Old Executive Office Building where Kissinger will give a press conference announcing the successful conclusion of the helicopter evacuation of the last Americans from Saigon. Unfortunately he was a bit hasty in his proclamation, because after his press conference it was discovered that 11Marines were left stranded on the roof of the U.S. Embassy. They were ultimately rescued less than three hours later, but the war ended as untidily as it started. Washington, D.C., April 29, 1975.”

Apparently there was a black-tie event at the Kennedy Center that evening, Washington EST, hence our “James Bond” Dr. “Strangelove” was hastily called in the situation room ( much like the take down of Bin Laden). At first he was credited to have said, in context, that if we (Nixon and staff) were to take out Thieu, just like Diem was before, then the world would say “to be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its Ally proves fatal”. Hence covention wisdom in Washington “ if you want a friend might as well get a dog “. before the Watergate story broke , Nixon was to bomb Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and turning “Hondaville” into Nukeville.

Asked if any regrets, our Doctor in Philosophy formerly named Heinz ( who dated Barbara Walters) ” we thought we could turn South Vietnam into another South Korea”. H-Mart to V-Mart.

But, Mark Felt of the FBI “deep-throated” and derailed this “ mission “ (of going dark behind the Paris Accord back directly) to deal directly with Moscow, Hanoi and Zhou Enlai.

Even Kurt Russel , in a fictional Ph. D. Consultant in Executive Decision , couldn’t keep up. Not without Halle Berry’s aid ( brave air stewardess).

In “When Allies cut and run”, our own Doctor of Philosophy Hung Tien Nguyen , a close confidant to President Thieu, pleads “one day, when future Viet-American get to position of power (again, per Kissinger – “ power is the ultimate aphrodisiac -“) remember NOT to put allies and high-risk entourage in similar position”. The book came out in 2005, before Kabul. Oh well.

At least, to be fair and lenient, we know that President Ford inherited a situation, a bad one, not of his own making. When Operation Baby lift crashed one of its only two planes out of Saigon, President Ford flew to San Francisco to greet and hold one of the babies (photo courtesy again of David Hume Kennerly), babies that per one Navy man’s account written home to his wife, “tossed from the air, like basketballs”. President Ford used to play ball in Michigan, then in the Navy ( the tip-off).

He tumbled often (SNL Chevy Chase) but caught one this time (been busy with Operation Eagle Pull, Talon Vise, Frequent Wind etc..).

Time to heal.

Write this when I am gone.

Been almost 49 years to be exact. As Kissinger’s extolled : “as historian, we need to acknowledge the inevitability of tragedy”.

That tragedy was also mine. It cut off oxygen of my youth, choked my aspiration and derailed my dreams.

Time to heal. But don’t hastily celebrate Mission Accomplished. It could back-bite. Whoops! There are more on the roof.

It could haunt you (Ford had two assassination attempts on him while Carter aborted his hostage rescue.)

Saigon lost its name, and downtown soldiers statue . The gate to the Independence Palace however got fixed and Dr Hung’s Palace Files printed (way after the Pentagon Papers, but nevertheless, made public those Nixon promises but never honored). To his credit, he had to borrow money for a Press Conference room rental that same fateful day.

Both Ambassador Martin, and President Ford were known to be pet lovers. The former wouldn’t leave on Saigon Last Day without his daughter’s dog, the latter took his to work (in the Oval Office photos).

I sure hope if not honor, then compassion for one species will lead to the other; Not un-eloquent as “I wish they just gone to hell, that which we want to put behind, always lingers on”.

Words wounded, and hard to heal even when it’s time to heal.

We too should get some. Per Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.

As a gentle people, we were “herded” to pre-approved regions, an uprooted version of the Phoenix program.

Our carry on: Black/White photos and sobbing tales:” Uncle Ban took 18 bullets for the team, Cousin Khe split his salary for fellow Parisien students.”

Last month, on President Day, my sister passed away.

With her, our memory keeper, stories of struggle and sorrow were buried. Growing up in turbulent times, she was (I still am not used to past tense in her case) a busting T.V. high schooler in a country where many foreign actors wanted to have a say and foothold. from” the Ugly American” to “the Quiet American”, from Sino to Franco Empire. “Stay the course, to preserve our prestige” (100% goal of US involvement).

