Look, it's Mick Jagger, and he's like 90. See you in late 2008.

If yesterday's Arts & Leisure snoozer on Ozzfest felt a little familiar to you, congratulations -- your memory is better than The New York Times's. A little digging in the archives reveals that The Gray Lady has done this story four times in the last ten years:

Iron Man Slows, And So Does The Industry (June 2006)
Rock's Bad Boys Grow Up But Not Old (September 2002)
Grandfatherly Rockers Smooth Out The Wrinkles (February 2002)
Second Acts for Aging Rockers (February 1996)*

I don't know what it is about this story that makes the Times go all twitchy every 30 months, on average. Is it the unsurprising notion that rock stars actually age, rather than blink out of existence at 30? (FLASH: MUSICIANS SUBJECT TO LAWS OF PHYSICS... DEVELOPING) Whatever the draw is, they just can't seem to resist it, like an aging rocker who periodically reconnects with a groupie who was once young, when he (the rocker) was himself young, which -- hey, look at that! -- he no longer is. For that matter, they also seem to find irresistible the use of shopworn formulations like "rocker" and "rock's bad boys," the latter referring to -- Three guesses? Anybody? Bingo: The Rolling Stones! -- but that's for another day. In another two and a half years, presumably.

*Sorry, the pieces themselves are behind the Times's steel-reinforced pay wall, like an aging rocker condemned to live out his days in the well-guarded fortress of the gated community where he now dwells, ironically, because he used to talk about everybody being free and stuff, and man, is that ironic or what?