The Russians Are Coming…The Russians Are Coming…

…And they have their heinously expensive 394-foot long yacht with its Philippe Starck designed interiors parked right off the coast of Venice, CA.

Buckle your seat belts butter beans because it seems the free spending Russian oligarchs that have been snatching up high priced properties in Europe and all up and down the eastern seaboard of the U-nited States have finally hit the west coast and hit it big.

Yesterday we received word from the peeps at Yo! Venice! that word on the real estate street was that 30-something year old banking, steel and fertilizer fat cat Andrey Melnichenko–not to be confused with the fertilizer honcho Dmitry Rybolovlev who paid $95,000,000 for Donald Trump’s Maison La Amitie in Palm Beach in the summer of 2008–was in the process of buying up an entire block on Venice’s Ocean Front Walk. That’s right chickens, you heard that right, an entire damn block.

Although there are no confirmations by anyone connected to the alleged situation, a well connected and intrepid source told Yo! Venice! that indeed several title orders had been opened on multiple properties between Paloma and Sunset Avenues. It’s not known, nor does Your Mama have a clue, what Gospadin Melnichenko might want with an entire city block of ocean front property in Venice. Perhaps it’s just an investment, maybe he’d like to build a hotel, or possibly erect a massive residential monument to his extreme wealth.
Mister Melnichenko and his supermodel Serbian wife Aleksandra have been cat nip for the gossip glossies, billionaire obsessed, and boat queens around the world ever since it became public knowledge that he spent upwards of $300,000,000 to have a super-yacht built at the Blohm + Voss shipyards in Hamburg. The big glittery boat, the one sitting in the waters of the coast of Venice (shown above), was quite simply dubbed A.

Listen chickens, if you haven’t seen photos–or better yet the video–of Gaspadin Melnichenko’s floating mega-mansion, get thee eyeballs on them quick. The submarine-shaped ocean liner measures 394-feet long–that’s longer than a damn football field–and includes 23,600 square feet of living space. The lavish and very contemporary interior spaces of the super sleek and somewhat sinister looking boat were all did up in quintessential Philippe Starck style with acres of mirrors, rotating beds, Baccarat crystal wash basins in the poopers, and walls covered in silver leaf, white sting ray hides, and hand-stitched calf’s leather. There’s even a hidden “nookie” room in one of the many guest suites for, well, for doing the dirty, of course. Other ocean going luxuries includes three swimming pools, a helipad, a gigantic garage with 3 large launches and, natch, heavy duty security including bullet proof glass and dozens of cameras including night vision cameras.

Mister Starck rather humorously told the Wall Street Journal that “while most megayachts are ‘vulgar’ statements of wealth and power” Gaspadin Melnichenko’s A is not. The French designer went on to pronouce–presumably with a straight face–that, ” this boat has elegance and intelligence, it is not trying to show the money.” Bitch, pleeze. You gotta be completely out of touch with reality not recognize that spending $300,000,000 to build a 394-foot private yacht with three damn swimming pools and a helipad ain’t about nuthin‘ but showing the damn money.

Anyhoo, all us real estate gossips will wait on pins and needles for confirmation–or denial–of Gaspadin Melnichenko’s rumored property purchase in Venice.

top photo: Guillaume Pilsson for The Wall Street Journal
bottom photo: Yo! Venice!

Candy Spelling’s Candyland Hits the Open Market

All the real estate gossips and others who care about such silly things already know that Tinseltown’s most famous widow Candy Spelling is fixin‘ to move to a 16,500 square foot (give or take) dee-luxe doo-plex penthouse of a newly built Robert A.M. Stern designed tower in the Century City area of Los Angeles. It’s widely whispered and reported she paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $47,000,000 for her new crib in the sky.

As the custom build-out of her still gigantic but comparatively downsized digs nears completion, Miz Spelling must be getting eager and antsy to unload her famous (and infamous) mega-mansion in the hoity-toity Holmby Hills neighborhood. Miz Spelling has long had her house, which she rather haughtily calls The Manor, quietly and not so quietly on and off the market for a number of years. There have long been pared down listings on the websites of the real estates handling the property but it’s never been, as far as we can remember, on the wide open market. However, thanks to Wendell Whistleblower, we’ve learned that Miz Spelling has finally, at long last, and just yesterday put the listing for her titanic 56,500 square foot, 123 room faux-French chateau on the MLS.

Interestingly–and somewhat surprisingly to Your Mama–Miz Spelling has opted to stick with the blood curdling $150,000,000 asking price at which she’s been unsuccessfully shopping the property around at for years.

Back when The Widda Spelling first put her humongous house on the market and allowed some news cameras into The Manor, she giggled about how she really didn’t know how many poopers there are in her convention hall sized house. Presumably the real estates of record–or more likely their assistants–spent an entire weekend schlepping through all 4 floors of the mansion counting bedrooms and terlits because listing information now shows there are 14 bedrooms and an astonishing 27 poopers. Have mercy! Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter’s tyrannical and theatrical house gurl Svetlana would fall over in hysterics and convulsions iffin we told her that she was going to be responsible for keeping 27 damn terlits polished.

Other interior comforts and frivolities include a billiard room, arcade room, doll museum, 2-lane bowling alley, a flower cutting hall with professional florist refrigerator, a gift wrapping room or two, an art studio, exercise room, music room, barber and beautician facilities, a full service wing with staff quarters, at least 5 fireplaces, and garaging for 16 automobiles.

The grounds, which span 4.69 flat acres according to listing information and must require a full-time grounds keeping crew to maintain, include a circular football field sized motor court with a fountain in the center, formal gardens, expansive lawns, vast terraces, a koi pond, a l’orangerie, antique rose bushes, tennis court, and a swimming pool with adjacent pool house complete with full kitchen and bar.

It makes Your Mama’s heart squeal with agony to think of Miz Spelling–who ,as fer as we know, lives alone but for her staff–coming home on a Friday night after a casual dinner with Tori at Koo Koo Roo and rambling around that big ol‘ hotel sized house all by her lonesome.

Making matter worse and driving Your Mama to the drink at nine in the damn morning is that we can’t realistically conceive of just who might want to buy a house like this at a price like that in the shabby economy with which we’re currently saddled. None the less, has anyone called real estate size queen Tyler Perry or Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko whose been bobbing around on his big boat off the coast of Venice, CA the last couple of days?

Of course, we don’t know a book end from a tight end but we think that if Miz Spelling isn’t going to slash the asking price she just might have better luck getting the property re-zoned and selling her steroidal mansion as some sort of corporate retreat or maybe as half-way house for Hollywood wives who get unceremoniously traded in for a younger and firmer version of themselves by their middle-aged and out of shape entertainment executive huzbands.

It’s our understanding that Miz Spelling still owns and maintains an ocean front spread on Malee-boo’s super swank Carbon Beach that’s just a few doors down from David Spade.

photo: Pacific Coast News

Mariska Hargitay Upgrades in the Hamptons

BUYER: Mariska Hargitay and Peter Hermann
LOCATION: East Hampton, NY
PRICE: $7,340,000
SIZE: 7,000 square feet, 11 bedrooms 6.6 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: With the summer coming to a close–and Hurricane Earl bearing down on the east coast–we thought we’d take a virtual stroll out to the hoity-toity and celebrity packed Hamptons, that glittering string of über upscale communities that dot the beachy and bucolic landscape at the far eastern end of the south fork of Long Island.

