So, Nicolas Cage. How to talk about Hollywood’s favourite nut job? I’ve never been on the Cage train myself; I never thought he was the best actor and he always rubbed me the wrong way, like an overzealous hairy uncle that I just don’t trust. But it’s less fun to dislike him now that everyone else does too. The poor guy just unraveled. His movies all flopped at the same time, his money ran out, and it turns out that money and success really were the only things hiding his extremely bizarre personality from the rest of the world.

He’s the kind of guy who, when his cat accidentally gets high on shrooms, does them too, to keep him company (yes, that really happened). When playing a traumatized vet in Birdy, he had a dentist pull teeth without anesthetic so he could “understand real pain” because a) dental procedures are comparable to the horrors of war and b) he’s such a bad actor that he couldn’t just pretend to be in pain. He diets according to sex, and not the way you’re thinking: he only eats animals whose mating he finds “dignified,” like birds and fish. If he finds their sex to be unattractive, he can’t bear to eat their meat. He once woke up to discover a man, completely naked except for Cage’s own leather jacket, sitting on the foot of his bed, eating a Fudgesicle. And of course, he spends money like a legit crazy person. He owns or has owned: albino king cobras (yes, plural); a t-rex skull (he outbid Leo fair and square!); a pet octopus that helped him with his acting; a private island next door to Johnny Depp’s private island (sounds like a bad neighbourhood already); and the Shah of Iran’s Lamborghini.

But that’s not all. As you may have heard, Sean and I are in New Orleans this week and Nicolas Cage has some pretty infamous ties to the town. Of course, owing the IRS $6.6 million in back taxes meant some of his properties needed to be sold, and those included his New Orleans real estate. One of those houses was a murder mansion. It was once home to Madame LaLaurie, a wealthy socialite who tortured and murdered her household slaves in the 1800s. She was discovered in 1834 when rescuers responding to a fire at the home found bound slaves in the attic who all had the marks of having been cruelly tortured over a long period of time – I’m talking people hanging by the neck, mutilated, limbs stretch or torn right off. The fire was later confessed to have been started by the cook, chained to the oven by a chain around her ankle, in a suicide attempt. Outraged, a New Orleans mob stormed the house but LaLaurie fled to the safety of France. If that sounds at all familiar, you may have seen Kathy Bates play a fictionalized version of her on American Horror Story. Unsurprisingly, the mansion is said to be haunted by the ghosts of the dead slaves, including a young girl who fell to her death fleeing LaLaurie’s whip and was buried in the back yard. It may not be a place you’d choose to lay your head for the night, but Nicolas Cage plunked down $3.45M for it.

The second home is much less spectacular in reputation, but quite delightful for living in, I would think. At 13000 square feet in the prestigious garden district, it was once owned by the catholic church, who took to calling it the Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel. And then Anne Rice owned it. And then Nicolas Cage, possibly for the nights when he’s filming another crazy horror movie and sleeping in the blood-soaked house mentioned above got too intense. It’s nice to have an unhaunted backup house just in case. It was actually rumoured that he and his family actually lived in the house next door to this one, and thus owned three properties, because sometimes two is not enough. At any rate, “economic difficulties” led to their sale\foreclosure and now he owns no homes in New Orleans but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t own a place to rest his weary bones.

Just as his homes were being sold, he was busy purchasing a cemetery plot. And not in  just any cemetery, but New Orleans’ most famous one: St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. It’s home to deceased Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, who is said to haunt it. Because the water table is so high in New Orleans, the tombs are all above ground, and leave it to Nicolas Cage to take advantage: he’s built himself a pyramid tomb that reads Omni Ab Uno, Latin for Everything From One. Now, it’s entirely possible that the IRS just can’t foreclose on a tomb. And some New Orleans locals think it’s also possible that the pyramid is stuffed to the gills with cash. The rest of us just wonder whether the pyramid is a tribute to his role in National Treasure, whether the dollar bill has a secret map that would unlock its door, or whether he’s just mixed up in some Illuminati shit. And maybe, just maybe, his flamboyant, 9 foot tall pyramid mausoleum is where he’ll regenerate his immortal self. Some of the locals aren’t too crazy about this eye sore in their historic cemetery, but female tourists have embraced it – literally, leaving lipstick kisses on its walls. To find out if I’ll do the same, why not follow our travel adventures on Twitter – @assholemovies.