Oh, boy.

Edna Gunderson has the scoop in USA Today: Bob Dylan’s Cadillac ads are a gas.

On 2001’s Summer Days, Bob Dylan sang, “I’m drivin’ in the flats in a Cadillac car,” a lyric that comes to life today in the debut of a multiplatform ad campaign for Cadillac. In a 30-second TV spot, the music legend, sporting a cowboy hat and shades, steers a black 2008 Escalade across California’s Antelope Valley before stepping out to survey the desert landscape.

He utters one line: “What’s life without taking a detour?”

[...]

In a long-form online vignette (viewable now at xmradio.com and starting Wednesday at cadillac.com and mycadillacstory.com), Dylan cracks, “You know what’s even better than a great road tune? Not having some DJ talking all over it. Unless, of course, that DJ’s me.”

Despite the links referenced above, I can’t find the ad online yet. Nevermind; it will be all over the place pretty soon. [Update: Click here for XM hosted video. Or view the 60 second clip here via YouTube. Two minute clip is at this link.]

It’s hard to know where to begin with this. It’s just about impossible to stop laughing, for one. It’s a beautiful day.

One of the first reactions on a big Dylan messageboard goes like this:

First of all, Jeff Rosen[Dylan's right-hand man manager type -ed.], if you had anything to do with this, a GIGANTIC F*** You

Second of all, Bob, I seriously hope your house burns down from a climate change induced fire*

and one more thing,

I may not listen to Bob for a long time on the back of this news

there’s lots of good artists out there who aren’t clueless

Bob can sing Masters of War and then promote gas guzzling a**hole vehicles?

Yes, the Cadillac Escalade, which Bob is pictured with, makes somewhere between 13 and 19 miles per gallon. “Where’s the global warming,” indeed.

So, on “Theme Time Radio Hour” a couple of weeks ago, when Bob answered an alleged email about Sheryl Crow’s TV commercials, and talked about how Sonny Boy Williamson sold flour and Jimmie Rodgers sold biscuits, we can now see that it wasn’t so much a retroactive defense of his lingerie commercials as much as it was a preemptive strike regarding the Cadillac campaign.

What is there not to love about Bob Dylan doing some Cadillac commercials? Cadillacs are Americana. They have populated his songs, and so many songs by other people that Dylan would love. (This week’s “Theme Time Radio Hour” is in fact going to be on the theme of “Cadillac;” Dylan is even daring to mix the editorial and business interests.)

I think it’s now official beyond all question: Bob Dylan is free. He can do anything he wants. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line about there being no second acts in American lives has never rung less true. Dylan has beaten everybody who has ever tried to pigeonhole him, dismiss him and define him. He is 66 years old, on top of his game in countless ways old and new, and is having an absolute blast. He’s got eight carburetors, and he’s using ’em all. Rock on, Bob.

…

*Addendum: The wish from that messageboard poster above that Bob’s house would “burn down” is of-course particularly nasty coming at a time when wildfires in Malibu are very much in the news, and homes are burning down, and people’s lives are at risk. As to these fires being “climate change induced,” that seems wishful thinking on the part of our sweet and benevolent global warming enthusiast. That part of the country has long been afflicted by wildfires. The dry and hot Santa Ana winds have a lot to do with it, and they’ve been blowing for a long, long time.

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