In early July of 2010 it was reported that the Emmy winning and freshly unemployed Law & Order hottie-mommy Mariska Hargitay and her actor huzband Peter Hermann upgraded their East Hampton digs from a modest 2,554 square foot house on East Hampton’s Buell Lane to an historic and rambling shingle-sided farmhouse in the same posh part of town as the summertime spreads of Martha Stewart, Mort Zuckerman, and Jerry della Femina. The property is, as it turns out, also just around the corner from the very English-y Coxwould estate–listed for a bone breaking $425,000 for the 2010 summer season–that the Kabbalah Kween is rumored and reported to have leased for the summer because the $10,000,000 horse farm that she bought in late 2009 from Kelly Klein does not, alas, have a house on the property.

Blame it on the booze butter beans, but Your Mama quickly forgot about Mister and and Missus Hargitay’s new house in the Hamp-toons until recently when we were clued in by the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who whispered in Your Mama’s big ol‘ ear that the Hargitay-Hermanns scooped up a 3-story house in East Hampton–purchased through a trust–in late June 2010 for $7,340,000.

Listing information shows the disheveled and slightly raggedly old-school Hamptons “cottage”–built way back 1890–sits on a 1.14 acre parcel and measures approximately 7,000 square feet with a staggering 11 bedrooms and 6.6 poopers. We’re not exactly sure what a .6 pooper is but that, puppies, is what the listing says.

A gravel driveway sweeps across the yard to the house where a charming and deep covered porch spans the width of the front facade. There’s little Your Mama enjoys more than whittling a summer day away on a shaded porch near the beach with a big stack of tabs, a giant pitcher of gin & tonics, and a big bag of candy. Yes, we’re a damn fool for candy. It’s a bad habit Sister Woman hates–she’s in the teeth bizness–but one we can not seem to break.

Anyhoo, according to listing information, the interior spaces include a trio of parlors with wood floors distressed by age, a dining room, window wrapped sun room, and a huge, funky eat-in kitchen with a turqwaze and black tile pattern painted on to the wood floor. The laminate counter tops have an unfortunate swirly, cream and rose colored pattern, the beat up cabinetry that is supposed to look old and charming just looks to Your Mama like it’s seen its better days, the Sub-Zero fridge has a chalk-board front, and above the commercial style range hangs, we are mortified to see, a pot rack that looks all kinds of hungry to clank some unsuspecting water boiler on the damn head.

Presumably, many if not most of the cottage/mansion’s 11 bedrooms are situated on the second floor. Also on the second floor is a huge deck, part of which is covered, that overlooks the back yard. Another long deck runs along one side of the main floor at the back of the house and steps down the in ground heated swimming pool that too is surrounded by decking.

Even more deckingwraps around a small blue wooden building–let’s call it a quaint little pool house with French doors and 9-over-1 panel sash windows–and around to where a very 1970s looking round hot tub has been sunk into the deck. The grounds also include wide swathes of lawn, mature plantings and shade trees, a guest house and a recording studio.

The unassuming, quirky, and unpretentious property–if anything in the Hamptons that cost more than seven million clams can be considered unpretentious–was sold by a British born but New York City based fashion designer and her rock and roll drummer huzband. While we always appreciate a home that genuinely looks and feels of its owner–and we do appreciate that this house does look and feel of its former owner–we don’t care for the particulars, in this case a wildly eclectic hippy-dippy beach house meets Shabby Chic meets English country house meets city sophisticate day-core. However, it’s really of no use speaking on it because Your Mama has to (hope, pray and) assume that the Hargitay-Hermanns have brought or will bring in their own nice, gay decorator and maybe even a smart architect to put their own spin on the interior spaces.

The real estate whereabouts of Miz Hargitay and Mister Hermann are oft reported on and speculated about. We’re not sure how much light we can throw down on the matter but here’s what Your Mama knows.

In October of 2007, Miz Hargitay and Mister Hermann unloaded their 2,500 square foot Jeffrey Bilhuber designed TriBeCa penthouse at 19 Beach Street for $5,100,000 and quickly laid out $7,000,000 for a 4,817 square foot penthouse pad in the then newly converted O’Neill Building on bizzy, wide, and loud Sixth Avenue in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Eight or so months later, after learning their toddler got into a swank school on the Upper East Side, the peripatetic pair hoisted the 3 bedroom and 3.5 pooper doo-plex digs at the O’Neill Building back on the market with an asking price of $8,250,000. A few months later, in October of 2008, just one year after moving in, the Hargitay’s packed their bags, strapped their baby on their back, and moved back out having sold their corner unit aerie for $8,150,000 to a New York City property mogul.

There was chatter among the celebrity real estate gossips back at that time that the Hargitay-Hermanns were either looking to move uptown–closer to their tykes pricey institution of learning–or to one of the leafy and expensive enclaves in Westchester County just to the north of New York City. Honestly bunnies, we don’t have a clue where the Hargitay-Hermanns went but iffin Chelsea was too far for their child to commute to toddler school, then Westchester County might as well be the damn moon, you know?

listing photos: Sotheby’s International Realty

Ladees and Gentlemen, The Taupe Office

Lord have mercy, what is with Americans and their affinity for wishy-washy beige day-core?

The Oval Office, that room in Washington, D.C. where American presidents sit and pull the levers of international politics, has never been a particularly stylish place decoratively speaking. It was a fairly utilitarian affair until Pat Nixon injected an oval shaped electric royal blue rug into the mix. Ever since then each president–with the assistance of his not always very stylish wife and a well paid decorator–has done up and did over the Oval Office to reflect their own personal decorative tastes.We’re down with that. We genuinely feel that the got-damn president of the U-nited States of America ought to have an office in which he (or, perhaps one day, she) feels comfortable and relaxed and capable of making decisions that have global impact. We don’t even mind if a few of our tax dollars go towards funding a redecoration of the Oval Office, even if it is for an administration we don’t care for.

However, we got some issues with the latest tasteful, rigorously restrained, and totally taupe incarnation of the Oval Office. President Obama’s newly redone office is a cautious and almost frumpy sea of taupe with just tiny hints of blue on the sofa pillows and the table lamps sitting on the side tables in the seating area in the center of the room. Even the vertically striped wall paper fades away into visual obsolescence.

Your Mama well recognizes that in a time of war and economic austerity for the peeps of America–at least the ones who don’t work on Wall Street–it would have been wildly inappropriate to unleash a crayon box full of color in the Oval Office. This bizness, however, seems to Your Mama’s pea sized brain like decorating for the lowest common denominator. We smell a conscious effort by the Obamas and Mister Smith to create a set up and get up that would not offend voters–conservative ones in particular–so many of whom are eager as beavers to find a reason to knock the president down a notch or two and just might see something more stylish as a sign of uppity elitism and/or lack of connection with the common man. (Please note kiddies, that is not intended as a political statement, it’s our meaningless opinion of the day-core.)

