Trial and Error is 'The New Normal': Happy New Decade 2010

I was having lunch earlier in the week with a partner in a management consulting firm here in Munich. His firm specializes in consulting to media companies including broadcast, newspaper and magazines. Conspicuously absent from his client mix were digital media companies. In asking him what kind of work his firm did with these traditional media companies, he spoke of restructuring and cost cutting measures, mentioning specifically that when a media company looses revenue, the first thing they do is cut marketing. "But you can only cut so far", I responded, "how much from expenses saved is put into R&D"? He had no answer for that, meaning probably that the answer was none.

We discussed the digital revolution for awhile and how it was gutting the publishing business. I explained that the problem most companies had with interactive mediums was that the solution was a process as opposed to a fixed answer - and what worked yesterday, won't necessarily work today. "It's trial and error I guess?", he said, with an almost bemused wonder of how-the-hell-could-anybody-ever-make-any-money-off-that? If I cut $10 from your budget you've got $10. You can see it in your hand. But if I invest that $10 into coming up with new ideas to keep your particular Titanic from sinking, can you see that? Not today. And the things you need to see, instead of cold hard cash and an office full of empty cubicles, are opportunities - opportunities to turn that leaky barge into a seaworthy vessel one day again on new and un-chartered seas. And precious few management consultants have the ability to see things like that, let alone newspaper companies or magazines. Things like opportunity not immediately quantifiable. But opportunity cost is - what it costs you when you fail to take advantage of an opportunity. You can measure that in your competitor's new BMW around here. And that's where Infinite Wisdom takes its cue. To look at a business' future as a qualifiable process and a willingness to embrace opportunities instead of wasting time and money over a lost quantifiable past.


Seth Godin supposed today in his blog that if we are unhappy with what we have accomplished in the last ten years that maybe we should spend the next ten years at least doing something proactive, that we won't look back on and say we missed something. Something fun. Something motivating. Something qualifiable. His book, Survival Is Not Enough, sums it up for me and all those management consulting firms and traditional media companies who should be spending their time on creating a new future instead of trying to manage their fading past.

2009 saw my parting with a partner over this idea exactly. She made decisions based on survival alone, and that wasn't enough for me. And now we journey apart, - she survives, alright, but at what cost? Not one I was willing to pay. And so I write my future, everyday. With trial and error as my guide. Trying and failing and trying and failing until the law of averages eventually rules in my favour. If that's my price of success, I'll happily pay and at least have fun in the making.

Happy New Decade, all. Welcome to 'The New Normal'.

For my New Year's post from last year in Vietnam, click here.

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

Rubber Stamp Post-It Note Business Cards: Recession Profit Stategies #4

Recently I was on the way to a business gathering and I realized I was out of name cards. What to do? One of the main reasons we all go to these things is the ability to network and meet new people and in Asia, you look like a real dork if you don't have a name card. It's almost a religion here, and the titles one sees when attending an otherwise average gathering border on the surreal. "Deputy Chief Marketing and Information Technology Strategist", "Assistant To The Director In Charge of Other Directors", "CEO, Founder/CIO/UFO"... you know what I mean - but to show up without one means, essentially two things: #1) You can't afford the $6 printing fee, or #2) It's your first time in Asia. I myself was in a pickle - and so it was in a flash that was much more necessity than creativity I snatched a pad of Post-It notes and a rubber stamp I had made with this blog address and began to manufacture cards. The stamp fit quite nicely and they took all of five minutes to make a bundle. Voi la! But the problem of presentation remained. How was I, a guy who professes to be not only a Brand Provocateur, but a Fortune 500 Brand Provocateur going to pass off these pieces of shit as real cards?

Enter "The Global Financial Crisis" and in a jiffy I had a clever opening line for the distribution of some pretty cheesy cards. Opening my card case slowly and casting my sullen eyes upon the soon to be recipients I recited, in a deadpan fashion, how tough the crisis had been on my company and how we had resorted to saving money on all sorts of things, including name cards as I peeled each card gingerly away from the next on the pad. Fucking hilarious. The shits and giggles were almost instantaneous, and a flurry of chuckles and ha-has ensued. It was an immediate hit. Throughout the remainder of the evening I passed them out to the same humourous response and was even prompted by people who had been told what I had to give them one. The next day, hits to this site were up dramatically.

A few weeks later, another opportunity presented itself at a meeting of geeks, designers, venture and tech people, and again, the response was tremendous. One fellow, Min Tran, a right fine graphic designer in his own right, said the card was "better than design", because the idea was the design. Who knew? I guess necessity, being the mother of invention, knew. It just took me awhile to figure it out.

