The cover page of Bruce Tran's bankruptcy filing

If nothing else, Bruce Tran has the knack for making news even when he’s not doing things.

What the CEO of VHN-TV and vice-president of the Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California is not doing now, is that he’s not going to show up at a hearing on the collection of more than $1.5 million in judgment debt.

Because he’s filed for bankruptcy, and the law provide for the stay of all actions against the debtors until either the bankruptcy case is over or the bankruptcy judge lifts the stay.

Which was, of course, how people learned of the bankruptcy filing in the first place: His lawyer filed it in the collection action to stay a hearing.

Despite being on the hook for the judgment debt that may reach close to $2 million if legal interest is added, in his bankruptcy filing Tran claims debt of only between $0 and $50,000.

The Vietnamese American Federation, of which Tran is a vice-president, is a creation of the Interfaith Council, a religious group that sought to “unite” the various political fractions in the Viet community.

A very public election was organized for the Federation’s board. When the results came out, though, the organizers kicked two winners off the board. Tran was moved up the ranks and ended up as one of two vice-presidents of the group.

His term is up this year, and a new election is being organized. An organizing committee has been set up for the new election, but the process for choosing this organizing committee was a bit obfuscated and confusing; it’s unclear what role if any the Interfaith Council is now playing in this. 

Anyway, apparently worried that Viet Weekly editors may run (and, gasp, win), organizers inserted a new condition for candidates: You can’t run if you’ve traveled to Vietnam in the past year.

Tran also ran for mayor of Westminster in 2010 but lost to the incumbent.

The million-dollar judgment was one for fraud, awarded to Thomas Nguyen, his former partner and an entertainer better known in the Vietnamese community as Quoc Thai. The lawsuit is a result of a previous lawsuit (read about the previous one here).

In the previous lawsuit, Thomas Nguyen/Quoc Thai had sued Tran, Suzanne Nguyen, and the media company that Quoc Thai founded, VHN-TV. Quoc Thai had claimed that the defendants unlawfully freezed him out of his ownership in the company. The court had ruled that each defendant got 30%, a consultant got 10%, and VHN-TV must pay Quoc Thai $300,000.

But then Bruce Tran issued himself a huge number of shares, diluting Quoc Thai’s ownership down to 3%. So Quoc Thai sued again, and the $1.5+ million judgment resulted.

Suzanne Nguyen, too, filed for bankruptcy and got a stay of the collection against her.

Y Lan looks just like her mother

The San Diego Padres baseball team designates its Labor Day game as “Vietnamese Culture Day” and will feature Vietnamese pop star Ý Lan to sing the national anthem at the game.

This may be a signal that baseball is trying to make itself become familiar to the Vietnamese community. Of the three top American sports, it is somewhat, well, interesting, that the most American of them all is least watched by the Vietnamese-Americans.

The Padres may be trying to reverse that.

For its game against the Giants (by the way, we’re talking about the MLB champion baseball team from San Francisco, not the football team from New York that Vietnamese are more familiar with) on September 5, the Padres will celebrate Vietnamese culture with a pre-game ao dai fashion show, a Viet band from Orange County, and Y Lan will open the game with the national anthem.

Y Lan comes from a famous Vietnamese artistic family. Her mother Thai Thanh was the top pop diva of her days, with a career that started in the 1940s and lasted all the way to the 1980s in the U.S. Thái Thanh was among a very small number of South Vietnamese singing stars not to resume their singing when the communists took over the country.

Y Lan’s father Le Quynh is a movie star. Many of her uncles, aunts, and cousins are also musical stars – composers, musicians, singers. Top Vietnamese songwriters Phạm Đình Chương is her uncle, and Phạm Duy is her uncle by marriage.

Y Lan herself didn’t have a singing career until her early 30s, and has since shot to the top of the pop singer hierarchy.

A mother of six and a breast cancer survivor, Y Lan is the founder of the Ylan Sweet Dreams Foundation that helps educate and raise awareness for women’s health, according to Nguoi Viet here.

The Bolsavik is hoping that after this wonderful news, maybe more Vietnamese-Americans will learn to actually sing the Star-Spangled Banner. (Oh, like you never noticed that any event where they salute the flags, the Vietnamese would sing the old South Vietnamese anthem with gusto and then they would stay mute while a machine plays the American national anthem?)

Following is the press release received from by Y Lan’s husband:

For Immediate Release Media Contact: Ted Nguyen

Aug. 22, 2011             949.371.6141 or tednguyenusa@gmail.com

Pop diva Y Lan performs on Labor Day at Major League Baseball’s first Vietnamese Cultural Day at Petco Park

SAN DIEGO – Y Lan, the iconic songstress popular with Vietnamese worldwide, will perform on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 5, before the Padres go on the field with the World Champions San Francisco Giants.

