Saigon in 60 Seconds: Aw, Okay, I Lied, It's 1:58 - WWED Reporting for The Morton Report

60 seconds is not long enough to see Saigon, but 1:58 works. Quickly. See all about it here at TMR.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Read my other blog: A Suspension of Disbeliefs

Fired for online activities? Join the club.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine was told to take his blog down, or risk termination from his place of employment. His blog had nothing to do with his job. Two years ago a woman was fired from being a lecturer at RMIT Univeristy (Saigon) for content on her personal blog. Knowing her fairly well, I took a look at the offending content. She deserved it. What she had written was rude, culturally insensitive and way, way off base from being a role model for Vietnamese students aspiring to be a professional anything. It was like she was a different person online than off, and not a good one.

But the two examples were radically different. My friend's blog was enlightening, humorous, extremely well written and a real liniment for the pains of poor reading we suffer here in expat heaven - hers, a piece of rambling horseshit that truly undermined the title bestowed on her by the university on her name card. But that's not the point is it?

The point is, why were their two respective employers holding their employee's citizen journalistic involvement over their heads and using it as leverage against their jobs? Let me say that in English; Why were these two employers F#*&%^$g with their Sh%@?

And the answers to those questions could fill a lot more pages than we have here. But it makes you wonder. For those of us raised and schooled in countries where freedom of speech, even stupid speech, is supposedly a right granted to us constitutionally, WTF is going on when those same countries reach across oceans and continents to quash those rights on their citizens living abroad? WTF is it when we have to use those letters as opposed to the actual words?

The video above is an absolute farking scream. And it uses the "F" word extensively. The writer/director/producer was suspended from his job at Best Buy after his video gained a million views on YouTube. For those outside the US, Best Buy is a computer and electronics retail chain, and the video involves the subject of a customer wanting to make a purchase of such an item - but in no way and no inference, ever mentions the creator's day-job employer.

So what to do? Calling your boss a limp pricked weasel on Facebook is a pretty clear violation of that non-disclosure clause in the contract - so don't do that. And Tweeting that your latest conquest can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch is reasonably more interesting than Tweeting whatever numb-nut thing you were thinking while online at Starbucks - but still cheap and rude. The lesson seems to be, that no matter how erudite and charming you think you are online, you are probably most certainly not viewed that way in person, based on your sophomoric online antics.

Which brings me around to me.

When I started this blog two and a half years ago, I made the conscious decision that I would put my own real name on it, and stand by its content, keeping in mind that I am me, in whatever form I choose to represent myself - digital, print, electronic or in person - employed or unemployed, and need to be responsible for what I write, and who I am - in whatever arena that might fall. And until recently, that has not been so much of a challenge. But that had been until recently.

For everyone who loves this blog, there might be 10 employers who don't. And for every 99 employers who don't, there might be one that does. The trick seems to be only working for those who do like it. And this week, I found two. Two organizations who actually found the work on the blog to be a benefit to the assignments I will accomplish for them. For one, the entire idea that I have worked for 2 1/2 years producing a steady diet that has accumulated into 350+ stories tells a prospective client that I am consistent, disciplined and tenacious. Hell, I'm not being paid a dime for this. Who would do that? And why TF would anyone do that? And two, it tells them that I love what I do. And that's almost unheard of these days.

Love. That's a funny word to use for work. And yes, I do consider this work. Passionate work.

I met a woman this week who has just returned to Vietnam, fresh with a shiny new MBA from one of the top 25 schools in the world. She was telling me that she wasn't sure the multi-tentacled global behemoth she had just signed on with would allow her to apply passion to her work - and there's a word you don't hear very much from people in regard to work these days - passion. How refreshing.

Jerry Della Femina, past CEO and co-founder of the famed New York ad agency, Della Femina, Travisano & Partners was cornered by a rather religious and right-winged employee one day and told that she had heard some water cooler chat about two employees shagging under a table in a conference room. She requested that Mr. Della Femina reprimand the employees and even went so far as to suggest that the two be fired for the act. Imagine that. Fired for fornicating. What had the world been coming to? Now people are getting fired for writing, or worse, making harmless YouTube videos.

