A New House for Funnyman Kevin Nealon

BUYER: Kevin Nealon
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $3,450,000
SIZE: 5,600 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: If the children will put on their thinking caps they'll recall that in May of 2009 Your Mama discussed the Manhattan Beach, CA cottage of comedian and actor Ken Nealon (Weeds, Glenn Martin DDS, Saturday Night Live) that he'd hoisted on the market with an asking price of $3,295,000.

Property records now show that Mister Nealon and his bizzy bit-part actress wife Susan Yeagley (Parks and Recreation, Til Death, The Sarah Silverman Program)–who made a baby together in early 2007–finally sold their Manhattan Beach pad in March of 2010 for $2,725,000.

Thanks to the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial we've learned that just a few months later the comedic couple set down new roots a few miles up the coast in the upscale and family friendly enclave of Pacific Palisades where they shelled out $3,450,000 for a newly constructed mansion wedged onto a tight 6,857 square foot lot in the El Medio Bluffs neighborhood.

Listing information indicates the quasi-Georgian style three-story house measures approximately, 5,600 square feet and includes 7 bedrooms and 5.5 poopers, plenty of room for Baby Nealon and several shorties more iffin Mister and Missus Nealon are planning on more. On one side of the center hall entry way is the formal living room with coffered ceiling, fireplace, and and a cluster of narrow but tall windows that reach almost all the way up to the ceiling and all the way down to the white oak hardwood floors stained a walnut color.

On the other side, a formal dining room with heavy moldings, and simple painted wainscoting that runs around the room. A hallway that runs perpendicular to the entry leads to the less formal open-plan family quarters that include a family room with fireplace flanked by built in cabinetry and shelving, and large sliding glass door that open to a small back/side yard. There's also a big breakfast area and large chef friendly kitchen equipped with custom white cabinetry a few glass panel doors on the uppers, speckled granite counter tops, a 12-foot long center island, extra-large butler's pantry, and high-grade stainless steel appliances that include a warming drawer and wine fridge.

A stair hall with skylights sunk into the coffered ceiling leads to the second floor bedrooms that include a master suite with hardwood floors, tray ceiling, fireplace, private marble pooper with glass enclosed steam shower, and French doors that lead to an expansive roof deck with built-in seating that wraps around a fire pit. The deck is unquestionably the most scenic and interesting outdoor space on the tight lot but Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter would not care to spend three and a half million clams to have guests traipse through our boo-dwar into order to get to the most appealing outdoor entertaining space. No-siree-bob.

The lowest level, a basement sort of thing, includes the two car garage, windowless media room, and large laundry facilities. There's is also a dining nook with built-in cabinetry, massage room, and fitness room all with faux-windows backed by some sort of disturbing and perplexing mural of a tropical scene that has Your Mama gagging up our early morning Bloody Mary.

The small, almost claustrophobic lot includes a small ficus hedge surrounded backyard with a patch of lawn and dining terrace. The Nealon's new digs also include guest/staff quarters, large laundry facilities, a 2-car garage, state of the art electronics with built-in audio system, surround sound and iPod docking station which is nice since stereo equipment is quickly going the way of acid wash jeans.

listing photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Keller Williams/Santa Monica

Comedian Chris Tucker Selling Short

SELLER: Chris Tucker
LOCATION: Monteverde, FL
PRICE: $2,000,000
SIZE: 8,861 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It wasn't so long ago that comedian Chris Tucker was one of the highest paid jokesters in Tinseltown. We didn't believe it either but 'tis true, puppies. Your Mama just about fell out of our chair when we read reports that indicated Mister Tucker took in as much as $20,000,000 for his role opposite Jackie Chan in the 2001 action film Rush Hour 2 and we actually did fall out of our damn chair when we read that he reportedly earned another $25,000,000 for Rush Hour 3 in 2007. By the end of the first decade of the naughts, Mister Tucker was, needless to say, a very rich man who was livin' large with multiple mansions and a fleet of faincee automobiles that he at least once drove fast and recklessly.

The problem, children, is that Mister Tucker apparently forgot to pay his taxes and, as anyone with even 1/3 of a brain knows, the taxman gets 49 kinds of peeved and pissed when he is denied his due. Last year the busted-ass broke state of California filed a $3,594,409 lien against Mister Tucker and just today reports have begun to surface that the not exactly rolling in clover federal gubbamint filed documents with the Los Angeles County Recorder's Office that demand Mister Tucker fork over $11,571,909 and 26 damn cents in back taxes.