The San Diego Padres organization is recognizing the Vietnamese community in San Diego, among the largest in the U.S., with “Vietnamese Culture Day,” the first such event in Major League Baseball. Pre-game cultural festivities include the iconic and alluring ao dai fashions, musical entertainment by the talented Lily Bee and Le Toan Band from Orange County, Calif., culminating with Y Lan singing the national anthem.

“The youth and culture themes tap into our community pride and will draw both die-hard Padres fans and Y Lan’s legions for a great day in baseball,” said Alexander Nguyen, treasurer of the Vietnamese-American Youth Alliance of San Diego that partnered with the San Diego Padres front office.

Y Lan (pronounced e-lan) has more than 100 musical videos to her credit, including a recent release by the wildly popular Paris By Night series of top hits commemorating a 20-year career. She sings Vietnamese pop, French classics and American standards for Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese fans and audiences.

The mother of six children and a breast cancer survivor, Y Lan started her own charitable organization called Sweet Dreams Foundation to promote women’s health awareness and early detection.

Y Lan’s mother is the legendary diva Thai Thanh and her father, Le Quynh, was Vietnam’s first big star of the silver screen. Two of her uncles are Vietnam’s revered composers and songwriters.  Growing up in a musical legacy household, Y Lan was actually discouraged from singing to pursue academic study.

In 1980, Y Lan’s young family left Vietnam as boat people and a year later settled in America.  Not until age 32 did she start her singing career when a music producer in Orange County discovered her talent singing at a classmate’s wedding. Y Lan shot to instant stardom with her inimitable renditions of romantic ballads. She has toured four continents to Vietnamese communities of the diaspora.

“It’s going to be a milestone for me as well as a tremendous honor to sing our national anthem,” Y Lan said. “As a refugee adopted into this land, I can’t think of a more thrilling moment than performing The Star-Spangled Banner in front of 35,000 San Diego fans in their family outing to cheer America’s favorite pastime.”

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Gen. Ky's funeral in Kuala Lumpur

A little-noted line in a notification from General Nguyen Cao Ky‘s family indicates the family is embracing a hidden part of his past – something that many other Vietnamese families have trouble doing.

According to Vietnamese customs, at least recent customs, when someone passes away, the family posts or sends out notification to friends and neighbors informing them of the passing. Called a “cáo phó,” it is intended to give those friends an opportunity to pay their last respect.

So it was that when the former South Vietnamese strongman died, his family sent out a cáo phó. This cáo phó was amended several times, as funeral plans kept changing.

The final version, sent to Nguoi Viet Daily News to be published (click here), contains something interesting:

The English portion of the cáo phó lists 6 children, but the Vietnamese portion lists 7.

Click on the thumbnail for the full version. You can also see the same cáo phó on Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen‘s web site here.

The extra name, Nguyen Cao Ky Trang, is reportedly that of a daughter the former general had out of wedlock before he became a general.

Stories circulated of how General Ky, once he ruled the country, started taking revenge on those who disclosed the girl’s existence. No, no severed heads of horses in bed or anything, just things like yanking a publisher’s permit and such.

But that was a half-century ago.

Today, it looks like the now-grown woman has finally been taken into the fold of her family in a very public way.

Madame Nhu in Paris

 
The woman whose sharp tongue and interference in government affairs contributed to the downfall of the first presidency of South Vietnam passed away in Rome on Easter Sunday, according to her biographer.

Madame Nhu, born 1924, the wife of Presidential Adviser Ngo Dinh Nhu and sister-in-law of President Diem, passed away peacefully at 2am Sunday, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, in a hospital.

The news was relayed by Truong Phu Thu, a retiree from Seattle whose 2004 interview of Vietnam’s former First Lady was the only known published on-the-record conversation she had after the war.

Truong Phu Thu had been in constant contact with Madame Nhu, helping to translate her memoirs.

His announcement said the 87-year-old Madame Nhu, nee Tran Le Xuan, received her last rites before her death. She had been living a reclusive life in Europe.

For the first decade in exile following the 1963 coup (it used to be called the Revolution and was the Republic of Vietnam’s National Day) that killed her husband and brother-in-law, Madame Nhu avoided the United States, boycotting it as the country that she thought stabbed Nhu and Diem in the back.

In 1975, however, she flew to New York for an interview on NBC and for a reunion with her parents.

Madame Nhu was a member of parliament and president of the Women’s Union (Phụ nữ Liên đới) during the reign of President Diem. Since the Nhu family lived in the Presidential Palace with the bachelor Diem, Madame Nhu became the de facto First Lady, present at all state functions.

The position got to her head, however, and the thirtysomething French-educated woman began acting like she ruled the Queendom of Vietnam. Just as President Diem was accused of blatant pro-Catholic bias and anti-Buddhist repression, Madame Nhu went to American TV and made wild accusations against the Buddhist monks, challenging them to keep burning themselves.

Even lesser measures she took were viewed as advocating the agenda of Catholicism, to which she converted when she got married. When she pushed through a law making it hard to obtain a divorce, it was widely seen as enforcing Vatican’s edict against dissolution of marriage.

