Can't be a Gonzo journalist? At least you can be a Gonzo pothead.

The first and most important stop on our road trip back to New York was Las Vegas. I'd never been before so the idea was to make a straight-edge gonzo piece about my first impressions of Sin City uninfluenced by drugs or alcohol, a sacrilegiously sterile homage to that beautiful man, Hunter S. Thompson, who I had the time, resources and spirit to emulate in my late teens, early twenties.

It's Evan Thomas' observational grace notes that deliver the complete Nixon. You've got to empathize with a guy who was totally helpless with anything mechanical and was comically clumsy while wrestling a lobster that clawed onto his suit.

The pizza joint next door does a good slice of violence. An argument mushrooms. The cops on speed dial and paramedics export an unsatisfied customer to the hospital. Something about pepperoni, some kind of insult, I hear a metal pipe over the skull settled it.