In addition to his taxation traumas it appears that Mister Tucker has some real estate woes too. We don't know if it's a co-inky-dink or if it has something to do with his taxman troubles, but yesterday Your Mama learned from Darryl Divulgesthedirt that Mister Tucker has put his massive mansion in Monteverde, FL on the market with an asking price of $2,000,000.

The hitch, the rub, and the pickle is that Mister Tucker paid more than two million clams for the property. In fact he paid way, way, way more than two million dollars. According to property records, the once plenteously paid wise cracker forked over–brace yourselves butter beans–$6,000,000 for the mansion in June of 2007. It don't take any flicking of the beads of Your Mama's well worn and bejeweled abacus to see that Mister Tucker's current asking price is an unnerving four million bucks less than he paid for the property just 3 years ago.

Mister Tucker's faux-Tuscan Floridian getaway, located just outside of Orlando, FL, sits on an approximately 1 acre lake-front lot in the upscale and guard gated golf and equestrian community of Bella Collina. Listing information indicates that the 2-story, 8,861 square foot extravaganza of questionable architectural integrity and day-core has 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half poopers, and is a former "Street of Dreams" model. Your Mama does not know nor do we care to know what a "Street of Dreams" model is but based on our own sensitive and persnickety decorative tastes and preferences we find Mister Tucker's crib to be–we're just gonna say it–a Street of Nightmares.

That's right. We said it. Pleeze people, there is no way in hell Your Mama or the Dr. Cooter could get a good night's rest in a house that includes what listing information calls a "whimsical pirate ship themed home theatre." Oh lo-ward have mercy, please do not tell Your Mama that there are people out there who actually think a pirate ship theme is an appropriate or acceptable style of day-core in any home with even a shred of dignity. Maybe you can pull that shit off in a 5 year old's bedroom but not in any room used by an adult. No. Seriously. Just no. Someone get Your Mama a nerve pill and the smelling salts because we're going to need a little something to get us through this one.

Listen chickens, we're sure there are many people who find living up in the Bella Collina community to be a stellar experience and we can't argue with them about that since we've never been to Bella Collina or even to Orlando. But we take serious umbrage with these ticky-tacky decorating themes that get installed in too many over-sized faux-Tuscan and mock-Mediterranean model mansions that line the streets of upscale gated communities across the country. In fact we are so adamantly opposed to themed day-core that Rule #9 of Your Mama's Big Book of Decorating Dos and Don'ts states that, "No dwelling of any architectural style in any location that aspires to be a home of good taste shall inflict theatrically themed day-core on any room besides that of a small child, and even then the "theme" should be used very sparingly."

Anyhoo, Mister Tucker's Bella Collina crib sits at the tail end of a cul-de-sac where a long driveway leads to a motor court and garaging for 4 cars. Tall and skinny cypress trees flank the font entry that leads into the double height foyer where some sort of faux paint treatment has been slapped on the on the walls, multi-colored tiles are installed the stair risers, and swoopy wrought iron stair rails and banisters of the type not seen in any real Tuscan home climb dramatically up the the second floor landing.

Listing information indicates that in addition to the formal living and dining rooms, Mister Tucker's digs include 2 game rooms, a temperature controlled wine cellar, a library with secret room, and that horrifying "whimsical pirate ship themed home theatre." Listing photos show a family room with a patterned stone floor that connects across a breakfast counter to the kitchen that we presume is equipped with high-grade appliances and high end counter tops.

The in addition to a decent-sized bedroom where a zebra skin rug is laid out on camel colored wall to wall carpeting, the master "wing" includes a sitting area, morning kitchen for all those too damn lazy to walk downstairs to get a cup of damn coffee, and a lavish pooper where a multi-colored stained glass window separates the showering area from a gigantic jetted tub for two.

The outdoor living spaces include a deep covered patio with dee-luxe built-in barbecue center, long bar with bar stools and randomly placed flower arrangements in urns with a faux-patina treatments. There is also a large stacked stone outdoor fireplace with flat screen tee-vee mounted about the fire box, a free-form dark bottomed swimming pool, and a small spa tucked into a rock formation/water fall thingy. The property backs up to one of the community's two private lakes which allows for maximum privacy and, yes, pretty views.

