NoirCon 2008 - Saigon Noir

NoirCon 2008

Saigon Noir

By

Reed Farrel Coleman

A few months before Noir Con, Lou Boxer, one of the event’s main organizers, wrote to me asking that I do a piece for the program on their guest of honor Ken Bruen. Given my long standing friendship with Ken and my respect for his work, I was only too happy to oblige. Within a few days, I sent the piece off to Lou. Lou was so pleased with the piece that he came back with a second request: Would I make a speech in Ken’s honor at the banquet?

I was myself honored to be asked and set about the task of writing the speech. I didn’t want to repeat what I had written in the program and, as the speech was to strictly honor Ken’s work and was to precede his receiving an award, I thought it only proper to strike a more serious tone. I solicited quotes on Ken’s work from crime writers in Ireland, the UK, and the USA. I received some amazing responses not only in praise of Ken’s work, but explaining how influential and inspirational his work had been to others.

It took me weeks to get the speech just right, tweaking it, practicing it on my friends and family. I was confident everything would go smoothly. Yeah, right!

The banquet was held at a Vietnamese restaurant called Saigon Maxim. The first sign that things might not go as smoothly as I anticipated came the moment I walked through the door with my wife and Judy Bobalik. Not ten feet ahead of us and to our left, at the entrance to a large catering room, was a squad of Philadelphia Police in black flak jackets. I’m not talking Kevlar here. I’m talking ceramic/steel insert flak jackets. I’m talking Glocks, cuffs, etc. They looked more like special forces than security. The strange thing is that they didn’t bother any of the mystery writers while they practically strip-searched every Asian who dared come close to entering the catering room. I guess we all found that a bit strange, but so are all mystery writers.

After dinner, Ken Bruen, Dennis McMillan—the other guest of honor—writer Bob Truluck and I were called to the small stage at the head of the dining room for the ceremonies. The stage featured a green curtain backdrop decorated with a large painted cardboard snake with gold glitter and a small, white Buddah-like figure on a platform which seemed to hover above the stage. Bob Truluck, a truly nice man whom I had only just met, was to lead things off with a speech in praise of Dennis’ work as a publisher. Bob, like Dennis, is a natty dresser. He wore a straw pork pie hat, a white and turquoise silk shirt over a t-shirt and jeans, with matching turquoise and white shoes. Now far be it from me to make fun of a man’s hair, given my bald pate, but Truluck’s gray do sort of resembled a cross between the mother’s wig from Psycho and Pippi Longstocking’s.

The second Bob began his speech—eight, single-spaced, handwritten pages—an explosion of music and singing came from the big catering hall next door. With all due respect and apologies, to the uninitiated and untrained Western ear it sounded like cats being strangled while someone played Emerson, Lake and Palmer records backwards at the wrong speed. Almost immediately, Bob lost his place. The music got louder and louder. Then, two waiters just walked up on stage, opened a side door and, without a word, began tossing cases of beer—bang, bang, bang, bang…—onto the stage as if they were alone in the room. If to be is to be perceived, we weren’t. Now Bob was frantic and hopelessly lost, so he reverted to trying to tell stories about him and Dennis. The music got louder. Bob totally gave up on the prepared text and the word fuck became prominently featured. Poor Bob, I thought. Thank God it wasn’t me. Heroically, Bob persevered and finished up. Deen Kogan and Lou gave Dennis is award. Dennis said a few words and then it was my turn.

The music stopped a minute or two before I took my place in front of the mic. I was simply being lulled into a false sense of security because thirty seconds after beginning my speech, the music came back up—louder. Several people complained to management, but management’s solution was not to lower the music. It was to turn my mic up full bore. My voice became totally distorted and the loudspeakers screeched. I was producing more feedback than Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock and I didn’t even have a guitar or Wawa pedal. Jim Nisbet went apeshit and stormed into the other room. The music quieted for about ten seconds and came back louder. Ken’s agent Lukas stormed into the other room and actually pulled the plug. The music came back louder still. And in the midst of this madness, a screaming fight and shoving match between the cops and patrons breaks out at the front of the restaurant. Not only do I hear it, I’m watching it. My ears are nearly bleeding. I can’t hear my own distorted voice. The mic is feeding back worse than ever. Finally, I cut the speech by two-thirds. Bruen steps up to the mic and the music dies. Go figure.

Afterwards, Dennis, who reluctantly agreed, began to play Spanish guitar for us. Guess what happened. That’s right, the music started up again and drowned him out, but Bob Truluck would not be deterred. He and his lovely wife joined Dennis and began a rough approximation of Flamenco dancing. Only later did we learn that Friday night at Saigon Maxim is Cambodian Karaoke Night. Not only that, but that this had been a very special Cambodian Karaoke Night because the Cambodian Britney Spears, as she was described to us, had made an appearance that night. Hence the cops in riot gear. As Gary Phillips, Christa Faust and several other people pointed out, if the speech had gone as planned, it would have been forgotten by the next morning. With a high level of confidence I can assure you that no one who was there that night will ever forget my speech or Bob Truluck’s. I know I won’t forget it.