The moral of this story is not so difficult at all. Sometimes you have to let the situation dictate the terms of the creativity - letting go is sometimes so difficult - but worthwhile in the end. I could have showed up with no card at all and, honestly, nobody would have cared - but instead I took it a step further and ended up with a solution that worked for everybody.

For more Recession Profit Strategies click below:

#3 The Recruitment Process
#2 Saving On Employee Costs
#1 Falling Economy

For more on time bandit idea & business concept filching, para-normal plagiarism, and all out spooky behaviour, check below:

New York Magazine Steals AsiaLife cover from the future!
Dr. Thanh robbed by Chinese Time Bandits!
SDM:Saigon Digital Marketing victim of para-normal plagiarism!
Bono and international do-gooders caught (Red)handed in idea heist!
Saigon Brand Provocateur steals idea from himself!

Workers of the World Unite - A recession re-imagined - The Individual Collectivist is Born

Lech Wałęsa (IPA: [ˈlɛx vaˈwɛ̃sa]; born September 29, 1943) was an auto mechanic and shipyard worker who became a Polish politician and a trade union and human rights activist. He co-founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union , won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995.^[1] I first became aware of Walesa in the late 80s as the leader of the Velvet Revolution, a non-violent workers revolution that helped bring Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to the end of the Cold War. This clipping - from somewhere around that time, impressed me for it's simplicity, directness and correctness in the face of uncertain futures. Here are a few other quotes from Walesa that I quite enjoy: On Work - “I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things.” On America - “You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love?” On progress - “He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.” On the opposition - “I got politics and economics moving and then others took over.” On talk - “I must tell you that the supply of words on the world market is plentiful, but the demand is falling.” Interestingly enough, I was not able to find the quote at the top of this page, my favourite still.

The way society functions, we are all encouraged to rely on institutions for security - basically, because they need us to function, but when those institutions fail, where are we to turn? I was asked recently if I had always felt like an entrepreneur, an independent, a free thinker at an early age and in reflection I had to answer, yes. Yes, of course. I'm adopted, so that put me solo from the git-go. I painted signs at 16, opened a video games parlour at 19 and was also a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in the US from 1974-1976. In 76, I remember going out on strike with the union and watching the union management go from defiant, to defensive to defeat - not even amongst their own ranks could they summon a quorum - whilst management remained immovable. This told me quite a bit - and I also remember having a lemonade stand when I was 10. I proceeded on to university, being quite possibly the only man in the union who had a "Plan B" - actually, for me it had always been "Plan A" - the factories only being a way for me to have made enough money to have funded my education. Later, in the corporate world, I saw social behaviours that mimicked what I saw in the union organisation - the water cooler revolts, the drunken Monday Night Football declarations, the Xeroxed defiance of a populace to afraid to advance into management and risk becoming part of the problem. The black and white photo you see of the solitary worker is from those days - I have kept it all these years, kept in my daytimer as well, to remind me of how I saw myself at the time - an individual, but just another uniformed part of the masses that would board the rapid transit towards the building of a stronger America every day. I remember proposing an idea to my boss, Allan Klein at Leo Burnett, for our client Nintendo. I remember Allan listening, as if he had a more urgent meeting to get to and wrapping up the whole session up with the statement, "David, they haven't asked us for that". "I know Allan", I returned, "But isn't it our job to think and be proactive for our client, to make proposals?" "No, not really, David. Our job is to execute what we're told", he responded. It was well before that day, probably around the time I saved the B&W solitary man photo that I knew that, that kind of thinking was wrong, it was just on that particular day I understood fully that it was really wrong, and ultimately detrimental to the whole place. There was an obstacle in my path and nothing would ever grow there for me. It was time to kick it.

That Embarrassing 70s Show - I Was In It!

Oh dear. It's all about to come out of the closet - and I'm not talking about my gayness - although from this photo, you've got to wonder. Note particularly, my full-length denim jumpsuit (I'm on the far left) and my buddy's not-so-delicately-cross-hatched pants. Fucking hilarious, you've got to admit.

This photo comes from Sylvia, a really good art-friend during our freshman year in college and the dude standing next to me is my best friend at that time, Tom Nelson, or "Nels" as everyone knew him. I was known also as "Carls" at the time and together we composed a most deviant organization called "The Swedish Mafia", a clandestine cooperative dedicated to art, beer drinking, cigar smoking, classic car repair (we both drove junk piles of ever-changing make and model including Studebakers, Ford Mustangs a Buick "Invicta" and a Datsun) and the chasing of many women who were essentially bad for our mental health, although many times more than good for our physical health. From that was born another private club, "The Porker Brothers", but that's another story entirely. Tom now makes a "clean" living in custom homes.