When a statue of the Trung Sisters - ancient Vietnamese women warriors who fought the Chinese – were erected in Saigon, it was said that she made the sculptor put her face on the statue, making her the Trung Sisters incarnate. The statues were toppled following the coup.

At the time President Diem was deposed and subsequently killed with his brother, Madame Nhu was on a trip to the U.S. to drum up public support, accompanied by her oldest daughter. (In Vietnamese, the word was “giải độc” – to undo the poisonous feelings and thoughts.)

Accusing the U.S. of instigating the coup, she left the country in disgust and went to Italy. Her other children were later allowed to join her there.

Her memoirs are slated to be published later this year, according to Truong Phu Thu. It will be in its original French and a Vietnamese translation.

Funeral services will be private.

Bruce Tran

Bruce Tran, one-time mayoral candidate for Westminster, and Vice-President of the Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California, was found liable for more than $1.5 million for defrauding his business partner.

The judgment hit Tran and his associate Suzanne Nguyen with breach of fiduciary duty, conversion (i.e. theft), and also malice oppression and fraud justifying punitive damages. The verdict, being in a civil case, did not require unanimity, but the jury was unanimous anyway, ruling 12-0.

Bruce Tran is the Vice-President of a group named “Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California” (“Ban Đại Diện Cộng Đồng“). Voted in by a public election last year, the group answers to the Interfaith Council (“Hội Đồng Liên Tôn“).

The jury awarded the plaintiff Thomas Nguyen, a radio operator and entertainer known in the Vietnamese community as Quoc Thai, $1,485,000.

After the verdict was rendered, together with a finding that punitive damages are warranted, the parties stipulated to the punitive amount of $150,000.

Don’t know what the defendants were thinking when they stipulated. Such a stipulation would be inconsistent with any claim later (say, on appeal), that says the jury findings of liability is erroneous.

The lawsuit is a result of a previous lawsuit (read about the previous one here).

In the previous lawsuit, Thomas Nguyen/Quoc Thai sued Tran, Suzanne Nguyen, and the media company that Quoc Thai founded, VHN-TV. Quoc Thai claimed that the defendants unlawfully freezed him out of his ownership in the company. The court ruled that each defendant got 30%, a consultant got 10%, and VHN-TV must pay Quoc Thai $300,000.

But then Bruce Tran issued himself a huge number of shares, diluting Quoc Thai’s ownership down to 3%. So he sued, and this judgment resulted.

Proving that a tendency to faint in public places again and again is not a destabilizing disability, community activist Bui Kim Thanh was spotted today making art.

They say art is good for the soul.

They never said flags make good sweat bands. Or Sikh-style turbans. But hey, whatever works.

Tequila's boobs didn't calm crowd

Tila Tequila, whose real name is Tila Nguyen, got on the receiving end of rocks, beer bottles, and feces thrown at her at the Juggalos music fest last weekend, according to the AP here.

The Juggalos is an annual festival that stretches over 4 days, organized by Insane Clown Posse and featuring mostly artists from their own label. Tequila was there as a guest artist on their “Ladies Night.”

As she went on stage, the crowd started throwing things. Apparently, this crowd loves throwing stuff because security is already on stage batting away things.

The crowd screamed for Tequila to take her top off – which she did, while still prancing around singing. The crowd got even worse, says MTV here.

According to comedian Tom Green who was there, “a mob of hundreds chas[ed] Tequila from the stage and surrounding a trailer where she sought refuge. They rocked the trailer and smashed its windows,” he told CNN here. (Watch video shot by Tom Green at the end of this entry.)

Tequila told E! Online here that she wants to sue the concert promoters.

It’s a strange day when a crowd actually gets upset at seeing Tila Tequila’s boobs.

Born in Singapore of Vietnamese boat-people parents, Tequila is probably the most famous Vietnamese TV star in the world.

She formerly hosted the reality dating competition show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila on MTV, which ended after its second season.

Tila was named the hottest artist on Myspace in 2006.

In 2008, Tila Tequila starred in an ad calling attention to human-rights abuses in Burma. Read here. The ad was directed by Timothy Linh Bui (Green Dragon) and was one in a series produced by the Human Rights Action Center.

Last year, Tequila sued, and got sued back by, San Diego Charger Shawne Merriman after she claimed he choked and falsely imprisoned her. Merriman said Tequila was too drunk to drive and he was just keeping her safe until a taxi could arrive.

In a strange twist in the case, a few days after filing the lawsuit, Tequila got on the internet, stripped naked, and accused Merriman of an assortment of vices, including drugging underage girls and having sex with them.

And that’s just a couple days after Ly Tong had proudly said he’d rather stay in prison, American in prison ain’t so bad, and his supporters should save their money to help democracy activists in Vietnam.

Guess those activists will have to wait now…