Above: the teenaged lead singer of the Hot Nasties, circa 1977-78.
Photo located last night under a pile of old records. Note the rasta handle.

SFH’s fate seems inextricably linked, in myriad ways, to Toronto “mayor” Rob Ford.  We can’t shake him, as hard as we try.  He’s like herpes – once you get him, he goes away for a while, but he never fully disappears.

So, two big SFH and Rob Ford related developments:

• Our new guitarists, Steve Deceive and Royal Niblit, will be debuting at the 2013 Strummerfest in K-W next week.  We’re opening for Die Mannequin, and will be attacking the Ford Nation with reckless abandon.
• Ugly Pop Records is issuing ‘Mayor On Crack’ in 45 rpm form – with ‘Rob – The Rob Ford Song’ is on the flipside!

If you’re in K-W, c’mon by and say hi.  If you’re not, get ready for the release of Mayor On Crack.  It’s gonna be huge.

Like Rob.

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Dear Chief Blair:

Other folks want to canonize you as a saint. I’ve never felt that way, for various reasons.

Another reason: your guys had the goods on Rob Ford six ways to Sunday. Schedule One narcotic use and possession (as he’s admitted); extortion (threatening the power of his office to get back the cell phone with drug connections on it); participation in a criminal organization (the new offence created, ironically enough, by his pal Stephen Harper).

As others have said, correctly, if a poor non-white kid had been implicated in just one of the above-noted crimes, they’d still be in jail.

But Rob Ford? Again: you had him, and you let him go.  Why is that?

When Toronto gets a new mayor – and if you’re still around, which I increasingly tend to doubt – get ready for some tough questions, Chief.  There’ll be plenty of them.

Sincerely,

Warren Kinsella, LL.B

P.S. The questions will be directed at the Crown Attorney’s Office, too.  They’ve been as negligent as you, perhaps more so.  Kathleen Wynne’s maladroit Attorney-General will need to answer for that, I think.

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ROB FORD DOES HEROIN.

That would’ve been my headline. Call me crazy, and many do, but it seems to me that that is news.

Wow.

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My Aunt Irene passed away on the weekend, another family member felled by cancer.

Her funeral is today in Knowlton, in the Eastern Townships, and I couldn’t get there on time. My Mom is there, however.

What can I tell you about her? To me – as a kid, as now – she was what Montreal was when it was at its hippest: Expo ’67, Trudeau (the elder), Habitat, all of that. She was cosmopolitan and multilingual and lived on two continents, and I thought she was from another world, back then. She was cool.

Anyway, say a little prayer for her, if you will. She was a good one. Thanks.

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Hey! Somewhere in the past few days, I acquired more than 14,000 Twitter enthusiasts. At the moment, 14,234, to be precise.

I have some small distance to go before catching up to a Future Prime Minister and Our New Twitter Overlord, but not much.

So, do I get an award or something?

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Jim Watson calls Gord Brown “Gordie.” Good God! The horror!

Oh, wait.  I call Gordie “Gordie,” too, because he’s one of my oldest friends. I’m friends with Michael McSweeney, as well.  I wish to assure the Citizen’s crack investigative team that I do not, however, call Michael “Mike.”

So, let’s see: no law was broken.  No rule was broken.  In fact, all that did happen here is this: this guy duly registered, as the law requires.  He followed the rules, right out in the open. So the Citizen decides to do a drive-by on him.

Lame, lame, lame.

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I’m no PMO shill, obviously, but I think this Chong bill is a trap. It is dangerous.

Among other things, it would render this sort of nightmare – which I lived through, day after day, from 2000 to 2006 – an ongoing reality, and give rise to myriad constitutional crises.

Well-intentioned, but a bad idea. Cure is worse than the disease, etc.

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Junior Murvin, a giant of my teenage punk years, died yesterday in Port Antonio.  He was in his sixties.  No one knows yet what was the cause, apparently.

The Clash famously covered Police and Thieves, of course, but Murvin should be remembered for more than that one amazing tune.  He was a genius – and I will keep forever the note Murvin sent to me, via my Jamaican friend Karl Hale, a few years back.  Here’s the song for which he was best known.

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Dear Rob Ford:

We decided to have a meeting, and limit attendance to people who haven’t committed a number of major crimes.  Sorry.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Wynne and Norm Kelly

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