Dennis Miller Double Whammy

SELLER: Dennis Miller
LOCATION: Santa Barbara, CA
PRICE: Price Upon Request (previously reported to be $17,500,000)
SIZE: 10,000-ish square feet,

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen giblets, contrary to popular opinion we are still “officially” partaking in our extended Thanksgiving holiday break and, more importantly, we are more than a little worse for wear from last night’s early dinner of tomato bits and champagne that ran obscenely late with our visiting from Alaska gal pal Sheila Sinn and her baby brother Vard C. Camp. So cut us some slack, okay?

In June of 2010 Emmy winning comedian cum kind of conservative radio talk show host Dennis Miller and his long time former model wifey Carolyn “Ali” Espley listed their fully restored, updated and upgraded mansion in Montecito, CA with a reported asking price of $17,500,000

Mister Miller started up his ladder of fame in the mid-1980s when he appeared on Star Search and lost to the spectacularly unfunny Sinbad. It wasn’t long before he took over the Weekend Update desk on Saturday Night Live. After jumping the SNL ship in the early 1990s he helmed an eponymous late-night talk show on the tee-vee and by the early 2000s he’d taken a job as a color commentator for Monday Night Football. In the mid-naughts he began a long relationship with Fox News on which he gives his opinion on things on their various punditry programs. His primary gig nowadays, as far as Your Mama can tell, is a 3-hour syndicated talk radio program called The Dennis Miller Show on which he chit-chats about political, cultural and social issues and plays host to a variety of guests from Ohio lefty liberal congressman Dennis Kucinich to that smug and pugnacious Ann Coulter ladee who causes Your Mama’s sphincter to seize up with anxiety at the mere mention of her name.

According to previous reports and property records Mister and Missus Miller picked up their Montecito estate–technically and from the tax man’s point of view located in Santa Barbara and not Montecito–way back in 1993 for an undisclosed amount of moolah. Your Mama thinks it’s pretty safe to assume the cost for acquiring the property was far far far less than the seventeen and some million they’re (allegedly) asking. Anyhoodles poodles, the 10,000-ish square foot house was lucky enough to be designed and built in 1895 by prominent and adroit Gilded Age architect Stanford White part of whose bizness was to conjure and create opulent homes for shockingly rich individuals. He’s also the man (mostly or partly) responsible for designing the iconic Washington Square Arch in New York City’s Greenwich Village and both the Metropolitan and Century clubs, also in New York City.

Listing information indicates the historic and elegant 2-story mansion with 8 bedrooms and 9 terliting facilities was restored by Mister and Missus Miller in a 1994 gut renovation that dutifully retained the masterful configuration of rooms and maintained the original architectural detail. The public rooms include but are not limited to an impress the guests style entrance hall, graciously scaled formal living room with fireplace and a bank of French doors that open to a planted terrace, an intimately sized and bookshelf lined library with a second fireplace, a banquet hall sized formal dining room outfitted with Chippendale chairs, an antique crystal chandelier and a second slightly less formal eating area tucked into a window wrapped nook.

There are exposed beams painted white in the large gore-may eat-in kitchen that has mahogany flooring, white raised panel cabinetry, a Mercedes-sized marble topped work island/breakfast bar, dee-luxe built in side by side fridge and freezer and a Dutch door that opens to a side terrace. We don’t particularly care for the generic and upscale banality of this particular cookery but we do love us a Dutch door, children.

In 2002, according to listing information, Mister and Missus Miller embarked on a second renovation of the shingled Colonial style residence that included an enlargement of the family room with river rock fireplace and built-in banquette style eating area. The master bedroom suite was enlarged and includes a bed chamber with fireplace separated from a private sitting room by French doors, custom closets and and a vast partially paneled pooper with mahogany herring bone pattern floors, fireplace, rose velvet covered window seat and matching free standing chaise where Mister and Missus Miller probably sit when they clip each other’s toenails, twin free-standing vanities, and a gigantic soaking tub for two set smack in the center of the damn room room.

Deep, rocking chair style covered porches lined with columns and flower boxes ring the lower level of the house and transition the elegant but not entirely stuffy interior spaces to the expansive grounds that include 3.76 acres of unnaturally green lawns, beautifully laced mature trees and lush flower gardens. At one end of the house a heated swimming pool and spa complex includes built-in lounge seating, a large stone terrace heated by a massive free standing river rock outdoor fireplace, and a cabana with fully equipped kitchen, barbecue and a poolside pooper. Elsewhere on the grounds are a tennis court, sunken trampoline and a “whimsical” tree house.

Just beyond the swimming pool a separate “Recreation House” built in 1917 has a private gated drive, sunken living room with original stone fireplace, and two bedrooms perfect for overflow guests who tend to make too much noise farting and fornicating.