The Bella Collina community offers residents 2 Tuscan themed clubhouses, a full service spa, fitness center, sports and equestrian facilities, 2 lakes, vineyards, and a Nick Faldo designed championship golf course. All the amenities probably explain the $1,178 per month community fee that the homeowner must pay in addition to the $68,852 per year in taxes.

Mister Tucker owns a couple of California residences including a 6,399 square foot mansion in the guard gated Mulholland Park community in Tarzana, CA. Property records show he purchased the 5 bedroom and 6.5 pooper house in November of 1996 for $1,113,511.

In June of 2001 Mister Tucked snatched up the house next door paying $2,400,000 for the 6,549 square foot mansion. Mister Tucker listed the house in the spring of 2008 for $3,800,000 and finally sold the white elephant about 18 months later in November of 2009 for $3,000,000.

Property records show that in April of 2008 Mister Tucker laid out $1,300,000 for a 4,922 square foot house in super suburban Los Angeles city of Granada Hills, CA. As best as we can tell the 5 bedroom and 5 pooper property is where his baby momma lives with his young son.

There are reports that state Mister Tucker maintains a home in Atlanta, GA–he was raised just outside Atlanta in Decatur–but Your Mama didn't find much in the way of evidence of that. Don't mean he down have real estate roots there, just means we didn't find anything specific.

listing photos: Re/Max Central Realty

Sacha Baron Cohen Lists and Goes Big In Los Angeles

OWNER: Sacha Baron Cohen
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,900,000
SIZE: 2,806 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Now that colossally and constantly controversial British born comedian and provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen is playing with the big boys girls in Tinseltown and earns $20,000,000–plus many millions more on the back end–just to make a damn movie, he and his Australian actress wife Isla Fisher have turned into some serious, a-lister style real estate size queens. More on that big buy later.

Since the Baron Cohen clan is decamping for a dee-luxe new compound high in the hills above Laurel Canyon, they're no longer in need of their much more modest current home, also in the hills high above Laurel Canyon. Thanks to the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial, Your Mama has learned that the sassy and scathing satirist recently put his family house on the market for $2,900,000. The property is also listed for lease with the unnecessarily complicated asking price of $11,995 per month. Lo-ward have mercy Your Mama hates these crazy real estate numbers. Why can't they just call it twelve grand a month? Why go through all the numeric rigmarole that just gives people a damn headache?

Anyhoo, as most of the world is well aware, Mister Cohen's comedic stock in trade involves creating fictional characters who go around the world, talk to strangers, act like a damn fool, and ask probing, provocative, and often tasteless questions until his subject reacts in sometimes funny and often revealing ways. He unquestionably uses stereotypes to poke fun of others, but he arguably does it in the service of exposing barely under the surface bigotry and hatred for Jews, black, homosexuals, and any number of other historically marginalized groups of people. Mister Baron Cohen has his detractors for sure but there also seem to heaps and hordes of folks happy to pay $10 or $13 bucks to watch him mercilessly pillage, plunder, and disembowel the social construct at the expense of folks not in on the joke.

Mister Cohen started up his ladder of fame in the late 1990s when he achieved notoriety as the ignoramus "whigga" poser Ali G, a character that parodied the very real and very strange phenomena of privileged suburban white kids adopting the patois and mannerisms of inner city hip-hop culture. As popular as Ali G was in Britain, the character that put Mister Cohen on the entertainment world's global map is without question the bumbling buffoon Borat Sagdiyev, a dim-witted rube from Kazakhstan whose constant and only schtick is that he says inappropriate things to the unsuspecting. Next up for Mister Cohen was Brüno Gerhard, a flouncy homosexual fashion reporter from Austria who pissed off a just about everyone from the The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militia group with his excessive narcissism and sexually suggestive questions. Mister Baron Cohen's cinematic modus operandi reminds Your Mama of the old Candid Camera program only with the more high minded aim to use low brow humor to gleefully expose the soft and ugly underbelly of racism, homophobia, religion, taboo, and etc.

Because his three most well known characters are now so easily identified by the public, Mister Baron Cohen has retired them. Next up for Mister Cohen, according to reports, is a goat herder and a deposed foreign dictator who will appear in an as yet unnamed movie scheduled to be released in 2011.

Property records show that Mister and Missus Baron Cohen purchased their mid-century modern-ish house in December 2005 for $2,450,000. Listing information shows the single story house measures 2,806 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 2.5 poopers, a count that may or may not include what listing information calls a "detached guest room with steam shower."