Mr. Della Femina politely thanked the woman for bringing this to his attention and excused himself. Later, in an interview with a journalist he recounted the story and summed up his reaction as such; "Hell, I thought if people feel comfortable enough to f--- here, then this must be a pretty damn good place to work."

Sadly, the world seems painfully shy of the enlightened views of Mr. Della Femina these days. Maybe those dolts at Best Buy and a few international schools could learn a thing or two from him, the new MBA graduate and myself -

a life with no passion is no life at all. Learn to feel it, revel in it, harness it and put it towards some greater good in life, work and the hereafter. I was told once, in relation to creativity, that you can always pull a crazy idea back in a bit, but you can never take an employee who only comes up with average ideas and get them to do crazy when you need crazy.

The smart employer will see the energy and inherent creativity in their employee's online efforts, and learn to harness it, encourage more of it and apply it to productive tasks. And the dumb employer will get to hire all the other wallflowers who don't know the difference between a well-phrased Tweet and an ill-punched time-card. Viva la difference!

MENSA endorses McCain/Palin

In a unilateral announcement, American MENSA members have released the following video/press release endorsing the McCain/Palin ticket. And this is fairly amazing considering that MENSA members rarely speak, as opposed to AA members, who can't seem to shut the f up. Sarah Palin was really sort of pissed she couldn't be in the video. She really loves to be on TV.

Now don't think that this is some Aljazeera video, released from a cave in Northern Pakistan, with no video markings or clear understanding of the time of making. And it's not a "Borat" out-take either. This is a documented Mensa meeting with at least two of the three participants actively participating, save the man, who keeps trying to wave his hand over the camera - which, he doesn't realize, has a lense longer than his arm. And these are MENSA Americans, mind you - the backbone of the McCain/Palin camp - real patriots with a story to tell. And boy what a story! Glad somebody's got their head screwed on straight this year - and a few Buds under their belt!

Yet, just when you thought things were twisting into another yet unknown surreality, we get Major League Baseball throwing a game back so that Obama can own a "roadblock" on American media for 30 minutes, the night of October 29th. Yep, right here. Hit the link and read all about it. Go figure. America's national pastime being postponed so that we can listen to a 30 minute infomercial by a presidential candidate? Our country must be truly in the shits. Budweiser sold to foreigners - baseball postponed - and that pesky financial bailout business. Jeezuzz. What's next?

Who said you need to be in America to know what's going on? I've got it all covered, right here in the Wild Wild East , from Saigon - site of the last great American victory overseas!

But please don't let my political affiliations or location sway you...if you're a MENSA member, please, vote your conscience - as opposed to your press handlers IQs.

For more on Obama, click below:

Presidential Puppy In Rehab After Just One Week!
Rick Wagoner Makes History - First CEO To Be Fired By A Sitting President
"I Vote For Black Guy!" - Obamanation II
Lunch With Obama: Perspective XVI - The Little Things IX
A sex Redesign obama For scandal The oprah Wild oral Wild butt East iPhone Dailies
"Yes We Can": Obamanation
MENSA Endorces McCain/Palin
Obama Splits Ticket, Boots Biden!
Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase!
Obama Brandishes a Bud For The Bubbas!

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue

I'm a terrorist! Are you?

Courtesy of Mike Kirby...the following ad:


A government of the people, by the people and for the people? Not according to the Patriot Act. We're now living in Soviet America. Revolution is the only patriotic response.

This, just in from a reader:

Hello Brother Dave, Love ya babe! – Mismanagement and Greed (Lies for profit) have left our “Leave it to Beaver” life so far behind it is incomprehensible to vast majority of “Drones” left out there thinking that all they have to do is “live” to the age of Social Security and everything will be ok. Since the age of “Personal Awareness” we have become the idiots of “Blame”. It’s always “Because” someone did something when in reality, “None” of us have done anything except become complacent. Guess what? The existing process is “Not” about to change… so… either we shut the fuck up or do something about it! How hard is that?

Saigon 182.5: The movie

So what does Saigon really look like? To me, it looked like this after 6 months. And what does "Saigon 182.5" mean? It means this: a circle has 360 degrees. A year has 365 days – and so six months has 182.5.

And by the way: Go to the sidebar and scroll down to the Podcast control to pause the music before playing the film. That way the soundtracks won't conflict.




This film was shot originally just as whatever had been on my cel-phone for six months and edited in the Mac. A compendium of stuff. I made it as a sort of video postcard for friends. Then, in the summer of 2006 it was entered and deemed a finalist in the Nokia/Discovery Channel MobiFilms contest – a film contest for movies done exclusively on mobile phones. It was actually shot on a Motorola V3. The contest judges took particular note of that. Whilst participating in the contest we were all given very expensive and insanely complicated Nokia n93s to shoot with, including a Carl Zeiss lense and an inane editing interface that made programming a VCR seem easy. The task was to shoot and edit a film in one hour. My film that day sucked. The shots and script were ok but we were required to edit it in the phone using the Nokia interface that could only be described as Flinstonian. This film is much better and no phone should be made to edit film.

I think Nokia understands that now. They abandoned the MobiFilms contest concept after just two years and have since been preoccupied with coming up with their own iPhone killer. Ha. And me? I'm back to Motorola. I won a $700 retail Nokia phone for my efforts and sold it for $500. Big money in Vietnam.

It Was 40 Years Ago Today...

Well, not 40 years ago exactly, but 40 years ago in general that the Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive on American forces in the war. It was a surprise attack, launching on the first of the Vietnamese Holiday of Tet, or Lunar New Year, the same as the Chinese and Koreans celebrate. While historians have generally considered the Tet offensive to have been politically successful, militarily it cost great lost of life to the Viet Cong and inflicted heavy casualties on soldiers and villagers alike.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

The Tet Offensive (Tet Mau Than), or officially, Tổng Công Kích/Tổng Khởi Nghĩa - General Offensive, General Uprising, was a three-phase military campaign conducted between National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) during the Vietnam War (1955-1975).The purpose of the operations, which were unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity, was to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and to spark a general uprising among the population that would then topple the Saigon government, thus ending the war in a single blow.

^{I'm sure there were military parades in Hanoi but I didn't see any in Saigon. Tet here passed peacefully, as well it should. During Tet the majority of businesses close for various times over a two-week period but most certainly for the three-day official Holiday which happened last weekend. Almost at the beginning of the Holiday, the man or maybe woman across the street died. So at 4am one day the brass band started up and we were off for three days of burial celebrations. This person ran the busiest Vietnamese restaurant on the street, packed at 4am with all the local workers from the tourist bars here, but during the funeral – closed. And closed still. I wonder if that's the end of the business? Just to give you and idea, here's another Vietnamese funeral – shot from my balcony:}




The modern funeral ceremony, at least in Saigon it seems, borrows a lot from a New Orleans style service. In any case, the Holiday is now finished and the Vietnamese will get back to work, at least until Christmas, when a full two months of festival activities launches again and doesn't end until Valentines Day. Now that's something you get here: all the charming traditional holidays right along with all the cheesy commercial western ones!

America Overseas? CitizenMekong to the rescue!

For all those worried about America's image overseas, I send CitizenMekong to the rescue – America's champion in the communist world!

Going to the War Remnants Museum here is a fairly sobering experience. Certainly one-sided but a side Americans have never seen – and as valuable as any museum could be. For starters, it's called the American War here – understandably so.

Gone now are the agent orange fetuses they had in glass jars, now replaced by photographs. Gone also, the photos of Jane Fonda and John Kerry. These exhibits existed until George Bush's visit in late 2006. Still here though are examples of some of our war hardware with plaques that say how many tanks and how many planes were used. They number in the tens of thousands of all sorts of killing equipment. The number of bombs dropped is singularly staggering.

And a Vietnamese man smiles, serves you a Coke and a bag of prawn chips as you rest under the wing of a plane to take a break.

The equipment in the video is not in the War Remnants Museum. It is stuff found all around town at different locations and part of anyone's daily walk.

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue

"You have a very interesting resume"

That means the interviewer thinks you are strange. And what is strange? Strange means you are not like them. It means they do not understand you. It means they are looking for someone more like themselves.

