"Well, He SOUNDS Like Bob Dylan, But, Uh....."

Two things sure, the old saying goes.

Death and taxes.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’d offer you that there’s a third.

Getting older.

Assuming, of course, that the first of the other two doesn’t get you first.

Or the second of the two doesn’t send you there.

And while there are a myriad of “signs” that you’re getting older, here’s one that will mean nothing to anyone under the age of, say, thirty, but will bring a smile to anyone over the age of, say, fifty.

Rock legend Bob Dylan was stopped in July by police in Long Branch, New Jersey, who were responding to a call about a suspicious person roaming the neighborhood, police said.

According to Long Branch Police Department Sgt. Michael Ahart, Dylan had been peering into a window of a house that was for sale, which prompted a neighbor to call the police on July 23.

One of two responding officers, Officer Kristie Buble, 24, approached Dylan and asked him for his name.

"She recognized the name, she just really didn't believe it was Bob Dylan," Ahart told CNN. "He was soaking wet because it was raining and he was wearing a hood."
So Buble asked the musician for identification, but he had none.

Buble and her partner, Officer Derrick Meyers, 24, then asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them to where his tour buses were parked. Once they arrived, Dylan showed them identification.

"Dylan was really cool about the whole incident," Ahart said. He said he asked the singer why he had been walking in the rain and was told, "I just felt like going for a walk."

Dylan, who is on a national tour with musicians Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, was in Long Branch on the Jersey shore prior to his performance at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.


Interesting, don’t you think that, while Dylan is obviously not a household face anymore, this little incident was worthy of reporting?

And at the risk of sounding like I’m trying to dodge the old age tag, let me suggest that there are a couple of very good reasons why, regardless of his age or ours, the guy wasn’t recognized right off the bat.

First, let’s be honest, he was never a household FACE to begin with.

Second, regardless of his accomplishments, anyone could very easily have been enjoying his work for decades without paying much attention to what he looked like.

Third, the Bob Dylan that most people have in the optic memory is the Kramer haired circa Highway 61 Revisited Bob Dylan, not the nudging seventy year old, craggy faced Bob Dylan.

And finally, when you get right down to it, it seems like a no brainer that he wasn’t recognized right off the bat.

He is, after all, a celebrity who has never gone off on Anti Semitic rants while being busted for DUI, never flown to Argentina to see his mistress while his wife cooled her heels in the Governor’s mansion, never stolen anything from Jennifer Anniston, let alone Brad Pitt, never turned up in a Paris Hilton sex tape (that alone adds to his uniqueness in the culture, I’m a thinkin’), never had eight kids without so much as a thought about how to support them, never had eight kids and left his wife and TV show to take up with skirts twenty years his junior, never claimed to be able to see Russia from his porch, never been photographed getting out of a limo without his panties and has never, at least to date, been connected in any way, shape or form with Michael Jackson.

I think, more than anyone, Bob himself enjoys the irony and pleasure of finding himself, at this point in the career, a “complete unknown…”

How refreshing it would be if we had as much trouble recognizing any or all of the aforementioned familiar faces.

And wouldn’t you know it?

Bob manages to have a lyric that fits the occasion, a little nod to the
aforementioned aforementioned.

From Positively 4th Street.

“I wish that for just one time / you could stand inside my shoes
Then you’d know / what a drag it is to see you…”

Good for you, Bob.