In these days, we were both obsessed with getting through school (Black Hawk College in this photo) and finding jobs in the ad business (His mother was an art teacher and his dad had an advertising company of some sort) and Sylvia was a bit of a Tom-boyish art buddy of ours who was just really, really sweet and truly a good friend as well. Little did we understand that these days would pass quickly and this photo is probably the last time I saw or spoke to Sylvia. Until now.

Over the last year, since starting the blog and posting thrice weekly at least, my Internet presence has increased exponentially. Along with Facebook and LinkedIn, I'm pretty easy to find and any great number of voices from my past have popped up recently - and interestingly enough, primarily female - the account executive from my first TV shoot with Bozell & Jacobs in Dallas, the researcher and media woman who worked on the Nintendo Game Boy account with us in the early 90s, and another woman with whom I had an affair with at Leo Burnett. Oh, dear. If 25 year olds start popping up calling me "daddy", I'll start to worry. But that hasn't happened, yet. Yet. So there is definitely another side to being a Web 2.0 provocateur. A side that tax collectors, old enemies and older ex-girlfriends might find to use to exorcise antique angst. But that isn't what has happened to me at all - conversely, everyone I have re-met has been just so sweet and nice that it makes me wonder what kind of a guy I really have been? Even Tom and I are still in contact. Wasn't I supposed to have been a Porsche driving, cocaine snorting, advertising-creative-hero-in-his-own-mind, sort of asshole in all those years up the ladder? Well, we'll do a call-in show for that later. I'm sure we can find a guy I bullied in gym class - or maybe art class for sure. Are there art class bullies?

Thanks so much to Sylvia for this, and for letting those of us who have spent time in divorce court know that there is another side to that 50% figure. Sylvia and her husband in the photo, Jim, are still married. But no damn thanks for the fashion faux pas "outing". Damn that hurts!

The Language Barrier : The Asian Business Conundrum - Your best speakers are not always your best employees

I first heard this from David Miller, outgoing managing director of Leo Burnett Korea as I was coming in to the country as a managing partner with our office there.

"Your best speakers are not always your best employees", he said and went on to explain that as a new foreign manager that I would have an immediate withdrawal reflex and lean immediately on those who could speak English, bypassing a whole building full of people who could possibly solve my problem. And he could not have been more right. Foreign companies are absolutely classic at populating meetings full of elegant orientals who can certainly talk a good game, but are miserably inept at managing anything when the job gets back to the shop. And this can happen in two ways:

1) They are Asian of national descent but were raised overseas. In Korea they are "Kyopo". In Vietnam they are "Viet Kieu". And while western managers are just fabulously happy to have people like this on the ground, the locals can many times resent them because they didn't grow up in country, don't really know the culture, and talk funny. Additionally, can be perceived by the locals that the imports are getting a better deal than those who have fought for their country and don't deserve it - so they often have great difficulty getting anything done inside their native culture.

2) They are miserable managers. And therein lies a huge problem in Asian education, western hiring practices and any sort of management whatsoever here. The preference for excellent English over excellent thinking. Has anyone noticed that Putin never speaks English at a summit? Or that any other number of foreign leaders from everywhere from France to Argentina don't either, yet run perfectly solid countries with minimal crap over time - yet many African leaders with Indian and Pakistani ones thrown in, speak perfect English but have box-of-rocks countries that are rife with problems.

Back in the US you see it in a way that is almost comical, but common. At Leo Burnett we had an account manager named Bob Chen, who was of Chinese American descent, and had been put in charge of the Nintendo account, a one hundred year old Japanese company. No one seemed to be worried that the histories of Japan and China at war over thousands of years could be an issue but the decision was much more simple than that. In a 50 storey building with 2300 employees, we didn't have any Japanese. Rumour was that management was running around the office looking for "yellow people" before the pitch and Bob was what they could find. Close enough, right? Bob worked hard but he didn't really understand the business and certainly didn't know fuck all about Japanese management. There was another instance, in which Sony had expressed a preference for German design in it's ads - you know, real clean, spare, cold stuff, so a German designer was shipped in. What a nice guy, but the entire account staff just regarded him as an alien. America has just been fabulously insular forever whilst claiming to be a "melting pot" but that's been largely crap. Happenings this week are the first hope I've seen. Ever.

But the problem has now reversed itself for me. It's the local companies who plant good English speakers in front positions and then direct with old men and an opium pipe from the back room. Whenever I walk into a meeting and meet a room full of perfect English speakers, I am immediately suspicious. Not a one of them is a decision maker. They're props. Actors, TV talents. And the sooner indigenous and foreign companies alike realize this, the further they will come towards getting a great group of different people working together. Not myself or a one of us is going to be able to erase this prejudice, but as managers we can recognize it and take real big extra care to include everyone in the projects. I leave you with two examples from my initial assignment in Korea.

