by David Ngo
photos by Joel Marasigan

Throughout my entire career in the media arts, no one could ever pronounce Ngo correctly. Some of the most notorious mispronunciations of my last name include ‘n-go,’ ‘nee-go,’ ‘ing-go,’ and ‘nuh-go.’ Apparently, the ng sound in Vietnamese is completely unpronounceable in the entertainment industry. I used to try to sound out Ngo to colleagues, and the most common response I got was, “Yeah, that’s what I said, ‘nuh-go.’ Right?” Tired of this broken record, I eventually started “correctly” pronouncing my own last name as ‘no,’ and this made life a whole lot easier. However, my faith in pronouncing Ngo properly was restored last year when I met two media artists named Bee and Ella—and we created Ngo Club.

I first met Bee last summer at my day job at a celebrity-driven television network in Los Angeles, where I earn paychecks as a programming executive. (Yes, I get paid to watch TV.) I also have an unpaid career as a filmmaker, and at the time was working on an independent documentary with an editor who also worked at my day job. Taking a strategically-planned water break, I went to visit my editor at her edit bay one summer morning. There, I met a skinny, track-jacket-wearing producer who introduced himself as Bee Ngo (pronounced ‘no’). I was stunned. Did I just actually meet another Ngo working in entertainment? And did he just purposely mispronounce his last name too? When we both discovered that we were two Ngos, there was an instant camaraderie between us. After some generic small talk, I knew Bee was cool when he jokingly asked me, “So like, are we supposed to go grab pho now?”

When two Vietnamese people have lunch together, it is actually possible for them to eat something other than pho dac biet. Bee and I started having work lunches at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos and Koo Koo Roo mainly because we could walk there. As I got to know Bee, I learned that he is anything but a typical Vietnamese American. Bee grew up in Kansas City with no exposure to an Asian American community. His family was the only Vietnamese family in the area.

According to Bee, “There were six Asian kids at my high school, and two of them were my siblings. My parents tried to maintain their Vietnamese values, but we were completely surrounded by Midwestern sensibilities.” Additionally, Bee was never interested in getting good grades and joining campus clubs to improve his college applications. In Bee’s words, “As a child, I was more into causing trouble and walking the fine line between right and wrong. And I’ve learned that it’s not wrong unless you get caught.”

Bee is someone who bucks convention, and this has manifested itself into a career as a television producer. Regarding his career, Bee comments, “I have an opportunity to change the way people view television, so I’m happy with where I’m at right now.”

Like Bee, I share his desire to create change and affect society, but aside from that, I am basically his alter ego. Although I went to an 85 percent Caucasian high school in the O.C. (Orange County), my parents had Little Saigon on speed dial. As a child, my mom dragged me to Phuoc Loc Tho every weekend to buy bulk amounts of tiger balm. I went to Vietnamese language school until the 4th grade. I ate Vietnamese food for dinner nearly everyday as a kid. In high school, I was basically a nerd. I took honors classes and always worried about studying. I joined several campus clubs for the sole purpose of enhancing my college applications. (I was even president of one of them.) I had the worse haircut ever. Essentially, I was the polite Vietnamese boy that got good grades, stayed out of trouble, and was destined to become a lawyer. Today, I’m still that quiet Vietnamese boy who stays out of trouble, but somehow I missed the memo about law school. (My haircuts remain terrible though.)

Despite our different paths, Bee and I found ourselves at the same cable network and working towards the same goals. It’s almost like when straight-laced Edward Norton randomly meets a rambunctious Brad Pitt on an airplane in Fight Club. (Guess which character I would be?) Actually, the movie Fight Club became the impetus for the creation of Ngo Club—an inside joke turned social revolution. Bee and I started to joke about how we should unionize ourselves at work as a way to protect ourselves against “the man.” The two Ngos needed to stick together in case something major ever goes down. Eventually, we named our organization Ngo Club and established some ground rules. The first rule of Ngo Club is that you must work in entertainment, not medicine. The second rule of Ngo Club is that your last name must be Ngo. Finally, the third rule of Ngo Club is that you must hate durian. Once these tenets were set, Bee and I were ready to recruit new members, thinking that this would never actually happen. What are the chances of meeting another Ngo at work?

Approximately two weeks after Ngo Club was formed (fall 2005), Bee comes up to me one day at work with a revelation. “Dude, did you know there is an Ella Ngo that works here?” he said. When attempting to send an e-mail, Bee had scrolled past Ella’s name in the company’s network server. I told Bee that we have to recruit Ella for Ngo Club, but then we debated this idea. We didn’t want to come off as dweebs who e-mailed a total stranger simply because she shared our last name. However, we had a golden opportunity to increase our membership, so we took our chances. I sent Ella an e-mail that stated, “Bee and I saw your name in the server and thought that you’d be a potential addition to our Ngo Club.  Bee is the president, and I am the club’s recruiter. Let us know if you are interested in joining the club.” After receiving this e-mail, Ella later told me, “I was skeptical at first because this could be really dorky or really cool. These two Vietnamese guys could be totally unsocial.”