Shakespeare said, “When love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.” Erich Segal said, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” And a lot of other people have said lots of other things about love. What all the stories and words and experiences teach us is that we cannot define love and all we do know about it is that every love story has an ending that, at the outset, we cannot predict. Some are bittersweet; some are sweet. Some—works in progress—are open-ended.

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Luxury LV

The venerable Tattered Cover in Denver (one of the finest indie bookstores in America) recently hosted a signing for our own Norm Clarke and his newest title, Sinsational Celebrity Tales. Authors on Tour recorded his comments and you can listen to him HERE. Norm shares the background on his biggest stories including crashing the Review-Journal servers on the $200 steaks in Vegas story; Britney’s wedding/annulment dinner at N9NE Steakhouse at the Palms, and the infamous bitch-slap from Pete Rose objecting to Norm adding him to the top ten worst tippers list in his first book. A fun look at the world of celebrity gossip from the inside — and according to Norm, the celebs never fail to deliver story leads, day after day in Sin City.

SIGHTINGS
Steve Wynn and his girlfriend, Andrea Hissom, attending a birthday party for the wife of South African hotel and gambling magnate Sol Kerzner at The Dorchester in London on Saturday night. Also in attendance: Sarah Ferguson, Simon Le Bon and Geri Halliwell. … Famous sisters Joan and Jackie Collins, meeting with Cher backstage after her show Tuesday at Caesars Palace.

Which celebrities get the perks in Las Vegas? And which ones demand them? Who are the cheapest celebs and the most generous? Who are the best and worst tippers? And who is likely to have a public meltdown whenever they venture out?

Norm Clarke, a former columnist at the Rocky, reports on the Vegas celebrity culture for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. When celebs behave badly, Norm gets the scoop.

Norm chatted online Monday and shared the Barack Obama/Las Vegas connection. Read the transcript here.

He will discuss and sign copies of Sinsational Celebrity Tales at 7:30 p.m. at Tattered Cover LoDo, 1628 16th Street at Wynkoop.

On January 13, 1962, her hit “Norman” debuted in Billboard’s Top 40 and reached No. 3.

According to a number of Internet sites, Thompson, now in her 80s, has lived in Las Vegas for years.

For starters, I would like to tell her that I made the mistake of looking up “Norman” on YouTube last week and playing it for the Leggy Blonde, who missed that era.

She now uses (abuses?) the song to get my attention by singing the “oooo, oooo, oooo” lyrics. Apparently little else works.

At the time the song came out, I was dating the daughter of a local farmer. He was not impressed — and not many parents would be — that I was a college dropout with no focus and little future. The night he banned me from the farm, he gave me something to think about with his parting shot, “You aren’t going to amount to nuthin’.”

A year later, opportunity knocked when I was a 20-year-old grocery store delivery boy in a small Montana town. I dropped off an ad at the weekly newspaper and asked the editor if he was covering the upcoming basketball tournament.

He couldn’t get away, he said, but knowing my interest in sports, he asked if I would like to freelance it.

He paid me the princely sum of $5 for covering a three-day tournament 80 miles away. But the money didn’t matter. I had my break. Ten years later, I was covering sports out of the Cincinnati Associated Press bureau, and thankful for a swift kick in the right direction.

Aussie Robbie Maddison Photo by Tom Donoghue

Don’t ask Robbie Maddison, Australia’s Evel Knievel, to compare himself to Robbie Knievel or their dueling New Year’s Eve jumps tonight.

They are oceans apart, said Maddison, in so many words.

“There is no comparison,” a fuming Maddison said Tuesday.

“He is a disrespectful drunken bum, a no talent who is making a joke of a jump,” he said.

Their feud isn’t being manufactured for TV ratings: Maddison is on ESPN and Knievel is on a Fox special.

Maddison, who grew up idolizing Knievel’s father, told him so at the iconic daredevil’s funeral a year ago in Butte, Montana.

“We sat down and drank into the night, talked, and he told me how much he respected me,” said Maddison.

The wheels came off their friendship when Maddison learned Robbie Knievel “tried to sabotage me.” The bad blood involves a confidential conversation Maddison said he had with Robbie Knievel’s stunt coordinator about bringing him on board for Maddison’s New Year’s Eve jump.

“After he (Knievel) found out, he went about planning to kill my thunder,” said Maddison, who will attempt to race his bike 100 feet straight up a ramp and land on top of a replica of the Arc de Triomphe at Paris Las Vegas and freefall into a safety net.

Down at The Mirage, Knievel will soar 200 feet over the refurbished volcano.

“There are thousands of guys in the world who could make that jump,” Maddison said. “There’s … only one guy who could do this jump.”

“New Year, No Limits” airs on ESPN beginning at 8 p.m.

Fox’s “New Year’s Eve Special” begins at 11 p.m.