We left Mohegan Sun around 11 p.m. on Saturday night because we had seen all we wanted to see, we were down five bucks, and we had a long drive back to Westchester ahead of us.

But we didn’t realize we were leaving at precisely the same time a Kid Rock there let out, so we got to share the shuttle bus back to the parking lot with a group of Kid Rock fans. That alone was an interesting a sociocultural experience as the trip to the casino itself, and so, you know, two for the price of one.

Kid Rock fans — at least the ones in the shuttle bus back to the Winter Lot at Mohegan Sun — are, for lack of a better term, hicks. I don’t know what they’re doing in the middle of Connecticut or how they got there, whether they were uprooted from the middle of America in search of work on the East Coast, live in some small pocket of cowboy territory in New England, or simply traveled from afar to see Kid Rock.

But it’s intriguing to me, because Kid Rock, from what I understand, is not really a hick. I saw his Behind the Music. His real name is Bob Ritchie, and he grew up in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit, the son of a wealthy auto dealer.

Actually, Kid Rock got his start in Detroit’s hip-hop underground and was signed to his first record deal as a rapper, but it fell through — if I recall the VH1 show correctly — because Vanilla Ice blew up and blew over, and Kid Rock’s act was too deemed similar.

I guess that makes a little bit of sense. The only Kid Rock song I can think of offhand is his first big single, Bawitaba, and that certainly incorporates some rapping, if you could call it that.

I don’t really care for Kid Rock’s music, but I think Kid Rock is awesome. A lot of this stems from when Kid Rock came into the wholesale/retail lobster farm I worked at on Long Island, bought a couple of lobsters and tipped me four bucks. That was cool — not everyone knew to tip their lobstertrician, so I appreciated it. Thanks, Kid Rock.

Also, it seems like Kid Rock was just sort of hellbent on stardom from an early age, and so, you know, good for him. You could probably accuse Kid Rock of selling out for abandoning his hip-hop roots in favor of whatever it is he’s doing now that appeals to all the people in cowboy hats on the shuttle bus, but I don’t think it really counts as selling out if your whole goal in the first place was to sell places out.

Also, I’m pretty certain Kid Rock was the first non-Cher person I ever heard use auto-tune in the manner it has since become popular, so kudos to Kid Rock for trendsetting, or at least trend-foreshadowing or something.

Lastly — and this was my main point about Kid Rock, and it took me 500 words to get here — a few years ago someone released a sex tape featuring both Kid Rock and Scott Stapp of Creed. I wrote about it at the time on a now long-forgotten blog. I was going to revisit the same topic again, but I’ve already written too much about Kid Rock, so I’ll instead just excerpt some here:

Scott Stapp and Kid Rock. Who even knew they knew each other? Like, how did that come about? I gather that they were touring together at the time, so I guess that puts them in the same place at the same time, but, well, how did they first broach that subject? Are Kid Rock afterparties the types of places where orgies just break out? I mean, I guess it’s entirely possible, since it’s not like I have any frame of reference here. Orgies certainly don’t break out at the parties that I’m attending, maybe that’s just how it goes in Kid Rock’s circle.

The thing is, by appearing in a porno video, Scott Stapp — a purported Christian — proved himself a hypocrite. By appearing in a porno video, Kid Rock proved himself an honest man. Nothing Kid Rock ever said or did made any claims that he wouldn’t, if given the opportunity, film himself having sex with several women and with other dudes around too, because hey, that’s just the way Kid Rock rolls.

Thus, one porno video somehow made Scott Stapp less cool and Kid Rock moreso, and, to tell you the truth, that’s cool with me.

I haven’t seen the video, but I’ve heard it’s pretty filthy. In fact, from what I understand, it’s the single most vile, most disgusting, and most morally debased product of the mass media since Kid Rock’s second album.

Zing!

Oh, me in 2006. Anyway, in conclusion, Kid Rock is cool, even if his music isn’t. So here’s to you, Kid Rock.

Finally, I would be remiss if I mentioned Kid Rock without linking to his amazing collection of mug shots. No one in history has ever been so happy to be arrested outside of a Waffle House.