From Wild Wild East:

Jinook Kim was our motorbike delivery man at Leo Burnett. He was also a TV producer, but as the low cub on the totem pole, was stuck with delivering tapes, first to the censors, then to the TV stations at god-awful hours in the morning. But Jinook's boss was such a complete bum, that had acquired such an earned disdain from me that I came to rely on Jinook for anything of importance. His boss, a Mr. Park, had been trained at Columbia College in Chicago, arguably the top broadcast school in the city, and it was obvious that during his time in Chicago, he had done nothing but take the train from Korea-town, attend class, and go back to Korea-town and drink beer with his buddies at the end of the day. He could speak English but was creatively worthless, had never been to the Art Institute, a Sox or Cubs game and didn't even know who Al Capone was (I'm serious).

Jinook, conversely, couldn't speak a lick of English but spent his entire day in the office, while waiting to do his evening editing and deliveries watching videos. Hundreds of videos. I called him Tarantino, (he had no idea what that meant) because Quentin Tarantino taught himself to write and direct films by working in a video shop. Jinook had gone to a crappy trade school and was treated like dirt by the other Koreans. He was also paid less than even a secretary and was my lowest paid staff.

Over time I came to realize than Jinook's talents lie not just in his technical and creative ability, but in his negotiating skills in getting persnickety censors to approve stuff at 4am.

One day we had a huge issue with a Reebok commercial. The censors had rejected it because it featured Shaquille O'Neal having his head shaved to reveal a Reebok logo on the back of his head at the end. Harmless. But the censors had called head shaving "degregating to the human spirit" and refused to put it on air. We, of course, had just received the film from the US and put a Korean voice over on it.

Arriving the next morning, I was apprised of the situation and informed by Jinook that he had already created a solution. Remember, Jinook could speak no English to me aside from things, like video, movie and Speilberg.

He showed me the revised cut and my jaw dropped. It was fucking brilliant. "How, how, how", I said, "did you think of that?", I asked him. "Because, I know your mind", he said, "I know your mind".

Jinook had simply re-cut the commercial, using the same voice over to run the entire film in reverse, beginning with Shaq and a Reebok logo on his head, and ending with a happy Shaq and a full head of hair. Crisis averted. Censors appeased.

My second story comes from the same company and a different employee, a writer.

Ms. Lim, was regarded as our top writer and had a well earned reputation for churning out mildly humourous and engaging radio commercials for BMG music on artists as scintillating as Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, and we know where they are now don't we.

All writers and artists had their copy and ideas approved through me and it was usually done with Mrs. Woo, our department mom and creative director, providing the translation.

I reviewed the script and made a comment about changing the joke at the end and what I got what an obviously incensed Ms. Lim. "You no speak Korean", she belted, "You no read Korean. You no!", and she stormed out. As was sometimes the case, I just suspected that this issue world be referred to the president and he would over ride me, so I didn't loose much sleep over these cultural flairups.

The next morning I arrived in my office to find a wide ribbon of beautiful rice paper rolled and tied with a bow on my desk. I grabbed my coffee and sat down to open it. As I stretched it out, it was written with a simple black pen but in a penmanship that was elegantly Ms. Lim.

I am paraphrasing here and imitating her dialect but this is the general gist:

Dear David;

When you come here, I no have confidence for you.
You not Korean. You no speak Korean.
How know you Korean writing?
I mad to managers about give us you.
But last night, I thought about your idea,
and it is good one.

Thank you,

Ms. Lim

Ms. Lim and Jinook ended up on a film trip to Chicago later that year to make a television commercial for Kelloggs. We ate at at all sorts of restaurants, they visited my house, met my wife and generally had the time of their lives. They were the first Korean staff to have ever worked outside Korea. On the shoot, we had big, 10" plastic cornflakes so that we could shoot high speed film and get proper definition on the "milk spash" shot. Jinook wanted to take one home but we had to say no. Trade secret stuff. Koreans can copy anything, even plastic cornflakes. Jinook's salary was appropriately raised from $12,000 a year to $18,000 by the end of my tenure.

Jinook ended up being one of the city's top commercial directors, working for the best production company in Korea and may even have his own company now. Ms. Lim became the principal freelance writer for my company, CarlsonCreative, and enjoyed a stellar career as an advertising writer. Both of them learned to speak impeccable English.

And there is the moral in this story: Infuse your employees with passion for their discipline, reward them and let the benefits come back to you. The English will come as they want it to come, if you inspire and support them.