The property presents a fairly fortified facade to the street with an electronic gate that slides open to a small motor court, two car garage and front entry. The entry leads to the primary living space which is a gigantic living/family room with hardwood floors, a pitched and beamed wood ceiling, large windows and French doors that open to the back yard, and a massive, extra-wide river rock fireplace with a raised hearth where two table lamps flank the firebox. The room is divided into two distinct areas. A more formal area in front of the massive, extra-wide river rock fireplace contains two indentical sofas covered in a dee-lishusly tactile dusty baby blue fabric that square off over a clean lined and low wooden coffee table. The second less formal area has a seal gray sectional sofa, several poufs and ottomans for overflow guests, and a vintage Vernor Panton capiz shell chandelier...at least we think it's a vintage version but it could be a custom Panton inspired thing.

The dining room, an extension off the living/family room, has high ceilings, lots of windows and French doors with views of the surrounding mountains and canyon, and a large dining room table with 10 chairs over which hang a trio of classic George Nelson saucer-shaped pendant lights. The adjacent kitchen is a gray and white wide-galley style affair that opens on one end to the dining room and a breakfast area at the other where the Baron Cohens have a round Saarinen dining table surrounded by four white Saarinen designed tulip chairs. The winter white kitchen cabinetry has a lovely gloss that our sometimes difficult house gurl Svetlana tells us are probably very easy to clean and the appliances, as expected, are of the high grade stainless steel variety. The children will note that the clever kitchen designer has accommodated the microwave in an under counter cubby so it isn't settin' out looking a hot mess on the counter top. Hanging over the work area in the kitchen is a Cellula chandelier that retails for $2,600 at the mid-century and modern design emporium Design Within Reach, a store that that carries product that are not, in fact, fiscally in reach for most people.

The not particularly large master bathroom has a very high beamed ceilings painted white, a wall of windows with thick white mullions, a low built-in cabinet below the windows painted a gleaming shade of white, white wall to wall carpeting, and a walk in closet with custom built-ins. On the tall wall behind the bed black and white wall covering that looks to Your Mama like a bunch of birch trees without any leaves. It's all very stark, but at the same time it looks like a serene room in which to slumber. The home's clean lined design continues into the Baron Cohen's private pooper where there is a grey tile floor and an extra long vanity fitted with two sinks that have exposed plumbing under the counter and are divided by a large window, half of which is frosted for privacy.

In addition to the lagoon-style free form shaped swimming pool and spa that's surrounded by grey flagstone, the property includes a covered terrace where the Baron-Cohen's have a very expensive and new-fangled picnic table lit by a satellite style chandelier, several decks with very contemporary furniture and hammock, and an outdoor gym with any number of body torture contraptions, free weights and a large mirror. Can someone please explain to Your Mama why people like to watch themselves in the mirror when they're strain to lift weights and do other exercise?

Although no property records confirm a transaction, two of out better sources whispered in our ear that the reason for the move is because Mister and Missus Baron Cohen recently dumped a butt load of money on a huge, a-listers only spread above Laurel Canyon last on the open market with a price tag of $18,900,000.

According to listing information that we dug up courtesy of Babbling Babette, the Mister and Missus Baron Cohen's new compound crib sprawls across several park-like acres and has multiple structures including a mansion sized main house with 7 bedrooms and 10 poopers, plus a guest house pavilion/pool house, detached theater, and caretaker cottage.

listing photos (lease): Sotheby's Int'l Realty Sunset
listing photos (purchase): Sotheby's Int'l Realty Beverly Hills

Cheryl Hines Lists Not Particularly Funny House

SELLER: Cheryl Hines
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $4,249,000
SIZE: 4,908 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It's always a breath of fresh air to come across a celebrity who recognizes that the bottom done fell out of the Los Angeles real estate market in 2008 and understnads that while there are signs of life and glimmers of hope the economy still sucks for most people and the days of buying a posh property and then quickly flipping it for a multi-million dollar profit is, for the most part, long gone.

One of those celebrities with a sensible real estate mind would seem to be Emmy nominated actress Cheryl Hines who a little birdie told Your Mama recently listed her house in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles with an asking price of $4,249,000. That, puppies, is a modest gain over the $4,125,000 that property records show she and her man-mate Paul Young paid for the property in June of 2005. A few flicks of the well worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that's a barely there 3% gain over five years, a picayune profit for a house in this price range and one that will be more than eaten up by the fat real estate that will be paid when the property sells.

