"The Venga Bus is coming..."
Six Flags Amusement is running a curious commercial on New York television. A bus pulls up to the curb, and out jumps this hyper old guy, except it's obvious he's wearing one of those fake bald-skin caps. Like a swimming cap, but flesh colored.
This techno dance tune beings playing, and the guy just starts jumping around like crazy. Kind of dancing, kind of having a seizure. He's obviously freaking out the people around him, but for reasons only obvious to Six Flags executives, the people follow him onto the bus, and they end up at some amusement park.
"The Venga Bus is coming..."
Here's what's weird: the music playing is "We Like to Party", a song by the Venga Boys that for about six months in 2000 was the only song being played in Southeast Asian dance clubs. I know this because my then-future wife was jetsetting across Asia at the time, trekking with obnoxious Israelis and dancing to "We Like to Party".
The song is all about how a mystical bus, the Venga Bus, is traveling "New York to San Francisco", and other assorted places, to carry passengers to Ibiza, Spain: dance center of the western world. Mountains and oceans will not stop the Venga Bus. If you see the Venga Bus, and you're ready to party, the next stop is Ibiza.
"The Venga Bus is coming..."
The effect of all this is that Ibiza is one of the few places with an identity in my internal atlas of the universe. Most of that space is taken up by New York, with a few acres (or hectares for my metric friends) left over for Arrakis, Dune, Desert Planet and Irata, which is "Atari" spelled backwords and is the setting for the 1980s computer game "M.U.L.E.".
But Ibiza has a distinct identity outside New York. When the city gets too crazy, and the Nazi Cats (see my earlier post) threaten to take over, the magical Venga Bus will appear in the nick of time, and deliver us to a carefree sanctuary of drinking and dancing, with lots of techno beats and strobing lights.
"The Venga Bus is coming..."
Adam