Hitch is way better talking about what a gross bag of flab and existential dread he is before his dental veneers and exercise routines and hair treatments and Brazilian waxes and nicotine patches and whatnot than he is making the journey interesting. I do like the way having him spend a year focusing on his own decay leaves him with an an anxiety of mortality that just totally needs a couple of double scotches and a smoke to make it recede into the far distance. Essay appeared in Vanity Fair for October 2007. ( )