Dasmarka Real Estate

SELLERS: Bill Lawrence and Christa Miller
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $10,995,000
SIZE: 9,552 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The other day while we puttered around minding our own damn beeswax and mixing up a super-sized early afternoon gin & tonic, Your Mama received a flurry of covert communiques from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who pointed our nosy nose towards a casually uptown country mansion in Los Angeles, CA owned by sitcom creating superstar Bill Lawrence and his comedic actor wife Christa Miller and listed with a price tag of $10,950,000.

While not without acting charms or joke-timing abilities, Miz Miller is none-the-less a lucky lady who seems to have benefited greatly from some good ol' fashioned Tinseltown nepotism. The former child model, was once shot for a soap advert by the legendary snapper Fracesco Scavullo, landed her first tee-vee gig in 1985 on the sitcom Kate & Allie., a program on which her Auntie Susan starred. That, hunnies, would be her one-time Emmy-winning and seven more times-nominated Auntie Susan Saint James who was then and is now legally wedded to three-time Emmy-winning NBC sports television super-producer Dick Ebersol.

Miz Miller later appeared on programs such as Northern Exposure, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Party of Five and Seinfeld before she landed her first big gig on the hokey but wildly successful but no longer airing seven times Emmy-nominated sitcom The Drew Carey Show (TDCS). While doing her thing for her nine seasons on TDCS she hooked up with and hitched her wagon to television writer/producer/creator Bill Lawrence who rocketed to the top of the Hollywood heap in the mid- to late-1990s with the Emmy and Golden Globe winning political sitcom Spin City.

Mister Lawrence went on to create, produce and write the screamingly successful 17-time Emmy-nominated hospital comedy Scrubs. As that hit show wound down in 2009 and '10 Mister Lawrence shifted into high sitcom gear and created–and currently produces and writes–the Golden Globe-nominated Cougar Town, the Courtney Cox post-Friends vehicle that's essentially a less optimistic and more acerbic version of Friends if the friends were a boozy gaggle of 40 year old under achievers in a sleepy coastal town in Florida. Miz Miller, the advantageously-bred and well-betrothed little minx, appeared in 89 episodes of Scrubs and currently stars and holds her own in Cougar Town along with the soo-blime Busy Phillips, the magnificently-formed Josh Hopkins and the under-rated Ian Gomez.

In early 2001, not too long after Mister Lawrence and Miz Miller threw their life-lots in to the same bowl of soup, they acquired a 6 bedroom and 6 bathroom residence in the shadow of The Getty Museum in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, CA. Their nearby neighbors included action film producer and genre game-changer Joel Silver and actors Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart. Your Mama finds conflicting information in records we accessed on the property but it appears the Lawrence-Millers paid $4,300,000 for the 6,312 square foot house and sold it either in May 2007 for $6,422,000 or September 2009 for $7,300,000. Either way they pocketed what to most people would be a small fortune.

A few years after buying a big house in Brentwood, the couple went and bought a big beach house in the Bu. According to The Bizzy Boys and confirmed by our deep throat source Lucy Spillerguts, Mister Lawrence and Miz Miller coughed up $4,500,000 in September 2003 to buy rocker Pat Benatar's 6,107 square foot house perched the cliffs of Malibu's star-studded Point Dume. The 4 bedroom and 5 bathroom residence has a swimming pool on the ocean side of the house and a private stairway that zig-zags precariously down the cliff to the crescent-shaped beach at Dume Cove. Now, bunnies, while it would most certainly be heavenly to walk out our back door and sink our portly tootsies directly in the sand and sea, it gives Your Mama heart palpitations to think of having to haul all the way up those rickety-looking stairs every time we felt nature calling or wanted a hunk of damn cheese.

Anyhoo, all those booty-busting stairs must not scare the Lawrence-Millers who, three children later, traded up from their home on Halvern Drive in Brentwood to a 9,552 square foot East Coast traditional-style mansion in the rustic but ritzy Lower Mandeville Canyon area of Brentwood. Records indicate that in April 2007 the pair paid actress Victoria Principal a princely $12,600,000 for their privately situated mansion that provides the family of five 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms and lovely tree-top canyon views.

All those children with their thinking caps have do doubt already consulted their mental calculators and determined that with property's current asking price of $10,950,000, the couple are looking at a considerable $1,650,000 loss not counting the fat real estate fees that could easily run well upwards of a quarter million clams. And that, puppies, is if the couple's Real Estate–a very successful property purveyor who specializes in the uppity enclave of Brentwood–can perform the unlikely but not impossible feat of a full asking price sale. Combined, the fees and the amount they'll likely flush down the real estate crapper could amount to a bone-rattling two million dollars, or more. Of course, Your Mama does not know bric-a-brac from a pram so we can't say with any authority or direct knowledge of why the Lawrence-Millers want to leave their mansion in Brentwood but it seems obvious even to a moe-ron like Your Mama that if they're willing to take a two million dollar smack to the real estate face on the sale of this house they must want to move reeeeeally damn badly.

