If you're like most people, you spend most of your life wandering around the cartoon savannah, completely oblivious to the faint music in the distance, until one day you round a corner and discover that all the animals have gathered around a large flat rock jutting out into the sky, slicing the horizon. Compelled by some kind of instinct, you cautiously take your place amongst the animals. The music is loud now, almost deafening, as you watch a mandrill lift the cutest cartoon lion cub you've ever seen to the crowd below. It's the circle of life. You know because you've somehow stumbled into The Lion King and that's the song that's playing at deafening levels.
A much less dramatic and far less Disney way to appreciate the circle of life? Look at this picture of the baby on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind then, and the Nirvana baby now:
It is confirmed: you are old. Isn't it crazy how babies grow into teenagers then adults then old adults then nursing home residents then dead? The circle of life.
The Nirvana baby is 17 now, and he's clearly proud of his participation in an iconic album cover—as he should be. In fact, he finds a way to mention it all the time:
From MTV News:
Now, 17-year-old Elden is a high school student, who told MTV News last year that "it's kind of creepy [to think] that that many people have seen me naked – I feel like I'm the world's biggest porn star."
Elden's parents were paid just $200 for allowing him to be photographed back in 1991. But last year, Elden told us that being the Nirvana baby has its perks. He references it when trying to pick up ladies, he said: "I have to use stupid pickup lines like, 'You want to see my penis … again?' "
Aww. Poor, misguided teenage Nirvana baby. You've clearly seen VH1's The Pick-Up Artist too many times and without the necessary irony bubble. Unless you're competing to win rune medallions from a guy named Mystery who's watching you from a van outside Phoenix's hottest nightclub, you don't have to use stupid pickup lines." Taking pickup lines and negs and "kino escalation" seriously is only mandatory for aspiring walking eyebrow rings (WERs). That's not you, teenage Nirvana baby, I know it isn't. And if it is, then you're doing it wrong. Here are a few pickup lines, aka openers, aka magic:thegatherings better than, "Hi I'm the Nirvana baby. Want to see my penis again?":
—"Hi."
—"Hey, did you see that giant poster of Nirvana's Nevermind album outside?"
—[Holding up a the album cover, with a gold star strategically placed over the baby's penis] "Notice a resemblance? No?" [take out giant gold star and place it over your crotch] "How about now?"
—"Settle an argument for me: girls find the Nirvana baby hot, right?"
—"Hey do you ever wonder what happened to that baby on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind? Cause he's standing right in front of you."