As vanilla as it may be, the Oval Office’s new day-core is definitely more up to date and of this time than the wealthy grandma look of previous administrations. But honestly chickens, while everything is in good taste and (we presume) high quality, this looks like the sort of thing one might find in the lobby of an expensive business hotel.

All that said, what Your Mama really wants to know is what’s the shit with the fruit bowl on the coffee table? Do Michael Smith, the Prez, and his adviser peeps really think Benji Netanyahu, Nancy Pelosi, or General Austin are gonna reach down for a banana or a damn nectarine in the middle of high stakes meeting? Pleeze.

It should be noted that no tax payer money was spent on the overhaul of the Oval Office. The cheddar for the redo came from a pool of money created by private donations given specifically for the purpose of doing over the White House day-core.

photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times

Is Tiger Woods Swinging His Club In New York City?

Rumors have been running all kinds of wild for the past few days that recently dee-vorced and a lot less rich Tiger “Can’t Keep It In His Khakis” Woods moved some crap into a downtown New York City rental apartment last weekend.

The scuttlebutt baby seems to have been birthed on the US magazine website that quoted an unnamed “witness” as saying that Mister Woods introduced himself as “the new neighbor.” The story was quickly picked up but the kind folks at Curbed who speculated that the 34-year old golf phenom might choose a celebrity packed building such as the Superior Ink in the West Village that has celeb friendly amenities such as a residents only indoor parking garage for discreet entries and exits. Curbed quickly added an update to their report that a CNBC sports business reporter tweeted that the stories of Tiger’s new New York City digs were not true.

The next gossip cowboy to ride the rumor was the NY Daily News who reported that Mister Woods was seen unloading boxes and golf clubs from a double parked BMW and into an unidentified Hudson Street building. Never one to walk away from a pretty face–or large mammaries–Mister Woods allegedly stopped to pet the puppy of the very same “pretty brunette” who tattled to the Daily News about Mister Woods’ alleged new bachelor pad in the West Village.
Once again the good people at Curbed quickly picked up the story, identifying the building pictured in the Daily News item as the Printing House condo building on Hudson Street in the lower and far West Village neighborhood (above). If all the real estate rumbling about Mister Woods getting himself a part-time pied a terre at the Printing House has any veracity–and we have no idea if it does or not–Your Mama imagines that part of the appeal of the Printing House building for Mister Woods may have been the boo-teek rooftop gym that includes squash courts, yoga and pilates classes, and a rooftop swimming pool and sundeck. Sounds like the perfect place for a horny public figure to semi-discreetly pick up large chested and hard bodied babes and get them downstairs for some bowmchickabowbowm without anyone being the wiser. Okay, that’s naughty and nasty and probably uncalled for but he’s proven himself to be shady that way, you know?

In other Tiger Woods related real estate news, former squeeze Rachel Uchitel–who was reportedly paid ten million big ones by Mister Woods to keep her luscious lips shut–reportedly wants to purchase a newly renovated 3 bedroom and 3 pooper Park Avenue apartment priced at $1,995,000. The problem is, according to the tabs, the condo board is getting all persnickety and balking at the notion of having such a notorious (and alleged) home wrecker as Miss Uchitel living up in their midst.

Honestly chickens, Your Mama didn’t know nor do we think that the board of a condominium building gets a say on who can or can not buy an apartment in the building. Of course Your Mama don’t know a cook book from a cup of coffee but it’s our understanding that that particular privilege of black balling potential apartment buyers–iffin anyone wants to call it a privilege–is the exclusive domain of the boards of co-operative buildings and not condo buildings.
Anyhoo and whatever the case, Your Mama did a little research and the only recently renovated 3 bedroom 3 pooper Park Avenue apartment we could find currently on the market at $1,995,000 is an 8th floor number in a pre-war building on lower Park Avenue at 39th Street, just three short blocks south of Grand Central Station (above). The apartment includes a wood burning fireplace in the living room, a small dining room, granite counter tops in the kitchen and–glory be!–windows in each of the three poopers for airing out Miss Uchitel’s stank.

The children may recall that in December of 2009 Your Mama dissed and dis-cussed Miss Uchitel’s ground floor 2 bedroom and 2 pooper apartment at the Turnberry Place condo complex in Las Vegas, NV that she had–and still has–on the market with an asking price of $1,350,000.

For what it’s worth–and it ain’t worth a penny–we just find it sort of strange that Mister Woods might even want to maintain a residence in the very same city where Rachel Uchitel is allegedly trying to set down some real estate roots. But then again, what city could Tiger Woods live or spend time where he hasn’t already gotten in trouble for schtupping a stripper, porn star, or a star fucker?

photos: Property Shark
listing floorplan: Corcoran

Cornelia Guest Puts Templeton Back on the Market

SELLER: Cornelia Guest
LOCATION: Old Westbury, NY
PRICE: $11,900,000
SIZE: 11,532 square feet, 11 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Before socialites like Tinsley Mortimer jumped on the low-brow reality tee-vee train and celebutantes like Paris Hilton were regularly snapped by the paps with their hoo-hoos hanging out and getting busted by the po-po in a car full of pot smoke and coke, there was to the manor born Cornelia Guest. Miz Guest, who was called the “Deb of the Decade” in 1986, seamlessly and effortlessly blurred the lines between Manhattan’s uptown uptight and downtown’s funky fabulosity. Although never without the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, she catted around with the likes of Andy Warhol and was a habitué of the gloriously debauched Studio 54 where drugs were consumed like candy and drag queens and disco divas cavorted with the the high fashion crowd and Upper East Side social set.

Miz Guest was born solidly into the old-line American aristocracy. Her glammy style icon mother C.Z. Guest–whose portrait was famously painted by Diego Rivera, Salvador Dali, and Andy Warhol–came from a brood of blue blooded Boston Brahmins. Her polo champion father Winston Guest, a second cousin to Winston Churchill, was an heir to the colossal Phipps family fortune, much of which was derived from steel and real estate interests. A New York Times article from 2001 cleverly and accurately characterized the Guest family as “blueblood gone boho,” which is exemplified by Winston and C.Z.’s 1947 wedding in Cuba in which the best man was the Old Man of the Sea himself Ernest Hemingway. Winston and C.Z. made two babies, Alexander and Cornelia.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of America’s east coast based aristocrats and plutocrats coagulated at the western end of Long Island where they built spectacular and vast country estates with improbably large and lavish mansions. The area, known as the Gold Coast, quickly became a bucolic mecca for self-made industrialists, scions of old families, and other assorted lockjaws with recognizable family surnames such as Vanderbilt, Roosevelt, Rogers, Whitney, Phipps, Pratt, Woolworth, and Coe, whose family seat, a Tudor Revival style pile they called Coe Hall, had 65 rooms including floral arranging rooms, trunk storage rooms, cedar closets for linens and off-season ensembles, and accommodations for a household staff of at least thirteen.

Although some remain (somewhat) intact and a few are still in the hands of descendants of the original owners, many if not most of the old Gold Coast estates have been torn down, cut up, bought by the new crew of wealth and power including Wall Street honchos, and/or converted to commercial use.

