Iggy Pop spoke at my university the year I graduated.  It was a talk in a gymnasium.  I can't remember if we sat on bleacher seats or on chairs, or both.  He was funny at times, natural in manner, although I think he referred to prepared notes, with spontaneous asides now and then.
     On the Lecture Circuit With Iggy Pop was never a TV show, so this speech wasn't part of some second career.  He was still making music.  He had the status of living legend, although I wonder how many students in the audience (this was 1990), knew who he was, or that he was closely associated with superstars like David Bowie.
     I recall a story Iggy Pop told about receiving a phone call from the film director, Ridley Scott, who wanted the singer to perform a song for the soundtrack of his new film, Black Rain.  Scott, according to Iggy Pop, and here Iggy did an amusing imitation of the director's refined Englishman's voice, said, "I want your song to play at the very beginning of the film.  Your voice will be the first thing the audience hears..."
     Iggy Pop accepted the tempting offer.  After all, this was the director of Alien and Blade Runner.  He recorded the song, time passed, and when he saw Black Rain, Ridley Scott's dangled fruit of Iggy's voice being "the first thing the audience hears" wasn't at the beginning of the film.
     "They fucked me," Iggy said to us in 1990, adding, "They fucked me."
     He went on later about how he had taken to writing essays; that it's an effective way to develop one's ideas and powers of expression.
     Over the next few years, I found out that quite a few people I knew at the time, and even some I didn't know until later, were at the Iggy Pop speech.  The woman I was dating at the time was there, something I found out only the next day.  A year or two later, a friend (whom I didn't know in 1990) told me he and some of his pals approached Iggy Pop after the talk and had a pleasant conversation.  They invited the singer to hang out and drink some beers.  Iggy Pop declined, saying he had a prior commitment, but he was nice about it.
     At the time, I didn't know his music at all, and I'm still sketchy about his biography and artistic output, but I bought his album Brick By Brick when it came out in June 1990, not long after his speech at my college.  The song, "Candy," a duet with Kate Pierson of The B-52s, is great, and worth listening to.
     Iggy Pop's recommendation about writing essays stayed in my mind.  I didn't write essays regularly until many years later, but I then found he was right about the benefits coming from their composition.
     Vic Neptune's habit derives from a few words Iggy Pop said in a crowded gymnasium in 1990.

                                                                                Vic Neptune