64 year-old rocker Keith Richards goes from smoking his dead father's ashes to eating a cigarette on stage during a live Rolling Stones concert.

And to think there are still small-minded people out there who say drugs kill brain cells and forty years of heavy smoking makes you prematurely old-looking…

• Donna Martin graduates…to a coveted spot on still-running ABC trainwreck, Dancing With The Stars.

• Even without a hottie ombudsman, ABC news admits it kind of effed up by interviewing Allawi lobbyist, Phillip Zelikow

• Yankees clubhouse accidentally-on-purpose promotes gang violence.

• Rumor (still) has it that Jake Gyllenhaal's been doing a lot of "rehearsing" for Brokeback Mountain 2. You know, when he's not going on shirtless bike ride with his totally heterosexual friends.

• Hendrik Hertzberg loses his blogging v-card. As expected, the first time could best be described as "awkward and underwhelming."

• Crazy old lady celebrates her 100th birthday by lighting up her 170,000th cigarette.

Occasionally, we (almost!) forget about Steve Dunleavy, both because he's become rather crotchety and eccentric in his ripe old age and because we tend run in different circles [Translation: we don't tend to spend our days getting shitfaced in a midtown Irish pub].

Thankfully, Dunleavy is generally happy to remind us of his existence by periodically indulging us (and, of course, himself) with crazy, self-righteous rants in which he's clearly in the wrong. Take, for instance, yesterday's missive, entitled "Smoke Gets In My Ire," a one-man crusade pitting Dunleavy against a nameless hotel manager for no apparent reason.

Writes Dunleavy:

IT may not make the Guinness Book of Records, but I believe I paid the highest price in the world to smoke a single cigarette - $25, to be exact.

I recently got my bill from a very charming boutique hotel in downtown L.A. called the Hilton Checkers. On the 21st line of charges was the notation: "Smoking in the room: $200."

Yes, I had been told it was a nonsmoking hotel, but like most desperadoes in the grip of nicotine, I've gotten away with it before in nonsmoking rooms. (Wrong, I know.) Over a period of four nights, I smoked two cigarettes a night, defying the prohibition. Total, eight cigarettes. Hence, my extra charge of $200 amounted to $25 a cigarette.

Here's our take on it.

CONTINUED »

No matter that Stuart Elliot's column is weeks old to the table, but today the New York Times' columnist showcases Camel cigarette's new female-friendly marketing ploy, designed to target a wider, curvier range of emphysema sufferers:

Wall Street analysts praise the introduction of Camel No. 9, in regular and menthol flavors, as a further step by the R. J. Reynolds, a unit of Reynolds American, toward a new marketing strategy.

But critics decry the new Camel as yet another effort to single out women for smoking pitches, a tactic they trace back to the 1920s when American Tobacco urged, “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet” to promote Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Silly tobacco companies. There's no need to resort to these brazen marketing tactics. Ultimately, female smokers are basically looking for the same things as their male counterparts, namely, a cigarette that will enable them to inhale as much tar, nicotine and lung cancer as humanly possible—in every single, intoxicating puff.