The stunning Stanford White designed mansion with its separate “Recreation House” isn’t, as it turns out, the only old house Mister and Missus Miller own in Montecito. They also own the French Mediterranean style villa across the road. Although information Your Mama dug up on the interweb shows that the listing expired in mid-November of 2010, Mister and Missus Miller had this second Mediterranean manse on the market with an asking price of $2,500,000.
As best as Your Mama can tell, Mister and Missus Miller scooped up this second residence in June of 1993 for an undisclosed amount of money…or at least an amount of money we were unable to suss out.

The main house, according to listing information, has two master suites plus staff quarters. A fully detached guest house, situated across the motor court from the main house includes an office area and two additional and good sized guest rooms that share a single pooper.

The tile roofed and wood shuttered residence was built in 1958 at the tail end of a long gated driveway and includes a large entry with magnificent black and white marble checked floor, a paneled formal living room with fireplace, blood red formal dining room that opens into a sun room with picture windows, sky lights, and fireplace, and a country kitchen. A sparsely furnished family room sort of space has built-in bookshelves, a wall mounted flat screen tee-vee and a bizarre and not particularly cohesive collection of traditional upholstered pieces paired with a chunky and very disco Lucite coffee table that, quite honestly, would look 47 times better up in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter’s family room.

Both of the upstairs master suites have tree top views and at least one opens out to a covered terrace with views over the back yard and towards the Pacific Ocean. The swimming pool, surrounded by dense foliage, is a swoon-worthy circular affair although we could very well do without the pair of rooster figurines that stand guard over the steps into the pool.

To be honest chickens, Your Mama don’t know a circus tent from a book store so we really can’t say what purpose this house serves for Mister and Missus Miller. Perhaps it’s another guest house. Or maybe his or her parents occupy the place. Or maybe they just rent it out to someone with the dough-ray-me to live in Montecito but not the desire to actually own a house in Montecito.

Celebrities and filthy rich big bizness types ooze out of every crevice of über upscale Montecito and some of Mister and Missus Miller’s nearby neighbors include tennis ace Jimmy Connors, movie producer Steve Tisch (Forrest Gump, American History X, Snatch), actor Michael Keaton, and the queen of Montecito herself Oprah Winfrey, but of course her $50,000,000 spread is so damn big that she’s neighbors with practically everyone on Montecito.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International

Terrific Feature on Premier Estate Properties

A great read in Haute Living Magazine provides a comprehensive look at Luxury Portfolio member Premier Estate Properties, chronicling their rise to top Florida luxury real estate company from their inception in 1993. Recognizing an opportunity in the…

Read More

Kim Zolciak Re-Lists Her Wig Storage Facility in Duluth

SELLER: Kim Zolciak
LOCATION: Duluth, GA
PRICE: $499,000
SIZE: 3,396 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Housing prices continue to drop like flies and celebrities (and quasi celebrities) aren’t immune to the sorry state of the economy. One of those homes on the asking price downward spiral is the Duluth, GA townhouse of Real Housewive’s of Atlanta’s resident wig wearing wonder Kim Zolciak.

Miz Zolciak–who claims to be 32 but, let’s be honest chickens, looks like a 40+ year old drag queen with a butt load of Botox up in her face–recently traded in both her married sugar daddy Big Poppa and her lesbian lover DJ Tracy Young for 25-year old professional football player Kroy Biermann. The horned-up mommy of two tweenaged gurls met her new man/boy-friend during a charity event dance contest during which she and about a million other people including Your Mama were unable to take their eyes off of his impossibly firm, Alaska-sized backside. Not long after the dance contest thingambobber, the lovebirds hooked up in short order Mister Beirmann put a baby up in Miz Zolciak. The two were recently engaged and Your Mama sincerely wishes Miz Zolciak a world of be-wigged and wedded bliss even though we fear that as Your Mama’s boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau always says about such tawdry romantic situations: “This can only end in tears, this can only end in tears”

Her new bun in the oven may or may not have something to do with Miz Zolciak’s renewed interest in selling her townhouse. Back in the summer of 2009, the wannabe pop star who can’t carry a tune to save her damn life listed her 3-story townhouse with an asking price of $568,700. No one stepped up to sign the deed on the dotted line and eventually she took the townhouse off the market. Miz Zolciak recently re-listed her upgraded and professionally decorated residence with a much lower asking price of $499,000, not much more than the $486,000 she paid for the place back in January of 2006.

Current listing information shows the townhouse, smashed up between to other townhouses, spans 3,396 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers. Miz Zolciak and her real estate people decided that on this trip to the real estate rodeo they would attempt use her “celebrity” to assist in the marketing of the townhouse. Not only does the listing declare that this is a “REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA LUXURY TOWNHOUSE,” one of the listing photos shows Miz Zolciak posed on a tufted bench in her bordello-ish boo-dwar in a pair of ripped up jeans, a frilly rose colored blouse, an inch of pancake make-up and, natch, one of her many faux blond manes.