Excerpts from Wild Wild East:

"Webster says: A STRANGER. 1a: of, relating to, or characteristic of another country : 5: having the quantum characteristic of strangeness synonyms: STRANGE, SINGULAR, UNIQUE, PECULIAR, ECCENTRIC, ERRATIC, ODD, QUEER, QUAINT, OUTLANDISH, meaning departing from what is ordinary, usual, or to be expected."

Strange means you may have been to places and know of things that they don't so the word interesting is inserted instead. It's not a form of curiosity - unfortunately - it's more of a criticism, a way of pushing back from the table.

"One look at all those descriptions and it’s easy to tell why people from other countries can be misperceived or misunderstood. Strange, outlandish, eccentric and odd - queer, erratic, and peculiar – these are certainly not the words we want to describe the person who’s coming in to manage your company. So maybe there’s a basic problem in using the word foreigner to describe people from other countries – but in Korea you will be a foreigner, like it or not.

Many of my expatriate friends have experienced the initial shock of being labeled foreigner and they tend not to like it, but Koreans, being from a homogeneous country with a Confucian value system, where everyone has a place in the hierarchy of the group, don’t see anything wrong with it. To Koreans it simply means that that person is not part of the group. And that is exactly the point:

The first thing one needs to learn in moving from a Western to an Eastern culture is not who you are, but who you are not."

Talking with friends and relatives back home is a little bit different. At any gathering or cocktail party you are obviously the zebra in a room full of horses and they are all very curious to learn how and where you got your stripes – for about twenty minutes. Then their knowledge of Korea or Vietnam turns to MASH and Apocalypse Now until it finally wanes and the conversation jumps to Bob's issues at the country club or Bert's new Lexus.

How odd to have been the foreigner when I initially moved abroad and now to be one again when I go back home or deal with American's there.

A few years ago I had a speaking invitation to about 250 Korean graduate students who were all planning to study abroad in one field or another. My subject was marketing. Reading through my resume and reviewing the Powerpoint it became obvious that most of the information was just gobble-dee-gook on paper. Couldn't I tell the story better in pictures? I gave a 2 minute run-through of my credentials...blah, blah, blah – university this – big agency/big client that, blah, blah, blah – and then said, wait – "All of that data on paper just tells you what things are. I want to show you how it all feels." I then proceeded to show the following film. I've edited the ending a bit to reflect the last couple of years just to keep it current for new audiences.



"The Guild of the Infant Saviour on East 86th Street in New York in 1956 was approximately 6885 miles and exactly thirty-nine years away from Seoul, Korea in 1995. Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis would play their last comedy show together at the Copacabana just a few blocks away that year and Elvis, singing Hound Dog, would electrify the Ed Sullivan show in the same city just a few months later. But things were reasonably less grand at the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a home for unwed Catholic mothers just a few blocks south of Gracie Mansion on the East River and adjacent to what was then Misericordia Hospital at 531 East 86th. It was here that Shawn Michael Everitt would begin his journey"

How does one get from New York to Illinois? From Illinois to Texas? From Texas to DC? From DC to Chicago? From Chicago to Korea? From Korea to Vietnam?

"I would be asked in Korea much later, how it felt to be a foreigner in a strange land and my response was simply this: When you’re adopted and have traveled by car from Jersey to Illinois at the age of three, you’re already a foreigner – doing it one more time is just no big deal."

Now the thought occurs to me that I should edit the film one more time – to explain to Americans about my time in Asia – or just make a whole damn new movie. Or write a Book?

Into the GapingVoid!

Who knew years ago that the funny Scottish man who drew sardonic urban cartoons on business cards and grooved to Django Reinhardt would be a web 2.0 prophet today?

