Summer 1993 Vol. 04, No. 2 So Close Yet So Far
(Editor’s Note: This message needs to be seen, again and again, to be fully appreciated. The dialogue is sometimes sung and sometimes spoken while the visual image is of Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs reciting their dialogue superimposed over, or replaced by, some of the Prankster’s archival footage from the 1960’s. The transcipt is missing some words that were difficult to decipher, and some words may be incorrect.)
Ken Kesey: Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday to you…
Ken Babbs: Was quite an event aboard ship, I do remember it, it was right after that first leak was felt and the bilge pumps were kicked in and they said to me, they said…
Kesey: You have to stop kicking those bilge pumps, you got to quite kicking them.
Babbs: I know they aren’t working right, sir. I asked myself, always dropping them droppings and then what about the fog.
Kesey: The Neon pigeons, 24 in every cube we were promised, 24 in every cube.
Babbs: That’s right, we demand our rights.
Kesey: We demand our rights, our left and our colored pigeons.
Babbs: Yes, we do or else we won’t, by Scott, sir, man the pumps at all, no… We will woman the pumps, ha ha. No, we won’t even do that. No humor allowed on this trip, sir. I mean do you have any of that substance, sir that sacral, that sacral…
Kesey: This is the birthday of one of our great benefactors, I mean. Do you think that old what’s his name Koresh down there in Waco Texas, would have come up with something that someone else wouldn’t have thought of two hundred, two thousand years ago?
Babbs: Same old, same old, same old.
Kesey: Were you there? Were you there? They got the people high.
Babbs: Yes, I remember it well, that bicycle ride down through the Lucerne valley.
Kesey: They got the people high.
Babbs: He said, son, you take this over to America, it will contain enough to get that tree that takes its sap up to the top as high as it could ever want to go.
Kesey: The sap is back.
Babbs: The sap is back.
Kesey: Without the sap what chance do we have? All we have is wise people like Kissenger.
Babbs: Kissenger! Ah, kiss my ger,by gosh, not his.
Kesey: Anyway, where were we?
Babbs: We were singing our happy birthday song to that fine man who in 1943 took that famous bicycle ride through the Lucerne valley and came up with… New cheese.
Both: New cheese, celestial cheese, climb to the top with the top of the bees, get your cheese through all the doors you came in town there’s going to be more, yea hit the cheese, cheese, cheese, got to find my cheese, cheeso, cheeso, got to find my cheese, cheeso, in the old.. never again.
Babbs: Balm of the Beeades, said book of the bread was bread, that you would get to your cooper dead head, mast head. The mast head, sir, is shaking in the breeze.
Both: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear LSD, happy birthday to you;
Babbs: I wish we could get some of that substance today.
