The Lost Member of Spinal Tap

One of the amazing things about Brother Leader Moamar Qaddafiy of Libya is just how dissolute and seedy he looks. I described him earlier as looking like a schizophrenic homeless man. But he also looks like a washed-up and perpetually stoned rocker from the early 1970s. Especially in this poster, which looks more Haight-Ashbury 1972 than Hopey-Changey 2008:

I see a fourth-rate Keith Richard and Bob Dylan in that face. I see no creative energy in that face. I see aging headbanger, someone who always turned his amp up to 11, never saw a line of blow he didn't snort, never saw a nubile young groupie he didn't grope, never slept in a hotel room he didn't trash, and who stopped mattering round about 1977 when he could no longer musically cope with disco and new wave. Maybe his career was briefly rejuvenated in the late 1980s, playing rhythm guitar for the unpainted Kiss, but he's spent his life mostly in a drug-induced fog, playing the same four minor early-1970s hits over and over and over again with the same band of mates for aging fans and confused kids in small clubs and county fairs and watermelon festivals from Poznan to Portland.

Pity he couldn't have overdosed on something substantial in 1973.