Hugh and I met in the fall of 1989 as the two newest employees of the Leo Burnett company in Chicago. Hugh had just graduated from the University of Texas and I was about ten years into a fairly successful advertising career. Our day of company orientation included hours of scintillating explanations of insurance plans, profit sharing plans and of course, an in-depth analysis of the ever important employee handbook. We didn't give a fuck about any of it and spent most of the day cutting up, asking inane questions and marveling at the sincerity with which our sophomoric behaviour was being responded to. The day culminated with a showing of Leo Burnett's now famous retirement speech, "When To Take My Name Off The Door". You can see it here:



And with that speech, we were actually inspired. Behind the mahogany veneered walls and shiny conference tables, here was something we could sink our teeth into. Common sense, uncommon honesty and heartfelt passion for the business of creating something. I've heard it said that in terms of people's respect for certain professions, that advertising people rate just above used car salesmen and somewhere below lawyers, but here was a man you could believe in. Too bad he was dead.

Hugh and I would work together for the next few years. At lunchtime we'd grab a sandwich and head for the Jazz Record Mart in The Loop, still the largest jazz record store in the world. The storefront was a small deceiving dusty affair with just a few rows of racks of old LPs and a tiny selection of CDs. But through the curtain on the back wall was a cavernous room with tens of thousands of records of all shapes and sizes. They even had LPs that were nearly a metre in diameter, commissioned by the US Army for use on Jeep-mounted turntables with overhead loudspeakers on the rollbar. These records were only grooved on one side with the theory being that nobody had time to turn a record over on the battlefield. The size was simply to insure the longest play possible.

Hugh was a huge jazz fan, his father having been one as well, and probably taught me more on the subject than anyone previously. But all along were the cartoons on the business cards. They were an integral part of Hugh. Sarcastic, sardonic, enlightening and decidedly un-PC in the ultra conservative environment of the Leo Burnett Company. Remember, this is the company that created the Jolly Green Giant, not the Blue Monster of www.Gapingvoid.com fame.

What the fuck were we doing there? Both of us were fairly well known for throwing shit in the company's face whenever given the chance and did so routinely, because that was actually our job. I am convinced to this day that companies in the precarious predicament that Leo Burnett was in, in the 1990s need to hire people who will come in and shake the tree.

From Wild Wild East:

"Burnett would struggle in the years after that, loosing client upon client, all for different reasons, but the message was clear: this was a company tied to the images of the Marlboro Man and the Keebler Elves struggling to come to grips with a vision and technology that was much more Mario and Pokemon."

I told people for years that my job was to be the exact opposite of everyone else at the agency, that by sheer force of individuality and a measured detachment I provided a service that they desperately needed – objectivity. But it's hard to maintain that kind of freedom once you become part of an organization because the organization won't let you. They hire you because your are different but then try to make you the same as they are. This is pure organizational psychology. There is little one can do about it – within the organization, that is.

Hugh and I continued to work at Burnett for the next few years. In the mid 90s I headed for Korea and Hugh moved to New York. After a year and a half in Korea, I started my own agency there and Hugh continued on the cartoons. in NYC. As fellow geeks I'm happy that technology has allowed us to keep in touch and stay creative.

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

2.6 Million for a Super Bowl spot?

I recall having around a million dollars once to produce a spot for the Super Bowl. It was okay, not great, but not as bad as some of the shite I saw the other day on YouTube. You can see the game here in Vietnam, on a Monday morning at an American bar, but you don't get any commercials. It's an ESPN international feed or something.

Shortly after I arrived here, I was sitting on a tiny plastic chair on the street having a coffee and a smoke – little plastic chairs are pervasive in Asia because so much living is done at street level. As I sat, I saw the man in this video, slowly making his way toward me so I discretely pulled out my cel-phone and shot this film. If a picture is worth a thousand words this spot should be worth at least a million dollars. It didn't cost a cent, but hopefully will do some good.
_______________________________________________

After I made the original film, it sat around awhile until the script came. This would have been a little over two years ago. Watching George Bush on TV roostering around and acting as if America had some sort of copyright on morality just didn't add up to me, when I could see the results of our morality, 30 years after the fact. I finished the final commercial at home on my Mac and then sent it around the world to interested organisations. A wonderful man named Professor Kenneth Herrmann from SUNY Brockport in New York responded and we began a partnership. Do click on Professor Herrmann's link and see the good work he and his students are doing in Vietnam – and of course help them out with a donation if you can.