Even worse, quite frankly, than the photo of Miz Zolciak herself, is the listing photo of the formal dining area where two gigantic photographs of Miz Zolciak and her prodigious cleavage hang on the wall behind the table. Oh hell no. Hunny, pleeze. Who does that? Seriously, what is the psychology that leads someone to actually say to their assistant Lo-teesha Rideabicycle, “Can you call the handyman to come over hang up a couple over-sized professional framed photographs of me with my titties hanging out up in the dining room?”

Listen Miz Zolciak, despite our better judgment we sort of like you. We marvel at your complete disregard for decorum and we can’t help but to admire your ought to be deeply embarrassing efforts to have a singing career even though you sound like a damn walrus in heat. However, we must draw the line somewhere and that line is gigantic “glam” photographs of yourself hanging on the wall in the dining room. Trust us when we tell you that with the possible exception of your new baby daddy Kroy nobody–least of all your children–wants to eat a pie from Pizza Hut while looking up at your bustin’ boobies. Please don’t do this in whatever new house or condo or townhouse you end up moving to, okay? Promise Your Mama you won’t do that.

Anyhoo, other amenities and luxuries of Miz Zolciak’s lair include a double height foyer, 10-foot ceilings coffered ceiling in the main living areas on the ground floor, fireplace, hardwood and wall to wall carpeted floors, a gore-may kitchen with granite counter tops and a breakfast bar, a separate office, exercise room, family room, second floor laundry room, an over-sized master bedroom with sitting area and spa-style pooper, a small fenced patio with irrigation system and waterfall, and custom fitted closets with wig storage nooks. (Okay, Your Mama don’t know know that there are wig storage nooks in Miz Zolciak’s closet, but we like to think there are and if there ain’t there ought to be.)

Unfortunately for Miz Zolciak, there are at least two other townhouses with identical layouts in her gated complex in suburban Atlanta that are currently listed with much lower price tags of $445,000 and $400,000, a sorry situation that indicates Miz Zolciak may have to come down even lower off her price iffin she’s really serious about finding someone to take her townhouse off her freaky French tipped hands.

We’re back…

Listen chickens, Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter wound up out in the boonies at Big Daddy’s ranch the last few days where, apparently and unfortunately, they haven’t heard of the damn interweb yet.

We’re back to civilization now and slowly crawling back up into the celebrity real estate saddle and fixin’ up to ride. Try to have some patience now. Okay?

Happy Turkey Day!

Another Housewife’s House on the Block

SELLERS: Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,450,000
SIZE: 4,200 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There’s an unofficial real estate rule when it comes to the houses of all the “housewives” on The Real Housewives of Wherever series: Soon after the season begins, regardless of which city is featured, at least two of the “housewives” will put their houses on the market.

Some need to sell due to financial distress (Gina from Orange County for example) and some just because because they want a change (Jill from New York City, let’s say). Currently, the Atlanta, GA area house Sherée Whitfield leases in is on the market for $1,395,000, Mary Amons has her suburban D.C. digs on the market for $1,995,000 (reduced from $2,350,000), and Lisa “Pinky” Vanderpump’s palatial pile in Beverly Hills, CA is unofficially listed with fat asking price of $29,000,000.

Also on the market, with an asking price of $2,450,000, is the Bel Air contemporary of raven haired Beverly Hills “housewife” Kyle Richards, one of the few of the entire lot of “housewives” who actually seems to be a housewife. Miz Richards–a former actress and Paris Hilton’s mother Kathy’s sister–is hitched to Los Angeles über-agent Mauricio Umansky who purveys posh properties for Hilton & Hyland, the well known brokerage owned, of course, by Kathy’s hubby Rick Hilton, otherwise known as Paris’s daddy. Are the children following?

Miz Richards showbiz career goes back to the mid 1970s when she was just knee-high to a lawnmower. Starting in 1975 she worked it on Little House on the Prairie and in 1978 she appeared in her seminal silver screen role in the horror film Halloween. She later starred in the tee-vee series Down to Earth and beginning in the late 1990s until 2006 she has long relationship of 20+ episodes on the hospital drama ER.

Mister Umansky, who has more than $400,000,000 in listings, shakes his money maker all over the Platinum Triangle–that’s Bev Hills, Bel Air and the Holmby Hills, butter beans–and he gets a substantial percentage of the listings for the mega-mansions in the guard gated, star studded and steroidal Beverly Park community.