Most of the children should recognize Miz Hines, who once upon a time was Oscar nominated actor Rob Reiner's personal assistant, as the actress who portrays Larry David's wife on the HBO's semi-scripted and soo-blimely executed sit-com Curb Your Enthusiasm, a program on which she's starred to critical acclaim for the last 10 years. In addition to her role on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Miz Hines also worked her sometimes improvisational stuff in a fair number of films and television programs such as the animated series Father of the Pride, Herbie Fully Loaded, Goodnight Vagina, The Grand, and In the Motherhood. She even made a brief, 3-episode spin through the excruciating but magnetic family melodrama Brothers & Sisters.

A few minutes research on the interweb and Your Mama learns that Miz Hines is quite the bizzy beaver. In addition to her duties on Curb Your Enthusiasm, she'll be lending her voice to something called The Legend of Secret Pass, co-starring in a new one-camera sit-com called Wright vs. Wrong with Debra Messing (Will & Grace) and the a-may-zing Carrie Fisher, and she is the executive producer of an upcoming do good-feel good reality program call School Pride that follows the mawkish Extreme Makeover model. Instead of doing up houses that the financially less fortunate owners can no longer afford, Miz Hines' reality program will be about community members going in and improving busted up and broken down schools. Listen butter beans, Your Mama is all for fixing up schools, giving kids a clean and well equipped place to learn, and paying teachers a proper wage and all, but we are not interested in a program that mixes good ol' fashioned charity/volunteer work with the shameless manipulating of the heart strings of viewers. We find that sort of mawkish and obvious format tawdry, tacky, and more than just a little unseemly.

Anyhoo, according to listing information, Miz Hines' single story Cape Cod meets rambling California ranch meets a hay barn style residence located in the Mandeville Canyon area measures 4,908 square feet and includes a total of 6 bedrooms and 5.5 poopers. That breaks down, according to listing information, to 4 family bedrooms, a bedroom and pooper for Yorbalinda the live-in housekeeper, and a guest house above the garage with living room, bedroom, wee kitchen and private pooper.

A walled and electronically gated entrance shielded by tall trees and thick and mature foliage opens to a wide stone paved driveway and motor court that curls around a gnarled olive tree–that is an olive tree right?–and leads to a barn-like two car garage. A classic, farmhouse style front door with nine-glass panes opens into a generously sized entry with adjoining powder pooper. The formal living room–which really isn't very formal at all in large part to the massive flat screen tee-vee mounted onto the stone fireplace where an actual piece of art ought to be–has distressed oak hardwood floors, built in cabinetry tucked into a niche, beamed ceilings, and a wall of nine-over-nine sash windows that reach deliciously almost all the way to the floor. The formal dining room has an oddly located and narrow niche with shelves for displaying the china or whatever, a low but lovely wood ceiling and, much to Your Mama's delight, s Dutch door that opens into the backyard. Dutch doors are pefect for letting the breeze blow through but still keeping the kiddies and the pets from sneaking out and dumping themselves in the pool.

The wide, galley style kitchen has both granite and butcher block counter tops, Viking brand stainless steel appliances, and over-scaled, cream colored honey bee tile floors that Your Mama thinks need a'changing. The kitchen opens into a window wrapped breakfast room as well as a family room where someone left a horrid and oddly located 9-dollar Home Despot light fixture in the ceiling. Uhm, no. We just can't get past that in a four million dollar house. That's the same stoopid light fixture that Your Mama's lame and lazy landlord installed in our old two-bedroom tenement on the Lower East Side of New York back in the early 1990s. Pleeze. People. No.

Anyhoo, the master suite includes a large and largely uninspired pooper with a giant step up soaking tub sunk into a marble surround and flanked by twin vanities. We're not even going to comment or reference our Big Book of Decorative Dos and Don'ts as to the cliché fuchsia colored orchid sitting in the far corner of the room. There are also dual master closets, according to listing information, and a fireplace shoved uncomfortably into the corner of the room in such a way as to make us feel edgy, off-kilter, and in dire need of a nerve pill to readjust our decoratively sensitive equilibrium.

The guest house above the garage has a slightly rustic, Upstate New York sort of thing going on with a pitched wood beamed ceiling, hardwood floors, multi-paned sash windows, wide wainscot cabinetry, and that dead damn fish up on the wall.

