Breaking Up is Hard to Do

"It's too tough boss," my prized fighter said.

"You've almost got this," I said massaging his shoulders.

"I'm not as good as I thought I was."

"Don't let it mess with your head."

"I'm tired."

"You can do this!" 

With some fights all you have to do is enter the ring and your opponent topples to the ground like a fallen oak tree. Other fights are battles with an enemy who won't stop fighting, won't stop attacking, won't stop being an aggressive jerk. Unfortunately, the fight at hand was not the former type. If it had been, this story would over by now. Nope, this fight belonged to the latter category, the hard, fight-to-the-death one. The only unknown was: who was going to die first? 

The fighters in the ring were formidable. In my corner was my protege and fighter--Mr. Wonderful--the best all-around Mixed Martial Artist, DIY destroyer. And I, I, was his manager, trainer and biggest fan. In the opposite corner was his formidable foe--The Slab. 

After breaking down the concrete and the sarcophagus walls, all that was left to destroy was The Slab. 

"I've got this," Mr. Wonderful said bouncing on the balls of his feet hungry to enter the ring.

"Thor's hammer will take care of The Slab," I said confidently passing the tool to my fighter. "In my day I used this to knock down the sarcophagus walls." Mr. Wonderful nodded, then putting his trust in me started swinging. He swung that hammer left, right and six times to Sunday but nothing worked. The Slab reflected each battering ram as if it had been a feather brushing against Half Dome.

The bell rang and Mr. Wonderful darted to his corner and hollered.
"It's not working!"
"I see that," I said because I had witnessed every deflection of The Slab's formidable nature.
"Now what?" my prized fighter shouted from the ring.
"The drill."
"I don't have a drill bit that big!"
"Size," I said wiping my fighter's face, "Is irrelevant. All that matters is what you do with the drill. Harness its power!" I said handing him the tool.

After finding a drill bit the size of the Statue of Liberty, Mr. Wonderful rammed the drill into The Slab. He brrr'ed, whrr'ed and qzvrr'ed throwing his muscular, massaged shoulders into this attack. His efforts were impressive, his strength was massive but there was one problem.

"It's not breaking!" Mr. Wonderful said when the bell rang. 

"I see that," I said because my eyesight was 20/20. Indeed, The Slab was a very worthy foe. "It's a lot stronger that the worst enemy I ever faced in the ring," I said reminiscing on the previous day when I single-handedly broke up the sarcophagus walls. Ah! The good old days. So much could change in a day!

"Now what?" my fighter said his words tinged with fear. I felt the fear too, a growing realization that after all we'd done to clean the clock of this opponent we'd still have to admit defeat. But as they say in MMA demolition: It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings and… we had't heard the aria yet.

"Use the jackhammer."

"The 25 pounder?" 

"The 75-pound jackhammer!" I said as Mr. Wonderful sagged against the ring's ropes. 

"That's a lot of jackhammer." 

Never was there a truer sentence. I'd discovered how heavy the tool was when I rented the thing from the home improvement store. I couldn't lift it into my car alone. In fact, I needed eight pudgy 20-Somethings to get it into my vehicle.

Ringside once again, I helped lower the 75 pounder to my fighter. 

"If this doesn't work," I said "Nothing will." I watched him hoist the blade between his feet while standing atop The Slab.

"So," he said wilting under the weight of the machine. "This is your last idea?"

"That's right, kid. Make it worth it. Or you'll end up on you tail back in Topeka, Kansas."

He nodded. I handed him earplugs. I pushed the power cord into the electrical socket. He squeezed the handles. The machine blasted, belting out a tune every fat lady loved. Using all his weight, Mr. Wonderful steered it into The Slab. The jackhammer's blade sunk into the concrete. It worked! Then it stopped.

"Keep going! It's working!" I said jumping up and down.
"It's heavy."
"I know. Exactly 75 pounds heavy." I saw the exhaustion in his body and face. "Show this opponent who's boss and make that machine sing," I said handing my fighter a glass of water. He guzzled it down, nodded and promptly made confetti of The Slab.

How the fat lady sang! There's nothing as beautiful as a fat lady singing. Except perhaps a pit in your backyard that is concrete-slab free.

"You beat The Slab!" I said dancing around Mr. Wonderful. My champ nodded then collapsed on the sofa. Tomorrow he'll tell this tale of how he beat The Slab but until then, I'll leave him be so he can hear the fat lady belting out that beautiful aria in his dreams.

Anthony Kiedis Buys Petite Sunset Strip Villa

BUYER: Anthony Kiedis
SELLER: Waldo Fernandez
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,650,000
SIZE: 2,679 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little birdie we know on the down low that's often in the know about celebrity real estate doings recently chirped in Your Mama's ear that the new owner of A-list decorator Waldo Fernandez's latest property flip above the Sunset Strip is none other than Red Hot Chili Pepper lead singer/lyricist Anthony Kiedis who just shelled out $3.65 million for the petite and pedigreed villa. The walled and gated residence, built in 1940 and nestled into a steep down slope on a curvaceous and narrow street just above the Sunset Strip, was originally designed by architect F. Pierpont Davis and re-worked by Hollywood Regency honcho John Elgin Woolf. The house has popped up in the glossy pages of Architectural Digest "at least thrice" according to the kids at Curbed.

In late June, 2012, after a couple of years on and off the market with a cornucopia of price tags as high as $3.695 million, the property was purchased for $2.4 million by the renown and regularly published Waldo Fernandez, a Cuban-born decorating dervish who's worked over rooms and homes for a panoply of celebrities like Brad Pitt, Darren Starr, and Tobey Maguire.

