Tag: Academy Award

Forwarding

Tonight we turn the clock forward. Day light saving time.

At least, for once, we can advance time, unlike other occasions when waiting for a test result might seem like an eternity.

From Ulysses we found this timeless advice: “Hold on to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past”.

It matters that we exist and move forward to “all future”.

Time waits for no man.

It is neutral and ticks on for Pope and Pimp alike.

I saw a picture of Dustin Hoffman on the cover of the AARP Magazine.

Our “graduate” is now 75 (then Mrs Robinson must be much older).

Time waits for no woman either.

Demi Moore filed for her divorce. On track and trajectory for more, perhaps taking a chapter from Elizabeth Taylor‘s  playbook.

Every so often, we hear about modernity: how the Church has to elect someone with an MBA-equivalent to “run” it, or Congress needs to revise the IRS tax code.

Yes, besides time which is forwarded tonight, we got institutions which also need forwarding.

Since they are not modernized at the same pace, we experience a mis-match in speed of execution.

All future plunges to the past. And we are standing right now, right here as a witness (passive) and a participant (active).

Regardless, day light saving will happen tonight, and in the Fall, we get it back. Hope your choices are well rewarded by then. Wow! I still can’t believe Dustin Hoffman is 75. Let’s fade in the sound track from Mrs Robinson (and the scene of the red convertible driving on highway 101, where our Graduate was going to disrupt a wedding, which waited not for him). ” And here’s to you. Mrs Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know, Hey Hey Hey.”

To Die Another Day

Those gene combination keeps going, mutating and evolving.

Buddistically or biologically, we aren’t going to die today. Maybe another day. But not today (I am obviously blogging still, 957 and counting).

Unlike a line in American Pie “too much whiskey and wine…this will be the day that I die”. Meanwhile, in the land of the living, some rules stay : what you sowed, you reap; do unto others as you would like to be done unto.

The sun rises and it sets; the usual tempo except when asteroid hit Earth. Death uninvited.

Every day, we got Twitter but not every day we got twister (depends on what region of the country, the impact and differences are quite significant). The later lifted trucks, cows and roofs high into the air.

Who said it’s peaceful when you die in your sleep.

I got a rare glimpse into the process of aging and dying this past week: accompanying elder siblings to doctor visits, pharmacy waiting rooms etc…

My brother is a pharmacist. And he will soon be waiting outside the counter for his own prescriptions. We all will be waiting in front of those counters (unless they streamline the process).

To die another day. But not today.

In Ishtar, Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty shooed away the crows “Go away, not dead yet”. The movie however was a bomb. Just desert sand and deserted seats.

The journey however continues, whether we are on a quest to Mars or to the Mall, in stages: born, live, reflect and die..

I am glad to have been shown by great writers how they searched and sifted through the details of their lives.

Still there are many great stories remain untold, while more mundane stuffs got printed.  Who can tell what sells?

Consumer’s taste is quite fleeting.

We avoid risks, unless it’s other people who take the fall (Oscar‘s host).

It’s called sacrificial lamb. Someone dies in our places. To appease death and atone for sin (collective).

Winter is soon over. Spring is forthcoming. Symbols of life are about to show forth and, to remind us once again that life won’t go away.

The gene pool, 99 per cent plus, will go on through the lives of our children. To die another day. Not today.

Stars and stunts

They stretched the truth to “show” it in better lights (as in Argo).

They twisted some arms, pushed the envelopes and burned both ends of the candle (one end is dream, the other memories).

They stepped into characters, sang the chorus and spoke the lines.

Light, sound, camera and …”action”.

Moving pictures. Marketing of dreams and merchandising of goods.

Set the theme and set the stage for next year and years to come.

This year is of no exception.

Except for newer versions and interpretation of old materials (Karenina, Lincoln and Hugo). Streisand finally sang Memories the way it meant to be from this vantage point when the composer himself had passed on. The last time it etched in our memory was that of  Robert Redford and herself in Black and White (Redford’s hair looked even blonde in Black and White).

Editors could afford growing hair. And soundtrack for foreign movies montage was still from Cinema Paradiso (our early moving-going experiences).

The Oscars. Hollywood annual Pilgrimage, with one billion followers, and millions of tickets and tapes sold. Stuff of dreams yet turned into hard cash.

Stars and stunts sell, even and especially in time of Sequester.

The resemblance

She offered me water, from her huge one-gallon container. Hip-hop dancer-trainer, you see.

We need water, especially when we dance many sets at a local theme park to entertain and engage visitors.

So, you finished the first of the “girl w/ the dragon tattoo?” …..so it went. We broke bread and shared snippets of our interrupted lives.

Late Fathers Day installment.

Significant nevertheless.

