Christopher Hitchens, the D.C.-based provocateur, militant pundit, humanist, legendary writer and orator, great iconoclast and moralist, enraging author, and — my personal favorite — intellectual pirate, is dead. Long live Christopher Hitchens! On YouTube. Performing a rambling stand-up routine at the D.C. Improv Comedy Club in the late '90s.

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Drink and cigarette in one hand, Hitchens makes several jokes that are either over my head or absolute nonsense, or both. He sings a song about drinking. In a "melancholy" mood — a euphemism for intoxication? — he says "the problem with Washington is solitary vice." It's unclear what he means by this, partly because he's mumbling and partly because he moves on to another thought sloshing through his head.

Hitchens does rouse laughter with a joke about the "pathetic" word games he plays by himself. For instance: Take a well-known phrase with "heart" in it, and replace the word with "dick."

"It cheers me up, sometimes," he says.

Hearing his examples cheers me up, too.