::: badadream, badaboom!
in hotel cells listening to dial tones
remote controls and cable moans
in his drink he's talking
gets disconnected sleepwalking back home
other people wouldn't like to hear you
if you said that these are the best days
of our lives
other people turn around and laugh at you
of you said that these are the best days
of our lives
[“Best Days”, Blur, The Great Escape album, 1996]
Surprise! Bada finally showed up. He’s feeling better. In fact, he felt much better this morning that he decided to go to Negeri Dongeng to see his ‘parents’ for a vacation. Why not? He deserves a break, and what place to have it than neverland? It is a small resort north of Far-from-Hell where Bada’s ‘parents’ live in a condominium near a lake. There are forests and gray skies, arthouses with great movies and rare stuff, and a place called Korova Milkbar with waiters with little leather bow ties.
I took Bada to the Timbuktu airport and watched him fly away. My personal take on the subject is that Bada is an angel sent from heaven. Yeah, from Heaven (with goddamn “H”). He never acts meanly, never holds a grudge, never takes revenge (though Pulp—one of his most favorite bands—once sang, “revenge is gonna be so sweet..”). He cries when he sees homeless cats near the freeway. He never gossips, never backbites against the losing losers around him. He is an angel. But angels are not humans. They cannot have children the way welfare fathers and fastest stenographers and great directors and interior decorators can. That’s what I expect to find out when I die: that Bada was an angel after all.
We’ve been together now for almost twenty five years. We can read each other’s thoughts by now, and we usually spend our time together pretending to be dogs. But at the bottom line, he is an angel. Now he’s off to Negeri Dongeng. My tears dropped.
After Bada flied I drove home. In the treehouse I found Badu was still playing chess with Death, and Boris was still busy with his melancholic soap opera scripts. We got drunk. Sid Vicious of Sex Pistols once said, "I've only been in love with a bottle and a mirror." Haha. I read stories and sang them a lullaby for an hour. They slept, and so did I. The nightmare began. Bad dreams as usual. Strange and stranger. This episode: I sat next to an attractive woman in white with beautiful lips. She used to be my shrink. [Awfahkk, I spend half my life talking to my shrink!] “I’m a psychotherapist,” she said. “I’m working on the psychological correlates of death.” I sighed, “What does that mean?” She explained, “I mean the psychological states that accompany imminent death. Like how people feel after they’ve had terrible accidents.” Go fuck yourself, I thought. The sure mark of the loser: treating gifts as a burden. Then she gave me Prozac, Zoloft, whatever, as usual, just to make me um.. stay calm or something.. but I hated it soo much!! So I ran as fast as I can. Run, Forrest, run!
Insane with delution, I got my car—no, it’s not my car.. it's Badu’s car, with license plate D 374 VU—and drove down Sunset Blvd to Strip-Writer, a strip club right next to the new Max See Ad Hotel. It was perfect for Timbuktu. The waitress [Diane Selwyn or Betty Elms?] serve only fruit juices. No alcohol. Tomato, tomato! And then the strippers introduce themselves and smile before each number. “Hi, I’m Lana, and I’m going to dance for you…”
I watched for a while and then I drove home. Why not? Why the hell not? A little kid from outer space is accused of murdering a stripper and has to be saved from a lynch mob of psychopath by a mystical-machine-gunfire. Why not? Yeah? Well. If you’re so fahkkin smart [yes, I am!], why don’t you think of a better one?
I hated this. I came here to dream, not to fight. Maybe that’s why I’ve never really fit here. This is town of streetfighters, not daydreamers. But I don’t know where the town of daydreamers is located.
: or maybe is it where Bada now stays in?
(inspired by Ben Stein’s Hollywood Days, Hollywood Nights. Some words are taken from it, and mixed with Badu’s thoughts.)
