i'm worth a million in prizes

So it's lunchtime, and i'm going to ruminate: First of all, it's Earth Day. I haven't yet figured out how to honor that, although i have spent some time thinking about how angry she clearly is with us, what with all the natural upheavals that have happened lately. so i'm going to think more on what i and we can do to move that toward a better place.

It's Take Your Daughter to Work Day, which i discovered when i entered the lobby of the MetLife building next to a stroller with a tiny (presumably) girl inside sleeping, then saw a dad with an eleven-year-old little lady on one hand and a maybe-eight-year-old boy on the other. I suppose the conversation at home went something like this: "It's not fair that she doesn't have to go to school and I do." [repetitive flushing of toilet sound.] "Oliver, it's ok, honey, come out of the bathroom. You can go with daddy to work, too." And then for most of today I've been coloring with Eva, the 10-year-old daughter of someone who works here (at least i hope she belongs to someone here, though i'm not sure who, but said parent better come and find her by 5:00, because i'm not going straight home and it would probably be wrong of me to take her with me).

But, to me, the most amazing thing this day marks is that Iggy Pop has made it to the age of 63. Seriously, that's incredible. And boy can that man dance! He's got a natural snake-like move that hasn't ever seemed to change with age (I saw a little clip of it just last month at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies). I remember seeing Iggy in LA at the Hollywood Palladium about 30 years ago. Totally and absolutely mesmerizing. There was no one favorite moment, rather it was an end-to-end "Oh-no-he-didn't" extravaganza. He rolled on glass, he climbed out onto the speakers that teetered over the audience and made them teeter more, he whipped his microphone chord around like a lasso (and may have hit himself repeatedly with it...though i might have made that up), he dropped to his knees, he crawled, he keened, he wailed. And there was kick-ass music to accompany him. I didn't have any one favorite song or moment, it was just balls-out awesomeness end-to-end.


While I don't have the stomach for the excess of Mr. Pop's life (and for more firsthand, surprisingly gleeful insight into that click here to get a peek at Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk and read about why eyebrows are important or do a search for "Elton John" and read about how he terrorized a very high Mr. Pop at a show one night), I must say that the pure joy he seems to bring to his performing moments is unparalled and a certain inspiration for living. Certainly I don't know what happens when he's bouncing in his bubble out of the public's eye, but given the example of his public persona, I find joy. (And having "Lust for Life" as my ringtone makes my phone a more enjoyable necessary instrument.)

As I search for my own simple joie de vivre day in and day out, Iggy Pop's approach to life seems a crazy balance between full-out expression and no boundaries, chance-taking and creating. A kind of Energizer-Bunny approach to life (maybe without the dark shades). You keep going, you spin around, you keep a beat, you look goofy, it's all good. You pause and do it again.

Lust for life, indeed!