Mouse on Mars in Vietnam

And that's a little bit like the mice actually being on Mars, only weirder. Looks from the crowd on their sonic noise opening went from hysterical love (young Viet teens) to joy (old foreigners) to confusion (average Vietnamese) to flat out yawning (twenty-sumthing foreign girl) but there's no mistake about it, Mouse on Mars got their houseful, outdoors, in Vietnam tonight.


Arriving with a crowd of thirty-sumthing foreigners with me being the old cat in the crew we immediately sauntered up to the bar for a few brewskies. This took the staff by surprise. "5 minutes", we were told. Somebody at the venue forgot to sort out that beer was usually a staple at rock concerts. So they sent out for it! Ha. Leave it to the folks at the the Ho Chi Minh City Youth Cultural House to not figure out that people go to concerts to have fun. Honestly, none of these people had any idea who the band was, what they were doing there, and why the government (the German Government, actually) was sponsoring a couple of German DJs to come in and tear up their rice paddy for the night. But that's what made it all so much fun as well. It was as close as I had come to seeing the Ramones tear up Texas in 1980 and there was even a German guy with a Ramones t-shirt there. Oh how us oldies won't give it up. We're not going on that golden cruise ship until they come and haul us away!

Things got going in a foghorn sort of way with one of the members holding his mic up to a loud car-horn and driving away at least the pussies from what should have been a 2000 seat venue but only seemed to have about 700. Good. We didn't need those people anyway. The crowd, seemingly 50% foreign and 40% 'we have no friggin idea why we're here' Vietnamese was nicely bolstered by a tiny 10% of Viets who really did seem to get it. Did they do their Wiki homework before the show? Because I certainly had to.

Mouse on Mars is a German techno duo who did time with Stereolab in the 90s. And that means they met Sean O'Hagen of The High Llamas, who's group would make one of my 'Desert Island Disc' selections if needed. I spoke with Mouse, Andi Toma after the show and he confirmed that he really does know O'Hagen. Shit. Just one degree of separation away from one of my heroes in Vietnam. Never forget that.

Once the decomposed noise intro shook the life out of most of the crowd and the soundboard guys, things settled down into an hour's worth of heavy downbeats with distorted and looped vocals from the pair and a healthy throng of young Viets throwing their hands up in the air and dancing emphatically. If I had had kids by now, they would have been mine. Very cool.

One small missed bit of subtlety was a rear projected video screen that ran looped phrases through the eyes of an illustrated woman's face. The passage I remember most, paraphrased of course, was, "The state is not an expression of your liberty, the state is an affront to your liberty". I'm not sure the band, and I'm absolutely sure not the crowd, understood the gravity of that statement in a communist country. Brilliant. Subversive. Thank you mice.

On the last song a crew of Vietnamese break-dancers, 16 years old at most, came up and put on a show in front of the stage. The band took notice and came back with an encore that let the local boys strut their stuff. Oh to be so young. But I could never dance worth a shit anyway. Thank you mice. You helped me remember and maybe showed a few new recruits, that all this stuff really does matter. It really does.

On the way home I was passed by a white stretch party Hummer marked Saigon Limo with some Viet dude inside pumping his fist to a pulsing beat. Where was he when the real party was happening? Oh how money fucks them up. The Mouse show was free.

Props to The Word magazine in Saigon for picking this up.

We're all being eaten alive: June 22nd, 2010

We're all being eaten alive. And so that's what I've been taught by my 54th birthday. "Dammit David, we taught you to play by the rules, we sent you to a Catholic school, and you still don't learn. You must be stupid - or the enemy", said society.

The enemy of a good idea is complacency. No idea at all. The enemy of good is not evil, but inaction - the art of going nowhere for years without ever taking a stand. Without ever knowing where you want to go. Our schools breed this in us.

"Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."
~ H.L. Mencken

And I have not yet met a communist who has had a good idea. They have all been bred to believe the same old ones. Mao Tze Tung had good ideas when he was young, but his party institutionalized them and he was not allowed to adapt them to the present, although he tried. He died an unhappy old man, ostracized by the government he created.

"Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes."
~Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings, 1911

Last year I met a woman who talked me out of getting a regular job, she even helped kill one for me, for the proposed valor of starting something new with her - and then she left that idea and me, when it proved difficult - because she needed a regular job and a regular guy, like 99.9% of the world. She had a creative idea, and then killed it herself, or let her society kill it for her. Trouble was, I believed in her at the start. Who was wrong?

"When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong, they taught me different was wrong."
~ Ani Difranco

An internet entrepreneur, recently, backed me off the idea that we should try to solicit advertisers for a site but what he didn't have was the money to support his idea through years of no income. People forget that Google and Twitter were started with piles of venture capital. Piles of money.

Being an individualist isn't worth a pile of shit if you can't afford it - rather society will take some other conformity and package it as maverick vision. And women who once fell in love with your individualism will abandon you for it in favor of what society tells them is correct.

"Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers."
~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

The trick seems to be balance. How can we be creative and original without being victimized? How can we be responsible, without being complacent? And how can we find a partner who values and supports both?

