Music Video

You may have noticed over the last year that I like to make music videos....or really videos set to music. I make no claims to be good at editing and am admittedly an amateur. For inspiration I've looked towards the works of some great masters of film: John Ford, Billy Wilder, Milos Forman, Martin Scorsese, Coppola, Sydney Pollack, Sam Friedlander, the Coen Brothers, William Friedkin, Robert Redford, Hitchcock, King Kidor, etc. etc. However, there is one inspiration that trumps all the others: my buddy Tom. You may remember Tom from this photo:

Over the last couple of years Tom has been making music videos in his free time. Tom, like in his bathing suit, likes to get freaky with his work. Here's his latest video in his own words:

Please check out the new music video i directed for the song "Funeral Pyre Eyes" by ALL PARALLELS. The idea behind the video is that i took an old Earth Wind and Fire music video and put the 3 members of ALL PARALLELS in the video with them.

Pass this on to everybody you can and leave a comment if you could.

ok, hope you enjoy, time to get funky!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUtFKzIttsU

love

Thomas Tancred

Double Digits!

Ten months ago I went to the Hanoi International Airport with my buddy Steve to pick up my friend Devin. While waiting for his flight to arrive, Steve went to the bathroom and I took a seat across from two cute Vietnamese girls wearing traditional dresses. I smiled at the girl on the right and she smiled back. A couple minutes later Steve came out of the bathroom and started to chat up the girls. I never could have imagined that I'd spend nearly every day over the next ten months with the girl who I smiled at...

...and every day since then she's kept me smiling.

Made In Vietnam II

I have been wearing the same two pairs of sneakers for the past year. I have my "athletic shoes" which are a pair of black Nike running shoes and my "casual sneakers" which are a pair of Nike high tops:
(PICTURE: I'm not sure if this picture is blurry or my shoes are just that dirty."

I love my high tops -- a style I've stolen from my buddy Tom in LA -- but recently they've started to hurt my feet. They're really worn in and don't exactly feel like they're supporting my feet. I've been reluctant to throw them away because I know I can't buy a pair like them out here....or can I? Last night I looked in my shoe and saw this tag:

That's right, my Nike's are made in 'Nam! It might be time for a motorbike trip to find all the places where my clothing/backpack/shoes were made in this country. If you're curious, my other Nikes' were made in China.

Made In Vietnam

(PICTURE: Me and my LL Bean bag in Croatia.)

Last year when I was preparing my move to Vietnam I had a few small things to do: sell my Prius, ship all my belongings from California to New Jersey, and fix my LL Bean hiking backpack.

I've had a good relationship with LL Bean since I was a little kid. All of their products have a lifetime guarantee and I've used this guarantee quite a few times with my school bag growing up. In preparing to travel, I took out my large hiking backpack and saw that one of my shoulder straps was nearly ripped off. It had ripped during my trip to Italy for my friend Anthony's wedding the previous year.

I called LL Bean prepared to swap out my bag with a new one. Well, it wasn't as easy as it had been in the past. LL Bean stopped making my exact backpack and didn't make one anymore of a similar size. The very helpful woman on the phone told me I could get my backpack fixed at a tailor and LL Bean would reimburse me for the expense. Man, what a great company!

While I was talking with the customer service woman, something funny happened. The woman asked me to find the product number in my bag so she could write a report. I started to search inside the bag and was shocked when I found a tag that said: MADE IN VIETNAM.

Two thoughts occurred to me:

THOUGHT 1: Not all LL Bean stuff is made in Maine!!! Treachery!

THOUGHT 2: Can I get my backpack fixed in Vietnam?

I told the woman on the phone that I was headed to Vietnam and asked if I could get my bag fixed at the factory there. She laughed, assuming I was joking. Okay, I was joking but perhaps I shouldn't have been. During my travels over the past year the shoulder strap ripped again. I wish I knew where the factory was!

Clarinet Lessons

Often on Ahoy Hanoi I mention some of the unbelievable deals you can get in Vietnam. Well, the other day I heard perhaps the best deal yet:

My friend Sean -- a teacher/musician in Hanoi -- has been taking clarinet lessons for fifteen dollars a lesson.

Okay, that doesn't seem like an amazing deal since I'm sure you could get a half decent, starving musician teacher in America for around that. However, Sean's teacher is pretty qualified -- she's the first chair in the Hanoi Symphony Orchestra. That's right, he's getting taught by the best clarinet player in Vietnam for $15 a lesson. Hey, Mom, maybe it's time to dust off your old flute and come visit me again!

Ballet

(PICTURE: Huyen and I at the opera house.)

Because my friend Veronica was visiting during Valentine's Day, this past weekend I took Huyen out for a belated V-day. We went out to dinner for one of her favorite foods: chicken hot pot with lots of fresh shrimp (okay, it's one of my favorite foods too). After dinner we got some fresh ice cream and then headed to the Hanoi Opera House.

For around $30 I had bought Huyen and I seventh row, center seats. The seats were great, although I'm pretty sure no seats are bad at the opera house. The first half of the performance was the Hanoi orchestra playing a series of Beethoven songs. Accompanying the musicians were five opera singers and a Russian pianist. The music was amazing and Huyen was smiling from ear to ear anytime the opera singers belted out some lines.

After the intermission, the ballet began. The ballet was....well, 75% pretty bad. During the intermission they opened the stage pit and I assumed the orchestra would sit down below and play from there during the ballet. However, they didn't and the pit just remained open. This meant two things:

1. There was no live music. They pumped in the tunes for the dancers.

2. The dancers had to dance on the back half of the stage.

It was a pretty bizzare set up. The dancers were obviously talented but they weren't exactly in synch with one another. That said, the fourth and final dance was spectacular. All of the dancers came out with Chinese lanterns and put on a beautiful performance.

One of my favorite parts of the night was when a fellow foreigner behind me grumbled out loud, "This is a rip off" and got up and left during the middle of a dance. The lady had paid no more than $15 for her seats and had just seen a phenomenal orchestra which alone was worth the money. Huyen turned to me as they left and said, "I think they wanted live music during the ballet."

Reality TV

I heard this great story the other day that my reality TV friends can appreciate. My friend Marc's wife was called by her friend to shoot an episode for a reality TV show. Her friend is a hairdresser in Hanoi and the TV show wanted to do an episode about her as an up-and-coming hairdresser. My friend's wife was going to be the client who the hairdresser styled that day.

On the day of the shooting my friend's wife went to the salon and met the film crew. It was a small crew but enough to get the job done. At the end of the shooting the producer said to the hairdresser that if he wanted the episode aired he would have to slip him some money. The producer wanted 5,000,000 dong (almost $300).

To us non Vietnamese this sounds absurd and an obvious case of bribery. However, in Vietnam many transactions like this take place. You get pulled over for running a red? Slip the cop 100,000. Want to keep your bar open past the midnight curfew? Hand the police a couple bills.

In the end the hairdresser coughed up the money and was given a phone number to call if she had any questions about the episode. That night the hairdresser called the phone number. It wasn't a real number. The whole thing had been a set-up.