Mister Kiedis—now fifty, fit, and still sexy in that dangerous, middle aged rock star sort of way—spent his early years in Grand Rapid, Mi with is mother and teen years in Los Angeles with his bit-part actor father, Blackie Dammett. Poppa Kiedis, whose autobiography, Lords of the Sunset Strip, was recently released as an e-book, moonlighted as a drug dealer for rock stars (and others). He famously palled around with high profile peeps like Cher and Sonny Bono, the latter of whom, may he rest in peace, was named young Anthony's godfather. How's that for a whackadoodle Hollywood pedigree?

As Mister Kiedis grew up fast and loose on the gritty streets of Los Angeles he eventually hooked up with his future Red Hot Chili Peppers band mates. In classic rock star fashion, Mister Kiedis dabbled in drugs—okay he more than dabbled he developed a raging addiction, and, along with his band mates, earned a special kind of notoriety in the early 1980s for performing in nothing but a jock strap and boots or, even more suggestively, wearing nothing but boots and a tube sock tied around his junk. Naturally he bedded and dated and hooked up with a beautiful battalion of lithe and lusty young models, musicians, actresses, and other female hangers-on. There was Nina Hagan, Ione Skye, Sinéad O'Connor, supermodels Heidi Klum and Jessica Stam, actress Laura Prepon, and, most recently, a stunning and very young looking brunette usually identified in the tabs and gossip glossies as model Helena Vestergaard. Along the way Mister Kiedis, sober for more than a dozen years, and his Chili Pepper pals won three AMAs, eight VMAs, one BMA and seven Grammys. Last year (2012) the band and all is members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The most recent digital listing details for the Sunset Strip property recently acquired by Mister Kiedis don't indicate the square footage. The L.A. County Tax Man puts it at 2,679 but that may or may not be accurate. Listing do, however, show the sophisticatedly staged, two-story Euro-style villa has three bedrooms, four bathrooms, three fireplaces, and garage parking for two cars.

High walls, locked gates, and a closed circuit t.v.-equipped security system that will record your ass if you so much as slow down in front of the house enhance the privacy and security of the residence that sits below street level down a serpentine, wrought iron-railed brick stairway.

A compact foyer leads into the main living room that isn't particularly large but is undeniably grand and voluminous with a 14-foot hard-carved ceiling imported from a cathedral in Europe, a 10-foot tall solid limestone fireplace that was probably snatched from some old building in Europe, too, and an arched window that extends to the floor and almost reaches the ceiling is flanked by normal-height glass doors that lead out to an awning-shaded and wrought iron-railed dining balcony with a perfectly lovely but hardly overwhelming over-the-tree-top city view.

A archway—it looks to be the exact same height as the arched window in the living room—leads into the groin-vaulted dining room where Mister Fernandez replaced a ticky-tacky wall of mirrors with an aged-looking mural that depicts what appears to Your Mama to be—but is surely not—a Victorian-era Florentine street scene.

The adjoining kitchen is oddly shaped and quite tight given the property's $3.65 million sale price, but it is well-equipped with high-quality stainless steel appliances, rough-edged stone counter tops, and cabinets that appear to be—but may not be—constructed of—or maybe faced with—some sort of rustic, reclaimed barn wood.

At the bottom of a stair well that looks dark and narrow in listing photos, there's a library/den/possible bedroom outfitted with a quaint corner fireplace and a spine-tingling, sky-lit 16-foot ceiling. Elsewhere there's a small guest bedroom and a second, much larger bedroom with a private sitting area, an awning-shaded Juliet balcony, and a full wall of windows—floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall—that overlook the swimming pool. The third bedroom suite is smaller and cozier with a fireplace, private terrace accessible through two sets of French doors, and an en suite abutting facility.

The lower level of the house opens at the tree- and shrubbery-ringed backyard where a series of wrought iron-railed red brick terraces step down the hillside. A corkscrew spiral stair links the dining balcony off the upper level living and dining rooms to the plunge-sized dark-bottomed swimming pool and spa.

As one might expect, often mustachioed and sometimes soul-patched Mister Kiedis maintains a rock-star size property portfolio that in addition to his latest acquisition above the Sunset Strip also includes: a gated mini-estate with a blade-shaped swimming pool in the Point Dume area of Malibu purchased in October 2005 for $4,825,000; An ocean front house near Hanalei Bay on the North Shore of Kaua'i picked up in April 2005 for $2.6 million; A two bedroom and 2.5 bathroom townhouse type residence in a affluent guard-gated development in Las Vegas that he snatched up in December 2005 for $570,000; And a lake-front residence on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, MI bought way back in 1996 for $220,000.

listing photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Westside Estate Agency

José Reyes Keeps a Real Estate Toe in New York

BUYER: José Reyes
LOCATION: Old Brookville, NY
PRICE: $4,578,000 (list)
SIZE: 7,669 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Just because Dominican Republic-born professional baseballer José Reyes now plays for the Toronto Blue Jays* doesn't mean the former New York Met doesn't plan to keep a significant real estate toe hold in the New York area.

In 2007 Mister Reyes and his wife, Katherine, shelled out $3.25 million for an approximately 5,000 square foot house in a gated enclave in the affluent Long Island community of Manhasset and now, thanks to a real estate canary we'll call Harry Hasthedish, we've learned that the deadlocked four-time All Star shortstop is about to buy a bigger house in the wealthier (and more waspy) Long Island village of Old Brookville where the (2010) median household income surged above $245,000 per year. As of this morning property records don't yet reflect a transfer of ownership so we can't say how much Mister Reyes agreed to pay for the place but our brief research shows the the estate-sized spread was originally listed in mid-2011 at $4,999,000 and last listed with an asking price of $4,578,000.

