Chillin' with Dylan

Things I learned from watching the 60 Minutes interview with Bob Dylan on Sunday night:

• Bob Dylan is humble to the point of neurosis. It drove me a little nuts, and I'm not even that big a fan. Every answer he gave was something to the tune of "Well, y'know, I wrote a couple of songs, people liked 'em, whatever." There's such a thing as having too much perspective.
  
• Bob Dylan doesn't sound like any Jewish senior citizen I've ever met. Dude, kvetch a little.
  
• Even Bob Dylan doesn't really understand "It's Alright Ma". As a matter of fact, I don't think he really gets any of his own songs. Rather than divine inspiration, I get the overwhelming feeling that a rhyming dictionary was the best gift a young Robert Zimmerman ever received.
• The real reason he hasn't been interviewed on TV in 20 years is because, uh, he doesn't really have anything to say. I mean, apart from spending 15 minutes deflating his own image to the point where he was ultimately indistinguishable from Rupert Holmes, I didn't really learn anything new about the guy I couldn't have gleaned from reading his entry in my Rolling Stone encyclopedia.
• Well, except that he kinda sorta explains his whole bizarro stint as a proselytizing Orthodox Jew as an elaborate practical joke on the media. To my way of thinking, a kooky Jew pretending to be a different flavor of kooky Jew is hardly mind-blowing. Now if he'd shown up to concerts in a sailor suit, shoved his harmonica up his ass and farted out "Masters of War" on it, that would have been genius.

Bob Dylan, if I were you, I'd ratchet up the Ego-meter to somewhere between "Bono" and "Prince". Why not start believing your own hype? Instead of downplaying the significance of the new Rolling Stone poll which picked "Like A Rolling Stone" as the greatest rock song of all time, do some trash-talking! Start referring to yourself in the third person! If you're going to fill three volumes of memoirs, dish some frigging dirt - I wanna know what noises Joan Baez makes in bed!

At least tell me you play the whole "Voice of His Generation" card to get out of speeding tickets.