Anyhoo, a deep porch that runs along the front of the house overlooks that gated motor court (and side-facing three car garage) and draws one into the front door that opens into a graciously scaled but comfortable house with a tasteful and traditional day-core that looks like it was professionally (and expensively) done in a style that we we'll call "Sophisticated and Inestimably Rich Greenwich, CT Grandma." Upscale East Coast Granny is decidedly not Your Mama's cup of decorating tea and, for what it's worth–and it's really not worth a damn thing–we think the addition of a wee bit of some cutting edge–or at least contemporary–art that would create a missing tension that would more overtly suggest the occupiers of the residence are only middle-aged as opposed to having a toe or two in the grave.

Walnut wood floors run throughout much of the main floor rooms including a baby-blue formal living room with fireplace and a formal dining room with coffered ceiling, wainscoting and an eye-catching corn silk blue wall covering that depicts birds sitting on the branches of rose bushes. Or maybe it's some other sort of bush. Whatever.

The restaurant-sized kitchen has stone flooring, a breakfast area, and over-sized high-grade appliances including a Volkswagen-sized Wolf range and two integrated dishwashers. The adjacent family room, visible through a pair of tall arched doorways that flank a built-in double-sided buffet, has ebony rough-cut beams that criss-cross the ceiling, an stone fireplace with flat-screen tee-vee mounted above it–natch–and French doors the swing inward and lead to a dining terrace shaded by a vine-covered pergola.

Each of the 5 family bedrooms, according to listing information, has en suite facilities and the master bedroom has two plus custom-fitted closets, a fireplace. Above the fireplace in the master bedroom hangs a painting the slides over to reveal a hidden flat-screen boob-toob recessed into the wall.

Additional rooms include a playroom, two wood-paneled offices, media room, an additional sitting room, fitness room and a probably useful but sort of haughty seeming flower arranging/package wrapping room, perfect for the multi-millionairess who probably don't fluff their own flowers or wrap their own gifts.

Many of the rooms at the rear of the mansion's main floor open through a series of French doors to stone-floored loggia that frames park-like views of wide and rolling swathe of deeply watered and unnaturally perfect lawn through wide archways. Mature trees surround the backyard and provide desired privacy around the swimming pool and spa surrounded by flagstone terracing and one of those necessary but intrusive looking child-protection fences. Listen, mommies and daddies, we know these fences are sometimes necessary to spare the lives of kiddies who have tendencies to do dumb things like run like a banshee straight into an unattended swimming pool but we still find them–at least 80-percent of the time–visually intrusive, awkward and a constant reminder that a backyard toddler tragedy breathes hotly and constantly down neck of parents and other lovers of tadpoles, tykes and tots who don't yet know how to tread water.

Given that Mister Lawrence and Miz Miller both seem to be firmly aboard the elusive Hollywood Magic Carpet Ride and that they're, apparently, willing to accept a multi-million dollar loss on the property, Your Mama expects they'll again trade up to something, if not larger, than wit more and better amenities like, say a tennis court, a guest house and/or stables for pet ponies and pigs.

listing photos: Prudential California, Brentwood

BUYER: Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel
LOCATION: Studio City, CA
PRICE: $2,090,000
SIZE: 4,931 square feet, 5-6 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A wee bit of previously unreported celebrity real estate news from nearly a year ago recently bubbled to the surface via The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial. Back in late April 2010, married stars of stage and screen Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs laid out $2,090,000 for a privately situated property in the rustic Fryman Canyon area in Studio City, CA.

Very few actors who attempt to cross over from television to film or from film to stage or stage to television (etc.) have much success. For better or worse, actors often get pigeonholed into a specific medium. Your Mama has a booze-fueled theory about why it is that Tinseltown actors often get packaged up as little more than a typecast commodity but that's really another topic for another place. One of the lucky few who has successfully and seemingly seamlessly got his showbiz jollies out in multiple media mediums is Taye Diggs.

It was humble beginnings in the Big Business of Show for Mister Diggs who in his youth hoofed it at the decidedly unglamorous Busch Gardens amusement park in Williamsburg, VA. Oh, no he didn't. Oh, yes he did. By the mid-1990s Mister Diggs and his well-formed chocolate brown chassis had clawed his way up the showbiz ladder to a coveted spot in the ensemble of Broadway's 1994 revival of Carousel. His Broadway fish got to fryin' and pipes a-blowin' magic the following year when he originated the roll of the mean ol' landlord in the musical theater phenom Rent. He later appeared Chicago and Wicked, both on Broadway.

Mister Diggs quickly transitioned from stage to the silver screen (How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Go, The House on Haunted Hill) and from the big screen to the little screen (Ally McBeal, Kevin Hill, Will & Grace). Since 2007 Mister Diggs has been shaking his money maker on the hospital drama Private Practice, a program we confess to having never bothered to watch.