With A. you don’t need to play “Anka’s Papa” (put those shoes upon my feet).

A earned  her own Sketchers at age of 4, being a child run-way model.

And joined a hip-hop team shortly after that. Now her team won 2nd place in Hip Hop International.

This year’s event will take it to bigger venue in Las Vegas, show of all shows.

I saw the resemblance (hidden, but I know: the ear lopes).

Anyhow, we were together as if never parted.

Can’t rewind or unwind the one-way flow of time.

Can only promise to see more of each other from here on.

She will be majoring in media. I recommended a mix of dancing and directing.

I hope she sees my point. Besides, women are getting behind the cameras to even earn an Oscar at directing (Jodie Foster started the trend).

How to train one’s eyes to see. Tip of the iceberg. I hope she listen. If any resemblance at all, she probably did not, and couldn’t wait to find out on her own. Like mine, my lessons were  hard-earned . I hope for A a life unlike mine i.e. without much interruption and with more people who can help her. She now grows up at the cusp of social media meteoric rise. She pointed to me at Best Buy the differences in latest version of phones.

Good luck A. Let Moore’s Law, Maslow‘s scale and Metcalfe Law work for you. Be in the way of opportunity and forget not to exercise those feet, whose shoes you had earned at an early age.

My girl got no tattoo, no attitude. She could have given the circle she is in.

Proud of A. Appreciative of those vacation dollars spent at the theme park where my daughter works. Every visitor helps. That’s an additional set of eyes watching my daughter’s dance group perform. Want some water?

All Cast

My neighbor got off his cast today. I congratulated him, and told him, me too,

had a broken arm after my first month of Kung Fu. “It’s itchy and hairy”.  I got a chuckle out of him (who would otherwise looked so mean).

A few minutes later, I walked past a man with only one arm. His left short-sleeve shirt flips in the wind. He must have just gone back from his morning walk.

I was warned! Keep it to yourself! There is misery and menace, determination and destruction in this world. Just as you thought you have seen it all.

Buon oi, Chao Mi. (Bonjour Tristesse).

The existential loneliness is just a base line. On top of that, we got heart-break, and war that left scars and perpetual prejudice (zero-sum game).

While Moore’s Law reflects on the doubling speed of chip processing capacity, we have human with broken limps and broken dreams, carry on with half-life capacity.

“Buon oi, yeu duong la the” (that’s what love is)

Yes, as human, we are witnessing convergence of bio-tech, information-tech and neuro-science (empathic civilization). But can we still feel? Our analog make-ups don’t evolve as  fast.  We obviously cling to stars from the past.

All cast.

Red Carpet at the Oscars still features Bo Derek (used to appear in 10) and Glenn Close (Big Chill).

Give me one more take.

All cast, all crew. Dream on.

All smoke and mirror. All Cloud. The jumpers (out of the Twin Towers).

Toward oblivion. Out of the ash, the phoenix shall rise.

Broken arm, but not broken dream.

All hairy and itchy, but healed and strengthened.

Stand up and fight on. One-arm man walks on by. Stirring up empathy in me.

Au cinema

When Facebook profile (soon to be called Timeline) needs me to complete my favorite movie section, I put down Cinema Paradiso.

It’s in Blu-ray now (Oscar-winning, well-preserved quality). It’s about growing up in an Italian village, with the cinema , Cinema Paradiso, as central theme. It was later demolished to make room for a parking lot. It’s a coming-of-age movie, with movie house no longer pro-fit-able (like Friendly’s ice-cream chain).  It mourned for the Best of youth, with melancholy and nostalgia.

It’s every man and woman’s twist-and-turn of fate, like an amusement park ride.

Mine was also related to a neighborhood cinema, one of dozen own by my uncle.

So I got in free, double or single features. My cousin just waved me in, no ticket was required.

I shed a lot of tears there in that darkened theatre.

I also watched Woodstock, the movie, a couple of times (Ten Years After, remember?) and was amazed at the energy and freedom of  American youth.

I even took my first date there, and half way through the movie, we sneaked out for a smoothie.

The theater is now own by someone else while both my uncle and cousin were no longer with us.

I sat across the street from it on one of my trips back to Vietnam. After I had finished my smoothie, I stood up and did not look back.

One cannot swim in the same current twice.

Yet, like the character in Cinema Paradiso, I often wonder what’s like to have lived the second time around.

Would I be embarrassed by a sudden surge of youthful feelings?

Can grown-ups like me indulge in another treat that of a child?

Will my first date and I even recognize each other however precarious the encounter may turn out to be?

I wish I could fade in the music piece (Cinema Serenade) from the movie right now.

It never fails to bring back scenes from the movie, but also, scenes from our own interrupted lives.

It’s so Italian yet so universal. “Go, don’t come back here”.

A little over ten years ago, they demolished a drive-in theater in Southern California to build a Walmart. Every time I drove past that site, I couldn’t help thinking of the old drive-in (teenagers were denied another place to hang out, unlike when my cousin took the projector home to show family wedding clips to hundreds of kids out in the open).

I guess that same sentiment was a trigger for the making of Cinema Paradiso: the loss of a gathering point, a common space and screen where we all are projectionists (self-projection). People nap, snore, kiss, eat and sometimes, just escape summer heat.

Now, we got home theaters (buy now, pay later) but it’s a solitary not communal act of viewing.

And certainly, no adult is going to take time to show a kid how to load a film reel inside the projections booth, or as in my case, wave me in to see a movie for free.

Yes, it’s now in Blu-ray: neither grainy nor counting down (or waiting for the second projector to kick in during intermission.) And certainly no attendant with flash light.

Technology (digital) brings change, at neck-breaking speed (hockey-stick curve), while our ability to adopt is bell-shaped.

I have waited for Alvin Toffler to come out with more of his series (which began with Future Shock). But apparently, yesterday’s futurist is today’s museum curator.

The thing with speed is, like the bullet train in Shanghai, no one knows how damaging the impact is going to be when two fast-flying objects collide.

I felt that gnawing in my stomach when taken up to the top of an amusement ride. I know it will soon drop me mercilessly with kids sitting behind screaming like characters in a horror movie.

The best scene in Cinema Paradiso was the one which our Toto enjoyed a stress-free ride leaving Alfredo with all the hard pedaling.

The Columbo close

Many of us in Sales would remember and practice the Columbo close “Before I go, just one more thing….” (then we would go ahead with a Summary close, with one foot still in the prospect’s door).

With two years, and 555 blogs, I thought I was done with it. But then, just one more thing…..

Peter Falk knew about personal branding long before there was Facebook and LinkedIn.

He figured, to make it in an image-driven world, (w/ right eye removed at an early age) he would have to:

A. work harder (in this case, asking  one more question)

B. work  Last Impressions while others focused on First Impressions (beat-up raincoat, Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall).

C. work from his strengths e.g.  M.A. in Efficiency, government job experience  – both used his analytic skills to “lock-in” his signature role as Ltd Columbo (much like Alda in M*A*S*H).

In that vein, I want to continue the ride, “still against the wind.”

When I tried out for Vietnam‘s prestigious high-school, I failed, because of all things, my Vietnamese language (I finished French Elementary, not Vietnamese). But  I did get in the year after.

Then I tried out for the high-school band. Luckily, I nailed the audition: they were playing California Dreaming, Don’t Let Me Down etc… right up my “foreign-language” alley.

Even today, tourists in Asia can still find bands that play 70’s music, even when band members couldn’t converse well in English. They just listened and repeated after the tape.

Then, I got thrown out of a long line in front of the US Embassy (a week before the last day of the War). They were worried that a long line would give away the impending doom.

But I am here now, and even got back to Vietnam, walked in that same embassy to have my M.A. degree notarize (after local, State and DOS steps). It was requirement for work permit.

Oh, just one more thing.

The professor of Journalism 101 said I would never make it (with manual typewriter? grammar? or make it in Liberal Arts?) So I packed my bag, and went to Hanoi at the beginning of the Great Recession, and passed the Cambridge English Teaching Award exam.

Just one more thing. I have worked at Fortune 500 companies for 15 years, driving beat-up cars (but won 2 brand new ones to pay off my student loan) albeit without the raincoat, and pulling a Columbo every so often.

How is that for someone who couldn’t pass Jr high entrance exam in Vietnamese.

On second thought, maybe I can inspire those who have always got nice cars, nice houses, speak fluent and perfect English with library full of books hardly touched.

Now, they just want to rob the bank, not to get away with money, but to be put in jail for medical coverage.

Please don’t. Just work on your strengths. Peter Falk (and for that matter, Danny DeVito) rise to fame not on their eye or height. They differentiated, focused on core strengths, and charm the audience not without empathy and a sense of humor.

Maybe my strengths lie in the fact that I don’t give up or  forget easily.

Most of my failures have been put to use, as stepping stones.

In short, my  next company and job will benefit greatly because my former employers and I have paid a high price for my ” professional profile”  It’s up to me to never repeat the same mistake twice. And that, I don’t forget easily.  Before you dismiss me with a HR’s cold “Next”, let me recap by saying,  “just one more thing”: was it my leadership talent? or my persistence? or my ability to work well with others – that you fail to register? Like in any closing situation, I “SHUT UP”. Wish I had that trench coat on.