With Zsa Zsa Gabor heading home this past Monday to spend her final days in comfort, rather than in a hospital, I think it’s only appropriate that we take a look at the life and times of the Hungarian beauty. Here are some Zsa Zsa Facts & Figures:

Zsa Zsa is the second of the three Gabor sisters: Magda, Sari (Zsa Zsa) and Eva. The sisters were born in Budapest. Zsa Zsa is now 93 years old.

Zsa Zsa attended a Swiss boarding school called Madame Subilia’s.

After finishing school, she was discovered in Vienna in 1936 by “the famous tenor Richard Tauber,” (oh, yes, Richard Tauber!) and invited to sing in a new operetta he was staging.

Zsa Zsa eventually became known more for her many marriages than for her acting abilities. She has been married nine times and has had seven divorces, one annulment and is still married to ninth husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt.

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Here’s a t-shirt you’ll find in thrift stores around Rhinebeck, New York in the coming years:

I’m pro-Chelsea Clinton. So I was saddened upon learning that among the biggest “celebs” at her wedding were Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. Really? Ted Danson? From The Huffington Post, “Reporters, who had been searching for celebrities in vain for most of the day, quickly zeroed in on the couple, prompting Danson to ask, ‘Are we the only celebrities in town?’”

Well, no. I mean, Vera Wang was there. Also Steve Bing, who’s not a celeb but more of a rich guy who knocked up Elizabeth Hurley and then denied paternity until it was proven with a test… never mind that the kid looked exactly like him.

I guess the cool thing about Chelsea is that she probably didn’t really give a damn about celebs at her wedding.

When last I visited the Denny Hecker saga (see The Hecker Timeline), he was facing down 18 new charges of wire and bankruptcy fraud. He and Steve Leach, one of his former execs, were looking at 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 20 years on each count of wire fraud. Pile on top of that another 10 for Hecker for money laundering and five for each… well, let’s just say that he would surely die in prison.

Since then there have been many more twists, tears and admissions of guilt. Let’s catch up, shall we?

After the new felony charges came down, Hecker had to appear in family court regarding the missing support payments to second wife Sandra. He was behind something like $8,000 to her. On March 30th, the judge ordered Hecker to jail after he was found in contempt of court for hiding assets and lying about what he still owns.

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I know that you’ve been losing sleep over what’s happening with the film American Sunset, so I thought I’d tell you about this press release announcing that it’s going to showcase at Cannes.

Wait. What? You’ve never heard of American Sunset?

Seriously? Corey Haim’s final attempt to act?

Yes, I’m talking about Corey Haim and Cannes at the same time. But back to that in a minute.

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So there’s an interesting contest going on in Minneapolis right now called One Man Minneapolis. Basically, if I’ve got it down right, they are going to crown one man from Minneapolis/St. Paul “The One.” The one man who best represents “COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT, PERSONALITY, INTELLIGENCE, AND FITNESS.” [Shouting text not the author's own.]

But like any beauty pageant for women, isn’t this stuff entirely subjective? Intelligence? Are we having them take tests? Submit SAT scores or IQ tests? Personality? Fitness… I guess this is a nicer way of saying “hotness?”

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I’ve gotten interested in the trials and tribulations of former Twin Cities auto king Denny Hecker. By sifting through many media sites, I have compiled the following time line detailing the rise and fall of The Heck. This time line is a living thing… new information comes in daily and I’m sure there are also errors or improperly worded points. If you have some major Hecker news or corrections to add, please let me know via comments. I’ll be updating it as new info becomes available. Without further ado…

Laughing In The Face Of Fate:
The Denny Hecker Story

1950s-1970s
Denny Hecker is born in 1952 and raised in North Minneapolis.

1970: Hecker graduates from Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis and marries his first wife, Judith Martin, the following fall. They stay married for less than two years. He does a brief stint in college and then drops out to sell cars at a local dealership. Cars, it seems, were his destiny.

1973: Hecker marries Sandra Storm (who may or may not be a comic book heroine). They remain married for ten years and have two daughters.

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Keith and I were having a discussion yesterday about our dog, Freja, being “a dog’s dog.” What this means, we decided, is that she’s loved by dogs and humans alike just for her very unfussy, no-holds-barred “dogginess.” This stems from another ongoing discussion between us about being a “Gentleman’s Gentleman.” Just what is a Gentleman’s Gentleman? With kind regards to Mr. Grant Weeks (truly in the running to be a GG), here are some pointers Keith and I came up with.

1. Have a flask on your person as often as possible. The flask must be filled with good liquor, no rotgut. Whiskey is preferred but not required. A true Gentleman’s Gentleman would have an engraved flask, possibly with a picture of a bulldog.

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Conspiracy theories are usually aimed at assassinations, UFOs, religion, Bill Clinton, Richard Gere, etc.  We’ve all heard the JFK assassination theories. We’ve heard about how the U.S. never really landed on the moon – it all took place on a sound stage!

But have you heard the one about Mommie Dearest?

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I’m sure you were as shocked as I was to learn that actor Nicolas Cage is facing bankruptcy. You probably thought, “Really? After being overpaid for so many years?” Apparently, Nic never learned the value of a dollar. Sometimes I feel badly for people who make stupid money mistakes… we’re all human, after all, and everyone makes poor choices at some point in their lives. BUT, come on, $276,000 for a dinosaur skull? This is the exact point on my Nic Cage Compassion Graph where my level of empathy drops to a point that hovers just above the X-axis and is labeled “bitter disbelief.”

I wonder about the sequence of events that led us here, to the point where Nic is selling off German castles and hot rods left and right and is suing his business manager, Sam Levin. Cage claims that Levin led him down a path to financial ruin. Whatever the case maybe be,  if you’re a fan of Cage, this ensures you many more years of enjoying new films from him, as he now has to keep working in order to be able to retire to an appropriately appointed mansion with waterfalls, telescopes and an airstrip. Nic Cage – he’s just like us!

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“Failure, if you can get through it, is a great experience to have had.” – Dominick Dunne

Today I got the news that Dominick Dunne died at age 83. I had only recently, within the past year, discovered Dunne’s collected writing about high-society crime, although I’d read various pieces in Vanity Fair off and on for years. I became so intrigued by him that I bought his memoir The Way We Lived Then, which is narrative but also a collection of incredible photos from his years in Hollywood, when he was married to his wife, Lenny. He was a compulsive photo-taker and scrap-booker (not in the way people scrapbook now, with all the doodads and foo-foos and cut-outs), in addition to an avid party-giver, and the book  is a moving document of a bygone era when life, for Dunne, was easy and he was living in Shangri-La.

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