In addition to Lisa Vanderpump’s twenty nine million dollar pile that’s directly across from sister “housewife” Adrienne Maloof, Mister Umansky is working his real estate stuff for three more mansions in Beverly Park. Although it has not appeared in the MLS for quite some time, Mister Umansky has long had the mock-Moorish mansion of nutritional supplements tycoon Bill Phillips listed on his website with an asking price of $34,000,000. Interestingly, out of the blut the other day Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate grapevine–but can not yet confirm via property records–that Mister Phillips’s estate, called The Great 78, was sold for $25,000,000. Rockstar Energy Drink CEO and founder Russ Weiner hired Mister Umansky to represent his Beverly Park mansion listed at $28,000,000. Mister Weiner bought his 16,000 square foot house in February of 2007 for $15,000,000. Mister Umansky’s list of listings also includes the 9 bedroom and 15 pooper spec house Beverly Park resident and Vanna White’s ex-huzband George Santopietro built, listed with an ungodly $50,000,000 asking price, leased briefly to His Purpleness Prince for a reported $200,000 per month and now has back on the market at the much reduced price of $27,900,000.

In the last few years Mister Umansky has sold at least three pricey properties up in Beverly Park including a newly completed boo-teek hotel sized faux-chateau last listed for $31,500,000 and sold, according to property records, for ten million and change. Your Mama suspects there may have been other trades and considerations in the deal and that the thing went down for more than ten million bucks, but we don’t know a cat box from a cookie jar so don’t nobody go spoutin‘ off about that. In the fall of 2008 hair-chested and accented Mister Umansky brokered the transaction for a not yet completed Tuscan-style behemoth bought by wildly wealthy property developer Ron Tutor for $36,700,000. A couple years prior to that he persuaded a buyer to pay $22,000,000 for a somewhat squat-looking mansion owned and occupied for a couple of years by none other than Kelsey Grammer and his insufferable soon to be ex-wife and Beverly Hills Housewife Camille Grammer. Despite the high-sterical drama between Miz Richards and the plainly narcissistic soon to be ex-Missus Kelsey Grammer, Mister Grammer still and currently has the erstwhile couple’s 7 bedroom and 9 pooper house in Holmby Hills listed with Mister Umansky with a price tag of $18,900,000.

While he may be a crack real estate agent in Los Angeles, Mister Umansky doesn’t seem to have the Midas Touch when it comes to selling his own home located on a small cul-de-sac so high in the hills of Bel Air that it might as well be Encino. Property records reveal that Mister Umansky and Miz Richards scooped up their family crib in June of 2004 for $1,935,000.

As best as we can tell from our research on the internets and in our archives, Mister Umansky and Miz Richards first put their house on the market way back in May of 2009 with an asking price of $3,450,000. Since then the property has been de-listed and re-listed several times and the price has plummeted to its current price tag of $2,450,000. A few flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus shows that that million dollar price chop represents a significant and sort of embarrassing 29% discount from the original price.

Listing information shows the recently remodeled two-story house measures around 4,200 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms each with en suite terliting facilities plus an additional full pooper for guests. Many of the home’s rooms look over or open to the resort style back yard and the view that encompasses the city lights of the San Fernando Valley and the surrounding mountains. The house sits atop a hill at the bottom of which snakes the always busy and always jammed up 405 freeway. Although Your Mama has never been in the house, of course, we’re thinking (and hoping) the house sits high and far enough from that freeway that whatever road noise there might be is minimal.

The main rooms include a long living room that opens to the resort-style back yard, a formal dining room, and an open plan kitchen, family and breakfast area that also opens up to the back yard. There are also, according to listing information, an office and staff quarters although we’re not aware that Miz Richards, a bizzy mother of four daughters, employs live-in domestic help unlike that perplexing and psychically destabilizing Camille Grammer ladee who can’t seem to slather on her own lip gloss without a resident make-up gay or raise her two youngins without a team of round the clock nanny-gurls.

The mostly earth tone day-core in the majority of Richards-Umansky residence is a very cohesive and obviously much considered situation that listing information describes as “contemporary Balinese tropical resort” style. Your Mama interprets this to mean that they stuck a bunch of carved Buddha things up in there, added some clean lined sectional sofas, tossed up a couple of shimmery Verner Panton designed sconces, set some leafy and spikey plants in various corners and threw in a couple white leather Barcelona chairs in the sitting area of the master bedroom. The “blended” nature of the day-core was unfortunately reinforced with a plethora of flooring materials including travertine, slate, hardwood and wall to wall carpeting. Your Mama’s decorating rule #472 states that particular care must be taken when mixing and matching more than three flooring materials in any one dwelling and this house, hunnies, is a perfect example why.

Listen kids, this is hardly the worst sort of celebrity and “celebrity” day-core Your Mama’s come across lately but there’s just something so contrived and over-processed about it all that we can’t quite put our gin soaked brain on right at this moment. Can you?