All of this is Your Mama’s long way around an itty bitty real estate tidbit recently printed on Page Six of the New York Post about Miz Cornelia Guest being overhead at Martha Stewart and Harry Slatkin’s birthday party telling someone that Templeton, her historic family seat in Old Westbury, NY, is back on the market. According to The Post, Templeton is priced at “up to $20 million.” Upon reading the the juicy real estate morsel Your Mama, natch, went a-peepin‘ and a-pokin‘ around the interweb to see what we could see. We’re not exactly sure where the peeps at The Post got their twenty million dollar figure because with the help of Golda Knowsthegoldcoast we quickly turned up a live listing for Templeton that shows a much lower asking price. It’s true the Templeton, which has been on and off the market for years and bears the gently worn hallmark and slightly frayed patina of old American money, was at one time listed at $20,000,000. However, according to current listing information, Templeton is now on the open market with a much lower asking price of $11,900,000.

Buckle up your safety belts butter beans because it gets a little confusing here. It seems that there are any number of different and contradictory stories as to the ownership lineage of Cornelia Guest’s Templeton. As best as Your Mama can suss and surmise Miz Guest’s crib was originally part of White Eagle, the 300-acre estate of industrialist Alfred I. du Pont. In 1926 White Eagle was sold by the du Pont clan to Cornelia’s grandparents Frederick E. and Amy Phipps Guest who rechristened the property Templeton. In 1959 Templeton was inherited by Winston Guest–that would be Cornelia’s daddy–who sold the massive main mansion to the New York Institute of Technology in 1972. Sometime after 1959 and prior to 1972 Winston and C.Z. moved from the main house to a smaller but still sprawling house on the estate, which also and still goes by the name of Templeton. It is this house that is currently owned and listed for sale by Cornelia Guest.

Are the children following along?

During the 1960s and 70s Cornelia’s polo playing papa Winston and her supah-chic mother C.Z. were embedded members of the glittery jet setting and arty-farty elite of New York City and beyond. The charismatic couple entertained frequently and according to Cornelia herself, her parents regularly hosted at Templeton the likes of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Truman Capote, Yves Saint Laurent and his bidness partner/man-friend Pierre Bergé, heart transplant pioneer Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the Kennedys, fashion icon Halston, ballet honcho Rudolph Nureyev, and Oscar de la Renta who had a permanent room in the Guest house.

In the mid-1990s, after a stint in Los Angeles where she pursued a not very successful career as an actress, Cornelia moved back east and into Templeton. Although Cornelia’s mommy C.Z. didn’t pass over to the other side until 2003 and we presume she occupied Templeton until then, property records reveal that in April of 2000, the younger Miz Guest purchased the property from her brother Alexander for $6,125,000. While Your Mama don’t know a turnip from a dump truck and these property transfers among old-line family member can be very complicated to sort out, it appears to us that Miz Guest was buying out whatever share of Templeton was owned by her brother.

A long, gated and tree lined drive cuts through wide open pastures and sweeps around from the back of the house to a large motor court that spreads out from the front of the sprawling and imposing but architecturally plain mansion. The modified Georgian style brick house, built in 1924 and added on to in a somewhat willy-nilly fashion over the years, stretches out impressively on either side of the entry that is modestly marked by a simple white doorway surround. Listing information reveals that the Templeton estate spreads across 15.52 acres with an 11,532 square foot main house that contains a total of 28 rooms including 11 bedrooms and 6 full and 2 half poopers.

The front door opens into a bizarre yet fantastically amazing and wonderfully quirky decorative display that includes potted plants in the center of a white marble floor, a couple of ocelot-hide chairs and ottomans pushed up against the walls and, flanking the front door, a pair of massive curving elephant tusks, reminders of the days when big game hunting was de rigueur among America’s most wealthy.

Miz Guest, who we’re happy to say has honored and maintained the original casual but dignified decorative spirit of the house has also added her own idiosyncratic touches with unexpected and incongruous items such as the tiger striped rug in the Blue and White room that overlooks the gardens. The children will note the Salvador Dali portrait of Cornelia’s mother C.Z. hanging above the antique marble fireplace.

The animal print motif continues into a wide hall with well worn–some might even say worn out–leopard print wall to wall carpeting. In a New York Times profile Miz Guest–who currently has nine dogs and a donkey named Madonna–states that the carpet hides years and years of “dog stains.” Your Mama is, to be sure, down with the lightly tattered and slightly shabby look of classic old American money day-core but Your Mama hopes and prays the ladee of the house means dirty dog paws and not canine wee-wee because, well, that would be disgusting.

The other well-scaled public rooms include a large salon with soaring ceilings, wood floors, a mish-mash of animal print and brocade chairs, and a John Singer Sargent portrait of Cornelia’s infant father Winston on the lap of his grandmother Anne Phipps. In the ground floor library, there are cozy upholstered club chairs in front of a fireplace, animal hide covered stools and chairs–more remnants of the days when big game hunting was fashionable amongst the financially privileged–Chinoiserie accents, and walls and book filled shelves covered completely in an intricately patterned French printed cotton fabric. The celadon colored dining room has what appears to be green veined marble moldings and window surrounds, a worn parquet floor, and dining room chairs upholstered in a muted paisley print fabric that gives the room that certain aura of antique elegance meets discount fabric hodge-podge so particular to these sorts of houses.

Back in 2004 when the house was photographed for House & Garden, a magazine for which Cornelia’s mother C.Z. wrote a syndicated column on gardening, the sun room had lattice panels affixed to the walls. Today, according to listing photos, the lattice has been removed although the Pepto-bismol pink walls, dark wicker and faded floral print furniture pieces remain.

Miz Guest’s unrestrained and perhaps unresolved thing for animal prints and hides follows her, natch, right into her master bedroom where the floors are not at all surprisingly covered in wall to wall leopard print carpeting similar to that in the downstairs hallway. It is also in her bedroom where a topless portrait of her by Andy Warhol hangs above a marble topped commode.

In addition to the main house, the grounds of Templeton include two cottages, some greenhouses, extensive but somewhat haphazard gardens with big ol’ topiaries, a swimming pool, tennis court, and equestrian facilities with stables, barns, pastures and riding rings. Although it’s reported that she no longer rides much, Miz Guest was at one time an accomplished and dedicated equestrian.

Despite family portraits by John Singer Sargent, a Warhol or two, and all the trappings of old-school American landed gentry, the Guest’s Templeton has a distinct lack of pretense or high nosed snottiness. This house, children, is what new money aspires to when they pay big bucks to have their newly built mega-mansions done up by expensive decorators in the old style. These attempts to re-create the the dull luster and laissez faire day-core of old American houses rarely succeeds leaving too many mansions looking like overly precious and sad stage-sets. Of course, we’re certain that those with knowledge of and an affinity for actual old English country houses scoff and laugh at what passes for patina in old American homes modeled on their authentic English predecessors. But so it goes. One can always look up or down the totem pole, can’t they?

In addition to a few acting roles in recent years, Miz Guest has a catering business and she quite recently started a vegan cookie company that, with all due respect to Miz Guest, Your Mama thinks of as little more than a charming lark of a charming heiress looking for something to do in her quickly approaching middle aged years.