After our family migrated South, she on one occasion had a Filipino sent for us in a government-issued car (flapping flag and all) – she took me, her youngest brother, like a pin on the blouse – to attend front-row viewing at our National-Celebration parade.

She got her job training in the Philippines, her first trip alone out of the country. Upon return, she brought home good material for my tailored pants (first time I experienced Santa treatment).

Something about her penchant for travel: train, bus, automobile, plane, cruise ships and finally hearse.

Between her husband and she, they brought home tons of pictures: slides, prints, original 36 shots, polaroids, postcards and travelogs. None the more cherished than Hanoi’s. Something about home that had never left and served as bond between them.

That city that makes and breaks their hearts. Its scenery and smell, music and memories.

Once, I spent a month there, taking in the ambience and atmosphere (before Obama and Bourdain) to understand the adult: field, buffalo (one of the 12 signs), geese and sticky rice ” Ngay tro ve, anh buoc le….ra dung dau ao…co con trau xanh het long giup do”. (the village, the pond, the buffalo and bamboo).

It tore to them having to head South, after an agonizing 300-days deliberation. Worse off, they did not have the support of Northern Vietnamese Catholics who were among the one million intra-national displaced at that time.

Collective and communal, they kept up tradition: “gio chap” (ancestral commemoration with extended families etc..) and traditional card game (which I was glad to refill their tea). Until ideologue and culture shock did them in: “individualism reigns” in America (where one can just pick up and leave in two minutes), she once said.

In the South (of Vietnam) I arrived. Trophy child, I trailed behind four working adults (parents and 2 siblings) while they their life 2.0. They took turn on me like summer lifeguards: here are the guardrails, respect the elders, relatives and elected authorities. Residual message: if you forgot everything, just remember where you come from. Don’t pay attention to other people, no matter how screwed up they might be (or how many Bibles they swore on).

A coup d’etat here, a failed attempt at assassination there; a ceased-fire violation here and a lost honor there. My brother often recounted how devastating horror the bombing at a club was – matinee show – that took his talented friend. Or my brother-in-law saw a Japanese soldier beheaded a child petty thief (whose blood spattered on him, like the biographer in Unforgiven).

It’s we survivors of horror, hanging onto self-respect for the arduous journey. Old timers’ values!

Giay rach phai giu lay le (self-respect first and foremost).

On we live peppered with music (nostalgia) and meals (humble). Some culture we got!

Barely feeling out of the wood when another round of uprooting came due. To our collective shame, we picked up our carry-on and hopped on life 3.0 (my 2.0).

Car keys tossed. Empty handed (as dramatic and showman-like a Vegas card dealer at shift-change) for surveillance and world press cameras.

Re-start and rebuild like an automobile engine whose parts scattered all over. Driving on empty while engine light was on. Tons of steel (helicopter’s) and later, tons of skeleton (Boat People) sunk to the bottom of the Sea.

To re-assemble multiple lives without an INS manual was challenging. We couldn’t have done it, not without muscle memory i.e. once survived North-South, one could rehash East-West.

Education is a must. The brains and the hands. Work and chew (something like sticky rice) at the same time. Then, more potatoes and less beef. Soupy stuff and diluted OJ. In Reagan’s quote “oatmeal meat”.

“Good Will from one end to the other!” (the opposite of Colonial England whose Sun never set on its Empire).

I wish I had kept those tailored pants my sister had brought home. My first “foreign” and Santa exposure, which magically, a premonition of my own: the Subic Bay (Philippines) – only to return years later (Bataan, Philippines) to “pay back and forward”.

Of late, seeing the adult passed was painful. At her funeral, some cried, others prayed. People tossed flowers or gently laid them down, depends on one’s personal perception or self-projection of the End. Like Mandela says, “I am because of you”. The adult’s trek my trajectory. Their breadcrumb now mine.

With my own eyes, I saw the end albeit through a thin veil.

Why should other emigrants e.g. Jews from Germany, Polish from Warsaw etc… get all the good memories (Hollywood and the Holocaust). Ours are also worth noting, if not spicier (unless we prefer “let sleeping dog lie” like Captain Kurt’s line: “Horror Horror”). OK, OK, I got it. Pirates at sea don’t sell popcorn. Tattered outfit (subdue even at the start of the journey) don’t come across cinematically.

Homo sapiens stories (Hamas or Hmong) are lessons in disasters and determination. Stories of struggling women in a warring world, who on occasion claim their rightful front-row seats in a military parade or grateful back-row seat on an Intercontinental UNHCR flight.

