<center><p> <b><u>REVIEW OF THE WEEK</u><p> by<p> BAO DAI OF HOLLYWOOD</b><p> </center> <left> DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD 20 AUGUST 2000<p> </left> <center> <b><u>BAO DAI UNPLUGGED</b></u><p> </center>

I was thinking of calling this "Bao Dai Unclothed", but my ego, among other things, isn't that big, and lord knows the last thing I need right now in my so-called life is some crazed class action sexual harassment suit like People of the World v. Bao Dai of Hollywood. No, save those sexual harassment claims for my good pal Chuckles "Charlie" Lynberg who, for over a decade, regularly accused me of running around Greater Los Angeles with my penis sticking out of my pants because, well, to put it psychiatrically, he was projecting and this was (is, actually) Chuck's modus operandi in trying to catch the opposite sex (that and lunging at them in dark parking garages... odd thing it works for him and Bill Clinton. Me, when I say "I haven't had sex with that woman" no one ever doubts me.

So, a Day in the Life... naw, too boring... even I find myself pricing NoDoz in out of the way markets run by cut throat Asians (and no, if you were wondering, they don't give discounts to their own kind... and when they see me coming, I swear they get out the price gun and jack up their profit margins by 50 percent.).

Suffice it to say I awaken each morning at 5 a.m. long enough to swallow (with luck, it's hard to think at 5 a.m.) 2 Naprosyn, two Tagamet, 25 milligrams of DHEA and three capsules loaded with Korean Ginseng. The Naprosyn is easy to explain - when I was younger I partook in many hobbies, some of which resulted in:

No Left Knee --just leg bones tied together by a quadraplasty*

Bilateral heel fractures which, heals being heals never really heeled I mean healed.

A pulverized left femur (healed with rusty looking metal plates screwed in

A prosthetic shoulder (inside... it looks, on x-ray, like a long dildo with an enormous head)

The DHEA and Ginseng may be harder to explain, but frankly I think they work better than the Naprosyn, although that's not why anyone told me to take them (indeed, no one told me to take them and at 5 a.m. I'm not sure what I really take or don't take...) anyway, I get up at 6 and continue my rigorous schedule of self medication and/or other hygiene until I decide if I wait any longer my friend, who I've never met, but looks a lot like Manuel Noriega and sells crack along a street I take, might bet busted... or I might miss the bust or actually, I might have to sit in traffic so long my bladder will burst, and I leave the Millennial Condo.

Oh wait, we aren't doing a day in the life... sorry. I don't know why I even picked this topic other than I happened innocently into a chat room earlier and someone asked me if I "liked raunch." Idiot I am I asked what "raunch" meant (in the context it was used). I don't think those of you who don't know need to know, and those of you who do, and who like it, well, keep it to yourself, okay?

Okay.... I have a fatal case of seborrheic dermatitis on my scalp which I am presently treating by doing nothing, which frankly seems to work just as well as doing something. If I ever get enough money together I'm going to invest it in one of the bogus "cures" for this most annoying, itchy and often painful ailment and buy beach front property in what I hope is a remote island with a government that doesn't care if I let Colombian Drug Lords use my private air strip, at which time I'll become the biggest fucking advocate of the War on Drugs since Bill Bennett (hopefully without actually becoming bigger physically than Bill).

Besides that... well, I'm sorry i decided to review The Real World this season, which doesn't mean I won't next season. I need a new car... well, more want than need, but hope the want is fulfilled before the need arrives. I want a new computer too, but one of my best creditors decided to raise the annual interest rate to 24.99 per cent and since they were my favorite, I owe them quite a chunk of change, and since that letter upping the rate, every spare cent I can lay my hands on has gone into teaching them a lesson by paying them off. I think it's incredibly unfair that if some guy with an Italian last name charged that kind of interest he'd be arrested, while the Board of MBNA is probably up there in the corporate dining room pondering what would happen if they made it a monthly interest rate over poached salmon and albino asparagus (which only grows in the heart of NaziLand... figures....) so when MBNA is paid off they go on my ever growing lists of financial institutions never to do business with again (somehow I doubt they'll care unless the House of Nyguen retakes the throne of Viet Nam, and even then, father always was the black sheep of the clan and no one will let us forget the home movies of him scampering around the flat in Paris chanting "Hohoho Chi Minh the Viet Cong are gonna win" with his toy AK-47)...

Oh, and let's see.... I try to read Mary Worth at least monthly, which is fast enough for that comic strip... and I don't do it because of the compelling story lines either. Rather, Mary Worth confirms my theory that time is nothing more than the moving hands on a wrist watch (and also makes me feel like my life isn't as boring as one might think from the above.

Of course I left out all the stuff that might get me into trouble... all the shit you wanted to read, you voyeur you!

Oh, and I take melatonin because I love the dreams, even if they sometimes make me sad when I awaken. But as Grandfather said as he was being told no one wanted him back in Saigon, "Cie la vie." _________ *Okay, the involved hobby here was walking into the bathroom at 6 a.m. and slipping... but it barely slowed me down.....