Although in 2008, Miz Guest told Dan’s Papers–a Hamptons mag–that she was relocating to Hollywood to restart the acting career that never really got of the ground the first time, the recent New York Post item reports that Miz Guest was overhead saying that she wanted to move to Montauk. Who knows? Not Your Mama, that’s who. With the always unpredictable and delightful Miz Guest it’s probably best not to speculate on her next move since she’s been surprising those around her with her somewhat eccentric heiress ways practically since the day she was born.

In other Old Westbury real estate news, (alleged) mob daughter Victoria Gotti still has her giant heap of architectural vomit on the market with an asking price of $2,895,000. We first discussed the beweaved beehawtcha’s behemoth back in December of 2008 when it was listed for $3,500,000.

listing photos: Prudential Douglas Elliman

The Doull and Ward Duel Heats Up and Results in Listing Townhouse

SELLERS: Matthew Doull and Vicky Ward
LOCATION: New York, NY
PRICE: $5,995,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 3 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen kittens, Your Mama knows that few of you probably recognize the names Vicky Ward or Matthew Doull. They are, none the less, high profile New Yorkers whose names have been in the tabs lately due their impending and ugly dee-vorce. Even still and although we recognize they’re not exactly “celebrities,” Your Mama is in a New York state of mind and we’re feeling something sticky for the erstwhile couple’s townhouse in New York City’s once boho now insanely-gentrified West Village neighborhood currently on the market with an asking price of $5,995,000.

In the event that anyone cares, Mister Doull is a bit of biznessman and entrepreneur as well as a former (associate) publisher of the now defunct but once hot hot hot magazine Wired. He is also, for what it’s worth, the step-nephew of disgraced media mogul Conrad Black who was recently released from the pokey on a $2,000,000 bond after serving a few years of a 6.5 year term for a couple of nasty convictions on mail fraud and obstruction of justice. Mister Black once owned a number of pricey properties up and down the eastern seaboard including a Palm Beach mansion that, despite denials by his people, has long been on the market with an undisclosed asking price. It was to this ocean front estate that Mister Black reportedly went immediately after being released.

Miz Ward is a British born and very glammy writer and contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine, the gorgeous and glossy publication that Your Mama likes to think of as terlit reading for the urbane. The successful scribe has penned profiles and pieces on heaps of honchos and bigwigs such as former CEO turned wannabe senator Carly Fiorina, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, prostie luvvin‘ billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, prostie luvvin‘ pol Eliot Spitzer, and former C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame. In addition to laying down ink for Vanity Fair and Huffington Post and doing tons of on-air interviews for Bloomberg TV, Miz Ward recently released a best selling book by the name of The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High States Games Inside Lehman Brothers.

As mentioned earlier, the not quite yet dee-vorced couple have had their names splashed around in the New York City tabs including on the pages of Miz Ward’s former employer the New York Post where Page Six recently reported that both have restraining orders against each other after a big blow up that (allegedly) resulted from Mister Doull’s request that Miz Ward pay for a Brazilian vacation he took with his 22-year old girlfriend. Besides being capital t-tacky on Mister Doull’s part, what kind of gal who’s barely old enough to imbibe booze gets involved with and goes on an international holiday with a man who’s engaged in a bitter battle with his not quite yet ex-wife? And too, what sort of approaching middle age fellow with young children takes up with a 22 year old whippersnapper even before his dee-vorce is finalized?

Anyhoo, property records show that Mister Doull and Miz Ward purchased their West Village townhouse in May of 2000 when they shelled out $2,300,000 for the four floor plus basement townhouse. It appears to Your Mama that at the time the townhouse was snatched up it was a three unit warren of rooms that the once happy couple did up and over into a single family house with 3 real bedrooms and 3 full and 2 half poopers.

Your Mama has no idea when Mister Doull and Miz Ward’s relationship soured and swirled down the terlit of love but we do know that his is not the first trip the clashing couple have made to the real estate rodeo with this particular pony. According to the fine folks over at Streeteasy the Ward-Doull townhouse was first listed in mid-March of 2009 with an asking price of $6,995,000. It was mysteriously taken off the market just 12 days later.

Whatever the reason(s) for de-listing the property, it remained off the (open) market until mid-March of 2010 when it was hoisted back on the block with the higher asking price of $7,495,000. Two months later the price tag plummeted to $6,500,000 and another two months later the price dropped again to it’s current asking price of $5,995,000.

For better or worse, the section of the West Village neighborhood where the Ward-Doull townhouse is located is no longer a boho enclave teeming with artists and writers. That is unless they’re rich artists and writers, of course. The Ward-Doull townhouse, far from affordable for all but the very wealthy, is indeed perfectly situated and priced for all the pecunious peeps and chichi shop lovers who arrived like locusts over the last decade or two and transformed the neighborhood from a charming but slightly out of the way zigzag of narrow streets into a glittering shopping mecca for deep pocketed types, many of whom seem to cotton to the not accurate notion that it’s edgy and downtown to crawl around the West Village to purchase $400 doo-dads from the innumerable pocketbook punishing boo-teeks that line the streets.

The Ward-Doull townhouse is indeed a perfect example of what the West Village has become. Once upon a time not too long ago the immediate neighborhood was a little too far west to be considered fashionable. It was a bit gritty and most people wouldn’t have dreamt of stepping into one of the area’s squares or parks after dark. Today, not only is the Ward-Doull townhouse situated directly across the street from a playground where stylish moms and foreign born nannies take their children and wards for jungle gym climbing and screaming, it is sandwiched between the James Perse boo-teek where a simple cotton wife-beater tank will cost a gal fifty-five smackers and one of the three celebrity packed shoppy shops über designer Marc Jacobs has in the ‘hood. Other ritzy retailers near the Ward-Doull townhouse include Jack Spade–the male arm of Kate Spade’s burgeoning lifestyle empire–Lulu Guinness, and the world famous (and quite possibly over-rated) Magnolia Bakery where tourists and New Yorkers alike line up out the door for a nibble of one of their $3 and 25 cent damn cupcakes.

While Your Mama finds the day-core lackluster and even a bit dull, according to listing information the interiors were all done up by a ladee-decorator named “Kathy Lydon.” Unfortunately, the Real Estates misidentified Kathy Lydon whose actual name is Katie Lydon, a New York City based Brit who was recently called out by both Elle Decor and Metropolitan Home as an up and coming (interior) designer.

Listing information indicates the landmark townhouse was built in 1860 as part of a row of seven townhouses, all of which besides the Ward-Doull’s have ground floors converted to commercial and retail spaces. With no elevator, the four floor townhouse may not be for the torpid or glutially weak. However, for those who don’t mind getting a bit of exercise climbing from the ground floor kitchen to the third floor master bedroom the townhouse offers a modestly sized and well-conceived floor plan.

