I’ve been listening to John Mellencamp of late. It’s been thirty years. Returning to him at this ripe age affirms a long-held suspicion. Everything needed to know about life can be attained by studying this man. Start with the obvious — don’t change your name more than once. Never mind airport security hassles; it’s not good practice. The world lets Zimmerman to Dylan slide. But Johnny Cougar to John Cougar to John Cougar Mellencamp to John Mellencamp to Rick Barry Basketball Camp is too much. It’s like a young girl changing her signature while trying to project the desired image. Nobody cares how you cross your “t’s.” The same applies to other changes .. facial hair, footwear, religion, sexual preference, etc. One shift every five years is acceptable but don’t go jumping around too much. It’s bad form.
Don’t be too earnest. Have a solid back beat and simple chords but don’t over-sell. Stick with lyrics like “get a leg up / get a leg over,” and avoid “well we’re dropping our bombs, in the southern hemisphere / and people are starving, that live right here.” Go with your instinct on “rooty toot toot, rooty toot toot” but steer clear of “is this your life, Jackie Brown?” People enjoy assigning personal meaning to simple songs. If you’re going to be literal take a clue from Hank Williams and “hey good lookin’, what ya got cookin?” Don’t write a great song like “Hurts So Good” only to later claim you “never wanted to be no pop singer.” The same applies to claiming you never wanted to be “Johnny Cougar.” There is nothing wrong with being a pop star; the world could use a few more Cheap Tricks and a few less Alanis Morissettes. Earnestness is often mistaken for righteousness and righteousness never made any dinner party easier to get through.
Have a compelling personal life but keep it in check. Generate interest via your Wikipedia page when your career starts to wane. Marry multiple times with flocks of kids by different women. Name your girls “Justice” and your boys “Hud.” Date famous women after giving up on marriage. Start with Meg Ryan then jump to Christie Brinkley. Have Christie explain your amicable split was based purely on her distaste for Indiana and yours for the Hamptons. If you’re only 5′-8″ and have a disproportionately large head, don’t be adverse to chain-smoking and wearing heels .. particularly if you plan on standing next to Johnny Cash at Farm Aid. Go on Letterman (or current day equivalent) and tell him you saw a tear in his eye when you perform your latest tear-jerker. Smoke on the show.
That’s about all the John Cougar Mellencamp life advice I can dish, but I do have one other recommendation. Don’t post colorblind and/or math tests on Facebook. And worse yet, don’t reply if some other idiot posts one. You know the ones — a group of lavender and pink dots forming a word or a block of integers between one and two hundred with one missing. Then the claim “if you can identify this word / spot the missing number (in ten seconds or less) you are in the top five percentile.” This is then followed by a long list of replies, most of them correctly identifying “party” or “152.” And none, apparently, realizing that the answer is written a hundred times already and there is no way of determining whether you took all afternoon to get there. I’ve always assumed that those posting the wrong number or word are in on the joke and only doing so to keep the other Einsteins going at it. In any case it’s nothing in which Johnny Cougar would ever partake.
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