A wide, brick terrace, part of which is covered and part of which has a silly portable fire pit that's designed to look as if it's not portable, extends off the back of the house until it reaches a gently curving quarter wall that separates the terrace from the lawn and swimming pool areas. A myriad of mature trees and foliage ring the perimeter of the yard and ensure the outdoor spaces remain quiet and private should Miz Hines and Mr. Young want to have a romantical evening in the spa attached to the heated free-form swimming pool that's half-heartedly landscaped with river rock and ferns to look like a blue lagoon or something.

Although country casual is not in any manner, shape, or form Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's preferred decoratin' modality, it's always nice to peek into a celebrity home that's not been over-processed, over-blown, and over-styled into a sterile showplace that's sole purpose seems to scream and yell, "Look how rich and successful I am. No, seriously, look at me. I'm rich and my house is huge and there's not a hair out of place!" Miz Hines' house, on the other hand, actually looks like that of regular people–albeit it very wealthy people–largely unbuckled and untarnished from the plasticine glamour that infects Los Angeles and far to often substitutes for actual substance. Can you hear Your Mama Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian? Okaaaay?

Miz Hines and Mister Young's nearby neighbors include a number of other Hollywood types including Courtney Thorne Smith (Melrose Place), 3-time Oscar winning director Oliver Stone (Nixon, JFK, Born on the 4th of July, Platoon), actor Dennis Quaid, and twitchy comedian Gary Shandling.

listing photos: Architecture 8

Adam Carolla Lists Starter House In Los Angeles

SELLER: Adam Carolla
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,395,000
SIZE: 2,281 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.75 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: He may have rather stoopidly and controversially called Hawaiians "retarded" and "the world's dumbest people," but, children, comedian, ack-tor, and radio personality Adam Carolla is all kinds of rich anyways. Beehawtcha may have pissed off an entire state–not to mention an entire country–but he is none the less laugh, laugh, laughing all the way to the damn bank.

Back in 1996, not long after pairing up with publicity seeking celebrity rehabber Dr. Drew Pinsky on the long running Lovelines radio program, Mister Carolla took some of his earnings and purchased himself a starter located house high above Beachwood Canyon in Los Angeles, CA. While Mister Carolla and his family have long since moved on to bigger and better digs, the Beachwood Canyon crib remained the property in his portfolio. However, the talk radio titan* has, apparently, decided to lighten his real estate load because he recently put the property on the market with an asking price of $1,395,000.

*Okay, maybe Mister Carolla isn't really a "titan" of talk radio in like that poser Howard Stern who caters to the lowest of lowbrow taste but hobnobs with the hoity toity in the Hamptons, but he's still enormously successful.

Mister Carolla, a bizzy entertainment business beaver if there ever was one, got his big radio break on Jimmy Kimmel's erstwhile radio program Kevin and Bean. He went on to yakkety yak for 10 years on the radio with Dr. Pinsky, co-hosted a popular sketch comedy program called The Man Show with his new b.f.f. Jimmy Kimmel, and created and performed on the tee-vee program Crank Yankers on which scary looking puppets made crank calls to unsuspecting victims. In 2005, after leaving Lovelines, he started up his own eponymous radio program. In 2009 the show was converted to a wildly successful 5-day a week podcast that quickly became the most downloaded podcast on the iTunes. He's also done voice over work (Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Family Guy) and in 2008 he appeared on that way past its prime program Dancing With the Stars on which he mamboed and tangoed but was ultimately done in by the Paso Doble.

Property records show that Mister Carolla bought his Beachwood Canyon aerie in November of 1996 for $350,000. Lo-ward have mercy buttons, remember when y'all could buy a nice if modest house in a good part of Los Angeles for well under half a million smackers? Anyhoo, property records show the fully renovated French Normandy style residence was built in 1924 and listing information indicates it is an original Hollywoodland home.

Hollywoodland, for those not schooled on the history of the Los Angeles real estate world, is the architecturally diverse subdivision situated in the peaks and valleys in the rugged and scrubby hills above Hollywood. The now iconic Hollywood sign, which originally read "Hollywoodland" and was covered in flashing light bulbs, was erected in the 1920s as an advertisement to attract arty-farty and urbane home buyers to the development. While not nearly as posh or as expensive as Beverly Hills or Bel Air, Beachwood Canyon remains one of Los Angeles' most Los Angeles of neighborhoods, iffin that makes any sense.