Of course, Your Mama don't know a thing about professional baseball so we had to consult the internets and our boozy, ball crazy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau for a little background on Mister Reyes who, turns out, really knows how to hit the damn ball and steal bases. He hit more triples than anyone else in the major leagues in 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2011 and he stole more bases than any of the other professional baseball jocks in 2005, 2006, and 2007. In late 2011, after eight seasons with the New York Mets, Mister Reyes signed on for a six year stint with the Miami Marlins in a package deal worth $106 million. Just a year later, in an effort to decrease their overall payroll, the Marlins traded Mister Reyes to the Toronto Blue Jays who assumed the same pay package as he had in Miami.

Listing details for Mister Reyes' new residence in Old Brookville that Your Mama teased out of the interweb clearly show the red brick and cedar shingled quasi-colonial was built in 2006 on just over 3.5 acres but it does not indicate the square footage, which the Nassau County Tax Man puts it at 7,669 square feet. Listing details do show, however, that the two (or more) story house has six bedrooms and six full and two half bathrooms as well as 10-foot ceilings, extensive mill work, custom wood floors throughout, and a fully finished basement.

Formal living and dining rooms open directly off the double-height foyer and adjoining stair hall, the former with a fireplace and French doors and the latter with flesh-toned walls above a waist-high chair rail and a glimmery, palace-worthy crystal chandelier. Also in the general vicinity of the front door are a den with fireplace surmounted by a flat screen t.v. and a dark paneled library with another fireplace surmounted by a flat screen television.

The nearby kitchen is certainly large and well equipped with a Subaru-sized center island, granite counter tops, two-tone distressed raised panel cabinetry, and top-quality appliances but—frankly—it looks like the high-end kitchen of about 400 million other high-end kitchens in upscale suburban mansions and macmansions across the country. An adjoining breakfast room is wrapped on three sides by large windows and looks out over the flat (and featureless) football field-sized backyard.

The master suite has a private sitting room with fireplace, roomy bedroom and a very beige bathroom with twin pedestal sinks, a glassed in steam shower and a free-standing soaking tub set below a strange and unnecessary raised fireplace. Think about that fireplace, children, who wants to flip that thing on and sit in the tub where you can't even see it? Pleeze.

A finished basement, which probably adds a couple thousand more square feet to the total size of the house, includes a wine cellar, a small (carpeted) room the sellers used as a fitness suite, and a gigantic (barely furnished) game room with a carved wood bar that looks like an expensive (but boring) replica of a bar in an Old Timey saloon.

listing photos: Shawn Elliott Luxury Homes and Estates

Thor to the Rescue!

"More coffee?" I said noticing the empty cup on the breakfast table.
"Please," Mr. Wonderful said handing it to me.
"More bread?"
"Please."
"More procrastination?"
"PLEASE!"

It had gotten to this point in our lives. Mr. Wonderful, the ultimate DIY die-hard, was tired of DIY-ing. More correctly, he was tired of breaking up concrete having already devoted two days of his life to it and knowing he'd have to do at least one more but… he just didn't want to so he was looking for methods to stall, to put off the work, to play hooky.

I have to admit, I didn't blame him. The reason for the procrastination was that after breaking up all that concrete we'd found another concrete structure located under the previous concrete slab. This structure had four walls and was built as: 1) The dump bucket for the pool's original filter; 2) A support for the pool; or 3) A hiding place for pirate booty. Anyway you looked at it, the structure resembled a sarcophagus, you know, the thing they used to bury England's dead kings in.

"Maybe Richard III is buried in our backyard!" I said hoping to move my spouse to break the thing down.

"They already found him last year. Under a parking lot. In England," Mr. Wonderful said putting his feet up on the table and sipping his espresso. It's hard to trick a well-read spouse but I kept trying.

"Maybe pirates buried gold doubloons in our backyard! Arrr!" I said limping across the floor with a fake peg leg.

"I'm glad they used concrete bricks manufactured in the 20th century to hide their 18th century booty in," he said without looking at me. It's hard to trick a spouse who knows his history but I kept trying.

"Maybe I'll just do it myself," I said marching outside with a hammer.

"No way!" he said chasing after me.

After descending into the pit, I swung a hammer at the sarcophagus wall only to have my swing interrupted by Mr. Wonderful's arm. 

"I'll do this," he said.

"I got here first." We debated who would do the arm breaking hammer work and who would do the back breaking rubble removal work. What a toss up. He wouldn't hear of me hammering and instead insisted that I continued removing concrete chunks. Since the amount of rubble in our backyard rivaled that found in Dresden after World War II, I didn't argue. Like the sarcophagus, the rubble, too, had to go.  

As I removed wheelbarrows full of rubble, Mr. Wonderful swung at the sarcophagus's walls to no avail. The thing had been built to last and it was outlasting Mr. Wonderful's strength, stamina and interest. 

"Let's switch jobs," I said. Mr. Wonderful kinked an eyebrow. "I want to hammer," I said. "Please?" Finally we swapped tools. Gripping the hammer I swung it like Venus Williams at Wimbledon and BAM! Part of the wall broke off. I swung again. WHAP! More of the wall fell. Again, THWAP! And the walls tumbled down like Jericho. Mr. Wonderful paused to look at me with shock.

"You're good at building things," I said gritting my teeth. "And I'm good at breaking them."

"Don't let me stop you."

I swung again this time with a smile. There's a time to procrastinate and there's a time to channel your inner Thor. What comic book, fanboy geek doesn't want to pretend to be a Norse god making the world right by breaking things with a cool hammer? I confess to being one of those comic book, fanboy geeks. BLAM!

By the end of the day, the sarcophagus walls were gone as were my arm muscles. Ahhh, it's not hard pretending to be Thor if it'll help your spouse. POW!

