Six days a week Norm Clarke churns out "Vegas Confidential," his gossip column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He's been insulted by Jerry Lewis and slapped by Pete Rose. His trademark black eye patch is hard to miss--magician Criss Angel once threatened to put Clarke's other eye out if he ever wrote about him again.  He's landed some Vegas-size scoops over the years too: Britney Spears' quicky wedding and annulment, which he covered in the same column; and Michael Jackson's secret return to Sin City three years ago.  A former AP reporter, Clarke ditched Denver for Nevada after scoring $50,000 in the Colorado lottery. He used some of the money to buy a Vegas vacation home but since moved to the chic Las Vegas Country Club, a half mile off the Strip, where he lives with his girlfriend and two dogs, Rumor and Scandal. He spoke to Forbes in February.  You've had some infamous run-ins with celebrities. What was Pete Rose's beef?  I was having dinner at the Palms' steakhouse with Matt Drudge when Pete Rose came up to our table and slapped me in the face. I said, "What the f*** are you doing?" Rose said that I had ranked him as the worst tipper in town. I tried to tell him he wasn't the worst, just among the top 10 worst, but he wouldn't listen. Rose left, then Drudge turned to me and asked, "Did he just slap you?" I said yes, and Drudge said, "Well I certainly hope you're going to write about it tomorrow." I did.  How has Tiger Woods handled the gossip media?  His press conference made it clear that Tiger still thinks he's calling the shots on this story. What we learned is that he's a control freak. Two-and-a-half years ago I got a tip that Tiger had a girlfriend. My reaction was: Is she blond? If you can't tell me with certainty it's not his wife, I can't run it.  What probably foreshadowed all this was Tiger hanging out with Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan. The chicks were lined up 10-deep around those guys. That's a lot of temptation to give up. But when you have a wife and two kids, the fact he did this for so long, having unprotected sex with all these skanky women, is incredible even to us hardened gossip columnists.  The Las Vegas economy hasn't exactly roared back, yet New York Observer Media Group launched Vegas Seven this month, a weekly focused on news and entertainment. Gossip may be a big deal in Las Vegas, but isn't this a lousy time to start a newspaper there, or anywhere?
Writing up gossip in Sin City is the Wild West of entertainment beats. Norm Clarke is the sheriff.