The flat back yard has a heated, free form black bottomed swimming pool, attached spa, barbecue areas, circular sunken fire pit and a lawn plenty big enough to set up one of those horrid jumpy houses and fence off a small area for a sad little petting zoo like Miz Richards did for the down to earth yet still hideously expensive birthday party she threw for her toddler.

Even though the real estate bizness is tough, Mister Umansky probably still makes a living far greater than Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter combined and we suspect the Richards-Umansky clan is not downsizing but rather up-sizing into a larger and more expensive house in a slightly more swank part of town.

Producer Joe Roth Lists Eye Candy in Santa Monica

SELLER: Joe Roth
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $12,450,000
SIZE: 4,744 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Lo-werd have mercy, children, we’ve had to look at some serious real estate hot messes the last few days and weeks so even though we’re a little late to this particular celebrity real estate rodeo, we need a hard core decorative palliative to speed us into these trying holiday times. The fine folks at Curbed LA covered today’s morsel of architectural eye candy a week or two ago but we’re going to have our own look-see at the stunning Santa Monica, CA domicile Tinseltown producer Joe Roth recently heaved on the market with a hefty asking price of $12,450,000.

Mister Roth may not be a household name outside of Hollywood, but he’s wildly successful and we suspect that most households have viewed at least one of the many movies he’s produced over the course of his career. In the early 1990s Mister Roth was the chairman of 20th Century Fox and in the late 1990s he was the chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. In 2000 he founded Revolution Studios through which he’s produced a slew of movies with a-list actors that include Daddy Day Care (Eddie Murphy), Mona Lisa Smile (Julia Roberts), The Forgotten (Julianne Moore) and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (Johnny Depp). He’s currently at work on a couple of high-profile(ish) projects that include Ten with a bit too long in the tooth to be an action star Bruce Willis and Snow White and the Huntsman, which may or may not star Johnny Depp and/or Charlize Theron. In 2007 it was announced that Mister Roth–along with quirky billionaire Paul Allen–is the majority owner the Seattle Sounders, a professional soccer franchise, but of course we don’t know nuthin‘ about that sports nonsense.

Mister Roth’s devoon Art Déco dwelling, tucked up into a quiet cul-de-sac in the magnificent Rustic Canyon area of Santa Monica, was designed and completed in 1930 with the assistance of architect Douglas Honnold by legendary, influential and flamboyant film production designer Cedric Gibbons for his gorgeous superstar silent film actress wife Dolores Del Rio. Over a 35+ year period Mister Gibbons did up the art direction for dozens of iconic films that include cinematic treasures like The Wizard of Oz, Singin‘ in the Rain, An American in Paris, National Velvet, Quo Vadis, Little Women, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Annie Get Your Gun and on and on and on. Mister Gibbons is widely credited as the designer of the Oscar statuette, of which he won 11 and was nominated for 28 more over the course of his long long long career.

Property records show Mister Roth purchased the Mister Gibbons’s old house in June of 2004 for $9,000,000. He hired insanely successful nice, gay decorator Michael Smith to do over the interiors of the sophisticated and sculptural residence. Michael Smith, the children will recall is the very same decorator hired by President and Missus Obama to work over the oval office into a dull fantasia of earth tones.

The Los Angeles County tax man shows the main house measures 4,744 square feet and current listing information indicates the house includes three bedrooms and 5 poopers plus a 4-room staff suite above the garage that, we presume, has at least one additional terliting and bathing facility for the domestic help. In addition to the main house and staff quarters, the property includes a poolside cabana and tennis court pavilion.

A too-slick stainless steel gate opens from the street into a slim front yard where an asymmetrical and inverted ziggurat design that gets repeated in various and many ways throughout the house marks the entrance to the unusually configured residence. The small foyer all leads to a large reception room on the main floor with gleaming ebony hardwood floors, fireplace with ziggurat detailing, built in banquette seating–original to the house–and a dramatic terrazzo and stainless steel staircase reminiscent of an Art Moderne ocean liner that ascends dramatically to the vast second floor living room.

In addition to the reception room, the lower floor includes a formal dining room with stepped ceiling and built in boo-fay, a very contemporary kitchen with huge butler’s pantry, brushed stainless steel cabinetry and huge and marble counter tops, and an office with built in desk and banquette seating.

Mister Smith wisely divided the massive main living room on the second floor into several functional space that include seating areas with built in banquettes and bookshelves, a fireplace and stepped ceiling both with even more ziggurat detailing, and a cozy corner with cushy upholstered pieces perfect for tucking into to a long night of reality tee-vee programs that in Your Mama’s house often includes the program Hoarders. Have y’all seen that show? It’s like driving by a car accident. We know we shouldn’t be looking for or at the crashed car carnage, but we can’t help it we just look and look and look anyways as we glide by in the comfort of our big BMW.