Those Crazy Quaids Do It Again in Pacific Palisades

BUYERS: Dennis and/or Kimberly Buffington-Quaid
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $5,100,000
SIZE: 6,114 square feet, 5-7 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to both real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak and our eerily well-informed informant Lucy Spillerguts, Your Mama has learned why the soon-to-be-divorced May-December duo Dennis and Kimberly Quaid—he's 59, she's 45—unexpectedly flipped the contemporary Pacific Palisades pad they'd only purchased seven months earlier* back on the market two weeks ago with a fifty thousand dollar mark up: In early July (2103), through a vexatiously named trust, the estranged but co-parenting couple surreptitiously shelled out $5,100,000 to acquire a 1920s Spanish-style mini-mansion set privately and securely behind high hedges and an electronic drive gate on a sweeping curve of Sunset Boulevard in the ritzy Riviera area of Pacific Palisades.**

Property records indicate the 6,114 square foot residence has three bedrooms and nine bathrooms but digital listing details Your Mama scrounged up show there are six bedrooms and nine bathrooms. Making matters more confusing, the listing description parsed the bedrooms count as such: four bedrooms suites on the upper floor including a master suite with dual closets and bathrooms (shown above) and a fifth bedroom suite on the main level plus two additional staff rooms. As all of the children who can perform basic arithmetic can easily figure, that makes for a total seven bedrooms. Anyways...

The gated motor court at the front of the property has grass growing between the flagstone pavers and can accommodate up to ten cars, according to online marketing materials. A stout pair of mature palm trees frame the stained glass window flanked front door that opens into a circular foyer that steps down to a reception gallery. The hotel-lobby sized space sports an unfortunate and vaguely Medieval style with stone flooring, an ill-advised faux-stone wall treatment around the front door, numerous stone-framed doorways, and antique chandelier and half a dozen or more matching sconces, wrought iron stair railings, and what appear to Your Mama to be at least three—three!—stone and/or tile encrusted fountains.

An ever so brief hall with arched niches connects the foyer to the grandly proportioned step-down living room with dark brown wood floors, large windows on three walls, a colossal carved stone fireplace and chimney breast, two antique chandeliers, and a vaulted, exposed wood ceiling. Multi-paned glass and steel doors join the living room to the formal dining room where an over-sized, essentially square-shaped stained glass window sits colorfully between two tall and narrow ten-pane leaded glass windows.

The roomy, center island eat-in kitchen is fully updated with a vintage vibe and is dressed with marble counter tops and white subway tile back splashes the extend all the way to the ceiling and expensively equipped with two glass-fronted fridge/freezers, two dishwashers, a super-sized commercial-style range set into a subway tiled niche, a built-in coffee maker, a built-in vegetable steamer, and at least one under-counter wine fridge.

Double arched doors at the back of the reception gallery open to a small but state-of-the-art media room with terraced seating, a high-def projection system plus a large flat-screen t.v. set in to the wall, and a giant, pane-free window that overlooks the backyard.

Other notable features and creature comforts include a snazzy home automation system, a restored powder room with vintage tile work, a circular second floor sitting room, a ground level yoga/work out room (that was probably originally designed as a staff room). Listing details indicate there are two laundry rooms, a compact one just off the kitchen and another much larger one on the lower level that's kitted out with two washers, two dryers, two side-by-side slop sinks, and a stainless steel topped table in the center of the room.

The house sits tightly on a .37 acre sloping parcel but, none-the-less, outdoor living spaces are many and include a sun-baked tiled terrace atop the attached two car garage, a central courtyard embraced on three sides by the towering rear façade and at least one more dining/lounging terrace plus a flat patch of lawn ringed by a thick wall of trees and shrubs and a large swimming pool and spa girdled by a basket weave pattern red brick terrace.

*At least one report from the time of the purchase indicates that although title was held in both their names Missus Quaid, a real estate agent in Texas, and the couple's five year old twins retained exclusive use of the property until the children turn 18.

**Your Mama has no idea if Mister and Third Missus Quaid plan to reconcile and cohabitate in the Sunset Boulevard mini-mansion or if, more likely, the acquisition is part of soon-to-be-third-ex-Missus Quaid's settlement.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker (via Hot Pads)

Did Y'all Hear...

...that in 2008 an as yet unidentified 40-something year old Belgian art dealer bought the last home of Spanish surrealist Pablo Picasso in the historic village of Mougins, about 20 minutes from the Promenade de la Croisette in Cannes, for between 10 and 12 million Euros—that's $13 to $16 million U.S. dollars—gave the well-situated Provençal pad a striking minimalist make-over and popped it back on the market with a hair raising and hoopla-ensuring $220,000,000 asking price?

Current listing details and previous reports in the newspaper Nice Matin (via the hardworking kids at Curbed) show the stone-walled 35-room hillside villa, once known as Mas de Notre-Dame du Vie and now dubbed Domaine L'Antre du Minotaure, stands three stories high, has 10 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, a guest house and a guard house, two swimming pools, a tennis court, an extensive gardens.

Now children, this property has an impeccable pedigree and it is certainly something to behold even if the austerely finished and sparely furnished day-core ain't your thang but 220 million George Washingtons? Well...Your Mama thinks it's probably best to let the gloriously opinionated children and any prospective buyers decide whether the 14-17 time mark up over the reported 2008 sale price makes a lick of real estate sense, even with the no-doubt time consuming and costly renovation and restoration.

1,2,3...Go!

listing photos: Corcoran

Your Mama Hears...

