Smoking Keith Richards

Now, it all makes sense.

For years, Keith Richards topped our annual dead pool – he still does. The guy is a walking corpse. Every year, as we toss names out, people nod knowingly when Richards’ name comes up. I mean, look at him:

Given the life he’s lead and, the theory goes, the drugs he’s taken, it’s only a matter of time, right? Wrong. This has been going on for years and the guy keeps on tickin’.

Well now we know why.

In an interview published by NME, a British music magazine roughly equivalent to Rolling Stone here in the states, Richards is quoted as saying:

“The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

Of course, now that it was published, Richards is saying it was all a joke – that he would never take cocaine now and that he truly planted his father’s ashes with a “sturdy English Oak.”

Riiiight.

The halarious part of this is that Denis Leary called this exact scenario, years ago. Well, ok, sort of.

Back on his funniest comedy album, “No Cure for Cancer,” Leary actually joked about smoking Richards’ ashes for a high after the guitarist had died.

“I was reading an interview with Keith Richards in a magazine and in the interview Keith Richards intimated that kids should not do drugs. Keith Richards! Says that kids should not do drugs! Keith, we can't do any more drugs because you already fucking did them all, alright?There's none left! We have to wait 'till you die and smoke your ashes! Jesus Christ! Talk about the pot and the fuckin' kettle.”

Irony, oh, sweet irony.

President Bush's Spilt Milk Theory

Thanks, Mr. President, thanks for today's near-admission you’d been wrong … and I stress the word “near.”

But this is George W. Bush. Wrong is wrong and he isn’t wrong. He’s the decider. Deciders can’t be wrong – even when he’s smacked down by the highest court in the land and even when that highest court in the land tilts in his direction. Nope, no wrong here.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Bush administration was wrong in not enforcing the key provisions of the Clean Air Act. It was the first true global warming argument brought to the high court and, boy, did it pack a punch.

Bush got dunked by the court and now he’s saying, well, nothing new really. He admits the court’s ruling is “the new law of the land” but doesn’t quite bring himself to admitting the administration had it wrong all along.

He argued that "anything that happens cannot hurt economic growth. I care about the working people of the country but also because in order to solve the greenhouse gas issue over a longer period of time, it's going to require new technologies, which tend to be expensive."

And he continued to push the theory that nothing the US does matters unless China and India get in line on global warming.

Bush said that "whatever we do, it must be in concert with what happens internationally. Because we could pass any number of measures that are now being discussed in the Congress, but unless there is an accord with China, China will produce greenhouse gases that will offset anything we do in a brief period of time.”

To me, this sounds like an argument my 3-year-old might make when he and his buddies are spilling their milk all over the floor. He may look at me and say he won’t stop spilling his milk until the other kids do too. Sure, we have to stop the other kids from spilling milk but, for God’s sake, stop spilling yours first - not just because it'll mean there is less milk on the floor but maybe, just maybe, the other 3-year-olds will stop spilling their milk too.

And how does that jive with the Bush administration's immigration policy, by the way? This is the team that wants to put a fence on the border to cut off the flow of immigrants. Well if it makes sense to turn off the spigot there to stop the flood, why wouldn’t it here, too?

But that brings us back to the 3-year-olds and milk. You can't try to inject logic into a completely illogical mind.

Minute 13 of 15, I hope

There isn't much out there these days that tops this photo on the weird-o-meter.

Obama is Christ. Perfect message for the holy weeks we are in, perfect.

I can see the bumper-stickers now: "Don't Blame Me, I Prayed For Obama."

Here's hoping this "artist's" 15 minutes are at 13.

The Globe Plot Thickens

The plot thickens this morning on the Globe's Metro page. Where Brian McGrory's column usually is, there is nothing today. Often, the editors will put notes at the bottom of the page if a columnist is on vacation or just not writing. Today, nothing.

This, of course, only heightens my interst.

Presumably now we will see McGrory's typical Tuesday column tomorrow, in the Wednesday/Sunday slot previously reserved for the now bought-out Eileen McNamara. And then Adrian Walker back in his normal slot Thursday and then what Friday - another no-column day?

Why would the Globe make a change of this seeming magnitude but not tell anybody? It makes some sense to me that they wouldn't announce a new hire or that the post wasn't being filled this early in the process - but why not at least announce that McGrory was switching days and that, during the search, no column will run in McGrory's old Tuesday/Friday slot?

So far, I haven't heard back on my official query to Globe spokesman Al Larkin and my unofficial queries to others at the paper. I'll let you know if that changes. The website page at boston.com that lists the Metro columnist schedules hasn't changed either - still listing McNamara as Sunday/Wednesday, Walker Monday/Thursday, McGrory Tuesday/Friday.

Odd, very odd.

UPDATE: So it turns out part of the mystery wasn’t really a mystery at all – just an undersold announcement. Thanks to a reader, I’ve now seen the italicized note at the end of Brian McGrory’s Sunday column that I clearly missed on Sunday: “Brian McGrory's column will appear on Wednesday and Sunday.” I stand corrected.

A Signal from the Globe?

From the update department, as usual, readers of Guarino-Blog are paying more attention than Guarino.

"Jason" wrote this afternoon in a post to my McGrory item from the other day - "did we get our answer in today's paper?"

It took me a second but I realized that the Brian McGrory column I'd read not 20 minutes before had, indeed, been in the Sunday paper. McGrory writes on Tuesdays and Fridays - or, at least he did.

So does this answer part of the question, anyway? Is McGrory the new marquee writer, scoring McNamara's treasured Sunday Metro column? The Globe officially hasn't said anything that I've seen and the city's media critics haven't posted anything on their blogs. I'll ask around.

Guess in hindsight, we should have picked this up a day earlier when McNamara wrote (perhaps her Swan Song?) on Saturday - which is usually a day without a Metro column.

Of course, all this could mean nothing. McGrory might have just had an extra column sitting around and offered it up.

Could be I'm the only one in town who cares about these tea leaves. But I don't know why - this is the marquee journalism job in the city and, for my money, the biggest single soap box now available in New England.

We'll be watching. Stay tuned...