Mister Diggs and his Tony award-winning wife Idina Menzel (Rent, Wicked, Glee), produced a no-doubt Broadway-bound baby in the fall of 2009. As is often the case with the affluent and/or the famous, a new kid also means a new house.

According to listing information that Your Mama persuaded out of the interweb, the new west coast abode of Mister Digs and Miz Menzel measures a substantial but not gigantic 4,961 square feet and has half a dozen bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms that include a first floor master suite with an unquestionably insipid pooper.

The house, discretely tucked up into the tail end of a cul-de-sac, has no identifiable architectural pedigree or reference; It's just a large but perfectly ordinary house in a desirable location. Since listing photos show the house as it appeared before it was sold to Mister Diggs and Miz Menzel, Your Mama will refrain from a discussion on the previous owners' wildly eclectic decorating choices that run from a painfully banal Ethan Allen traditional sort of thing with beige wall to wall carpeting in the master bedroom to a spare but warm minimalism with a strong twist of mid-century modern in the family room. Put side by side these two rooms do not look like they could possibly be occupied by the same people. But that's no matter, really, since Mister Diggs and Miz Menzel have surely–we hope–hired their own nice, gay decorator to wash away all the decorative sins of the previous owners and turn the house o.u.t.-out in a style that better suits and reflects their own tastes and preferences.

The frosted glass front doors–that appear, much to our absolute horror, to have a Home Despot-style etched detailing–open into a double-height foyer with golden hardwood floors and a curved floating staircase likely to give even a half-assed Feng Shui follower a damn stroke. It's not just that the bottom of the staircase appears in the listing photo to be uncomfortably close to the front door. It's that the bottom of the stairs end directly in front of the front door, a situation that, according to Feng Shui Florinda can cause the home owner's money to tumble down the stairs and right out the front door.

Anyhoo, the residence includes all the normal rooms one expects in a two million dollar crib including a formal living room with fireplace and low-looking ceiling, a formal dining room with second fireplace and French doors that lead to a dining terrace and a second floor office punished with a cramped-looking pitched ceiling and fitted with some very odd Neoclassical-ish built-in shelves and cabinetry.

The kitchen, a notably large but awkwardly configured space, has hardwood floors, a vaulted glass ceiling and an adjacent breakfast area. The nearby family room, by far the nicest and most interesting room in the house as far as Your Mama is concerned, has hardwood floors, a pitched wood ceiling with exposed beams and a bank of extra-wide sliding glass doors that open to the backyard where a flagstone terrace wraps around two sides of the simply-shaped rectangular swimming pool with a wide set of steps at one end and a spa and bench nestled into the opposite end.

All the children who regularly dine at Your Mama's celebrity real estate table surely recall that we just discussed the Fryman Canyon area of Studio City where Survivor host Jeff Probst recently plunked down five million big ones for cowboy singer Gene Autry's former estate. Other well-known property owners in the Fryman Canyon area include Teri Hatcher, Leah Remini, George Clooney, and actor/director Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City) and her hubby director Howard Deutch (My Best Friend's Girl, Pretty in Pink).

Not surprisingly, Mister Diggs and Miz Menzel maintain a New York City residence in the Flatiron near Madison Square Park.

listing photos: Dilbeck Realtors

A staggering sixteen billion dollar (plus) fortune may only make him the 148th-wealthiest man in the world according to the folks at Forbes, but mining magnate Rinat Akhmetov is oft said by the people who say these sorts of things to be Ukraine's richest man. He is also the proud and confirmed new owner of a London penthouse that is among the most expensive apartments ever sold.

Your Mama twittered about this epic real estate event last week when the publicity shit hit the fan on all the property blogs and financial papers. At that time the buyer had yet to be specifically or publicly pinpointed. That changed yesterday–or maybe it was the day before–when a representative of the Ukrainian multi-billionaire confirmed his client's acquisition of a colossal penthouse house atop One Hyde Park, the famously and astonishingly expensive Candy & Candy conceived development in London's natty Knightsbridge nabe.

What Mister Akhmetov actually purchased at One Hyde Park, according to reports, are two massive units–a simplex and a duplex–stacked one on top of the other. Combined the pair of posh pads encompass three floors and cost Mister Akhmetov £136,600,000. That's $222,315,000 for all us Americanos. Numbers that high make Your Mama want to pee in our real estate pants in a disturbing and punishing mix of envy and outrage.

Mister Akhmetov, bless his big-spending heart, reportedly plans to spend another £60,000,000–nearly 100,000,000 U.S. bucks–to combine, re-design and decorate the elephantine penthouse. Based on information provided to Your Mama some time ago by an informant we called French Toast, each full-floor unit at One Hyde Park encompasses approximately 8,500 square feet. Your Mama used that figure to guesstimate that Mister Akhmetov's new digs in London–that he will unlikely occupy but a few weeks or months a year–measures in at well over 20,000 square feet excluding terraces.