...From a trusted canary deep inside the Platinum Triangle real estate world—let's call her Heidi Hearsay—that Will and Jada Pinkett Smith recently floated their epic compound in the Santa Monica Mountains near Calabasas (CA) as a whisper listing with a very loud $42 million asking price.*

The Tinseltown power players, who are forever insisting they are not splitting up or having some sort of unconventional open relationship, spent four years and heaven only knows how many millions to custom construct the 150-plus acre Calabasas area complex that includes an approximately 25,000 square foot adobe-style mega-mansion that bends around a plaza-sized central motor court before it branches off to accommodate garage bays for at least eight cars with additional living space above.

Some of the children may recall that the Smith's humongous, hand-crafted domicile was featured on the cover and in the glossy page of the September 2011 issue of Architectural Digest. The multi-winged house was described in A.D. by the home's Santa Fe-based architect, Stephen Samuelson, as "various interpretations of adobe in Persian, Moroccan, Spanish, as well as Southwest American cultures."

The article elaborates on the "deeply personal" and sensually curvaceous interior spaces that include decorative this and thats such as hand-troweled plaster walls, miles of exposed ceiling timbers reclaimed from old barns and homesteads, hammered wrought iron accents and stair banisters, floors and ceiling with spiral and infinity knot patterns pressed into the stucco or fashioned from river stones, brilliantly colored stained glass windows, and antique hand-carved wood doors from around the globe.

The Smiths first worked with esteemed nice-gay decorator Waldo Fernandez, according to the  A.D. article, but at some point switched to L.A.-based lady decorator Judith Lance who filled every nook and cranny with hand-crafted bits and bobs from around the globe as well as scads of bespoke pieces, including a bed canopy in the master bedroom painstakingly made entirely of tiny ball chains. It's a bit much for Your Mama's less show-stoppy personal taste in day-core and it's certainly something our house gal, Svetlana, would not even dream of dusting without a guarantee of a sizable bonus but it's certainly an impressive construction and conversation piece.

The double-height main entry spills easily into a double height living room with massive carve stone fireplace, a dozen or more towering jute wrapped columns, and a retractable skylight. That's right, a retractable skylight. There are numerous other secret nooks and cozy crannies throughout the house that provide more intimate spaces for private chats and solitary moments.

The dining room has rich vermilion walls and another kiva-ish fireplace plus an adjoining circular lounge with cushioned built-in seating that's perfect for taking in a palette cleansing aperitif or satiating digestif. The kitchen has cabinets crafted from 19th century oak panels, double fridge/freezers, a built-in pizza oven, and an adjoining breakfast room where an over-sized picture window frames a long view across a vast lawn toward a lakeside gazebo.

There's a meditation lounge with circular skylight, a billiards room, a luxuriously appointed screening room, and a state-of-the-art recording studio where a then 9 or 10 year old Willow Smith recorded her brilliantly catchy if terrifically annoying Platinum certified single Whip My Hair.

The master suite has high ceilings with exposed timbers, a raised hearth fireplace, and towering arched glass doors that link to a private terrace with built-in lounge seating. There's also a custom-fitted closet/dressing room that Your Mama would bet our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, is bigger than all the bedrooms in our house put together plus a sculptural bathroom with an over-sized flesh-colored soaking tub and a shower cave lined with glimmering pebbles.

Outdoor recreations and amusements include a man-made lake with a small island accessible via a narrow footbridge, a multi-pronged lagoon-like swimming pool complex with poolside cabana/changing room, a sunken trampoline, a sand volleyball court, and side-by-side basketball and tennis courts. The landscaped areas that surround the house give way to scrubby, undeveloped hillsides, rugged escarpments, and a distant view of Saddle Peak.

We're not sure if Mister and Missus Smith are looking to significantly lighten their real estate load or if they're simply looking to cash in the currently electrified upper end real estate market but it was recently revealed that the Smiths surreptitiously sold their 7-acre Hawaiian hideaway on the island of Kauai in an off-market deal for around $20 million to Russian real estate baller Dmitry Rybolovlev. Mister Rybolovlev is the very same fella, in case any of y'all somehow don't know, who paid brash real estate mogul Donald Trump a brain freezing $95 million for Maison de L'Amitie—a 33,000 square foot beast of a house on 6.26 acre ocean front acres in Palm Beach that he would like to raze and subdivide. He's also the same guy who shelled out $88 million dollars for financier Sandy Weill's terraced penthouse at 15 Central Park West in New York City and last year dropped another $150+ million for the Greek island of Skorpios and the neighboring island of Sparti.**

Your Mama's research shows Mister and Missus Smith's still impressive property portfolio that includes several properties in Pennsylvania—he was raised up in and around Philly—including a 3.34 acre estate with an 8,000+ square foot mansion in Bryn Mawr, PA. In the Los Angeles area the couple own a 4,100+ square foot mock-Med mini-macmansion in Woodland Hills that they snatched up in August 2010 for $910,000 and way back in 2003 the pampered pair quietly shelled out $3.4 million for a 4.66 acre equine-friendly estate in the guard-gated, star-stocked and equestrian-friendly community of Hidden Hills. It's here, Your Mama thinks but can't confirm, that the Smith family lived while their Calabasas compound was under construction.

*Use yer noggins, nuggets. Although our informant Heidi Hearsay is a hardcore mover and shaker in the real estate game and has provided us with eerily accurate top secret intel many times in the past, Your Mama can't currently vouch for the accuracy of this particular chewy morsel. So, for now, of course, this ain't nuthin' but mouth watering celebrity real estate rumor and gossip, at least until it pops up in of the more respectable property gossip columns.

**At least one of the three purchases listed here were acquired through trusts associated with Mister Rybolovlev's 20-something year old daughter, Ekaterina, but most property gossips assume Poppa Rybolovlev is the the real owner or at least the money behind the brutally pricey purchases.

aerial photo (Calabasas): Bing
photo (Hawaii): Houses.com

Poor O.J. Simspon...

