It is enough just to hear his laugh again—adenoidal, wracked rasp of Solomon sense and parched good times drifting over the static airwaves from California to New England and every burg in between. No idiot winds blowing here, just an old man cracking wise over the abyss that is America today. He can afford to, this man with nothing left to prove again. Jaded as Job must’ve been with seen-it-all wisdom, his own myth is a long-defiant invention of folkloric dimension as he spins the tallest of tales, and songs, over the radio today—just like he did in his apocalyptic ‘60s, his Rolling-Thunder ‘70s, his burned-out ‘80s, his rekindled ‘90s, and on into the distant hope of this new century…

I can only be writing about one man, Mr. Bob Dylan, and his rabble-rousing storyteller’s return to vintage form with his program on the Theme Time Radio Hour weekly satellite radio show. When rumors of his show, with its tagline of  ”Dreams, schemes, themes,”  leaked out over the news a few years ago, I remember thinking it seemed too good to be true. Dylan as DJ? As chatty host? C’mon. Besides being exalted for his epic canon of classics and a career spanning longer than those young pup Stones (not to mention in relevance), he is a man notorious for his misanthropic silence on stage, for his curmudgeonly ways and rapier wit, and for his willful refusal to do anything, ever, that he doesn’t want to do.

Integrity and genius, that’s Dylan squared. But it doesn’t make him an easy man to follow or understand. His restlessness burns on, leaving many of us stranded in his footprints. And some of us revel in that, too.

Bob is one of the lone holdouts against the ravenous Pop Culture Combine. Consider his solo achievements—here’s a guy who has been legendarily famous since his early 20s, he has been poked, prodded, criticized, and worshipped, many times over. Yet his own tongue-in-cheek self-description of being a “song and dance man” keeps on keepin’ us guessing. If you’ve ever witnessed one of his cockeyed, inspired kamikaze speeches at an awards show like the Grammy’s, when the audience holds its collective breath wondering what he might dare say next, then you know the obvious delight Bob still takes in disturbing the peace any way he can, while at the same time managing to continually make most artists seem tame.

Would he succumb to the pop culture virus now? Aficionados wondered. In the last few years, he somehow surprised us all, time and time again. There was his artistic resurgence with Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times. Or consider his Never Ending Tour that started way back in ’88 and continues on now as he travels America’s back roads and ballparks. And his biggest surprise, his seemingly perverse decision to lease his music for a Victoria’s Secret commercial. (Though with his uncanny, prophetic sense, Dylan once joked in one of his patented, Dadaist, stoned, high-wire press conferences in 1965 that if he ever did sell his music it would only be for ladies’ undergarments. Why not? Maybe he was more serious than we knew. We couldn’t tell. Just like back then, we couldn’t tell when he said he’s as good a singer as Caruso because he could hold his breath longer. Drum roll and chuckles. Either way, it’s as if he’s been biding his time for the last 40 years, just waiting to be courted by the right lingerie company. Chutzpah? Yeah, he built his career on that.)

And yet, to hear his crusty, ruined voice shine out over a satellite frequency is even more startling than seeing his weary frame juxtaposed against the young, sexy limbs of lingerie models on television. Introduced as if in a noir setting with drizzling rain falling on city streets, and narrated by Ellen Barkin and her sultry voice, Theme Time Radio Hour ricochets off the airwaves in a shotgun blast of vaudevillian one-liners, tender recollections, historical anecdotes, and absurdist humor.

Not to mention the music he chooses each episode, which jump-cuts from ‘40s swing band strolls to ‘50s Sun Records rockabilly to ’06 singer/songwriters roots fare. Imagine some pirate, twilight zone radio station that beams down Billie Holliday, Sinatra, Buck Owens, the Clash, and Bruce, among myriad other galaxies, into our XM frequencies. His encyclopedic musical knowledge and rough, off-kilter charm was always obvious in song, but he makes it moonshine-clear here every week.

Each episode has its specific theme, whether “Baseball,” “Divorce,” “Dogs,” “Sleep,” or “Luck,” and plays out like a compressed, panoramic journey of Americana with your favorite, slightly crazed uncle as the guide. He not only spins the songs, but he whispers the secrets behind them. And like the poet he is, he recites lyrics before and after songs, somehow transforming mundane phrases into a bard’s verse. He also answers fan email on the show and gives advice as he cues up an Abbot and Costello bit, or a Nietzsche quote, or sings “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in all his cracked, nasal, raging glory. (Cooperstown Baseball’s Shrine even recently inducted the “Baseball” episode into its Hall of Fame archives.)

While answering an email on the “Friends and Neighbors” show, he defines the parameters of his playlist. The listener’s question asks, “Love the show, but why do you play so many obscure artists?” Bob spells it out, “That’s a fair question, Vernon. First of all, why should we play things you can hear anywhere else? On the other hand, the artists I play are interesting and deserve their moment in the sun—besides; I’ll bet they’re not obscure to their friends and neighbors.”