For more on Creativity, Education and the like, check below:

"Do Our Schools Kill Creativity?" - Sir Ken Robinson
Brand Marketing and Staff Training in Vietnam
2009 Marketing Predictions
The Language Barrier - An Asian Business Conundrum

Kimmy Robertson & Twin Peaks: What Have I Done For You Lately III

Every once in awhile I get the chance to trot out some of my older work in advertising and today is one of those days. In my email, the ubiquitous message from YouTube, "Someone has left a comment on (insert video title here)". Oddly, joy does not immediately wash over one for the possibility that it's a complete slam is extremely high. I have one channel that features all of my professional work but the idea that anybody actually made any of the mazzilions of commercials on the Tube seems lost on many viewers. I had one punk call me a thief and said he knew I was claiming a work that was not rightfully mine. I sent him the director's name and listed the creation crew and never heard a thing back from him. Certainly not an apology. Advertising is a thankless job. Sometimes.

But not today. Today, I received a note from KimmyGloria who later revealed herself to be Kimmy Robertson from the American TV show "Twin Peaks" directed by David Lynch in the late 80s and early 90s.




We had cast Kimmy as the ditzy but oh-so-much-smarter-than-her-meathead-husband because she had gotten a free book of football stats with the purchase of a twelve-pack of Miller beer. The work was done at the Leo Burnett agency in Chicago. I had based the character on my partner, Alex Kroll Jr.'s, girlfriend at the time who could rip up a room full of footballers with her knowledge of everything from history to stats, strategy and players of the game. American football of course. Alex was the son of Alex Kroll Sr., then CEO of Young & Rubicam advertising in New York. He had been a star player on the Yale and Rutger's teams and did a year for a pro team which later became the New York Jets - so I had powerful real people from which to draw the concept. Kimmy was cast because of her innate sweetness and smartness and this is probably the only beer commercial ever made, save for the entire "Swedish Bikini Team" series, where the male characters are played exactly as most beer drinkers of this variety are. Dim. Kimmy is physically small but she carries this off huge as the only person in the room who knows WTF is really going on. The commercial won a number of awards and was well received by the client and viewers, Her note to me reads: "DEC you are now and always were so kind to me. Thank you!" Thank you Kimmy.

P.S. Kimmy's followed up her earlier note here: " Hi David, This is so interesting to me. I have watched stuff on YouTube but never posted a comment before. I only hoped you would see it. You were one of my really good memories, magic. You worked with magic. Only a few ever do."

Love,
Kimmy

Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Write the Best Damn Blog in the World - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII

At first, the number of disabled people - no, let me change that - the number of crippled, maimed and deformed people, on the street in Vietnam can be startling. But once one has lived here for awhile another observation becomes much more astute - how well they fit in - how they are part of not just the environment but the consistent social fabric and neighborhood in terms of relationships, businesses and the daily goings on of things. The shop owners take care of the beggars. There is an obvious harmony that I can not ever remember from America. There we called them street people and since Ronald Reagan cut federal funding for care facilities we banished our disabled to the streets to die. We later re-classified them as homeless to seem more caring. I recall Pioneer Square in Seattle, an historic area of charming cast iron front buildings, putting chain-link fence around all the park benches so the street people didn't sleep on them, which would have destroyed the quaint Americana experience for tourists. At that time, in the late 80s, they said the average lifespan of a street person in Seattle was 18 months, before they died from disease and exposure. Ethnic cleansing? We only like people who are perfect like us. Wash the others out. I thought the chain-link really added to the charm of the area - in an Alcatraz sort of way. The only people I've seen who have made a worse mess of their needy, other than the Americans, for a wealthy country, have been the Koreans. They're just absolute assholes to those who don't fit their Oriental/Arian idea of the perfect Hankook. Koreans hide their disabled and shame them. But that doesn't happen here, and whilst this Communist utopia has about the same health care program as the US, people do get along, and fit in. Maybe that's something to do with having fought and won a war against a fate that would have been much worse than what they have now. Visiting Iraq in 30 years will be interesting to see what America leaves behind. ? The two boys are having a full throttle row on the sidewalk, straight out of Smack-down's greatest hits. He spins and does an awkward lunge in the air which appears to provide a kick to his opponent whilst protecting him from the tiled pavement below. Stunt-man school in Vietnam. And three girls and a very little boy sit in portable plastic chairs as if at ringside cheering the bigger boys on. One of the girls pops up with a piece of plastic leg from a broken chair to mimic a microphone and proceeds to narrarate the match for the remaining crowd of two girls and the little kid. I just eat my noodles and smile. ? Forlorn poor bar girls populate my Internet cafe surrounded by forlorn looking foreign men, Japanese, Korean and Western in an odd dating match that seemingly pits companionship and money against each other with the possibility of sex being a sideline but I can't imagine that much of the western baggage around here can get it up anymore. One guy claims to be celibate but has this rotating cadre of odd girlfriends. Loneliness is fought with a serious arsenal in post war-torn countries. Your wallet. Choosing a paycheck or a meal over a shag is really quit sensible. Chalk up a score for the girls around here. ? And my coffee man smiles, again. I'm at the wet market this morning for a week worth of veggies and am particularly enamored with the fish. But not today. Stories can be told by the palms of the hands of the woman who sells me my vegetables. A gaunt conical hatted vestige, she bears the marks of at least some trying farm work in her earlier years, maybe harvesting sugar and tearing long vertical lines from her palms down to the tips of her fingers. Her fingers are all misshapen in some way from breakage and who knows what and the idea of fingernails has been whittled down to just sort of dirty stumps at the ends. This market work must be a blessing considering the past. She is as sweet as can be and is there, 7 days a week, doesn't speak a lick of English, but always calls loudly to me when I turn onto her outdoor aisle of the market. Big pile of tomatoes, onions, peppers and what-knot. 10 thousand dong. 75 cents. ? Move along cowboy. ? Halloween hit Vietnam last week with a vengeance and had pretty much wasted itself before the actual date. A friend told me the bars were packed on the 30th but I wasn't out that night. He said the Vietnamese couldn't wait. They love ghosts and horror films. I made the colossal mistake of attending a Halloween event hosted by the "Creative Circle", an advertising creative club in Vietnam founded by Aussies, who apparently don't celebrate Halloween, and I did something unheard of to the crusty old dogs who populate the thing - I wore a costume. Now admittedly, it wasn't a very outrageous costume - I went as Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, arguably the top communication holding company in the world, and it only took a nice suit, one of those "Hello, my name is Martin Sorrell" tags, and a pair of glasses that look exactly like his (cheaply procured here for 2 bucks) - but it was a funny fucking idea, at least for that crowd. Yawn. Imagine the guys at the Creative Circle not doing anything creative at all for Halloween? Seemed normal to them. Only two other people, of roughly 30, wore a costume and they were treated as oddities. I did meet a few other people from Shanghai who were interesting and had a nice conversation with the guy who designed the packaging for my favorite beer in Vietnam, Bierre Larue. Other than that, is was thoroughly disappointing with one young Viet art director leaving, after being informed that there was basically no program for the evening, just beer drinking and a bunch of old foreigners. Yawn. My costume went over much better in my local pub where nobody knows fuck all who Martin Sorrell is, but the girls were all jazzed to see me in a very nice suit. ? The man in the booth next to me at the Internet cafe is talking to himself. He does this often - almost every night after the requisite amount of sud-swilling. Elvis plays. It's surreal as shit. Figuring out if it's PTSD he's affected with or more basic alcoholism is not really possible for me, - sure, I drink beer as well, but I sit at my computer and write. The greater majority of the place has no idea WTF I'm doing. That can be turned into a cocoon of sorts that keeps them all out - and lets this happen. ? So you're just itchin' aren'tcha? What the hell does the title to this post mean? What is he talking about? - The concept of Attraction vs. Conversion has become a bit of a Web 2.0 topic these days. Some like Mark Earls, describe it as "push" vs. "pull" marketing tactic. My friend Ken Johnson, who reviews business books for Amazon, reminded me recently, in his review of "The Peter Principle", that the core concept is over 40 years old. It's the idea that the more I actively market this thing, the less real readers I get. And I mean real readers as opposed to people who come in for the 99 cent special. I get all sorts of hits but only 25% come back over and over - and that's a good thing - considering that of that 25% there are 10% who stay for more than an hour each time. And I can deal with that. - Here's one of the latest of my more interesting readers. He congratulates me for being rejected by a major aggregating service for being "unclassifiable": - "First congratulations. I used to work as a journalist and I am inured to writing to a certain degree (an occupational hazard) - your blog has become riveting precisely because it is uncategorisable. It is not about anything, which in a modern Koan-like manner, makes it almost about everything. I really enjoy the writing and because I understand the drive, I will not deign to be condescending with the trite keep-it-up." - This is the kind of thing that keeps this blog going. This is the pull strategy in action. I didn't ask for this to be written. But I certainly don't mind an "atta-boy" or two. ? The guy in the booth next to me cuts right through the more than omnipresent Elvis that's playing - muttering, "fuck this shit", "fuck you", "fuck Bush" ? All I did today was go shopping and get this post up. Little things, but enough for today.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

To the lost:

Hello lost. You became lost when you went away. Not by some disaster or force majur, but by sheer inability to be there when it mattered most. One of you left for money and the SEC, another left for god, and yet another left because she was just terribly unhappy with herself and her business. Another left because he doesn't know how to balance business and marriage. My wife left when my company transfered me to Korea. Shit happens. People don't get lost because of you. People loose themselves because they don't know what to do. People get lost because they weren't looking for where they were going in the first place. Care for your friends and lovers but don't be surprised when they leave. A dollar has become a precious thing. Follow the money. That's how people get lost. Then in the end, finally, you can see what you've found.

"Rage is the only quality that has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing newspapers" - WWE Quote of the week 10.14.08

- And that's Jimmy Breslin for ya - keeping it real and true to the heart. This was found recently on The Information Paradox and I thought the whole site was worth a read. It's a group of writers who are kicking up quite a storm on Digg and getting read all over the word on the subject of "things American" with just the right amount of humour thrown in to their political stew. Give them a look and see what you think. Also in the "Mad but Positive" column this week is Todd Rundgren with his release of Arena, a politically charged call to action album that charted on Amazon's top 20 last week. If you need a little shot in the rock and roll head, pick up a copy. I'll try to get a few cuts up here this week. And vote - but please not for the hockey mom and her dad.

"Lehman Brothers. CEO - What a dickhead!": WWE's Quote of the Week 10.09.08

This one from Thomas Wanhoff and uttered right here in Vietnam. And I was even hinting at it a few months ago. in this very blog. Maybe the boys in New York and Washington can't see the forest for the trees and we need a level headed German in Vietnam to hit the nail right on the friggin' head. I agree with Thomas entirely on this one. These boys should all get a washing in the swirly bowl and be proscecuted with true American FUBAR vengence. There's a pile of dickheads right now and if our courts don't get em' maybe the American people need to get the government. Make sure to read Thomas' full post right here!

Seoul Searching: Perspective XII

Since beginning, this blog, as a companion to my book, Wild Wild East, I've made reference to different chapters by linking past experiences to present in some hopefully useful and secondly entertaining way. Oddly the "Wild Wild East Dailies" has taken on a life of its own leaving my work on the book to waste for the last six months. This month marks a return to the Book and a major edit I've had on my mind for awhile spurred by an invitation to show the manuscript to his agent by a friend of mine.

Today's entry seeks to return to days of yesteryear when the Wild Wild East was really the Wild Wild Upper East Side of New York City and your author was but a gleam in possibly 100 Catholic nurses eyes:

S E O U L S E A R C H I N G

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 Copacobana 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.

“He cried immediately, was cyanotic, resuscitated, then cried repeatedly”, said the medical report. The practice of slapping a baby’s butt after birth, was originally a device to kick-start heart valves and breathing apparatus as the infant made the transition from the fluid to the (Click on image to enlarge) airborne world (translation: resuscitated). Cyanotic babies, or blue babies as they were called, are blue in skin colour because blood is not yet circulating to the lungs which will produce oxygen – so a little slap on the ass not only makes them gasp but gives them an early taste of what life has to offer even before it begins to offer much at all – like finding out there is no Santa Claus before you even know who Santa Claus is.

The relatives in New Jersey had been told that Doris Mae had gone off to New York to secretarial college but probably everyone knew the real story. The preponderance of Catholics keeping up a good face would be mirrored for me by peoples in the far east many years later, but what an interesting precursor to a life of continually wondering where reality met the fantasy this new young man was about to live. Doris Mae Everitt gave birth to Shawn Michael Everitt on June 22nd , 1956 and immediately surrendered him for adoption. She would marry the father, Carl Henry Olson, just six weeks later and bear him another child but would never see her son Shawn again. For Catholics, image was everything. For little Shawn this would be just the beginning of a life of continual reinventions – for he was not about to stay little Shawn for much longer.

The diagnosis stated the child had no trouble eating but did not gain weight in accordance with his caloric intake. Tests were performed and it was decided that an adrenal insufficiency was the culprit. The kid simply needed more juice.

After 7 weeks in New York, he was transferred to St. Francis Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey and put on medication to correct the deficiency. Babies with a better shot at making sizable collection plate drops later in life probably got to stay on the Upper East Side – but this kid’s chances were less than average.

Over the course of the next seven months the same tests and procedures were replicated three times until a suitably fat and happy child could be properly offered up for adoption.

One must wonder how many passing doctors, nuns, nurses and night watchmen, the child came into contact with over his many months at St. Frank’s. What were the procedures for dispensing hugs and kisses? Tablet or capsule form? Did the teddy bears wear little black leather jackets? And what about communication training? Was he being trained to only speak Joisey or were the Queen’s English, and other accents being given appropriate instruction time? Brass knuckles or plastic rattles? This kid was coming into a tough world. Better get him ready.

