Director David Lynch turns 64 today. Rainn Wilson of The Office is turning 44. Comedian Bill Maher turns 54. Editor and TV pundit Fareed Zakaria is 46. Georgina Bloomberg, the younger of Mayor Bloomberg's two daughters, is turning 27. Embattled real estate developer Kent Swig is 49. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin turns 80. Melissa Rivers, the daughter of Joan Rivers, is 42. Actor Skeet Ulrich is 40. James Denton of Desperate Housewives is turning 47. And Lorenzo Lamas celebrates his 52nd birthday today.

Is real estate mogul Kent Swig headed down the same path as Hassan Nemazee, the banker who stands accused of providing banks with false information to obtain nearly $300 million in loans? The Real Deal reported on Monday that Swig, who is facing a series of lawsuits over several real estate deals that have gone bust, may be forced to file for personal bankruptcy if a $28 million judgment against him is enforced.

Who's had a crappier year: fallen real estate mogul Harry Macklowe or his son-in-law, developer Kent Swig? It's looking more and more like a toss up. Not only is Swig's condo project at 25 Broad Street blowing up, and his hotel venture at 45 Broad Street now in foreclosure, but Sheffield57—the drama-plagued apartment building Swig purchased with two partners in 2005 for $418 million—was sold off at auction today. The price? $20 million. [Crain's]

There's more bad news for real estate developer Kent Swig—and it has nothing to do the incident last fall when a former business partner clobbered him with an ice bucket, or the fact that his mentor and father-in-law is Harry Macklowe, possibly the unluckiest real estate mogul in town. The Real Deal reports that Citibank has filed a lawsuit against Swig for failing to repay a $5 million personal loan. [The Real Deal]

Barack isn't the only one with a reason to celebrate today. Georgina Bloomberg, the daughter of New York's mayor, turns 26. Real estate developer Kent Swig is 48. Newsweek editor and CNN fixture Fareed Zakaria is turning 45. Famed cardiologist Valentin Fuster is 66. The Office's Rainn Wilson is turning 43. Bill Maher is 53. Director David Lynch is 63. James Denton is turning 46. Lorenzo Lamas is 51. Buzz Aldrin is turning 79. And Melissa Rivers, the daughter of Joan Rivers, is 41 today.

♦ The car wash/gas station on West 14th Street (left) has been sold for $60 million to make way for a new retail development. [NYP]
♦ The Cooper Square Hotel opens in two weeks. [Curbed]
♦ An interview with Leigh Candler, NYC's new "co-op queen," best known for flipping aparments for Scott Bommer and listing Brooke Astor's former apartment on Park. [NYO]
♦ Some neighborhoods in Brooklyn are now more expensive than neighborhoods in Manhattan, according to StreetEasy. [NYDN]

Is the tumbling real estate market making people snap? Earlier this week, Mathias Guerrand-Hermès, an heir to the French fashion company and a real estate investor, went nuts on an Air France flight, allegedly attacking the crew and grabbing the pilot's crotch. Today we learn that real estate mogul Kent Swig (left) was assaulted last month by business partner Yair Levy, who now stands accused of beating Swig with a metal ice bucket over an Upper West Side real estate deal gone sour.

The Observer sits down with attorney Jonathan Mechanic, widely considered to be one of the city's best-connected real estate attorneys. His clients? How about Jerry Speyer, Steve Roth, Stephen Green, Mike Bloomberg, Bruce Ratner, Doug Durst, Mort Zuckerman, Harry Macklowe, Miki Naftali, William Zeckendorf, Gary Barnett, Bill Rudin, Donald Trump, Kent Swig, Joe Moinian, and Larry Silverstein. We're exhausted just reading that list. [NYO]

Embattled real estate magnate Kent Swig has a hand in just about every sector of the real estate market as a commercial landlord, residential landlord, developer, broker and manager. He's the co-chair of Terra Holdings, which owns brokerages like Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Properties, a principal at his family's Swig Investment Company, and the chief of Swig Equities.

Amid all this Linda Stein murder hullabaloo (no one in custody yet!), the Post's Dan Mangan thought it would be a good idea to stir up some other high-powered real-estate sex-and-death contretemps. He's right. it is! So he called up the very hetero-normative Kent Swig, the Brown Harris Stevens co-chairman who was present at the mysterious death of his "trainer" Kenneth Casoria nearly three years ago. The death itself wasn't so mysterious. Casoria had "consumed alcohol, smoked marijuana, taken ecstasy, cocaine and half a Viagra while at the party." The real question is why Swig had flown out to San Francisco to meet up with Casoria at said party. Three years later, he's still not incriminating himself. Nice try Mangan—you can always call again when Barbara Corcoran is found lifeless in the study with a candelabra. [NYP]