The second floor master bedroom overlooks the swimming pool and soccer pitch sized lawn in the back yard and retains Miz Del Rio’s original Lucite and mirrored dressing room where the light switches and floor to ceiling wall to wall mirrors are adorned with, natch, itty-bitty stars. According to a 2008 article in the glossy shelter rag Architectural Digest, Miz Del Rio allegedly slept in the upstairs bedroom while Mister Gibbons slept in the downstairs bedroom and would get back on forth via a ladder accessed through trapdoor in the ceiling of his closet that opened into the Miz Del Rio’s closet/dressing room upstairs. Seems like a lot of damn effort just to get up in your wife’s bed, but who are we to judge?

The gated and high-hedged house sits on a .65 acre lot three times as wide as the surrounding
parcels. Terraces, balconies and patios transition the glam interiors to the manicured but casual exterior spaces that include a vast swathe of lawn, a sunken, walled and lighted tennis court with viewing pavilion, a huge almost exactly square swimming pool and spa with adjacent pool house that houses the fitness and massage facilities.

Why Mister Roth would opt to sell his stunner of a house so soon after completing a renovation and where he might be going is a mystery to Your Mama but it better be someplace really damn special if it warrants leaving this house behind.

Angelyne the Billboard Queen Sellin’ Short in the Bu

SELLER: Angelyne
LOCATION: Malibu
PRICE: $575,000
SIZE: 1,810 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Anyone who passed through Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s knows Angelyne the Billboard Queen, an honest to goodness showbiz eccentric and nothing less than a Tinseltown treasure.

Through shameless self promotion Angelyne became internationally famous just for being “famous.” Starting in the early 1980s billboards and murals began to pop up all over Hollywood that depicted provocative high-camp images of Angelyne with lips pouted, boobs a bustin‘, platinum polyester hair teased high and looking like a bubble gum cross between Elvira, Barbie and a Lycra encased roller skating waitress from the 1950s.

Little concrete is known about doe-eyed and doughy-skinned Angelyne who has managed to remain a bit of a mystery even though she’s spent the last 30 years dragging around town decorated like a Macy’s Day Parade float. She’s even been known to circulate disinformation about her age and origins but based on our 72 seconds of research on the interweb Your Mama can tell the children that Angelyne might be from Idaho, she might be in her early 50s and nobody whose willing to go public with the 411 really knows how she’s paid for all her sassy and tacky stripper-style clothes or her famous pink Corvettes.**

**All you people who think Paris Hilton was the first self-made famous for nothing to make a damn fool of herself with her silly blush colored Bentley got it wrong wrong wrong. Miss Hilton, bless her little heart, merely grabbed a hold of ol‘ Angelyne’s marabou enhanced platform heels and hung on for dear life.

Angelyne’s baudy billboards earned her a special if vapid kind of fame, legions of fans, a music video or two but few film roles. Angelyne’s first appearance on the silver screen was in 1988 in Earth Girls are Easy. In 1991 she impersonated Barbara Bush in The Malibu Beach Vampires and her most recent role was in 2000 when she played a hitchhiker in the cinematic treat Flies on Cupid. Angelyne entered the political arena in 2002. She ran for the Hollywood city council on a platform that endorsed Hollywood seceding from Los Angeles. She lost. In 2003, after Gray Davis was recalled as the governor of California, she tossed her bespangled barrettes into the ring and made a run for the governorship of California. She managed to get 2,533 votes and, it may surprise some to know, came in a respectable 28th place in a field of 135 kooks and creeps. Only in California, puppies, which is why we love California so.

Anyhoo, time hasn’t been entirely kind to our Angelyne who still goes around looking like a parade float, but, you know, maybe one from last years fiesta that got rained on while parked out in the back alley. She’s still pink and fluffy with behemoth boobies and skin tight dresses up to her coochie, but it’s all busted up and broken down now, like mascara that’s done had a long day at the crying festival. Don’t nobody misunderstand Your Mama. We love Angelyne. We do. But the ladee needs a good stylist to hook her up with some age-appropriate outfits that don’t make everyone cower in fear that something big, bulbous and life-threatening might come popping out of her too-tight habiliments.

Unfortunately, it seems, time hasn’t been so kind to Angelyne’s once bodacious body or her pink pocketbook either. See kids, thanks to Malibu Maryann, Your Mama recently learned that Angelyne put her condo in the Bu on the market with a short sale asking price of $575,000. That’s right puppies, she may be the queen of Hollywood, but Angelyne is a resident of Malibu and for whatever reason–or reasons–is having trouble making her mortgage and has to sell up and get out.

