All Hail King Howard

I’ve always felt an allegiance to Howard Stern, “king of all media,” champion of strippers and "retards" alike. Although many refuse to accept or acknowledge his talents, Howard is one of the most successful entertainers in history. He is one of the few in the business who speaks from brutal honesty and truly does what he wants, sometimes to be funny, sometimes for the sake of making a finer point, sometimes just to be contradictory for the fuck of it – it really doesn’t matter. The man sticks to his instincts – perhaps all you can rely on in the business of causing controversy – and rides them for dear life through a sea of midgets, crackwhores and 40-year-old virgins. The Robert Crumb of talk radio, Howard has an eye for the freakish, the perverted and the intriguingly disturbing. He’s simply trying to bring his circus together and will finally get to do so, under a bigger tent with no FCC restrictions, this coming January. I have been waiting for this since the days of my crap-ass Long Island commute and I’m not the only member of the infamously warped Jones family who has been counting down the days.

The media blitz that inevitably trumpets upcoming celebrity projects irritates me, even if the attention is lavished on someone I adore (last month’s suffocating coverage of Sarah Silverman spoiled just about every good joke in Jesus is Magic), but I will probably end up reading every last article on Howard and his Sirius debut. You should start with this week’s excellent profile in New York Magazine while I ex today off the calendar and attempt to rationalize a $300 purchase in anticipation of the triumphant return of “Anal Ring Toss.”