Your Mama discussed the glammy One Hyde Park complex three years ago when all the world's real estate freakos like Your Mama were still a-quiver in hot anticipation of Candy & Candy's not yet completed attempt to make manifest an architectural and interior decoratin' tour de force. Prices at One Hyde Park run from a mind-boggling £6,750,000 ($10,985,000) for a one bedroom unit to a stupefying £115,000,000 ($187,161,000) for a duplex spread that may or may not have been acquired by a man named Mohammed Saud Sultan Al Qasimi who hails from one of the seven monarchical fiefdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates. According to the developers (via the Daily Mail) the majority of apartments at One Hyde Park range from £27-33,000,000, approximately $44-54,000,000 to all us peeps across the pond.

Many predicted that the exorbitant price tags coupled with a tanked global economy would spell disaster for One Hyde Park and its investors. Alas, activity at the very high end of the international property market remains relatively brisk compared to the molasses in which much of the world's real estate markets are stuck. But puppies, one must be realistic about how the finances of world's super rich get pinched when the economy dips, sags and plummets. Let's say a person has a net worth of sixteen billion big ones like Mister Akhmetov. Okay? Now, let's say an economic earthquake of some sort, like the recent sub-prime mortgage meltdown hot-mess, causes this person loses half his or her fortune. For many people, including Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter, a loss like that might mean we'll be forced to eat canned cat food for dinner when we're old. For Mister Sixteen Billion Bucks it's not really that big of a deal because, well, he's still got eight billion bucks in the bank, more than enough to maintain a three hundred million dollar pied a terre in London. Don't let anyone tell you life is fair, puppies.

The filthy rich residents at One Hyde Park have unfettered access to a private cinema, a golf simulator, wine cellar and fitness facilities that include an indoor swimming pool, sauna and gym. The building also provides valet services–it seems the über-affluent just hate to park their own cars–24/7 doormen and concierge and room service supplied from the hoity-toity Mandarin Oriental hotel next door.

One Hyde Parkians will also, it's been reported, have private underground access to the Mandarin Oriental hotel and a restaurant created by super-chef Heston Blumenthal of London's famed The Fat Duck. At Mister Blumenthal's Fat Duck earwhere the £160 (per person) prix fixe tasting menu includes palette challenging culinary confections such as Snail Porridge with Iberico Bellota ham and shaved fennel, and Anjou Pigeon with blood pudding and risotto of spelt and umbles. For desert a person might opt for the "BFG," which according to the menu on the interweb consists of kirsch ice cream and the smell of the Black Forest. Oh Jeezis, Mary and Jehosephat, Your Mama begs the hoity-toity restaurateurs of the world show some mercy on the people. Your Mama may be a proud and loud drunkard who loves us some reality tee-vee but we are not, contrary to type, entirely unsophisticated about food. However, what the hell is "the smell of the Black Forest?" Pleeze. Do they perform this sort of ephemeral dish-describing acrobatics in order to make diners feel like hillbilly rubes confronted with the ugly choice of Sophie? Diners at The Fat Duck must either pretend to know what the "smell of Black Forest" is in a hopelessly futile effort to fake their culinary bone fides or they're forced to ask an eye-rolling and 'tude-copping waiter-person to explain what this "smell of Black Forest" actually is and why it's important to the dish.

Anyhoo, the absurdly high prices ensure that only the super-rich need even bother to entertain the notion of a pied-a-terre or permanent residence at One Hyde Park. In accordance, the few names of rumored (and alleged) buyers that have slipped down the international property gossip grapevine are synonymous amongst the jet-setting global elite with near limitless–and mostly nouveau–riches. Kazakh copper king Vladimir Kim is reported to have snatched up a unit as have (allegedly) Irish property developer Ray Grehan, financially embattled Russian property developers Krill Pisarev and Yuri Zhukov and Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabber al Thani, the prime and foreign minister of Qatar.

Nefarious types beware: Buyers of this caliber demand and often require impenetrable state-of-the-art security and as such One Hyde Park provides bullet-proof glass, iris-recognition systems in the elevators, private panic rooms at the like. Not only is the building itself locked up like Fort Knox, many of the residents no doubt have a round-the-clock private security team who just might shoot first and ask questions later.

Equally acclaimed and reviled for their signature style, the Candy Brothers are no strangers to residential property transactions wherein so much money changes hands that it makes the heads of money-hungry multi-millionaires and billionaires alike spin around and spew the putrid vomit of envy. In the early naughts Nick and Christian Candy acquired the (in)famous Monte Carlo penthouse where billionaire banker Edmund Safra perished in a 1999 blaze. They spent years and many millions customizing and transforming the sea view aerie in their signature sleek, textural, dramatic and obviously expensive style. Global property watching children will recall that in September 2010 a big ol' brouhaha broke out in the real estate world about the Candy Brothers selling their shared 17,500 square foot duplex penthouse in Monte Carlo for "a diarrhea inducing £199,000,000." At that time the reported purchase price converted to a truly vexing $306,446,000, a number far greater than the GDP of any number of small nations.

