Trivia Question – How Old is Flea?
Happy Dyngus Day everyone!
Dyngus Day is a European Folk Holiday celebrated on Easter Monday. It’s historically most closely associated with Poland and parts of Ukraine, and is widely celebrated across Polish diaspora communities around the world including major hubs in Buffalo, Chicago, and Cleveland.
What are the holiday traditions you may ask? Well, in Cleveland they usually have some old guys playing polkas, a kielbasa queen, pastries, and unhealthy amounts of beer.
In Poland you ask?
Traditionally, boys throw water over girls on Easter Monday. In some regions they strike them with pussy willow[1] branches. This is accompanied by a number of other rituals, such as making verse declarations and holding door-to-door processions, in some regions involving boys dressed as bears or other creatures.
https://en.wikipedia.org
I’m sorry, what?!
Assaulting young girls with buckets of water? Pussy willows? Bear costumes?
I don’t normally watch 60 Minutes, but when I do it’s weeks after originally airing and on YouTube.
This week I watched a recent feature on the Red Hot Chili Peppers. A band I think we all can enjoy, they’ve been around since the 80s and have quite a few bangers over a very long time period of making quality music.
The 60 Minutes profile was done by Jon Wertheim who is on the show every week (again I don’t watch the show) and they always have him doing the soft news story. Which I didn’t really think a television news magazine would really have a soft news story to end the show, but 60 Minutes now always does, and it’s always Jon Wertheim (again, I DO NOT watch the show).
Oh…
Anyway the story was a pretty thin 13 minutes without a lot of substance (typical), but the one thing that kind of blew my mind was just how old these guys are. Compared to Jon frickin’ Wertheim they’re ancient.
A central conceit of the story was that it was recorded around the time of Flea’s 60th (that’s right 60th) birthday.
Alright, maybe not the picture of youth, but he doesn’t look that terrible for a 60-year-old who’s done as many drugs as he has. But perhaps more surprising to me was that Anthony Kiedis is also 60.
That’s right, and the drummer Chad Smith is even older and 61. Frusciante’s the youngest at 53 which feels more right but he didn’t even join the band until ’88 right before they really hit it big. But the band by then had been around for about a decade.
At any rate, 60 just sounds a heck of a lot older than 50 does. I think Red Hot seems like they’re heading to just becoming the Rolling Stones. A band where none of whom should be alive past 40 (and some didn’t make it) but just somehow keep playing to sold out stadiums into their 80s. It’s got to happen.
For those of you who don’t religously watch 60 Minutes, here’s the full piece.