Although we’d bet everything we own it’s not the name her momma gave her, public property records show her legal name as Angelyne L’lyne. The same property records reveal that although Angelyne bought up her condo in the Bu in August of 2000 for $530,000 she now owes significantly more than that. Interestingly, from 2000 to 2005 the name of a Los Angeles area oncologist also appears on some of the deeds and documents for the condo. Make of that what you will, chickens.

Listing information for Angelyne’s condo, located in a lackluster area of Malibu near Pepperdine University, shows that it stands 3 stories tall with 1,810 square feet of interior space and 3 bedrooms and 4 poopers. Listing information also indicates the ocean view condo, “NEEDS TLC & UPGRADES.” We did not add those capital letters, that is how it actually reads in the listing.

It’s too bad the listing photos aren’t a higher quality but never the less, children, get a nerve pill going up in your system, squint those eyes and have a good long look-see because this day-core is really something to behold. Your Mama can’t possibly cover every inch of Angelyne’s decorative bowl of domestic disaster in the Bu so we’re simply going to select just a few to highlight.

1. As if the over-sized, two-toned hot and baby pink velour furniture spread around the dismal oatmeal carpeted living room weren’t enough to make a person puke a little, Angelyne dared to accessorize it all with a miniature pink flamingo statuette sitting on a glass topped table with a lurid pink and gold ceramic leopard base. Your Mama can’t even bear to consider the circumstances that allowed for the existence of those fireplace flanking floor lamps trimmed in horrific hot pink fuzziness. Lo-werd have mercy on our weak decorative spleen. Please give Your Mama the strength to see our way through and out of this hot mess.

2. Angelyne really did it in the dining room, people. Not only did she festoon the room with hot pink boas as if boas of any color are acceptable material with which to decorate a home, beehwatcha slipped fuzzy hot pink terlit seat cover things over the seats of the black lacquer dining rooms set. No she didn’t. Yes. She. Did.

3. Listing photos show that at least one of the three guest bedrooms was worked over and put through the wringer of Angelyne’s one-noted and all pink decorative sensibility and includes cotton candy colored walls, matching deep shag carpeting, and a molded plastic bed frame, end tables and dresser set in the shiniest of hot pink a person should never see. Where does a person even buy furniture like that? Seriously, folks, where? Really turning the decorative piss into vinegar is that tawdry, gauzy and two-toned wannabe baldachin that is only made more heart wrenching when seen in conjunction with the pink heart-shaped pillow and pile of discarded clothes on the floor around the bed.

4. Iffin Your Mama had a dime for every time we went into one of those “cute little gift shoppe” stores, came upon a shelf full of angel figurines spray painted gold and whipped around to our not entirely sober b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau and asked, “What kind of person buys this stuff?” we’d be a multi-millionaire. As it turns out, the answer is Angelyne. That’s who spends actual money that angel crap. Beehawtcha buys them, takes them home to her condo in Malibu and hot glues those decorative bedevilments to various gold framed mirrors and around the fireplace in her cotton candy pink master bedroom-boo-dwar. Y’all take a minute to let that soak in if you need to because it’s really a doozy.

5. The half deflated air cushions in the spa tub in the tile lined master bathroom hint at an unspeakable loneliness we can’t contemplate and the cluttered counter top and wadded up ball of terlit paper or tissue or whatever on the floor in one of the guest poopers looks, well, dirty.

Even more difficult to endure than her unbearable but not unexpected decorating habits is to imagine what may become of the ungracefully aging Angelyne now that she’s going to have to vacate her premises in Malibu. Will she wind up in some one-bedroom rental in an ugly and out-dated apartment building in Koreatown with peeling paint and a family of 19 next door? Will she end up stuck out like a dog on fire in Van Nuys? Or will one of her rumored benefactors install her in a quintessentially L.A.-style crib above Hollywood Boulevard where she can cruise up and down the tourist laden streets in her pink Corvette while out of towners and locals alike hoot and holler their bemusement and adoration? That’s what we hope will happen. We might not be able to stomach Angelyne’s day-core–and we really can’t stomach Angelyne’s day-core–but we love her. The woman managed to carve out a wee niche in life, on her own whackadoodle terms, that didn’t exist before she carved it out. There’s something to be admired about that. At least we think so. We’re sure some of you will have a different opinion.

listing photos: Community Realty & Financial Services

UPDATE: Oprah Winfrey

Yesterday the real estate blogs were abuzz with stories about Oprah Winfrey having a look-see at a $68,000,000 house in Alpine, NJ. Well, buttons, Miz Thing tweeted this morning that not only is she not moving to Alpine but that she never even went to look at the house and she’s not sure how that rumored got started. Make of that what you will.