...As The Juice whittles away his days in a Nevada penitentiary doing 9 to 33* on a 2008 conviction for robbery and kidnapping the bank has seized his Spanish hacienda-style house in Kendall, FL after he failed to make mortgage payments for the last two or three years.

The disgraced former Heisman Trophy winner purchased the property in 2000 for $575,000 and court papers parsed by South Florida celebrity and property gossip Jose Lambiet at Gossip Extra reveal he now "owes  the bank a grand total of $892,283.11, including the $660,000-principal, fees, interests and court costs." The house, assessed by the Miami-Dade County appraiser at only $481,000, is scheduled to be auctioned on October 29 (2013).

Property records and aerial imagery show the single story 4 bedroom and 4 bathroom residence sits on 1.65 landscaped acres with a circular motor court, a half-court basketball court and a swimming pool.

What Your Mama wants to know is how come it took the bank three years to foreclose? They don't normally wait that long to foreclose on less (in)famous people, do they?

*Mister Simpson was recently granted parole on a few of his many convictions but will remain in prison for at least four more years.

aerial photo: Bing

Rumor Has It...

...an historic San Francisco mansion at that quietly traded hands in April (2013) for $35,000,000—the highest price ever paid for a single family residence in The City—may not have been bought by Trevor and Alexis Traina as was originally reported by all the Bay Area high society and property gossips but rather by young and generously-compensated Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer and her venture capitalist husband Zack Brogue.

As far as as Your Mama knows Mister and Missus Traina were first identified as the buyers of the $35 million mansion by the well-connected property fanatics at Socketsite and it was those wildly industrious kids at Curbed who, yesterday, were the first to suggest that the deep-pocketed buyers may actually be Miz Mayer and Mister Brogue. Here's what happened...

The august, Tudor style pile, listed in April (2011) for $33,900,000 by Sandra Gale, the founder of a company that supplies food and beverages to the airline industry, was quietly sold by Peter Baumann, a German-born New Age music pioneer turned real estate investor and progressive-minded think tank starter, who acquired the walled and gated hillside property in late 2011 for an unknown amount.

Property records indicate the residence in question was acquired by a corporate entity, Bellihouse, LLC, that obscures the identity of the buyer but curiously links to another large, multi-story house just one block away that per property records reveal is owned by Trevor and Alexis Traina, who had it photographed for the November 2009 issue of Vogue.

It might seem illogical and/or improbable to those who don't orbit in upper echelon of money and power, but the kids at Curbed snitched yesterday that the high-end Fog City real estate circles are currently aswirl with tongue wagging rumors that Mister and Missus Traina may have sneakily absorbed the house into a trust they control in order to obscure the identity of the property's real buyers. Certainly, stranger things have occurred.

Listing information that Your Mama dug up on the internets shows the house in question, near the western terminus of Broadway in the historically natty and notoriously nabobish Pacific Heights 'hood, was designed by preeminent San Francisco architect Frederick H. Meyer and built in 1922. The mansion retains much of its original elegance and architectural grandeur with hardwood floors, leaded glass windows, heavy duty moldings, and hand crafted mill work.

The house occupies a prime, mid-block position on a stretch of Broadway that's often referred as "Billionaire's Row" due to the slew of filthy rich and socially connected movers and shakers who own lavish mansions on the street, people such as Gordon Getty, Roger Barnett, Larry Ellison, and Mark Pincus whose newly acquired house is technically on Pacific but backs up to Broadway. Also on Broadway—next door to Mister Pincus, actually—is the the still unfinished mansion and guest house that Phoenix-based billionaire Peter Sperling—his daddy founded the internet-based Phoenix University—picked in 2004 for $32,000,000 and been for sale on and off since early 2010 when he shoved it on the open market with a ridiculously optimistic but publicity generating $65 million price tag. But that's another tale for another day...

A quick study of listing details, listing photos, and a mouth-watering floor plan included with digital marketing materials that were provided to Your Mama by a kind compadre shows the four floor behemoth that may or may not have been bought by Yahoo!'s lady CEO has about 11,000 square feet with four principal family bedrooms and 4 full and 2 partial bathrooms plus two staff bedrooms and one bathroom on the mansion's lowest level.

Also noted by Your Mama and/or called out in marketing materials: five fireplaces; two kitchens; two terraces—both on the front side of the house where they don't benefit from the toe tingling city, bridge and bay views; an underground garage parking for four cars; at least five storage rooms; a 3,000 bottle wine cellar; and a compact, somewhat awkwardly positioned passenger elevator that services all four floors.

The main floor living and entertaining spaces include a marble floored reception hall where there's a tiny telephone room tucked under the staircase, generously proportioned formal living and dining rooms, and a morning room for casual meals. An extensive, main floor service wing contains a spacious center island kitchen with all the top-quality bells and whistles, a commodious butler's pantry with silver storage closet, a laundry/catering room with direct street access, a home office, a massage room, and a partial bathroom with toilet and tub...the sink is in the massage room according to listing details.

One of the guest/family bedrooms on the second floor has a fireplace, a walk-in closet, and access to a tight hall bathroom while the other slightly smaller guest/family bedroom has spectacular views and direct access to a Jack 'n' Jill bathroom shared with the adjacent wood-paneled library. The master suite stretches the full depth of the house on the second floor with an graceful, semi-circular bank of windows on one end and on the other a wide row of windows that frame the exact sort of panoramic bridge and bay views that many high-brow San Francisco real estate fantasies are woven. The compartmentalized master bathroom does double duty as the closet/dressing room with numerous built-in dressers and wardrobes.

The only bathroom on the uppermost floor opens to the stair landing/hallway and is shared by a ballroom-sized family room and a bedroom suite with private sitting room and walk-in closet.

Lush, terraced gardens step down the steep hillside behind the house. Set well below the house are a heated outdoor swimming pool and spa, both exceedingly rare luxuries for San Francisco that are—we can all be assures—preposterously expensive to heat at any time of year in frequently frigid and foggy San Francisco.

Miz Meyer and Mister Bogue, who may or may not be the actual buyers of the mansion in question, already maintain a posh penthouse atop the Four Seasons Residences in San Francisco where there they installed a colorful and no doubt remarkably expensive 400+ piece Dale Chihuly sculpture n the ceiling. The tech industry bigwigs also keep a Craftsman-style house in the heart of the Silicon Valley, in Palo Alto, where they have installed a two-story soda shop in their backyard that's a miniature model of Palo Alto's Peninsula Creamery.

*Missus Traina, in case you don't know, is a lifestyle blogger and heiress to a significant fast food fortune—her maiden name is Swanson, you do the math—and Mister Traina is the young tech entrepreneur son of philanthropic San Francisco socialite Dede Wilsey and her second husband, shipping magnate John Traina who was later the fourth of romance novelist Danielle Steel's to-date five husbands. Anyways...

listing photos and floor plan: Pacific Union

A Painful Break Up

"You getting ready to work?" My 86 year-old neighbor said clutching his newspaper.

"Yes, Harold," I said spreading black plastic on the driveway.

"This job going to be a big one?"

"Yes, Harold."

"You have all the tools you need?"

"Yes, Harold."

"Can I watch?"

"No, Harold!"

Mr. Wonderful and I were embarking on the biggest DIY job we'd ever done on The House and the last thing I wanted was an audience. If Harold had offered to help us with the work, that would have been a different matter. But I didn't know how much weight his 86 year-old arms could carry, how much stress his 86 year-old heart could take and how much white wine his 86 year-old liver could digest. Yep, on this morning my spouse and I began with a glass of Chardonnay then promptly put on our boots and went to work.

We drank before noon because we believe in pleasure before pain. And oh boy, the pain was coming. In steps.

Since our entire backyard was covered in hard surfaces--concrete, brick, titanium--we'd decided to remove some of it, specifically the concrete slab which used to be the foundation for the pool's original filter. You know, the one the Ancient Egyptians installed. 

Here was our day:

Step #1 Went to The Home Depot to rent a circular saw with diamond tips.

Step #2  Back at The House Mr. Wonderful steered the saw, cutting through the concrete. He followed the straight lines we'd made with the sidewalk chalk. We're very high tech.

Step #3 Went back to The Home Depot to return the saw and and rent a jackhammer.

Step #4 The jackhammer weighed 25 pounds but felt like 160 pounds. It broke up the concrete successfully turning the formerly flat surface into a pile of rubble.

Step #5 Mr. Wonderful went back to The Home Depot to return the 25 pound jackhammer, meanwhile-- 

Step #6 I loaded concrete rubble into a wheelbarrow and dumped it on the black plastic in the driveway, meanwhile--

Step #7 Harold looked on with excitement wishing he could participate!

Step #8 I lifted out the last of the broken up concrete chunks and underneath discovered… more intact concrete. Arrgh!

Step #9 Mr. Wonderful returned to The House, saw the extra concrete that needed to be broken up then collapsed on a lounge chair. Arrgh!

Step #10 Harold wanted to get his hands dirty but couldn't. Arrgh!

Step #11 Mr. Wonderful's stiff arms were in pain, meanwhile--

Step #12 I experienced burning back pain, meanwhile--

Step #13 Harold felt massive mental anguish at not working our job.

I crawled to the fridge, retrieved the Chardonnay and despite our sweaty clothes and dirty boots, we drank the wine because it lessened our misery. Although Harold remained sore from being 86 years old and not toiling away. I grabbed a juice glass and poured our neighbor a splash of Chardonnay. He sniffed and drank it. The beverage helped him, too.

We survived an agony-filled DIY day. But realized we'd have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again. But then, that was tomorrow. Today we'd worked well and drunk Chardonnay. Yep, the pleasure eased the pain.

Michael C. Hall Catches Case of Real Estate Fickle

SELLER: Michael C. Hall
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,350,000
SIZE: 4,572 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms (total)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Six-time Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe winning thespian/boob-toob actor Michael C. Hall (Dexter, Six Feet Under) has been on a bit of a real estate roll. Last June he and his second ex-wife and Dexter co-star, Jennifer Carpenter, sold a contemporary residence in L.A.'s celebrity-soaked Outpost Estates* neighborhood for $1,837,500 to British supper club queen Tamsin Lonsdale.

Shortly thereafter, in July 2012 via a trust several sources including Lucy Spillerguts linked to him, Mister Hall quietly shelled out $1,950,000 a quirky 1926 Spanish Revival style micro-compound in the Hollywood Hills.

Less than a year later Mister Hall quickly caught a classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and in May 2013 dropped $3,825,000 on a gut-renovated and modernized 1923 Spanish Colonial style spread in the affluent and also celeb-saturated Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. No longer in need of his Hollywood Hills abode, he's flipped it back on the open market with an asking price of $2,350,000.

Current listing details show Mister Hall's no-longer-needed street-to-street mini-compound in the Hollywood Hills comprises a total of 4,572 square feet divided into a main house with four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms plus a separate, sky-lit guest house with an additional bedroom and bathroom.