– WWE –

As we mature into adults our childhood memories remain but become stored in our brains in a way that we are unable to consciously access them. Sometimes a motion, a shape or even a smell can trigger emotions and feelings from very early on. This was the case with the New York Store, located oddly, on 5th Avenue in Moline, Illinois in the early 1960s. Around the ages of 7 and 8 I began to have a series of dreams that focused specifically on architectural and physical environments. Striving to put reality to these fantastic images I came upon the New York Store in downtown, Moline. The New York Store occupied a fading, foreboding black façade that was a microcosm of everything implied by it’s namesake. In one dream I stare, childlike up through the European style windows to spy a chandelier and a grand winding staircase towering over a Steinway, atop a checkerboard, marble floor. In another I am transported behind the store to an alley where I see plainly that the grandeur of the New York Store is more like that of a Hollywood set, with paint-chipped concrete blocks and a rusty fire escape hanging over decidedly New York-like smelling piles of garbage. Ahh, the New York of old. I visited New York last in 2002 and, save for Ground Zero, it was a lot more like Disneyland – all spit-shined and polished to the nth degree – a tourist paradise but a real New Yorker’s nightmare. Damn Bloomberg and Guliani. They’ve screwed up a perfectly good dream.

But the New York Store in my dreams was not the New York Store of 5th Avenue in Moline, Illinois. Primarily the windows were wrong. The windows in my dream were ornate in the sense that they were large and undulating and full of panes amongst the wood framing that refracted light ever so differently depending on their angles. The windows on the actual department store were just flat panes of glass suitable for the mannequin dioramas that lived behind them. No, these windows were special, like the windows on the stern of a Spanish galleon at the captain’s quarters. I had certainly never seen windows like these – not in Moline, Illinois anyway.

My first trip to New York as an adult came in 1984 when I was 28. Working for an advertising agency in Dallas, Texas, I was asked to accompany my immediate supervisor to a recording session on a sort of training mission. As I remember, the supervisor had little use for me on the trip and I was allowed to leave the session early. That meant I had the whole of an afternoon to be a tourist and took to it as voraciously as one far ago displaced New Yorker could have. I saw the Statue of Liberty, from Battery Park only, the Empire State Building, the façade and lobby only, and Central Park, the zoo and Wolman Rink only – and the Guggenheim, the whole damn thing – quickly. At the end of the day, on the way down Broadway the taxi hung a right on West 44th (yes, you could do that in those days) on the way to the Lincoln Tunnel for my flight out of Newark when my jaw dropped and I slammed into near paralysis. I had just seen a ghost. “Stop, stop, stop”, I screamed at the driver. Gathering my bags and pushing $20s through the pay-slot, I tumbled out onto the sidewalk in front of 37 West 44th.

It was the building from my dream – exactly the building from my dream as a child. I hadn't thought about it in many, many years.

There could be no mistaking this one. The ornate design. The nautical galleon windows. The sheer grace and individuality of the thing. Bags over my shoulder I strode towards the building to read the brass plaque next to the entrance.

The “New York Yacht Club” it proclaimed – The New York Yacht Club. Fuck all.

Born on June 22nd and transferred to Trenton, New Jersey just weeks later, did Shawn Michael Everitt, a functional orphan at the time, have a chance to glimpse this building from the window of a passing vehicle on his way to the Lincoln Tunnel? For just a second or for a longer time? How fanciful it might have compared to the institutional/medical surroundings of Catholic child care in the 1950s. It’s doubtful that Shawn had even seen the inside of a church at that point.

It’s common practice for adoptive parents to tell their adopted children that maybe they were the offspring of wealthy or famous families. And it’s a fantasy not without merit, because in those days no one was allowed to know the truth – so why not make the kid a prince instead of a pauper? The fantasy offered more hope than reality.

On April 7th, 1957 a healthy and repaired Shawn Michael Everitt passed under the waters of Baptism in a Catholic ceremony and emerged as David Edward Carlson, the son of Raymond & Doris Carlson (yes, another Doris), who would later move him far away, to the land of the Illini Indians, Moline Illinois.

As it turns out, my birth father, Carl Olson had been an avid sailor and even owned a marina at one time in his life – Doris Mae, my birth mother, went on to marry a US champion water-skier, Bruce Parker, divorcing Carl after four years. My adoptive father, Ray, had just finished a Korean War tour on the US Destroyer Dashiel and at least understood sailing from a military perspective. But at no time, to my knowledge, did any of them ever take me to the New York Yacht Club. That part was only in a dream – “Where’s my sextant? Where’s my compass?” – wasn't it?

– WWE –

In other news from 1956, a Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress was signed by President Eisenhower, authorizing "In God We Trust" as the U.S. national motto, and the first television airing of the film, The Wizard of Oz, garnered a then staggering 46 million viewers.

Martin & Lewis were dead. Elvis was born and the Man Behind The Curtain and the U.S. Congress were headed for the perfect storm. David now had a new name and a steerage-class ticket for the fantasy/reality voyage of the century.

-----------------------------------------

One thing that's been very noticable about this blog is the amount of time people spend on the site. Over 25% of you choose to spend more than an hour here. That being the case, you might spend an hour with the Book and tour my Wild Wild East from the beginning.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective