Here’s what you all missed: Almost bought a house, until we didn’t.

Also, brewed a big hoppy American Red Ale, dubbed Dirty Water Red after that MWRA filth that was happening the day it was brewed. It’s brewed with Crystal 90L and Carafa Special II, hopped with Amarillo and Cascade, and then dry-hopped with more Cascade. Sort of an homage to a ton of great beers I had in Portland last year, as well as Ithaca Cascazilla, which exists because we can’t get any of those beers out east.

Some news happened as well. Brian McGrory went back to the well, to great effect. Eddie Kelly found a new way to infuriate Hizzoner – by actually bending a little. And Dianne Wilkerson admitted the evil racist feds actually had something on her after all.

One last kick at that last one. Adrian Walker’s Wilkerson career obit today lays some good groundwork, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. The point isn’t just that she was a filthy crook (feels good to finally drop the allegedly! there), because we’ve got more than our fill of filthy crooks here. Nor is it good enough that she was a tragic figure, Roxbury’s answer to one of Aristotle’s schmucks. Wilkerson’s downfall is important because it should put to rest a uniquely nasty and poisonous vein running through Boston politics.

Yes, as Walker points out, Wilkerson was skilled in taking care of her constituents when she wasn’t shaking them down. That wasn’t the only reason for her unusual staying power, though. She owes that to her particular skill at manipulating the politics of race – in a town where old racial wounds can reopen easily – for her own personal advancement. She did it when the AG had her over a barrel, and again when she was getting it taken to her by a better, less cynical candidate. She got paid for it when pressuring the city for that liquor license she wanted.

She had herself redistricted into wealthy white neighborhoods to up her access to money and development action, but every time she was cornered, she didn’t just point the finger away from herself; she surrounded herself by a phalanxes of people who looked like her, and asked them to believe that her own problems were also their own. After pleading guilty, that game is finally over.

I have an Op-Ed column in today’s Globe tracing a commercial real estate foreclosure in Roxbury back to the Dianne Wilkerson scandal. Not the bra-stuffing part, but the (alleged!) $15,000 crooked land deal pay-for-play part.

Read it here. Pony up $1 for the real paper and marvel at that incredible illustration. And check back next Monday for a new column on something else.

Um?

So we know that Bernie Madoff’s post-Ponzi life has gotten more than a bit weird: Maybe he’s got cancer, maybe he doesn’t, but we can say for sure that he’s shirtless and banging on a drum in a Native American sweat lodge, and also running with the gay gangs because no other prison gang wants him. All that, we know.

But. BUT. Did you know what the other billion-dollar Ponzi swindler, Allen Stanford, did before he greased up an Antiguan bank regulator with cash and Pats Super Bowl tickets? Oh, he just slit his wrist and swore a primitive blood oath with the Antiguan dude is all. No word yet if any virgins were tossed in a volcano for good measure.

More Madoff trivia – much more – can be found over here, on an Eater analysis of Madoff’s AmEx statements. Via DealBook.

What did I tell you, huh? You don’t buy anything! Don’t buy anything!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW0UCT5c0M8

[via]

But look what’s happening down in Dirty Jerz! It’s corrupt pols – including a Paddy wagon full of Italian mayors – in court and cuffs and ankle bracelets. Bonus: Organ-trafficking rabbis.

Perhaps the feds read the metro page?

Chris Faraone has the scoop over at the Phoenix:

The man known as Clark Rocafella is reported to have been working Beacon Hill crowds for several years under the auspices that he was a blood relative to the dynasty, dating back to the days it was helmed by rap mogul Jay-Z. One Brahmin regular who contacted JumpTheTurnStyle on condition of anonymity remembers one time that Clark walked into the Tannery in Back Bay, ordered the whole sneaker section in size 10, and instructed them to put everything on Hova’s tab. Another close friend confirmed the story. “This fuck told me that he was down with Sauce Money, and that he was down since ‘In My Lifetime,’ and that he oiled up bitches on the ‘Big Pimpin’ set, and blah, blah, blah,” said Maurice “Sir Cam-A-Lot” Kennedy, a bastard mixed nephew of JFK who now serves as the family’s liaison to the rap community. “But after all that perpetrating, now it looks like he might be a Rocafella after all.”

Below, a mug shot of Phil Spector without his wig on, because murderers in California aren’t allowed to wear their wigs in prison.