We're not sure the entirety of alterations and improvements Mister Hall made to the property in his ever-so-brief ownership but we do know from a few minutes research on the internets that, at the very least, he remodeled the master bathroom and replaced the tennis court—located below the residence and partially atop the detached three car garage—with a sunny, raised planter garden with bits of lawn, a handful of olive trees, and some succulents.

A discreet, gated entry at the tail end of a short cul-de-sac opens to a covered exterior stairway that descends a full flight to completely private brick-paved, tree-shaded and and foliage enshrouded dining courtyard. The front door, set into a deep loggia off the courtyard, opens into a spacious foyer with red tile floor and vaulted, exposed wood ceiling. The red tile floors continue into the main living room that has a fireplace and two floor-to-ceiling banks of windows on two walls that expose the room to the outdoor living spaces.

It seems obvious that Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota has been up in there and filled the whole house with a boat load of generic, white slip-covered sofas and a whole lotta neo-organic and tribal knick-knacks and doohickies.

The floors switch to wood in the adjoining formal dining where a double set of wood and glass doors connect to a wine room lined with wooden bottle racks. Other living spaces in the main house include a bedroom-sized media room with gigantic built-in television screen and French doors and an oddly-shaped library fitted with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases, a corner fireplace, and a pitched exposed wood ceiling.

Although we know from our research on the interweb that at the time Mister Hall purchased the property in 2012 that the kitchen was partly updated with top-quality stainless steel appliances current listings don't say much about the kitchen other than that there's an adjoining "reading nook" leading Your Mama to wonders if the cooker-room is still in need of some updating if not a complete overhaul.

All four of the bedrooms in the main house have en suite facilities and the the upper level master suite has at least two sets of glass doors that open to a long, awning-shaded terrace with canyon, mountain, and sky views.

The separate guest house has a carpeted bedroom (with exterior entrance), and an airy, sky-lit main living room/art studio with basket weave pattern brick floor and wood-framed glass doors.

*Other celebrity residents of Outpost Estates include but are far from limited to Charlize Theron, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy, Jason Statham—who bought his house from Ben Stiller, and Mario Testino.

listing photos: The Agency

In Case You Haven't Heard: Celine Dion

SELLERS: Céline Dion and René Angélil
LOCATION: Jupiter Island, FL
PRICE: $72,000,000
SIZE: Gigantic

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In case any of the celebrity real estate obsessed children haven't yet heard, Canadian songstress Céline Dion and her significantly older husband/manager René Angélil have hoisted their epic, village-like ocean front compound in Jupiter Island, FL on the open market with a publicity ensuring $72,000,000 price tag.

The fully fenced, electronically gated, and heavily fortified 5.7 acre spread eats up more than 400 feet of beach frontage and encompasses half a dozen Bahamian-inspired style structures including a mammoth mansion that spans about 17,000 square feet, including the basement. The main floor living and entertaining spaces include a formal living room with vaulted ceiling, a media room, and an over-sized butler's kitchen. The gigantic open concept family living and dining area has a "formal" dining area, an all-white and expensively appointed kitchen with long snack counter, a built-in breakfast banquette, and a lounge area where the fireplace is surmounted by a large flat screen t.v. and flanked by angled windows and sliding glass doors that have sweeping views over the manicured lawns to the rough and tumble surf.

There's at least one dedicated guest suite on the main floor (above) that's all decked out and did up in chocolate brown that includes a private bathroom, a walk-in closet, and direct access to a screened porch.

There are two en-suite children's bedrooms and a children's den on the second level as well as a massive master suite. Miz Dion and Mister Angélil's innermost chamber has a ceiling mounted t.v. that tilts out of the ceiling for optimal viewing angle. Multiple sliding glass doors open to a private sea view terrace. There are two additional private decks off the master suite, one with fireplace the other with a hot tub. The glitzy master bathroom is worked over in a high-glam manner with mirrored vanity, free-standing soaking tub and a glassed-in steam shower. In addition to the master suite's lavish dressing room that's done up like a swanky boutique—notice the sunglasses display case on the back wall—Mister and Missus Dion-Angélil also have a gargantuan walk-in closet custom fitted with automated clothing racks and shoe carousels.

Additional structures, most of which orbit around the water park-like swimming pool, include a two four bedroom guest houses, a tennis house with simulated golf range, a pool house with built-in grill and full kitchen, and a beach side cottage with sleeping loft and massage room as well as additional staff quarters and parking facilities.

The property has not one and not two but three swimming pools, one on the ocean side of the main house and the other two on the road side of the main house that are connected by a lazy river feature. There are water slides and fountains, a gazebo, suntanning shelves, and a fire pit seating area that extends into the geothermal heated pool that's equipped with fiber optic lighting and looks to Your Mama to be about as big as a small pond. The pool is so large that it caused a big brouhaha in the affluent Jupiter Island community and, in fact, in 2010 the town's code enforcement officer who approved the 500,000 gallon body of water was relieved of his his six figure position.

The French Canadian couple want to sell their Jupiter Island compound as they plan to spend more time in Las Vegas where Miz Dion has extended her exceedingly lucrative contract at Caesar's Palace through 2019. Presumably Miz Dion (and her entourage) have exclusive access to a luxury suite at the hotel but home for the Dion-Angélils in Las Vegas is a multi-residence compound that sprawls across three contiguous parcels in an small gated enclave in a gated swanky development that borders Lake Las Vegas in nearby Henderson, NV.

Last May (2012) the May-December couple listed their opulent, custom-constructed 24,000 square foot chateau on a private island on the outskirts of Montreal for almost $30,000,000. The 19-ish acre estate remains available on the open market with an oddly complicated asking price of 29,655,500 Canadian dollars, a price that includes most of the mansion's furnishings and day-core minus the Dion-Angélil's personal effects.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty