Great Advice for the Class of 99 and Far Beyond

I suspect that 1999 was an exciting year for a lot of people, what with those three nines just poised to flip over into zeroes, hopefully not with the accompaniment of mass chaos. Y2K might've been a blip on my radar as that year began, but I had more immediate things to worry about. Chief among them: I would graduate from high school at the end of May. For the whole class, it was a time of emotion when nostalgia wrestled with ambition as we tried to figure out whether or not we were glad to be going. Happily for us, we got just a little bit of extra advice in the form of a hit single we mostly just referred to as "the sunscreen song."

Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) wasn't really a song, though, just a speech that for some reason caught fire after director Baz Luhrmann of Moulin Rouge fame lifted it from a Chicago Tribune column by one Mary Schmich - not, as so often stated, from a graduation speech by novelist Kurt Vonnegut - and had Australian voice actor Lee Perry read it while a corny backing beat and "ooooh"-filled vocals by Quindon Tarver played in the background, eventually moving front and center with a couple of unnecessary choruses.

The melody was a re-hash from an earlier song, and it didn't add much to the speech, but it spared listeners from five straight minutes of just a guy talking; this was, after all, geared toward an audience unlikely to tune in frequently to PBS, where such commentaries might be common. Luhrmann wanted these sage words to reach the ears of those who might actually be able to use them, and if that meant a hipper package, so be it.

Perry's delivery is wonderfully dry, with just the right intonation to milk the speech for all the humor and wisdom it is worth. The music is actually most notable in its absence; the track starts off without it, and whenever it stops momentarily, we pay closer attention, anticipating that the next words will be of extreme importance.

The advice ranges from the basic and practical - "wear sunscreen," "floss," "stretch," "respect your elders" - to the quirky and profound - "Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements," "Don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's," "Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft," "Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it."

Schmich wrote her column as an imaginary commencement speech, what she would say to high school graduates given the chance. She ended up saying it to far more of us than she could have dreamed; years from now, listeners may laugh at the campy trappings, but the words will be just as valuable as ever.