Security was tight at the Republican National Concession, like it always is. But I found a way in, like I always do. I flew into Phoenix on the afternoon hilt from L.A. Popped two Vicodin and didn’t notice the plane was actually moving until we touched down under a hazy midday glow, silhouetting the high tower of Sky Harbor Int’l Airport. Not that I needed the Vicodin for a one‐hour plane flight, but I’d been up for almost 32 hours at that point, scrambling without luck to find a pass into John McCain’s predictable concession speech at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa. And besides, metal detectors have always made me nervous. Upon landing, it was clear that I needed more sleep, certainly, but it was already two p.m. and there was no time for that now.

An hour later, I arrived at my motel in Paradise Valley, just minutes from the heart of Phoenix. There was no reasonable place closer for less than fifty bucks a night, and this place didn’t require a credit card—just another fifty in cash for deposit. So I handed a hundred‐dollar bill to the young Mexican woman at the desk and checked in under a fake name. Just in case the Gods turned against me on this one, just in case I had to scramble back weary and defeated while authorities combed the streets in search of a W.C. Jennings.

At 3:30, I was in a cab on my way to the Biltmore, where McCain would be conceding in just a few hours. I had two more Vicodin stuffed into my jacket pocket, the one without the hole in it. Should I be detained and need to sleep in a rusty cell, those would be necessary. Also, fake eye glasses for special effect, and a pocket‐size flux compression generator, which would generate an electromagnetic pulse, thereby impeding all electric activity within 100 yards of the device. I was convinced that John McCain
was indeed a cybernetic organism, and one shock from an EMP would stop him dead in his tracks on national television. I also wanted to see Sarah Palin for myself. I didn’t believe she was an actual living person, more like a CGI apparition created by the Television Christian Right, modeled on soccer‐bag‐toting, moose‐hating northern women with wild daughters. Someone created her out of nothing. Probably Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity in a dark room somewhere in upstate New York.

All I needed now was a press pass.