What a night Fri­day was for people-watching on Wood­ward Avenue. At the State The­ater, the Trag­i­cally Hip. Across the street at Ford Field, “Bat­tle Cry,” some sort of Chris­t­ian teen thing in which peo­ple like me (that is, mem­bers of the so-called sec­u­lar media) were equated with jihadists.

And at the Fox, Iggy and the Stooges. Alan and I sat at a win­dow table in a bar called Proof, try­ing to peg which venue the passersby were head­ing to. The Bat­tle Criers were easy: Pudgy teenagers in high-school sweat­shirts, trav­el­ing in groups, high on life. The Trag­i­cally Hip fans were, fit­tingly, trag­i­cally hip. But the aging bik­ers tow­ing soccer-mom wives, the young punks too cool for the room, the pros­per­ous autoworker types and what seemed like half the jour­nal­ists in town — those were Iggy’s people.

We were Iggy’s peo­ple, too. Not hard-core, mind you; we were at that very moment skip­ping the open­ing act. And if you think the Trag­i­cally Hip would get me to hire a babysit­ter, you’re nuts. But Iggy, doing a down­town home­town show? I’m so there. I tried to pow­der down my sub­ur­ban unhip­ness for the occa­sion, but it was hope­less, and, to be sure, absolutely unno­tice­able in a crowd that was diverse in pretty much every way but racial. Alan saw a 4-year-old kid in the men’s room, sport­ing a fully spiked mohawk, there with his dad. There were at least two peo­ple in wheel­chairs. The cou­ple sit­ting next to me were young enough they felt the need to French-kiss every 90 sec­onds or so. A woman in the lobby showed off cell-phone pic­tures of her kids to a friend. “Wow, they’re so big,” the friend said. “You don’t know how old we are,” the woman replied.

Well, actu­ally we do. Iggy him­self turns 60 this com­ing Sat­ur­day. I expect he’ll still be tour­ing with the Stooges, doing “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “1969” and “Real Cool Time.” For the lat­ter, he invites a few dozen mem­bers of the audi­ence up on the stage to mill around, sing the cho­rus and gen­er­ally have a real cool time.

At one point I yelled in Alan’s ear, “I remem­ber when my dad was this age.” He was a well-preserved man through­out his late mid­dle age, but he wasn’t up for per­form­ing shirt­less for 90 min­utes, in a rag­ing shower of deci­bels, and com­plete with stage dives. Not the running-start sort of wild swan dives a younger punk might make, mind you — Iggy sort of stands on the edge of the stage and falls for­ward. It’s an AARP stage dive. (The roadie hov­ers ner­vously; you can tell he wishes he had a leash around his ankle.)

This isn’t a con­cert review; you can fol­low the links for that. But hey — Viva Iggy. He’s still mak­ing music that sounds bet­ter screamed out over a bunch of bob­bing heads in a venue like the Fox than it does on a CD. Fifty-nine going on 60 and he still wants to be your dog.

So, blog­gage:

Tom Wat­son on Imus. Maybe the best — and pray god, the last — word. And via Wol­cott, I also liked David Kamp’s obser­va­tion of the obvi­ous:

But I’ve always winced at any­one who bills him­self (or has his rep­re­sen­ta­tives bill him) as an “equal-opportunity offender” – which is the tack that the defend­ers of Don Imus have taken. Any true afi­cionado of com­edy and come­di­ans knows that “equal-opportunity offender” is apol­o­gist code for “hack enter­tainer trad­ing in dated ethno­graphic mate­r­ial.” Jackie Mason comes to mind (he actu­ally has a DVD out called Equal Oppor­tu­nity Offender), as does Car­los Men­cia. A corol­lary to this, which I learned from my old Spy boss Kurt Ander­sen, is that any­one who uses a con­struc­tion along the lines of “I treat peo­ple all the same; I don’t care if they’re black, white, pur­ple, or green” – who uses col­ors that no human being can actu­ally be – is inher­ently a racist bastard.*

Is it dres­sage…or is it dancing?

Later, folks.

UPDATE: Sorry I’m late get­ting to this, but I wanted to boost a cou­ple of things out of the com­ments. First, Tom Watson’s new­crit­ics take on the last Iggy bio. Ash­ley points out his faboo con­cert rider, cour­tesy of The Smok­ing Gun, our national trea­sure. And finally, James Burns’ Grum­bles on the sub­ject. Note, Jim: He didn’t sing “Lust for Life” Fri­day night. I guess it’s now been thor­oughly melded to images of yup­pies swim­ming with the dol­phins on cruise lines.