As do the front doors of many West Village townhouse, the front door of the Ward-Doull dwelling opens directly from the sidewalk of bizzy bizzy Bleecker Street into the ground floor of the building that includes a small foyer, living room with fireplace and small dining area that must be traversed in order to get to the generously scaled and sky lit eat in kitchen. For reasons that should be obvious to the children, we don’t care for a pooper to open directly into the kitchen where food in prepared as does the powder pooper of the Ward-Doull townhosue. Perhaps there were structural limitations that did not allow such, but Your Mama would have much preferred the door to the powder pooper be placed in the small hall landing behind the dining room that leads down to the finished basement level.

The lower level, a finished basement really, contains a large windowless recreation room with fireplace, a windowless three-quarter pooper, windowless laundry facilities, and loads of storage space including 4 closets in the recreation room area and a separate bedroom-sized storage room. In a city where space–storage space in particular–can be difficult to come buy, all the storage here is enough to make most New Yorkers seethe with envy.

The entire second floor consists the family’s casual living quarters, one large room with two fireplaces that stretches more than 35 feet front to back with a trio of windows at the front and a sliding door that opens to a 200-square foot roof deck at the back. At the center of the room, a very ordinary but probably expensive sofa is flanked by built-in bookshelves and sits across from a media wall in which all the equipment including a large flat screen have been thoughtfully sunk into cubbies. Whomever is responsible for the floor plan smartly included a wet bar at the back of the second floor with and under counter fridge as well as a half-pooper with window.

The townhouse’s third floor is given over to the master suite that includes a large bedroom with fireplace, custom fitted walk-in closet that is passed through to get to the master pooper that spans the full width of the townhouse and includes a large soaking tub, two sinks, separate shower with window, and a separate cubicle for the terlit.

The fourth and final floor has a sky-lit landing with closet and hall bath, two adequate size bedrooms each with commodious walk in closet. There’s also an itty bitty room marked “bedroom” on the floor plan but it’s a wee small for a proper bedroom in a six million dollar townhouse and besides there’s no closet in the room which means it would make a much better study room for the kiddies, a wee play room, or maybe even a teeny-tiny guest room for over nighters who don’t rank high enough on the pole to warrant getting an actual bedroom.

Listing information indicates the townhouse can legally be used as a bed and breakfast but Your Mama doesn’t know why anyone would even consider such a thing.

listing photos: Corcoran

Crocodile Dundee: Property Shark

SELLER: Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski
LOCATION: Montecito, CA
PRICE: $6,500,000
SIZE: 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in the mid-1980s a rugged and hunky 40-something year old Australian actor named Paul Hogan starred in a low budget comedy called Crocodile Dundee. Much to the shock and surprise of everyone, the Australian made movie became a worldwide phenomena with blistering box office receipts that one website reports totaled a staggering $328,000,000.

In 1986, around the time Mister Hogan’s crocodile movie was released, he was dee-vorced from his second wife–who was also his first wife–and in 1990 married his Crocodile Dundee co-star and current wife, actress Linda Kozlowski.

Unfortunately for movie goers, two more Dundee films followed the first. The second installment roared to box office success 1988 and, in a futile effort to squeeze blood from a cinema turnip, the third was released in 2001. Not surprisingly the third, final, and desperate Crocodile Dundee film was a box office flop. None the less and according to the same above mentioned website, the second and third Dundee movies took in combined gross receipts of $278,993,111.

Given their rather slim resumes on the Internet Movie Data Base, not many people, particularly those in the business of show, have thought much if at all of Mister Hogan and Miz Kozlowski since at least the early 2000s. The couple have, however, been much in the papers and tabloids the last few days and weeks due to some nasty and alleged tax issues back in Australia.

Here’s the skinny as Your Mama understands it: For the last five or so years Mister Hogan (and Miz Kozlowski) have been embroiled with the Australian Taxation Office over back taxes…boo-coo back taxes as it turns out. The A.T.O. claims that Mister Hogan, now a septuagenarian, used off-shore bank accounted to hide profits from the stoopid but lucrative Crocodile Dundee film franchise. Although exact numbers have not been released, recent reports reveal that the Aussie tax-man says Mister Hogan owes 37.6 million Australian dollars of unpaid taxes, an amount Your Mama’s currency conversion contraption reveals amounts to a heart stopping 33,365,600 in U.S. cheddar. A week ago, Mister Hogan flew back to Australia san wife and kid to attend his mother’s funeral and, much to his and his wife’s surprise, was immediately served an order by the A.T.O. that forbids him from leaving Australia until he coughs up the cash for his back taxes.

As complex and juicy as Mister Hogan’s 5-year skirmish with the Australian taxman may be, it hasn’t stopped he and his wife from repeatedly dipping their toes into the real estate pond here in the U-nited States of America where according to the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial they currently own a home in fancy-pants Montecito, CA that’s on the market with an asking price of $6,500,000.

Interestingly, property records show that the Montecito mansion was purchased through a trust in September of 2008 for $6,700,000. We don’t even need to flick the well worn beads of Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus to see that even if the property sells for its full asking price–which is unlikely in these topsy turvy real estate times–Mister Hogan and Miz Kozlowski are going to suffer a sizable financial hit to their (alleged off-shore) bank accounts.

Listing information for the property indicates the fairly newly built mansion sits on 1.2 acres and is of a “French Country” style of architecture but, frankly, Your Mama just don’t see it. What we do espy, based listing information and marketing materials, is that electronic gates swing open to a circular gravel driveway surrounded by redwoods and a front facing two car garage. Surely there was another solution to the garage than to face it front where it smacks people right across the face and gives the front facade a distinct and strong impression of being an ordinary if upscale tract house.

A hand-crafted and carved hardwood front door opens into the entrance foyer that features a tightly curled staircase with delicate wrought iron spindles. The main floor rooms include a formal living room with fireplace and built in shelves which allow it to do double duty as a library as well as a formal dining room all done up in shades of taupe with a coved ceiling and crystal chandelier. Less formal living spaces include a large living/family room with chestnut colored hardwood floors, fireplace, and French doors to the terrace that runs along the back of the house.

The eat in kitchen is a sunny affair with light putty colored cabinets done in a combination of closed and open shelving–which we like–marble counter tops, stainless steel appliances, farmhouse style sink, and French doors that open on to the terrace at the back of the house that overlooks the grounds and swimming pool. The main floor, according to listing information, also has a bedroom and pooper suite for guests or live-in staff as well as a powder room for dinner guest and drop-ins.

Upstairs are three bedrooms each with private pooper. The generous but not huge master has chestnut colored hardwood floors, a vaulted and beamed ceiling, private balcony with wrought iron railings that looks over the back yard, custom designed walk-in closet, and marble and glass pooper.

The terrace at the rear of the house has an outdoor fireplace for taking the nip of the seaside evening air and wide stairs that drop down to the meticulously maintained and unnaturally green lawn. A short hop across the lawn is the swimming pool surrounded by imported Turkish limestone. An adjacent open air cabana has a second outdoor fireplace and mini-kitchenette, a feature we’re quite certain our imperious house gurl Svetlana would appreciate so that she need not schlep out into the hot sun every time Your Mama or the Dr. Cooter desire a gin & tonic or other cold beverage. Other outdoor accouterments on the fully landscaped property include an organic vegetable garden as well as an organic citrus orchard, both of which are lovely accouterments.

