Agreed, trying to explain how bitcoins work to the average joe seems too complicated at the moment. Most of them generally wonder how you can "generate free money" through bitcoin mining. There needs to be better clarification around this? :/
I usually clarify the mining question by explaining that it's not really the most interesting or important part of Bitcoin. (Technically speaking, of course, it's very important, but not for general end-users.) I'm really eager to get my easy-to-use bitcoin client out there for folks to play with.