Given the notoriously fickle real estate constitutions of mega-moneyed people around the world it would not surprise us in the least to learn in 2-4 years that Mister Akhmetov no longer wanted his boutique hotel-sized pied a terre. Should this come to pass, would anyone like to predict if Mister Akhmetov will endure a gargantuan loss or if some other free-spending billionaire will come along and pay even more than the three hundred million bucks that Mister Akhmetov is expected to spend on the purchase and reconfiguration? Anyone?

The childre will note: The photos show a typical full floor unit at One Hyde Park and not Mister Akhmetov's triplex penthouse.

interior photos: Daily Mail

BUYER: Megan Ellison
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $13,750,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama first caught wind of this here juicy real estate tidbit about Oracle heiress and budding movie producer Megan Ellison (True Grit) a few weeks ago from on our our Platinum Triangle insiders but forgot all about it until reminded of the matter the other day by The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial.

Miss Ellison, the lucky (and allegedly lesbian) lassie, was born with a proverbial silver real estate spoon in her mouth. Her tech industry tycoon father Larry Ellison–co-founder and CEO of software supernova Oracle–is a notorious trophy property collector with outrageous and sumptuous residences and investment properties all up and down the state of California and beyond. In San Francisco he's got a monumental modern mansion in upper-crust Pacific Heights and down the peninsula, in the sleepy upscale suburban enclave of Woodside, Mister Ellison bunks in a sprawling Japanese-themed compound so meticulously built with traditional and ancient Japanese building practices and materials–it was built, it has been reported, entirely without nails–that it'll make your hair stand right up on end.

Mister Ellison reportedly owns upwards of a dozen properties in Malibu, including five contiguous parcels on Carbon Beach, and the recently dee-vorced big-livin' billionaire recently made real estate waves in the desert where, in early 2011, he dropped a sanity wrecking $42,900,000 for Porcupine Creek, an astonishing 249-acre spread in Rancho Mirage, CA with private 18-hole golf course, an absurdly palatial 18,000-plus square foot main house, four detached guest houses, four more guest casitas and a swimming pool and entertainment complex that looks more like something a person might expect to find at a resort hotel in Scottsdale, AZ rather than in some one's backyard.

Mister Ellison's near-mythic real estate apple apparently did not fall far from the tree because, like him, his daughter has a penchant for pricey properties, particularly, it seems, for compounds. As of Tax Day 2011, young young young Miss Ellison owns three very contemporary cribs on three contiguous lots with unobstructed city views in the very desirable and celebrity-friendly Bird Streets neighborhood high above the Sunset Strip.

The first of Miss Ellison's three Bird Street aeries, a glitzy, glassy, sexy, sassy and quintessentially Steve Hermann-designed house, was acquired amid much fanfare and hoo-ha in early 2008. She, presumably with a financial leg up from her Big Daddy, paid $12,600,000 for the 3 bedroom and 4 pooper party pad.

The following year, in April 2009, she (presumably) used $6,500,000 more of her daddy's dinero to pay media mogul Byron Allen $6,500,000 for the 3,562 square foot house immediately next door. We make no claims as to its veracity, but Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate grapevine that Mister Allen bought the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom house for his drop-dead gorgeous but real estate fickle mother who decided–after her son had done signed the deed on the dotted line–she didn't want to live there. Your Mama does not know Miss Ellison nor do we run in the same sorts of social circles as she does, but we also heard from someone in a position to know that the reason Miss Ellison bought Bryon Allen's unwanted property next door to the one she already owned was because she wasn't thrilled with the lack of view from the courtyard swimming pool in the first house. Bam! How y'all like them real estate apples? That's just how the daughters of billionaires roll.

In 2010 Esquire magazine made use of a newly built modern mansion directly next door the second house Miss Ellison had already acquired on the block. They called it The Esquire House, natch. The suave magazine hosted parties and events and all the fabulous people came as well as all the people who just think they're fabulous. They strapped on their booze goggles, mingled to the beat of L.A.'s most in-demand DJs and hooked up in a willy-nilly fashion that many of them probably regretted the next morning when they did that awful early morning drive of shame with smeared lipstick, a dress that smells like vodka and a ratty hair-do that let's ev-er-ee-one know you did not sleep in your own bed or look in a mirror before high-tailing it for home from a stranger's house.

Anyhoo, in September 2010 The Esquire House went up for sale with an asking price of $18,900,000. According to listing information, the mini-compound includes a 4 bedroom and 7 pooper main house plus a detached two-story guest house with music room and recording studio. The over-the-top interior spaces have clean lines, walls of stacked stone, vast expanses of floor to ceiling glass for absorbing the panoramic view of all of L.A. from downtown to–on a clear day–the Pacific Ocean.

