"I did try the Howard Hughes thing of stockpiling urine in jars and wearing Kleenex boxes on my feet, but it was so depressing and lonely," Stern said.  "Plus, I realized that it's not eccentric to copy someone else's eccentricities."

Stern knows he has a long way to go before realizing his long-term goal of transforming himself into a full-blown, self-made eccentric, complete with a half-baked social philosophy of his own invention and an extremely expensive collection of worthless art.

"I've made a lot of sacrifices," Stern said. "Do you think I love sleeping nude in a hyperbaric chamber pumped with pure circulating oxygen, or only eating foods that are white? The sad truth is, you can't always do what you want when you're a billionaire."

"That's just something I'll have to live with until my bones are interred in the moon's Clavius crater," Stern added.