My husband and I love underground hip hop, but we also love the old shit. I mean the REAL old school shit. Like Steve Miller. Or, one of my favorites from many nights stealing Pop's vinyl, Mr. Bob Dylan.

Bear with me.

The other day, husband says, “You need to listen to Dylan's 'Ballad of a Thin Man.' It's like the perfect song to remind me of the hipster blogger media people at the gathering.”

The song's basically about a reporter/academic/pseudointellectual who's trying to put a finger on 60s counter culture. The reporter “walks in a room with his pen and his pad…” and bascially finds himself immersed in an absurd world of circus freaks, drug use, and really weird shit (the verse about the midget who thinks he's a cow is especially bizarre). All the while our hero struggles to come up with something for his newspaper (or blog or whatever), overanalyzing everything. “What does this mean?” It's pretty funny. And pretty on point if you've ever run into any of the juggalo gathering “media tourists” (a fairly recent trend, since media was never allowed into or didn't care enough to cover the gathering until a few years back, with the whole 10th annual fiasco).

Anywho, I just finished listening to this classic Dylan track and wanted to share. I don't know if y'all have had the same experience with the hipster blogger folk. The past few years the media have been DEEP, taking all kinds of pictures and running up on people with mikes, shoving them in people's faces: “What does this, like, mean? Can you tell me what a scrub is?” The other year some chick in thick-rimmed glasses came up to me and said she was hosting a “juggalo spelling bee” for her podcast. She asked me to spell “horse.” Now, I'm an editor by trade, so her assumption that I'd be a fucking idiot just cuz I'm a juggalo was way off. And pretty comical. Fortunately, my pimp hand is strong. But I choose to just walk away, like a lady.

Now I'm not crying or whining bout this phenomenon, so don't get it twisted. The attention we get is kind of cool. But, then again, on the flip side, it does make us increasingly scrutinized in the public eye. I've always thought there was a correlation between all that newfound media attention and the federal law enforcement's newfound interest in us with the whole FBI report. So I'm a little jaded about it. But perhaps I'm stretching the bounds of cause and effect here…

Bottom line is, something's happening here, and you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones…?  So no pictures, please.

Enjoy this classic: