15 Reasons Why David Bowie Is The Man

1. He just turned sixty and is finally looking human.

2. He saved Iggy Pop’s flagging career, only to destroy him in cartoon form some thirty years later on the Venture Brothers.

3. At various times in his career, he’s claimed to be gay, bisexual, or straight, and all the while your mom would probably still have done him. As straight as you might claim to be, you’d probably have done him too.

4. Given his voracious appetite for sex, depending on where she was and when, your mom may well have actually done him already. Even if your mom’s name is Mick Jagger.

5. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day from the time he was 14 until about five years ago, and smoking makes you cool, though it may drive you to a sudden, tour-halting angioplasty, as it did for Bowie two years ago.

6. Name another celebrity who celebrated his 50th birthday at Madison Square Garden with celebrity-studded performances, inasmuch as one of said celebrities was that douche, Billy Corgan.

7. In 2003 Bowie was offered a knighthood by the British monarchy, and he declined.

8. Bowie as Pontius Pilate, Andy Warhol, and Nikola freaking Tesla more than make up for Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King, where his junk was just a little too well-outlined under his tights.

9. Bowie’s a New Yorker, which by definition means he’s cooler than 99.03% of the rest of the world.

10. He wrote his first US #1 hit, “Fame” with John Lennon (and Carlos Alomar) inside of about 12 hours during a freakishly heavy cocaine bender.

11. The greatest guitar solo of all time occurs at +3:15 into his 1997 album Earthling’s track, “Looking for Satellites, by guitar auteur, Reeves Gabrels. Yes, this is only my opinion, though I’m open to yours.

12. Somehow the whole world seems to think that he has heterochromia, but his eyes are actually both blue. Nevertheless, due to the one pupil that’s always dilated, stemming from a teenage fight with a pal of his over a girl, it always looks like he’s high on something.

13. By way of his publishing company 21 Publishing, he helped orchestrate an excellent hoax on the modern art world with the release of a book memorializing unknown painter, Nat Tate, who never actually existed. Until the veil was lifted, many otherwise laudable and pretentious art critics claimed to have known or heard of him.

14. 1969’s “Space Oddity” was used by the BBC when they covered the moon landing, Not many had heard of him before this, and it made him a star.

15. This video rules:

(images: nymag.com, wireimage.com)