I end today's rant with a clip of Todd Rundgren's 60th birthday bash two years ago. Todd and I share this day but also a number of ideals. He's raised two pro-ball players, another son in college and Liv Tyler as a step-dad, yet remained a rock star and a creative spirit at heart. And he maintains a successful career.

Toddstock Birthday Montage from Ed Vigdor on Vimeo.

Who the hell is thinking that at this age I should give up my ideas of being interesting, intellectual, creative and yes, profitable? I've had a life of all of that and can't imagine that it would ever be a good idea to turn a card and become a soldier - so much as others might want me to do. A lyric in a Todd song says, "Choose your heroes and choose them well, they could be leading you straight into hell".

"We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone - our parents, teachers, analysts - hypnotizes us to "see" the world and construe it in the "right" way.

The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists."

~Sidney Jourard

May I be "18 at 80" and loved for it, instead of discarded for it before I even get there, at 54.

Christmas In Vietnam - Saigon, Invaded Again!

Well, shit. I'm late again. The Vietnamese started putting up the Holiday decorations weeks ago. Never mind that there won't be any snow or that we won't even feel a smidgen's worth of cold. They've broken out the fiberglass reindeer and beat the pants off American retailers at getting this season off to an ice-sicley start. Remember, there's no such thing as Thanksgiving in a tropical climate because harvest season basically lasts all year, so there's no real start point for what will end up being a two month holiday. What happens essentially, is that somewhere in late November the decorations start going up and they'll stay up throughout the Lunar New Year, known as Tet in Vietnam, with minor changes and Santas replaced by Buddhas once Christmas is over. And there's little distinction between the Western New Year and the Lunar one. To the Viets, it's just an excuse to party and drive their kids around in Holiday garb on their motorbikes for months.

To aid in introducing this auspicious event, I've recruited my alter-ego, CitizenMekong, to MC the festivities for you this year. The video below gives you a pretty good capsule synopsis of what goes on around here - and don't complain about the picture or sound quality either. You must understand that CitizenMekong is a capitalist reporter working undercover in a Communist country and so must execute his reports via "spy-cam", an ultra-secret device hidden in an ordinary Motorola cel-phone. Pretty damn amazing, and a tribute to technology if you ask me.





Probably, now, having viewed the video, you'll have noticed that that there was virtually no mention of the birth of Jesus or much of a Christian theme to anything - and that's simply because, in Vietnam, Christmas has nothing to do with any sort of "Christ" or "Christ-child" or any of that secular rubbish. Here, it's been boiled down to strictly the commercial free-for-all the retail community has always wanted it to be - and it fits seamlessly into the coming Lunar New Year celebrations, if only by virtue of costume changes and a distinct slow-down in all sorts of work, government and school practices for the duration of a roughly two month season. By the time the Viets wake up from this Joyeux Noël cum Tet/Lunar hangover, all us bored foreigners will so chirping looney to get back to work that they'll be able to get us on the cheap through the beginning of March!

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?

Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III

I'm gonna rant a bit and the quotes in colour are from Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn". - Dream: Hugh Kwon from Leo Burnett in Korea works at Nintendo and is my boss. (only in this dream) Is reviewing my expense reports and instructing me how to cheat more effectively - old contract story from the "Wild Wild East" (not in a dream) . - Kevin and Charlie and Robbie and crew are all at the Lan Anh club today. Fracas in the pool. Cool. I'm reading Henry Miller. - "In America they're constantly running amok. What they need is an outlet for their energy, for their bloodlust. Europe is bled regularly by war. America is pacivisistic and canabalistic. Outwardly it seems to be a beautiful honeycomb, with all the drones crawling over each other in a frenzy of work; inwardly it's a slaughterhouse, each man killing off his neighbor and sucking the juice from his bones. Superficially it looks like a bold, masculine world; actually it's a whorehouse run by women, with native sons acting as pimps and the bloody foreigners selling their flesh. Nobody knows what it's like to sit on his ass and be content. That happens only in the films where everything is faked, even the fires of hell. The whole continent is sound asleep and in that sleep a grand nightmare is taking place." - I'm writing in Paolo's, the French cafe below my home. I can't have the details of the past in my writing - Forget the little things. Smells, and such. Bugs. A blur. Story about the roach on the wall of the bar and men behaving like roaches while it crawls. Li-Li bar. Finished. - There's a Saigon kiss on my leg in the sunshine. A fading burn on my calf from touching a motorbike tailpipe parked to shortly and no room for a man to walk in between. - And Paolo's bar breaks into a barwide chorus of "Stand By Me" when it shows up on the stereo and then a French song, even f%4#*ng louder. It's Sunday night. 8:45. - These are not the clouds of Chicago - The South Pacific only. They don't move. - "And I was just a Brooklyn boy, too, which is to say one of the last and the least of men." - A raindrop in the sunlight. - "Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not understood." - Long hairs growing from a mole. Beautiful for Vietnamese men. You see it all the time. No pictures for you today. Imagine. - "Most of us live the greater part of our lives submerged. Certainly in my own case I can say that not until I left America did I emerge above the surface. Perhaps America had nothing to do with it, but the fact remains that I did not open my eyes wide and full and clear until I struck Paris. And perhaps that was only because I had renounced America, renounced my past." - I have a large Philly cheese steak sandwich waiting. Over and out.

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