Tag: Madonna

Reality bites

It’s Sunday. Jamming Sunday.

Singer-musician-owner of Van’s Unforgettable was kidding, after a round of live and unrehearsed performances that we should just play a commercially released CD  since we at times failed at recalling certain lyrics.

He had a point. The age of automation and atomization is here.

Each of us, with headset and  in private should just entertain ourselves.

IN THE COMING DECADES WE WILL EXPERIENCE A KIND OF NEUROSES THE WORLD HAS YET  HAD A CURE FOR.  Knowing everything yet not knowing anything.

Spying on everyone yet not knowing anyone.

Data rich, content poor.

Socially connected, but emotionally isolated.

Like the song by the Foreigner, “I want to know what love is…why don’t you show me”.

Mobile and cloud computing, with semi and soon full automation assembly, will lower the costs and increase personal computing power. Yet no eye- contact, no time for organic relationship.

The lost art of  the start : “Hi, my name is….”

In the 60’s, the anti-war group was cool “Hell No WE won’t go”.

In the 70’s, the me decade.

In the 80’s, the politicization of religious America (as a reaction to Iranian Islamic revolution). The We there was meant for many splintered groups, not just the Moral Majority.

In the 90’s, chip speed gets faster while at the same time, we  “got mail”.

So instead of getting inter-connected, we end up with the atomization or re-individuation this time mobile-enabled.

By 2020, we will have lived in a world utterly foreign to our parents.

The narcissistic propensity comes in full circle. First, in looking at his reflection in the water that Narcissus felt in love with himself.

Then, the witch looked at the mirror (who is the fairest of them all).

Now, it’s the crystal – Samsung or Apple – screen which is our digital mirror or still water.

People are using mobile phones to put on make-ups, to take pics of themselves etc…

To “friend” and “Like”.

Mostly, as a recent study by Solis, to project onto others that which happened to be theirs in the first place.

Sort of Paris-Hiltonian world. “Nobody f… with my family and gets away with it”.

She is our new “Godfather” personified:  famous and furious.

Lethal combo.

Sex symbol and icon of a new age. The age of virtuality. Of 4-hr work week. Of instant access and gratification.

The Orwellian world has arrived, except this time, it’s so democratized that you don’t recognize it.

So put on a CD. Click on play, replay and instant replay.

Puff, the magic Dragon. No wonder music has also evolved, from Peter Paul and Mary (communal 60’s) to Madonna’sMaterial Girl (greed is good) to Gaga, At the edge of Glory.

Who cares about attempts at creativity, or our feeble memory. The chips will do all our memorizing and processing. All we have to do is “amuse ourselves to death”. Sit back, relax, and take a pill. Protest not. And even if you do try, you won’t know how. The machine and the men behind it have it all figured out in their races to world’s domination. Wake up checkers in this new attrition war. This time  it’s neither cold nor hot. Just virtuality vs reality. A fight to the death – the mother of all realities.

Switching the script

On film set, writer is often called out on short notice to fix the dialogue.

Something is better left unsaid or sounded odd when in “live” context.

In life, we can’t retrace our steps to switch the script.

It’s live, and happened once only.

There lies the importance of getting the right words first time around.

Another way to lessen the impact of misspoken words, is to come out immediately and retract.

Even the NYT does that.

When the facts are not straight, when a character is mis-portrayed, the best way for editors to damage control is to come out clean.

We happen to live on this side of the communication (data) explosion.

Facts and fiction are both out there.

As mentioned in Brand America a few blogs ago, people do come here and reinvent themselves e.g. name change (anglicized), hair-coloring and new wardrobe. Voila! Boy George and Bieber. Entertainers and sports idols are hot. They are more than hot. They sell merchandise.

Just Do  It.

After all, we move about our days, filtering ads and spam mail.

No wonder we long for those “in” mail.

Someone cares enough to probe and not to pitch.

And we in turn empathize with their plights, the pressures they are under.

If only we could switch the script. Living a new life and assuming a new persona.

Like when we were kids, imagining we had just been adopted by our real parents.

We wished for another life, another script (if only the writer were standing by as fixer).

Then we would be reclaimed, taken back to the castle and live a happy life ever after.

When I grew up, there was such a story. Of a half-breed (African-Vietnamese). Co Ba Xi. The man who had fathered her left only to come back years later as King of his tribe. Vietnamese Cinderella. But that’s just one jewel among a variety of Immigrant stories, ranging from model minority stories to loser’s stories.

One last thing about scripting. As long as we live out our story, and not someone else’s.

At the end of all travel is to return to the same place and to know ourselves for the first time.

It is often said, life is 10 per cent action and 90 per cent reaction. When a large part of life is lived out of reaction instead of proactive, we are not living our life script. Paul Anka would be proud to hear his “My Way” sung by 7 Billion.

Why wait for the writer to come to our rescue?

We are the writers, we are the world.

While still alive, we can switch the script, reinvent the characters, and overcome the challenges.

As long as we know what we want.

Or seek help. There are people who are gentle and kind (not just in San Francisco or down in the Bayou), and whose advice are plenty and fitting (learned this in Vietnam. People still give out free advice as if they were still living in a village).

I am indebted to professionals on LinkedIn, who endorsed my skill set and characters.

I am grateful for “followers” . People who trek the trail of current Recession and the trajectory of Social Media.

What a time we are living in, and what a company we are keeping. Just as we thought we should throw in the towel, then comes help.

I am the sum of my relationships. Two old people in their early 40’s were still at it, hence, creating me.

Now I live out that script, all the while hoping to switch those last pages.

Hope to read about your multi-chapter, multi-tasking life whose script is not written in stone, but evolving with unpredictable twist and turn and whose ending is happy albeit not perfect.

Madonna and child

Not the Seine in Paris. But Rach Nhieu Loc in Saigon. She wore a cone hat. Baby tanning in the morning sun, resting in her bosom. The other hand, she checked her messages from a mobile phone.

It’s  Thanksgiving in Vietnam. People  have a lot to be thankful for. It’s now ranked second on Happy Country Index (the US 25th on infrastructure).

Infrastructure and Index of Happiness. By all counts, the canal stings. But people as a whole are considered happy. Many would care less for the Mayan calendar and its doom prediction.

When it gets too hot, it rains. Nature idea of  a “smart” grid. GE is investing heavily in “industrial internet” (the way Bill Gates referred to in his “at the speed of thoughts”.)

People here move about at the speed of motorbikes. It barely rains and people are already in ponchos and helmets , zooming by non-stop. No delay, no second thought.

Moving forward. Day after day. Only the future. When school is out, kids pour out into the concrete sidewalks, like a disturbed  beehive.

High-margin items are on display, all mobile related (I phone casing, eye glasses and sun glasses, helmets of all stripes, pull-overs and book bags).

Students from the country side try hard to accommodate themselves off campus by working at odd jobs.

I found an eatery with decent meals. Sharing a round table with strangers: meat, rice, soup and iced tea.

French-style cafes are extremely popular, serving cafe-sua-da at all times of the day.

007 is shown here too, interlaced with Twilight.

I wonder if the life style depicted in those movies ignite young people’s aspiration.  The Twilight cast, red-eye aside, all look perfect when they don’t go “hunting”.

Books are confined in a dozen outlets, scattered around the city, still priced themselves out of reach of the average wage earner.

The publisher I am in talk with has a branch office behind a huge pagoda, which is located across from Vietnam’s famous Vinh Nghiem pagoda. So, it’s not just KFC and Burger King who stake out prime locations. Religious outfits do so as well.

Meanwhile, the population understands health and fitness, how they relate to happiness. A nation ranked second after only Costa Rica in Happiness can surely connect the dots.

Their diet is healthy and their movement swift.

It starts early in the morning and early in life.

I saw the evidence this morning. Mother and child. Sun bathing.

Texting and tanning.

All contribute to the formula of healthiness besides discarded Vinamilk pouches on the street.

Perhaps technology has contributed much to Vietnam’s progress. Today, if you found a bicycle moving about, it’s a rare sight.  You can’t reverse history (especially in China, where automobiles are now as common as bicycles three decades ago).

You can only move forward with industrialization.

You read these lines. You know I am at an internet cafe next to my cafe-sua-da.

I do have something to be thankful for. I found a high-speed internet location.

Socially connected

The inner ring then the outer ones.

We learn to trust, to collaborate.

Great things cannot be achieved alone.

That’s why the President tweets. That’s why we tweet.

Do you know someone who needs our services?

Or some place who is hiring so our students can apply.

We need those links and those leads.

People need people.

On LinkedIn, we keep seeing so and so is now connected with so and so.

The social graph keeps getting denser. Pretty soon, the net (shaped in our image) will be big enough to carry us to safety *unlike our social safety net which is in need of mending).

New world order, fashioned after our image and likings.

I have come across issues and images I would never have come across on my own.

Thanks to the net economy and taxonomy; yes, I can.

Let’s see if Twitter will tip the election (Kennedy election was a close call as well).

I suspect that it will.

We are not back in 2000. We are in 2012.

Apocalyptic year.

And we have made it thus far pass Labor Day.

Penn State lost 2 games out of the gate.

And the economy, especially in Europe, is still puttering.

Hard times. Like those Post Recession black and white phoros (migrant Madonna).

Something is to be done but then everything has been done.

Together we can. Can’t we.

More than ever before, we are socially connected.

More than ever before, we are doing worse.

What paradox!

What predicament!

All the tools in the world All the help in the world.

Yet still stuck in lower gear.

If we apply the five stages of grief  to the situation, we are now somewhere pass Anger and Denial.

We are in Compromise and Depression.

When people compromised, they ask for less  in return.

And when they are in depression, nothing gets done. Hitting the blank wall. Everything shuts down.

Socially connected or not, let’s remind one another to quickly Accept (acknowledge the Elephant in the room), and move one. Get out and vote . Get some fresh air. Go travel and spend money. Fall is a good time to catch up on some spending and yes, reading (Tom Wolfe is coming out with his voluminous piece again). Turn the chapter to “your life 2.o”.

Learn from Penn State, even with its first two losses. Ouch!

Being Here-Being There

“Being There” was first released years ago.

Peter Sellers portrayed an illiterate gardener who had been walled in all his adult life.

His only window to the world was through the TV screen. Hence his speech and demeanor replicated sound bites and screen gestures (awaiting for a “cut” to commercials).

Shirley McClain played a society lady who picked him up and “My Fair Lady-ed” him.

His gardening analogies propelled him into being a Washington insider (political pundit).

I thought of this movie when I read about a homeless man turned business man yesterday. Ted Williams from Cleveland streets with a voice-over talent got discovered and given a hair cut for a second chance in life.

I wonder how long that baritone voice last without a script.

We are living in a complex and over crowding world. The audience is fragmented, and their ability to cross check is up to the minute.

It’s nothing like in the days when newspaper men had to stand at the dock side waiting for the shipping news.

Yet speed aside, we expect in-depth analysis, and historical framework to place news in context (for instance, Tea Party, is it a new Moral Majority? Iran new American hostage, a return to Carter-era crisis? Wiki Leaks, another Pentagon Papers? Gaga, Madonna reincarnated? Ted Williams, the American answer to Susan Boyle?)

Twitter and Tumblr, fact checking and spell checking.

It’s the age of “being here” not “being there”.

It will take more than a pretty face, and a Bloomingdale power suit to make a man or a woman, gardening analogy or hunting analogy. I hear the floor director yell “cut”.

Nothing is new under the sun. Only once in a blue moon, we got an eclipse (merger). As of this edit, Yahoo is making bold moves.

Take a step back historically and contextually, you’ll see that it’s just a new spin on an old script. This time, even sound bites might not capture digital natives’ attention. You gotta to have video bites, sort of Being Here. Peter Sellers and his butler’s hat is now old school.

He needs a mobile strategy. Where ads appear simultaneously for a multi-tasking generation.

Short-tail product pool

Muzak pipes out “Beautiful stranger” by Madonna. Yahoo celebs still carries head-shots of Paris Hilton.

And Vanity Fair features Cher-is-back.  Holiday best-seller list shows John Grisham and Harry Potter. Across the pond, we are refreshed with royal wedding. I know 20 per cent of celebrities dictate 80 per cent of what we see or hear.

Easy comes, easy goes (Ricky who?).

At least, via I-tunes, you can still buy Beatles music. Long tail.

The British invasion, still.

I thought about taking a picture in front of the book shelves. It will be a documentation of a great transition (from print to online). I am sure future generation will look back and ask, what are those things behind great grandpa?

And I hope in the background, one can zoom in to see a variety of authors and subjects.

Why would anyone want to go through life, watching formula-movies, franchise TV shows, and read plots whose outcome one could already guess? The whole point of this side of life (art), is to surprise you, to uplift you, and to awaken you to new possibilities and twist.

No wonder children can’t stand going through the Edu-mill. They opted for stimuli on-line, whether it’s gaming or texting.

Friedman even op-eds that Education is the latest frontier (of warfare).

Seeing the intellectual poverty on display, kids “got it”. Doesn’t matter what they come up with, the market economy still dictates what and who are to be sold.

Blair-witch Project will go down in history as one of those rare blips on the radar.

And perhaps, with more affordable cam(era), young filmmakers will risk new narratives. Growing up digital, they have “mashed” multi-source in their brain.

What comes out will , at the very least, surprise us all, if not a call for change: kids ain’t dumb. We just don’t listen to them that often. Too busy to “follow”  the Armenian sisters, the wedding across the pond and who Paris is seen with last night.

all flesh!

It must be hard to keep reinventing one’s self, especially when it comes to topping your own high marks.

Gaga does it again on Vogue cover (all- meat bikini ).

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/09/07/2010-09-07_lady_gaga_dons_raw_meat_on_cover_of_vogue_hommes_japan.html

Use all your resources. Follow the money and your instincts.

This is to show that when it comes to imagination, we have no bound.

We are the ones who limit ourselves.

Try YouTube.

Have a laugh at some videos, then turn around, and laugh at yourselves.

Why can’t you do it better? Why don’t you do it at all!

The last time I saw Lady Gaga, it was on the cover of the Rolling Stone (gun and bullets).

Why all the complaints, now that she did away with guns and try meat and butter?

It’s designed as a publicity stunt. And in my book, it works.

It triggers the imagination. It opens up something in my brain. It moves me and motivates me.

Shouldn’t it motivate you? One human being do something unheard of before, leads to many more mutations.

Vietnamese math award winner was said to “have thrown the bridge across the river” for others to see and solve the many “lemma”.

Whatever multi-sided equation he was working on, I am sure humanity can someday benefit from much (the way we have profited from the size and speed of the silicon chips).

On the creative side, Lady Gaga now stands on top of earlier giants such as JLo and Madonna, to reign supreme. I had a good feeling about this, seeing Elton John and her in a duet.  I knew then, that Elton was pairing with her, and endorsing her as heiress apparent. It’s our garden of Eden, with Eve not wearing any clothes.

All flesh!

 

Pattern recognition

As the saying goes, “those who don’t know history tend to repeat it”.

I should have titled this blog, “the art of reinventing the wheel” as I saw familiar patterns reemerge everyday.

Avatar for instance. For a moment there, I thought I was watching Jurassic Park and Never-Ending Story put together.

Lady Gaga takes Madonna’s slot, Raquel Welch– Sophia Loren‘s.

And BP in the Gulf now the new bad guy after the Alaskan Exxon accident.

Matterhorn just painted a more vivid portrait than hasty Apocalypse Now (which in itself was Joseph Conrad‘s fixer-upper).

And Madoff was just reinventing Ponzi and recent ball field crashers just reinvent the 60’s running strippers (except for the being Tasered part).

I must admit, when the Oscar for Best Director went to the first woman ever (Hurt Locker),

all bets were off (in itself, it could be seen as a repeat of Broke Back Mountain‘s Ang Lee.

By challenging our presumptions, these people were given awards. Once again, Need to Know, the show,  tries to follow

Bill Moyer’s footsteps. The new “disrupts” the old (Amazon’s free smart phones) And society – or customer – benefits.

I hope there will be more google-like companies to unseat the incumbent (at least we got choices now between BING, Yahoo Search and Google).

( Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both said that five years from now, there will be another break through, and another five years after that etc…)

For instance, automated Search will be less random and based on our search profile, it can “recommend” and even make more sense than we could articulate .

Can’t wait for Semantic Web to come around. Now, that’s pattern recognition at a personal level: our digital shadow on the wall.

Keep clicking. And pack away those black and white ancestral pictures. Our descendants can always access “us” in the cloud, where they will learn about us more than we could ever selectively tell them. It’s good that each of us can be proud to have left not only our DNA strains, but also our 1-and-0 (not B/W) portrait i.e. our digital footprint.

The machine is the mirror. You might be looking at it, but it will eventually reciprocate. We forget, but it won’t.

tale of a survivor

A Canadian lady, back from visiting her family in India, was aboard the flight to Detroit on Christmas day.http://www.thecanadianpress.com/english/online/OnlineFullStory.aspx?filename=p122649A&newsitemid=27268234&languageid=1

She recalled vivid details of near-miss explosion, the terror and the bravery of passengers and crews.

We cannot control some events, but we can control our reaction (10/90 rule).

As far as stats , the chance for us to get hit by a car is much higher (1/80) vs (1/800,000 by a terrorist) in our life time.

But, for those of us on business frequent flying list, bump that up a bit.

These past few years, American stay put more, move less. Many just want to stay in their house, without it being foreclosed.

We are dealing with an atmosphere of insecurity more than fear. Insecurity makes us loose sleep, fear helps us prepared.

The perpetrator was known as son of a banker, sent to first-rate school in England (I had some Nigerian graduate school classmates whose intellectual mind I admired).  In contrast, Prince William, born of royalty, decided to pursue and focus on a S & R military career. One intends to destroy and take people with him, the other, saves lives.

Same age group, different sets of orientation.

What I detest are people who expound a certain view, and urge the restless and radical to go out and “just do it”.

N American kids would take that as a “call of the mall” and go out to buy a pair of Nike.

These days I can’t avoid hearing about the “marketing” damage Tiger’s downfall wrought.

This holiday could have been much gloomier but thank God, it’s behind us.

Four young men: the Prince who slept a homeless night in the street of London, a banker’s son who should have traveled with his underwear inside out (like Madonna), Tiger who no longer acts his name, and the Dutch producer enjoys his well-deserving sunshine in Miami after a brief stop in Detroit.

Come on boys! Let’s act like men. Had it still been “hunter and gatherer society”, we would have marched you deep into the trail

and had you haul wild animals back for supper. Life has been hard, digital or analog, even without fanatics.

The Canadian lady said she threw up when finally safe inside the passenger lounge.  Asked if she would fly again, the answer was , perhaps not American. We need some brand reinvigorating here.