Before becoming a Very Famous Celebrity, E.C. Mendenhall completed three tours of duty with the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, made over 5 million dollars investing in plastics, and spent seven years under the tutelage of a mystic order of Buddhist monks in Bhutan. He now divides his time between a summer cottage on the Vineyard, his ultramodern SoHo loft, and a heavily-armed compound off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. He owns no pets.