Based on previous reports, the Hogan-Kozlowskis have long ago decamped from Montecito for Malee-boo where they purchased a 3 bedroom and 3 pooper mid-century modern era house in the guard gated Serra Retreat (below). Records show the property was purchased in August of 2009 for $6,500,000.

There seems to be some sort of bad ju-ju floating around the Serra Retreat that’s been tainting celebrity residents over the last 5 or ten years. First there was Olivia Newton John whose man-friend Patrick went missing never to be seen again. She’s since picked up and moved to Florida and sold her house in the Serra Retreat that happens to be across the street from titanically rich director James Cameron’s compound and right next door to the mansion that pop tartlet Britney Spears owned and occupied when she was married to and split from her baby daddy Whatshisname. It was shortly after leaving her house at the Serra Retreat that she went plum bonkers, a sorry state of affairs from which the entertainer has since rebounded.

The Serra Retreat’s most famous resident is–or rather, was–Mel Gibson who shacked up in a sprawling estate with his soon to be ex-wife and their 49 children until he went off and got himself a Russian wench who bore his a love child. Of course, everyone knows the ugly brouhaha between Mister Gibson and his Russian baby momma so there’s really no need to recap that crap. Mister Gibson’s estate–which we’re told is now occupied by his soon to be wildly rich soon to be ex-wife–is currently on the market for $12,750,000 after first being listed at $14,500,000.

Most recently Serra Retreat resident Kelsey Grammer dumped his celery stalk of a wife Camille after 13 years of marriage and two piglets. Soon to be ex-Missus Grammer is part of the upcoming Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality program so that could get inneresting. While Mister Grammer claimed there was no other woman, just weeks after filing for a dee-vorce he was seen and photographed canoodling and house hunting with a young blond who is rumored to be preggers. It’s just so damn cliche we can’t stand it. Here’s this wildly rich, middle aged, and not particularly attractive actor who trades his 40-something year old wife in for a newer, shinier, and younger blond girlfriend. Gawd. Does it get any more ridiculous?

Anyhoo, Your Mama’s point is that Mister Hogan and Miz Kozlowski have had the Serra Retreat bad settle on them like dust on a windshield just as have so many of the other celebrity residents/property owners in Malee-boo’s most desirable gated community.

The house in Montecito is far from the first time the Hogan-Kozlowskis have been to the real estate fair in the U-nited States. In They previously owned a 4,518 square foot house in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles that they bought in June of 2005 and flipped in December of 2005. In December of 2005 they purchased a 3,249 square foot house on Riven Rock Road in Montecito that records show they sold in April of 2008 to a New York based couple. Earlier reports reveal that Mister Hogan and decorating mad Miz Kozlowski have bought and flipped as many as half a dozen houses in Montecito over the years. Hope they paid their capital gains.

P.S. If any of the children have an urge to say something about putting some shrimp on the damn barbie we suggest your bite your tongue or Your Mama might be forced to find you and beat yo ass with a wooden damn spoon. Seriously. Just. Don’t. Do it.

A New Mansion for Shonda Rhimes

SELLER: Shonda Rhimes
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,695,000
SIZE: 4,920 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: If the children will put on their celebrity real estate thinking caps they might recall what long damn slog it has been for indie-alterna musician and super Scientologist Beck Hansen and his wife Marissa Ribisi to sell their mansion in the Hancock Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, CA.

Back in April of 2007 Mister and Missus Beck bought a big house in the historic and fancy Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. They paid, according to records and reports, $6,750,000 for the 6 bedroom and 9 pooper property but quickly had a real estate change of heart–oh, those fickle famous folks and their wacky real estate ways–and flipped their real estate mistake back on the market in July of 2008 with an optimistic asking price of $9,000,000. By August of 2009, the asking price of Mister and Missus Beck’s residential albatross in Hancock Park had plummeted to $6,595,000, otherwise known as $255,000 less than they had paid for the place just 2 and some years prior.

Finally and at long last Your Mama learned from the bizzy boys over at Celebrity Address Aerial that in early March of 2010 Mister and Missus Beck unloaded their unwanted residence for $5,600,000. A few quick flicks of Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus shows that’s just 62% of their original pie in the real estate sky asking price and a painful $1,150,000 less than they paid for the property not counting improvement costs–which include installing a full recording studio and rehearsal room–and the fat real estate fees that easily cost the couple more than $200,000.

This was not the first punishing financial loss Mister and Missus Beck took on their real estate portfolio in 2010. In February of 2007 they paid $2,050,000 for a modestly sized house in the Point Dume area in Malee-boo. They sold the house in late January of 2010 for $1,650,000, a $400,000 loss not counting improvements and real estate fees. If Your Mama tries to add all that up in our mind we come up with Mister and Missus Beck watching almost (or at least) two million clams wash away like flower petals on a raging river.

The buyer of Beck’s white elephant was another Hollywood hotshot, 3-time Emmy nominated writer and producer Shonda Rhimes, the ladee responsible for foisting hospital dramas Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice on the airwaves. All the children know by now that Your Mama does not care for a hospital drama. Not only do we not want to know that our male nurse Fentanyl patch on his thigh but the Dr. Cooter brings us home enough real life hospital drama to quench our thirst for all things medically related. Anyhoo and for what it’s worth, Miz Rhimes also penned the screenplay for the Halle Berry vehicle Introducing Dorothy Dandridge as well as the embarrassing flop Crossroads starring Britney Spears in her feature film debut.

Now that Miz Rhimes has herself a new house in Hancock Park she needs to sell her previous home in Hancock Park which happens to be located just a few blocks norht on the very same street as her new manse. Property records show that Miz Rhimes picked up her first Hancock Park house in December of 2005 paying $3,885,000 for a 1926 Mediterranean mini-mansion that measures 4,940 square feet. The 5 bedroom and 5.5 pooper was listed on the open market in late July 2010 with an asking price of $3,695,000, a figure that represents an automatic loss of almost two hundred thousand clams not counting fees even if Miz Rhimes real estate people pull a real estate rabbit out of a hat and sell the house at its current full asking price.

It appears to Your Mama, based on the real estate photos, that Miz Rhimes has long moved on from her old house and into her new house and that her real estate people have had her former home staged like nobody’s bizness. Or, at least we hope it’s staged because there is so little life in the rooms that it would be heart breaking to think of Miz Rhimes making a home in a house where the books in the bookshelves are so preciously and self consciously displayed in the sun porch/family room that connects the formal living room to the terrace at the back of the house.

The former Rhimes residence opens to a soaring impress the guests foyer with and double-arched beamed ceiling, stained glass windows, dark stained hardwood floors, elaborate carved stone moldings that frame the entrance into the step down formal living room, and a sensuous staircase the curves gently as it rises to the private quarters on the second floor. We’re just going to look past the unforgivable horse figurine standing there in the entrance way and call it a decorative moment of madness for Stager Ladee in a Pink Toyota. The aforementioned formal living room has a beamed ceiling, carved stone fireplace surround, and a trio of French doors with transom windows that open into the sun room/family room where a couple of Bergere style arm chairs covered in zebra striped fabric flank a white upholstered love seat that we’d bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly was ordered from the Pottery Barn catalog.

