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/

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.