The main rooms of the gated mansion include a living room with a fire and water sort of fireplace/fountain sort of thing, a media area that looks far too much like the first class cabin on a damn airliner and a sleek kitchen open to a small dining area. The architects and designers peppered several built-in wet bars throughout the property so that one never need be more than 20-feet from a fresh gin & tonic. One of the wet bars is upholstered in leather and another has a rounded alcove outfitted with not one but three 32-inch flat screen tee-vees. A few of the other swankety-swank amenities of the highly stylized–and arguably over-designed–residence include a home office, high-tech fitness room, a state-of-the-art media room and a massive master suite with sitting area, fireplace, a long bank of floor-to-ceiling glass with city views, a multi-chamber spa-style bathroom, and a pair of custom-designed walk-in closets that look far more like a high-fallutin' boo-teek or haberdashery than they do a damn closet.

A wide, multi-level terrace extends off the back of the house. The expansive party-friendly patio runs along the steep slope that drops off in a vertigo-inducing manner and was–we're afraid to say–fashioned with two contrasting colors of stone pavers laid in a dizzying and unnecessary striped pattern that makes the whole thing feel like a hotel instead of a private residence. Slung around here and there on the terrace and around the house are several seating and dining areas, a built-in barbecue center, a patch of grass for the pooches, an infinity edged swimming pool with spa and a narrow and linear firepit thing that must be 30 feet long and looks it's aching to lick and char the fake-tanned skin of an "actress" in Lucite stilettos or maybe a douche bag in an Ed Hardy t-shirt.

Five months after appearing on the open market, the now de-consecrated Esquire House was sold for far less than the asking price and to the same corporate entity that owns the first house on the block that Miss Ellison acquired back in early 2008. The sale price, according to property records was $13,750,000, more than five million clams less than the asking price.

According to the steaming beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, Miss Ellison has now forked over an unimaginable $32,850,000 for her dee-luxe compound of three very contemporary houses all in a row. According to Your Mama's rudimentary calculations based on the property records we accessed, the property taxes alone for Miss Ellison's three homes in The Bird Streets are well in excess of $250,000 per year. How do them real estate apples grab ya? Anyone else besides Your Mama flat on the floor in a puddle of flabbergast and disbelief? We don't begrudge Miss Ellison her nearly 33 million dollars in contiguous real estate. We just can't imagine what she could want or need with three luxe and louche homes all in a row? But, then again, if Your Mama has said it once we've said it 111,111 times before: Who are we to question or comprehend the capricious ways of the rich and famous?

listing photos: Luxury Style Photography for Hilton & Hyland

Add some zest to your summer living! Fruit juice smoothies are a refreshing drink for a sublime summer's day or as a perfect complement to your weekend BBQ. The best things about smoothies is that you can be creative! Here’s a blueberry inspired recipe to get you started:

Berry-Blue Vanilla Smoothie
- 3/4 cup Minute Maid Premium Orange Juice
- 1 medium peach, cubed
- 1/2 cup blueberries
- 2 scoops fat-free vanilla-flavored frozen yogurt
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup crushed ice

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour smoothie into a large glass and garnish if desired. Each recipe makes one 10-ounce serving. Double or triple the ingredients and make additional batches for more servings. Remember the following tips for "perfecting" your smoothie:

• Freeze fruit ahead of time for a frostier drink
• Try to use the freshest fruit in season
• Too thick? Add more juice
• Too thin? Add more fruit
• Too tart? Add a sugar substitute, molasses or maple syrup

Yes I am looking forward the sunshine and warmer weather.

Fasten your safety belts, butter beans, we're about to dabble in a little dangerous but delicious real estate schadenfreude.

Back in early December 2007 Your Mama filed our most recent installment on the ongoing real estate saga of The Real Housewife of Orange County's glitziest reality tee-vee proselytizer Alexis Bellino and her husband Jim, a businessman of some sort who may or may not have committed some sort of white-collar crime.

At that time the blinged-out but (allegedly) cash-strapped couple faced losing a custom-built 6,900 square foot luxury mansion in Newport Beach, CA into the bitter maw of foreclosure. It may interest some of the children to know that the shingled 6 bedroom and 5.75 pooper property happens to be in the very same fancy gated enclave on Newport Harbor where current tabloid catnip Nic Cage owned a bay front home that he sold in 2007 for around $35,000,000.

In early August 2010, a Notice of Sale was recorded for Mister and Missus Bellino's property that called for an auction date of August 25th, 2010 with a minimum bid of $4,619,188. The Mercedes and BMW-driving Bellinos somehow managed to hang on to the house but, alas, this would not be their only turn on the dizzying merry-go-round of foreclosure. Indeed, on the 18th of November, 2010 a second Notice of Sale was recorded with an auction date set for December 10, 2010 in Santa Ana, CA. The minimum bid, according to the docs we saw, was now set at $4,677,635.

Three short days before the scheduled auction ownership of the property was transferred from Mister and Missus Bellino to Global Marine, Inc., a "business entity" of which Mister Bellino was the president. The company's lone asset: unsurprisingly, the Bellino's Newport Beach mansion. At some point Mister Bellino and his subordinate blond bombshell mommy-wife Alexis reportedly negotiated a loan modification with JP Morgan Chase (or whatever they're called nowadays) that staved off a third auction scheduled for January 10th, 2011.

It wasn't long after the mansion was transferred to Global Marine, Inc. in early December, 2010 that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and on the 15th of March, 2011 Jesus Christ himself must have finally answered the Bellino's real estate prayers because the mansion transferred back from Global Marine to Mister Bellino who in turn–glory be–sold it the very same day but at a steep and terrifying discount.

According to public property records, in August of 2007 the oh-so-flashy Bellinos took a whopping $4,560,000 mortgage when they acquired the property and they first attempted to unload their money-hoovering white elephant in early 2009 when they heaved the beast on the market with a desperately optimistic asking price of $7,995,000. Over the years the property was de- and re-listed a number of times with ever shrinking asking prices. The last known price tag was $3,395,000 and property records show that that Bellinos sold the property for $3,000,000. That, hunnies, is an unimaginably bountiful basket of money by the financial standards of most folks but for Mister and Missus Bellino it was a mind-bending multi-million dollar bang to their (allegedly) deserted bank accounts.

Iffin we're being honest we'd admit that we aren't really sure where the Bellino's set up house after leaving Newport Beach. We suspect they're holed up in a large but less well-located an still expensive rental house waiting out the financial storm.

Wherever it is they alit, we'd like to sincerely offer Missus Bellino an entirely unsolicited word of advice: Listen here Glitter Kitty Glamor Puss, okay? Your husband, bless his heart, seems to be having some money troubles–he's not alone in the twist of this soured economy, of course–and you have three little blessings from God to feed and dress in designer duds so you got to milk this Housewife thing for all it's worth. Let's be honest doll-baby, this nitwitted I'm-a-dress-designer thing can only end in tears and embarrassment–can you say She by Sheree?–and it seems to Your Mama that you're not really qualified to do much else besides be a buxum reality tee- vee "star" with a sparkling set of veneers and a shiny mane of fake hair. What we're trying to say is you just keep shaking your toned and taut money maker on The Real Housewives of Orange County for as many seasons as Bravo will pay your sinful grown-up ass to act like a petty and falsely naive junior high school girl who thinks baby-talk is sexy and can't move her face due to an aggressive Botox regimen.

listing photo: The Stanaland Group

BUYER: Jeff Probst
SELLER: Estate of Gene Autry
LOCATION: Studio City, CA
PRICE: $5,000,000
SIZE: 7,983 square feet, 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Singing cowboy Gene Autry–a chaps-wearing Tinseltown legend of epic proportions who also owned the California Angels professional baseball team from 1961 until 1997–went to meet The Great Wrangler in the sky in October of 1998 at the ripe old age of 91. His longtime residence in the rustic Fryman Canyon area of Studio City, CA passed on to he second wife Jackie who in turn donated the property to the Autry National Center of the American West (ANCAW). The ANCAW was unable to have the estate re-zones for use as a museum and put the property up for sale until August 2010 when it appeared on the open market with a decidedly optimistic asking price of $6,900,000.

Since Your Mama doesn't really know a iPod from an eyelash we really can't say with any authority whatsoever if the bloated asking price was merely the peeps at ANCAW testing the real estate waters or if someone grossly miscalculated comparable sales listings and arrived at a lofty number that, in the end, simply made no sense. Whatever the case, three months after the Autry estate was first listed for $6,900,000 the asking price was aggressively and dramatically decreased by a one million clams.

The new and lower price attracted at least one potential buyer: Jeff Probst, the 4-time Emmy-winning host and producer of Survivor who, according to property records, snatched up the Autry property for an even-steven $5,000,000 in early April 2011. A few quick flicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows Mister Probst's five million smacker purchase price was a whopping 28% less than the original asking price. Either Mister Probst got a great deal or ANCAW and its Real Estates were–with all due respect–smoking some serious real estate crack when it came to the pricing of the property.