Jonah Hill Snags Hollywood Hills Compound

BUYER: Jonah Hill
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,865,000
SIZE: 3,660 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Young, rotund, bespectacled, often scruffy and Jew fro-ed comedy phenom Jonah Hill wasn’t exactly discovered making jokes and slinging sodas at Schwab’s drugstore on Sunset Boulevard. His father, a well known accountant for high net worth and high profile folks in the entertainment industry, did the books for Guns N’ Roses and like many in that Tinseltown milieu Mister Hill attended the chock full o’ celebrity off-spring Crossroards School in Santa Monica. Mister Hill’s brother manages bands like Maroon 5 and Collective Soul and a couple of his b.f.fs happen to be the children of 2-time Oscar winning actor Dustin Hoffman. So, you know, he was sort of born with his wagon hitched to the Hollywood scene.

It was through his connection to Dustin Hoffman that Mister Hill was able to get an audition for what became his film debut, I ♥ Huckabees. It wasn’t long before he hooked up with rising comedy movie maker Judd Apatow for The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, and Funny People. More recntly, Mister Hill had a hand in producing controversial comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s faux-documentary Brüno and he starred in Get Him to the Greek with Mr. Katy Perry. He did a bunch of voice over work in 2010 and has several projects lined up for the next few years that he’s both starring in and producing. All that means is that regardless of how you feel about sophomoric, horny nerd terlit humor, young Mister Hill is busy busy busy…and rich rich rich. So newly weighed down with money that he recently went out and bought a fixer-upper mid-century modern house high in the hills above Hollywood.

According to the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial and confirmed with a somewhat circuitous route through public property records, 20-something year old Mister Hill–through a trust controlled by his father–splashed out a very grown up $1,865,000 to purchase a mini-compound designed by too little lauded architect Richard Dorman. The house, located in a sleepy enclave off Mulholland Drive, was built in 1959 for Los Angeles bidness man Fillmore Crank and his actress wife turned hotelier Beverly Garland (My Three Sons)

Listing information shows that in addition to the 3,066 square foot single story main house with its 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers, the nearly one-third acre property also has a workshop/storage room, a children’s playhouse and a fully detached and permitted guest house with three-quarter bathroom. That means there’s a shower but no tub, puppies. The house could clearly use some updating and upgrading, but children, take note of the simplicity of form, the hyper utilitarian board and batten exterior, and the magnificently deep deep deep eaves that help to keep the house cool during the high heat of the scorching Southern California summers.

A planted entry courtyard flanked by the two-car carport on one side and a bank of floor to ceiling glass sliders on the other leads deep into the modest if not exactly inexpensive compound where the front door opens into a massive foyer laid with Mexican paver tile floors. The living/dining room with fireplace, a room much longer than it is wide, has built-in book shelves and a variety of sliding glass doors that open the room to fenced and tree shaded courtyards that surround the house. The adjacent sky lit kitchen, a serious hot mess of an early 1980s remodel, needs a gut job to remove all the louvered cabinetry, peach colored tiles and that poor, sad little stained glass panel set into the door that opens to a lovely lounging and dining courtyard on the side of the house.

The master suite, which arguably occupies the home’s most desirable location at the back of the house over looking the swimming pool and backyard, has dark hardwood floors that look like they were installed recently, glass sliders that open the room wide to the exterior, and a small reading nook separated from the sunken tub in the way out-dated master pooper by a not particularly opaque decorative wood screen.

At the back of the property the main house, the fully detached guesthouse and small playhouse ring the petite but adequate salt water swimming pool and attached spa. Multi-level terraces and decks with oodles of potted plants and surround the pool and are large enough for a handful of sun loungers and a dining terrace.

Listen, kids, Your Mama knows that this house–despite it being designed by the very skilled architect Richard Dorman–isn’t exactly an architectural masterpiece. And we too have eyeballs and can clearly see there have been some severely botched alterations. All those multi-paned windows are, to be kind, architecturally criminal. But there are, as they say in the real estate bizness, some good bones to work with here so we do hope Mister Hill’s got the good sense to hire a smart architect, a talented landscaper and a nice, gay decorator to turn this lackluster kernel of sand into the architectural pearl it wants to be.

Until late summer 2009, young Mister Hill had been living in the same West Hollywood condo-loft building where HGTV designer Kenneth Brown once owned a condo and where records show Mister Hill–through the same trust that purchased the house in the Hollywood Hills–snatched up a 2 bedroom and 2 pooper pad in November of 2007 for $1,050,000 and sold in August of 2009 for $835,000. A few flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus shows that’s a not inconsiderable $215,000 loss not counting the fat real estate fees and commissions. Imagine for a moment, butter beans, being in your mid-twenties and having the financial fortitude to weather a two-hundred thousand plus dollar loss.

Next Page »