All the while, for a few brief moments in between, shined (Or, as a title from one of our very own “half-breeds” …briefly gorgeous). P.S. “I’ll have what she is having”.

We too should get some. As that one-liner by Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.

Since 80 % of communication are non-verbal, we are better off “listen” with our eyes (Ailes’ “it’s a visual medium. Turn around”).

In films, establishing shots set the context (where), music (when), and close-ups reveal emotions (who) more (when a couple gets intimate over candle-lit dinner – two shot – we know they are going to kiss, or when they introduce a gun, or gasoline someone will use it e.g. Broken Mirrors and Path to War.

In the court of law, prosecutors place people on the stand to get at the “truth”.

In life, we also “place people on the stand” to get a feel for what’s unsaid and left out.

Filmmakers show fidgeting hands, clammed up knees or giggling ones as well played by the late Philip Seymour to move the plot along (heightening the suspense with mock-up assumptions, conflicting argument vs contradictory clues …). Fake left moves right.

Ad Age used BOLD typefaces and unconventional paper size. With more gadgets and competing apps, every ad is now a mini billboard (grab you by the throat e.g. dog licking baby’s cheek plastered on the side of a bus making a left turn).

The internet favors hyper extraverts and loudmouth hecklers. It’s “citizen” communication age of unhinged amateurism. Every Spring an Arab Spring. Messaging that flashed fast wins. The screen is now Times Square, appeals and assaults our senses, with quick disclaimer for compliance to the FCC.

Like anything in life, after scratching the surface of the Internet, the elite (like Liquid Death does to water) will cordon and colonize, monetize and expand their digital brand. So far, it’s just a foreplay i.e. lost leaders to beta test to bait/switch; then moving up the food chain to high-brow exclusivity: membership fees, subscription and pre-paid firewalls, advanced booking, and selective Ivy-League e.g. LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram (not controversial TikTok). In London, you can board a train to go around the world (impoverish world) in 100 days. It would be weird to look out from the likes of Oriental Express to see natives sitting on top of crowded buses next to live chicken.

Netflix now goes overseas for markets. Eyes balls are eyes balls as long as could be translated to dollars. After all, they (next gen) will become purchasers of excess and surplus products, produced en mass via conveyor belts and better consumer research.

An Internet that divides, not democratized; publicly exposed vs privacy guarded. We keep seeing more FTC and FCC “fines”, which only be a dent to Big Tech.

Imagine the Internet as a high school where students at lunch form cliques, clubs, even “gangs” (Barbeque).

Can’t handle the truth.

Can’t get the whole world in his hand!

Stop the spin, the TED. I want to get off.

Facebook-a holism follows the law of diminishing return (one selfie, two selfies, naked selfie … all dull and duller). This planned obsolescence happened to TV, cable TV, DVDs, Roku and Tiktok.

My name is…. and I am a face a-holic.

(the FBA held “church” in a digital cathedral, reinforced and reassured its members he/she was on the way to recovery i.e. rediscovering nature (Walden 2.0), of one’s right to be left alone, of stoicism and sabbath, back to the land and organics living (Bob Dylan in Woodstock), engaging with people who invest time in mutual caring and issues that matter e.g. memory creation.

We are nearing the end of Web 2.0 i.e. one to many (Web 1.0), many-to-many (Web 2.0) where “free” sharing = free ranting (lowest common denominator, racing to the bottom of civility). 3.0 would be the age of a few-to-a-few selectively. Tribalizing and homogeneity. Enough “selfies” and millions of “impressions”.

Anthropologists have a treasure trove of data to extrapolate about human behavior, and how not much has changed since the days of old (cigarette ads to vapor ones).

The hard part for marketers is how to deal with skip-ad. Permission ads. Messaging must grab one’s throat, be in your face to get throughput. When Biden “gets it” we’ll all get it. (Turn around, it’s a visual medium). Even a robust State of the Union (a relic from Wesley Tent rally) could not bump his ratings.

BOLD headlines, sprinkled with intermittent and recurring machine-like encoding. Communication is repetition and redundancy (Chinese water-dripping torture). The crowd and the chant, the color and the caricature, herding and de-individualizing. Blood sweat and tears. Rinse and repeat.

Our current age of short attention span “hey, It’s Joe!”

See me. Feel me. (Roger Daltrey w/ his swinging microphone like a rodeo reeling in the Woodstock chanting crowd). On Dan Rather interview, Roger mentioned the need for immobility, for reflection and letting creativity find its foothold.

We’re back to where we started, with Morse codes and Maritime SOS. Listen with our eyes, using binoculars to scan the horizon. The revenge of analog (and the return of vinyl and lighthouse). Flash! Flash! Sending out an SOS, sending out an SOS. Message in the bottle.

80% of communication are non-verbal.

Whenever possible, zoom in for a close-up. The body and all its parts, fake or real, tend to give themselves away e.g. fidgeting and wiggling (unintended message sent).

Lighting sets the mood, music the tone and the stage context. The unseen is more impactful, the unsaid speaks louder.

Life, the internet and our own existence hover in drone-like speed, over the surface; hopping from one tip of the iceberg to the next, forming patterns and eventually to make sense of reality. Itself, reality, unfortunately is ever shifting and alluding, so we have to make it up as we go along, as if we alone can “fix” the coherent narrative, whose middle often is most ballooning (we can’t control our beginning and ending, unless you subscribed to C.S. Lewis’s conviction that one can control the ending).

The best we can do is secretly and silently put people in a “box”, zoom in for a close-up, a snapshot so authentic that even the best of actors can’t hide (in Oscar-winning Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s vengeful eyes after succumbing to a drink on the cause of his partner (Morgan Freeman) was bludgeoned to death by town sheriff (Gene Hackman). Again, close-up.

No one ever cries with their ears. Hence, the eyes are two-way mirrors, to the soul.

At some point, we will cut through the noise (ignoring audio signals) to solely trust our eyes, piercing through all attention-diversion, smokes and mirrors. We’ve been cheated and grifted. Isn’t it time to learn? Suckers in Chief.

Since the invention of light, then the internet: we adapt. Down to nano secs.

Communication today has to make allowances for SKIP AD and Ad sense (search).

Too bad you can’t read my mind. I only have good intentions and just want good company in readers, being old, straight, Asian and all.

What an insulting caricature once portrayed in Breakfast at Tiffany, the photographer guy from upstairs (Mickey Rourke in Kimono) who can’t sleep through all the decadent parties. Those parties lasted until sunrise, with blood-shot eyes covered by the pair of sunglasses Audrey Hepburn wore while munching “breakfast” croissant and window-shopping at Tiffany? (poor man’s version of Breakfast at Tiffany).

Can’t turn around in my kimono for a close-up even with plenty of Roger-Ailes’ insight (that’s it’s a visual medium).

Sorry.

Summer of 1982, she came with my Mom to my graduation. My father had been without a trace for 7 years.

But I was happy as I had ever been. And it was not the first time she filled in a parental role.

Fall of 1960, she dropped me off on my first day at school.

Guardian, mentor, moral leader and career woman, she pushed herself : traversing the East-West pole, just as my Mom and she earlier in North-South migration.

April 29, 75 ” People are roaming the curfewed streets…we must brave the curfew”.

Wherever she was, there was my home, albeit in statelessness or with naturalized citizenship.

The smell of cooked xoi (sticky rice) with thin slices of Chinese sausage on top, from Shirlington to Braddock, from Khai Xuan to Ban Co long stays with me.

The food (sweet potato) the gathering (gio) the memories (free ice cream for being her petit chaperon on dates) – all the same and resided in her DNA ( she even cleaned house for my step mom).

On my first trip back to VN in 2000, she wrote “make sure you don’t trip over, since the sidewalks there are not even as over here” ( Indeed I saw a Western tourist so busy looking at traffic that he tripped up). Advanced warning and frequent watching over for my welfare since the day she had me as her baby brother to practice her motherhood (turns out pretty good seeing the fruits of her bosom. She often got her first son’s name mixed up with mine).

In war or peace. Asia or America, she stayed steadfast, relentless and resilient.

A fall here (front teeth) a fall there (left eye), yet she dusted off then pulled ahead, like a stubborn buffalo sign she was born into: pulling the plow in merciless field, ploughing though life with not a trace of decadence and indulgence.

I owed a big part of my life to her who had more faith in me than I myself. from my first day of school till graduation as shown.

Her ubiquitous and observing glance ever present, because she was adamant and would not accept or allow someone in her circle to even fall short .

Snippets of my standard bearer and the only sister one could ever wish to have.