Anyhoo, listing information shows that Mister Autry's immensely private but far from isolated Monterey Colonial-style residence sits on a thickly-wooded 3.68 acre lot that's just a quick trot to Studio City's shopping strip on Ventura Boulevard. The house was custom built for Mister Autry and his first Missus–Ina Autry–in 1948-49. The mixy-matchy Monterey Colonial vernacular was first developed in the mid-19th century in Monterey, CA, as opposed to "Monterrey," as it was spelled in the listing text, which is a large city in Meh-hee-co. A Monterey Colonial crib incorporates various elements of Mexican hacienda style buildings and classic East Coast Colonials that together create a uniquely Californian architectural style. Features specific to and/or typical of a Monterey Colonial include a low-slung tile (or shake) roof, white plaster (or adobe) walls, tall shuttered windows, over-hanging second floor balconies with wood railings and wide porches on the ground floor perfect for settin' in the summer shade reading all the tabs and sucking on gin flavored Popsicles.

The sprawling two-story main house sits at the end of a long gated drive, measures in at a considerable 7,983 square feet and includes 5 bedrooms and 7 poopers, including a master suite with fireplace, dual facilities and–as per the listing–"major closets." A guest house/casita down below the swimming pool provides additional living space for those sorts of high-maintenance guests who tend to tax a host's hospitality or perhaps for a persnickety house gurl such as our Svetlana who would sooner peel the skin right off her body than live up in the same house as Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter. A patio in front of the guest casita has the letters G and A inlaid with brick, a sort of silly thing that we hope Mister Probst will maintain as a tie to the estate's iconic previous owner.

Thankfully, the residence's cowboy motif stops shy of looking like one of those ludicrous too-western, millionaire-goes-to-a-hoe-down themed monstrosities seen in far too many multi-million dollar mansions in places like Aspen, CA. None-the-less there is a thick vein of cowboy that runs through the residence and presents itself to residents and guest just as soon as they swing around into the motor court where a pair of spikey-looking horse and rider statuettes sit menacingly atop brick plinths that flank the front walk.

Inside, along with books–real books that probably actually got read–and chess boards and a big ol' built-in bar that Your Mama wouldn't mind sidling up to, we find paintings of rodeo events–the one over the fireplace in the formal living room is sort of amazing–more bronze sculptures of horses and cowboys, earthenware pottery clusters, Southwestern-y dhurrie rugs, several ornate saddles propped like sentries in various corners and a pair of bull horns mounted over the television in the walnut paneled library/media room. Although the dining room lacks a chandelier, someone who's hand we'd like to shake thought better of mounting a wagon wheel chandelier over the dining room table.

The cowboy look isn't exactly Your Mama's cup of decoratin' tea, but we do freely confess to a partiality towards the Ikat print arm chairs in in the family-room–love love love those buggers–and we're beside ourselves with desire for the even more magnificent and kooky arm chairs in the library/media room upholstered in the most amazing toile-inspired print that depicts horses grazing and frolicking in a meadow. The frilly, pleated skirt around the bottom of the chairs is, quite simply, icing on this deliciously campy decorative cake. Your Mama really has no place to put a pair of lounging apparatuses such as these wonderfully wacky winners but we'd gleefully make room for them should we ever have the opportunity to purchase them at a reasonable price.

The expansive, serene and blessedly under-manicured grounds–something too fussy with the landscaping would just be a cryin' shame–include a vast brick terrace with curvilinear edge off the rear of the house that looks over the terraced back yard, a sizable swimming pool surrounded by more brick terracing, winding paths, flower gardens and an outdoor entertainment center with fireplace.

Your Mama expects that Mister Probst and his team of historically-minded architects and nice gay decorators will tear this place up to make way for a more modern day-core that befits a Hollywood bachelor. Out will go–we hope–the cream wall-to-wall carpeting in the formal living room, the wine-colored carpeting in the library/media room and every bit of the out-dated kitchen that, while commodious with vaulted ceiling, butler's pantry and peg and groove hardwood floors, looks like the sort of kitchen mullet-haired Carol Brady might have coveted back in 1976.

The well-located and semi-rural-feeling Fryman Canyon area of Studio City has long attracted celebs and Industry types including Teri Hatcher, Leah Remini, George Clooney, and actor/director Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City) and her hubby director Howard Deutch (My Best Friend's Girl, Pretty in Pink). Fryman Canyon, where nature-loving Angelenos can hike right in the center of the city seems to popular amongst game show hosts as well. Not only does Mister Probst now called Fryman Canyon home but so do Richard Karn (Family Feud, Bingo America) and Alex Trebek who hosts the extraordinarily long-running Jeopardy!. For what it's worth, in the early naughts Mister Probst appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy! a couple of times.

Your Mama's brief and entirely unscientific research and perusal through property records indicates that Mister Probst has owned a small and secluded home off of Beverly Glen Boulevard in the upper reaches of Bel Air that he acquired in May of 2002 for an unknown purchase price. Prior to that he and his ex-wife Shelley owned a 2,032 square foot crib tucked into a hairy hairpin curve in the still sort of boho Laurel Canyon area of L.A. that they purchased in May of 2000 for $600,000. A few months later with their marriage in the skids Mister Probst deeded the property over to (Ex) Missus Probst who in turn sold the the house in May 2001 for $710,000.

listing photos: Hilton & Hyland