Like a crumblin' stone?

While I'm not as verklempt about the recent editorial schizo goings-on at Rolling Stone as some of my compadres, reading the once-venerable pub has been much more of an adventure these last few years than when I first started seriously devouring the mag in the late Nineties. My deep and seething distaste for Rob Sheffield as a writer and human being aside (it was really those execrable appearances on VH1 that tore it, Robster) and my on-again, off-again feelings about Austin Scaggs (who more often than not, comes across to me as a desperate, hack starfucker), there are enough scribes left at RS that are deft enough with turns of phrase as to warrant paging through the rag when it shows up every couple of weeks - mad props to David Fricke and Parke Puterbaugh, yo.
Their final issue of '04 and first issue of '05 (packaged together, don'tchaknow) arrived at Chez Riprock today...the side-splitting, quasi-serious profiles of Lindsay Lohan and Arnold Schwarznegger aside, there's still a SMOKING HOT pic of Paris Hilton on the opening spread (er, just dodge the barely contained Freudian slips in that last bit) that almost completely redeems the fluff that follows.
Their top 50 list reads like publisher/bon vivant/current editor (are they even trying to find anyone to replace Ed Needham?) Jann Wenner assembled the writers, doled out his mandatory inclusions and left the sycophants to fill in the blanks. And in alphabetical order? Way to skip actually having to judge the albums and rank them in some kind of order - just crank out a few quote whore-worthy blurbs and it's onto the next issue. Huzzah!
Eh, at any rate, I was dumb/committed enough to slap down the hundred smackers and re-up my subscription as part of the "Get Rolling Stone Until You Die" promotion - seemed neat enough. Besides, it'll have paid for itself in about a year and a half.