The kitchen complex includes a lot of white cabinetry that reaches all the way to the ceiling, high grade stainless steel appliances, some of the most upsetting looking gray and beige tiles on the floor and some similar and equally as distressing tile on the counter tops, a huge butler’s pantry, and a large breakfast room/den with a decorative mix of built in bench seating and black director’s chairs with white canvas seats and backs. Other rooms include, according to listing information, a formal dining room with a curving wall of windows that look out on the back yard, a family room with built in cabinetry, a “jewel box” of a powder pooper for guests, office area, bonus/morning room–whatever that is–and a staff room and pooper on the ground floor.

The second floor includes 4 bedrooms and 3 full poopers including the master suite with 2 walk-in closets with dressing areas, sizable private pooper with pink walls, marble accents and off-white subway tiles, a separate soaking tub and glass enclosed shower. The master boo-dwar also has a covered veranda that Your Mama would quickly convert into a screened in sleeping porch for that at-home quasi-camping experience on warm summer nights.

In addition to the de rigueur swimming pool and spa with old-school brick coping, the big backyard has an luscious outdoor showering station, built in barbecue center with sink and mini-fridge, a “romantic” vine covered pergola that shades a terrace with outdoor fireplace, thick and mature plantings that include fruit trees, and an elaborate and large children’s playhouse done up like a quaint Victorian house. The detached two-car garage has been converted, according to listing information, into an office lined with brown stained shelves and cabinetry, pooper, and pool changing room. We adore a pool pooper and changing room, but would sorely miss a garage because it is, frankly, too damn hot to leave automobiles out baking in the scorching southern California sunshine day in and day out.

Miz Rhimes former residence has also been fitted and kitted with, according to listing information, several flat screen tee-vees–natch–a Crestron home automation system, surround sounds, amped up security systems and a tri-zoned heating and cooling system for summer and winter time comfort.

Your Mama can only hope that Miz Rhimes new residence works better for her and her family than it appears to have worked for the peripatetic Mister and Missus Beck who can’t seem to find a place to plant themselves for more than a couple of years at a time.

listing photos: Prudential CA – Beverly Hills

The Diceman Leaveth Los Angeles

SELLER: Andrew Dice Clay
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,399,000
SIZE: 2,720 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama woke early, put our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly in the back seat of the big BMW and made the long trek from our remote and low-tech desert hideaway into civilization–if you can call it that–where we’ve managed to pilfer some wireless internet service while sitting in a café full of desert dwelling townies who keep looking at Your Mama like we’re from another damn planet. Amongst the many unread emails we found when we powered up our trusty laptop at said sad café was a little ditty from Brenda Blabsitall who squealed to Your Mama that controversial insult comic Andrew Dice Clay recently unloaded his house in Hollywood, CA.

To some, Mister Dice Clay–who was born with the name Andrew Silverstein–follows in the much lauded and applauded footsteps of venerated funny folks like Don Rickles, Sam Kinison and Joan Rivers who made themselves famous and rich by humorously insulting others. To others Mister Dice Clay is little more than a rude, crude, lewd and aggressively misogynist man with a masturbation obsession and a freaky Fonzi complex. Iffin we’re being honest chickens, and we always are, Your Mama thought Mister Dice Clay had long gone to the proverbial graveyard of forgotten comics and entertainers, replaced ages ago by the new crop of insult comics like celebrity skewerer Kathy Griffin and foul mouthed Lisa Lampanelli. In fact and much to our surprise, besides being the first fired by Donald Trump on one of those Celebrity Apprentice programs, Mister Dice Clay is alive, well, kicking, and telling his often offensive and sometimes degrading jokes every damn night at the Las Vegas Hilton.

While property records show that Mister Dice Clay owns a 4,461 square foot house in suburban Las Vegas, NV that he bought in bought in August of 2006 for $450,000, records also show that he has also owned a home in Hollywood since July of 2003 when he bought a light turqwahze traditional at the base of Nichols Canyon for $1,179,000. The house, perhaps not surprisingly given Mister Dice Clay’s signature 1950s rebel look, looks like the house where Fonzi lived in the apartment above the Cunningham’s garage on the long defunct situation comedy Happy Days.

Of course, Your Mama don’t know a scone from a biscuit, but many people of fortunate finances get a new house when they get a new spouse and given that Mister Dice Clay recently got hitched to a third wife–he has two sons by a previous wife–it’s very possible (or not) that the recent betrothal was the impetus for selling the house.

The well kept house was first hoisted on to the market in late May 0f 2010 with the asking price of$1,399,000. That must have been the right price because the house was sold, done, closed in just over 60 days at $1,399,000. Based on listing photos, Mister Dice Clay–or perhaps it was one of his ex-wives who lived here–moved out prior to listing the property so we don’t get to diss and discuss the day-core.

Listing information shows the house measures a somewhat modest 2,720 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 2.5 poopers. The front door opens to a central foyer and staircase with a large living room to the right that has a fireplace with a green marble and brass surround, big paned windows, and equilibrium upsetting muted tiger striped wall to wall carpeting. Behind the living room a small den with more wall to wall tiger striped carpeting, built in shelving and a double sliding glass door that opens to a terrace at the back of the house.

On the opposite side of the central foyer from the living room is a formal dining room and behind the the well-equipped and maintained but dated eat-in kitchen has cream colored cabinetry, glass fronted upper cabinets, white appliances and cream colored tile counter tops and back splash. There is also a “garden room” according to listing information with travertine tile floor (or some other sort of material) laid at an angle to the room and a long curving wall of French doors that open to the back yard terrace.

The upstairs bedrooms include two family bedrooms with walls painted a darker shade of Tiffany blue, white window frames and moldings, white ceiling fans, and a dusty light blue wall to wall carpeting that gives Your Mama’s delicate decorative sensibilities a shiver and a jolt of upset. The master bedroom, on the other hand, is a tone on tone study of beige things with camel colored curtains, pale beige built-ins, and cream colored wall to wall carpeting. Mister Dice Clay’s boo-dwar includes 2 walk-in closets and a private pooper as dated as the kitchen with a double sink vanity with tile counter and a gigantic jetted bathtub set into a dizzying alcove lined with mirrors. If there’s anything more uncomfortable to Your Mama than sitting in a giant boiling and bubbly vat of filthy water is sitting in a giant tub of filthy water surrounded by mirrors.

A long , gated and dead straight driveway scoots up the side of the house to the detached two-car garage at the back of the property. A wide, pergola shaded terrace runs along the back side of the house and steps down to the tree-shaded and grassy back yard. Your Mama expected for this amount of money in this location to find a pretty swimming pool in the back yard, but alas, there appears to be little more than and expensive and difficult to maintain lawn surrounded by tall privacy creating ficus hedges.

Whether Mister Dice Clay will opt to pick up another Los Angeles area property isn’t known to Your Mama but with his performance schedule in Las Vegas it’s hard to imagine he’d have time to look let alone occupy a house that isn’t in Las Vegas.

Now then, Your Mama and the long bodied bitches are back out to the boonies where we plan on spending the rest of the day seeking shade and sipping ice cold gin and tonics while the sands shift and swirl around the cacti.

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