Tales of two contrarians--the always-true-to-himself Christopher Hitchens and the trying-to-go-mainstream-again Howard Stern.

RIP to Christopher Hitchens, the talented writer and pundit (and unfortunate acolyte of Championship Wrestling Atheism) who was unafraid to take sometimes-perplexing contrarian decisions (rightly, in my mind, calling out Bill Clinton for his excesses while, sadly, swallowing the Bush/neocon party line on the Justness of the now-officially-ended-yet-again Iraq War):http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501363_162-57344017/christopher-hitchens-militant-pundit-dies-at-62/

Here's a compilation of articles Hitchens wrote for the SLATE.com website;
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/12/christopher_hitchens_his_greatest_slate_hits_.html

Also RIP in advance to the forthcoming career choice of the King of All Media:
Howard Stern has, in past decades, tried to mainstream himself in other ways besides the artistic success/so-so boxoffice film version of PRIVATE PARTS; the chief examples being an unsold five-night talk-show pilot for the Fox network and a straightforward interview series for the E! network dating from the early 90s.

And now, as the SiriusXM satellite radio series winds down, Stern is again offering a relatively defanged version of himself as a judge on Simon Cowell's GONG SHOW/AMATEUR HOUR dual homage AMERICA'S GOT TALENT:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/story/2011-12-15/Howard-Stern-is-new-judge-on-Americas-Got-Talent/51961412/1?csp=34

Ken Tucker of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY offers a more-optimistic-than-I-am take on this:
http://watching-tv.ew.com/2011/12/16/howard-stern-americas-got-talent-nbc/

Sins forever considered unforgivable: Jane Fonda, Artie Lange and me.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jane-fonda-criticizes-qvc-far-212264
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/07/16/jane-fonda-blames-canceled-qvc-appearance-on-the-right-wing/
http://www.danpatrick.com/2011/07/15/artie-lange-talks-about-returning-to-radio-to-do-sports/
http://www.tmz.com/2011/07/14/artie-lang-radio-howard-stern-directv-nick-dipaolo-hopfully-supportive-support/
http://poetry-arts-confidential.blogspot.com/2011/04/annual-plea-for-forgiveness-re-ugly-mug.html
http://poetry-arts-confidential.blogspot.com/2011/05/re-ugly-mug-its-all-over-for-me.html

Current and former Howard Stern writers must be weeping: Neil Strauss thinks it's all improv.

Well, it's here.  Neil Strauss' on-bended-knee interview with Howard Stern is now in the current issue of ROLLING STONE.

Expect a fair amount of analysis-speak, some it-was-sad-but-I-won't-be-specific-the-show-was-probably-part-of-it comments about the end of Howard's first marriage and, sadly, a continuing refusal-couched-in-"concern" to allow Artie Lange (who wants to return to the show to talk about his depression and attempted suicide) on-air.

My favorite passage of the article comes in Strauss' sometimes overfawning introduction:
"....someone who can sit in a room and improvise four hours of comedy four days a week."

I'm sure that current Stern writer Benji Bronk and former HS jokescribes Jackie Martling (Stern gave him a lot of credit in a 90s ROLLING STONE interview) and Al Rosenberg are thrilled to hear this.

Peter Biskind's STAR bio of Warren Beatty--two perspectives.

Here's free-lance journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis' gossip-laden take on Peter Biskind's STAR--a gossip-laden biography of Warren Beatty: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/books/review/Grigoriadis-t.html

And, for contrast, here's the Janet Maslin review which appeared a month earlier in THE NEW YORK TIMES: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/books/07book.html

To my point of view, the Maslin review is the more thoughtful of the two. But Grigoriadis does take notice of the continuing virus of male sexism towards women (be they journalists or artistic colleagues) in the Industry. And she was a victim of that sexism more recently when an on-the-money ROLLING STONE profile of troubled comic/HOWARD STERN SHOW regular Artie Lange received a boorish on-STERN rebuttal from Lange friend Norm Macdonald.

As for Warren Beatty, he had a great run from BONNIE AND CLYDE through REDS (excepting DOLLARS. THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN and THE FORTUNE--which I'm assuming he accepted because they were directed by Richard Brooks, George Stevens and Mike Nichols, respectively). ISHTAR, even when released, wasn't as bad a film as the let's-review-the-budget shallow nonsense that defined its reputation for the last twenty-three years. And BULWORTH was an honorable valedictory for Beatty-as-filmmaker--leaving aside the disaster-laden-career-finale of TOWN AND COUNTRY.

Maybe Beatty enjoys being all-but-retired and a late-in-life husband/father. Maybe Beatty can't get over seeing himself as the eternal old-school leading man to have a strictly behind-the-camera career as producer/director--or even to be a mere actor in other people's films.

But, in the end, Beatty's body of work as a filmmaker deserves to outlast the who-he-slept-with curiosities--and the books which focus more on the latter than the former.

Random trivial thoughts on pop culture.

1. After the widely lambasted solo project with Timbaland producing, I'm curious how much interest there may be in Chris Cornell reuniting Soundgarden later this year. Also wondering if any new material will be generated--or if it's a Pixies-esque just-play-the-old-stuff tour.
2. If Warren Beatty's so annoyed by the likely-irreverent upcoming bio from Peter Biskind, maybe it would have been a good idea to have just said nothing at all (as Artie Lange is currently doing regarding his hospitalization; Beatty had superattorney Bert Fields issue a "I didn't authorize Biskind's book" denial after Biskind and publicist apparently leaked a five-figure estimate of the number of women Beatty has been intimate with).
3. It's safe to say that Colin Firth is this year's Richard Jenkins--a fine actor who will get no more than a "thanks for your body of work" Academy Awards nomination for the film he's in. The collolary to this axiom is that, as with Jenkins and THE VISITOR, Firth is head-and-shoulders superior to the film he's in (Tom Ford's A SINGLE MAN).