Mister Carolla's crib, according to listing information, measures 2,281 square feet and contains 3 bedrooms and 3 poopers. The house sits atop a towering stone rampart and is accessed via a stone staircase that wraps around the rampart and leads up to a gated and hedged yard. Even more stair climbing is required to haul yer hiney up to the front door.

While it would most certainly be lovely to live on a private promontory high above the street, our imperious house gurl Svetlana would never permit Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter to live in a situation that would force her to perspire just from dragging the damn groceries up from the street to the kitchen. If there was some sort of dumbwaiter or funicular to carry the comestibles up to the house from the street she might relent. But even then probably not since she's still have to get her not interested in exercising at all for any reason self up the stairs.

Anyhoo, the interior spaces of Mister Carolla's former home include a step-down living room with a high-beamed ceiling, hardwood floors, fireplace, wet bar, and a tall arched window with views of the glittering lights of Tinseltown. There is also a den/family room with a second fireplace and built in entertainment center, and an eat-in kitchen all done over with a built in boo-fay and plate rack, white raised panel cabinetry, and high grade stainless steel appliances including a 4-burner baby Viking range. The master bedroom, according to listing information, has a third fireplace and, we presume, a private pooper.

Listing information indicates that the entire house was renovated and retrofitted in 1997 with a new HVAC system, foundation bolting, slate roof, electrical and plumbing upgrades and a beefed up security system.

The yard wraps around the house and offers a few small but flat lawn areas, a flagstone terrace with built in barbecue pit–or whatever that brick thing is–and an awning shaded patio that leads to a small deck with city views where the former traffic school instructor and staunch atheist sunk a hot tub and probably spent many-a-evening staring at the starry heavens. The children will note the gigantic flag pole prominently installed in the front yard. Although he may not believe in capital "G" god like most Americans still do, Mister Carolla is still a patriotic person. This is, after all, America, land of the free, and one need not believe in Jesus to be a good American.

Mister Carolla currently lives in a walled and gated property high atop the Hollywood Hills that he purchased in April of 2003 for $1,630,000. The Spanish style house measures 5,345 square foot house with 3 bedrooms and 6 poopers. Your Mama happens to know that, like at his former home in Beachwood Canyon, Mister Carolla flies the American–and the I-talian–flag at his current crib.

In March of 2007, according to property records, Mister and Missus Carolla paid $3,600,000 to purchase a contemporary ranch house in the Point Dume area of Malibu. As it turns out, the Carolla couple's beach house in the Bu, which has 4 bedroom and 3 poopers in the main house and another bedroom and pooper in the detached guest house, is currently for lease for July and/or August at $10,000 per month.

photos from Teles Properties listing

Mish Mash Monday

Let's begin the week with a few mish mash items cluttering up our desk top and taking up too much space in Your Mama's pea brain, shall we?

It's baaaa-uuuck. Oh, low-urhd, heaven help us all, it's bubbled back up to torture all us real estate watchers. That's right chickens, televisions freakiest and funniest house flipper Jeff Lewis is back at the real estate rodeo and has once again listed his white elephant in Los Angeles, CA with an asking price of $2,495,000.

Eagle eyed children and those who haven't completely wrecked their minds on the booze and dope may recall that the prickly and persnickety Miss Lewis last had his meticulously maintained residence in the Los Feliz area on the market in September of 2009 with an asking price of $2,295,000. It doesn't take any flip, flip, flipping of the well worn beads of our bejeweled abacus to see that's two hundred thousand clams less than its current price tag. Someone must be of the mindset that the market is on an upswing...

Let's quickly recap, shall we? Property records reveal that the large lipped and fastidious Mister Lewis snapped up the 3,024 square foot fixer upper in March of 2007 for $1,710,000. The hillside house, a 1960s post and beam number located at the tail end of a gated and quiet cul-de-sac in the star studded Oaks neighborhood, was given a full face lift and a new set of choppers. The arduous renovation was featured on Mister Lewis' boo-toob reality program Flipping Out. In April of 2008, the newly rehabbed 4 bedroom and 4 pooper property was flipped back on the market with a bloated and entirely unrealistic price tag of $3,195,000. By August of 2008, the asking price had been sliced and diced down to $2,595,000. By this point, at least one deal had failed to come to fruition. From August of 2008 to April of 2009 the pristine property was listed and delisted at least three times and from May to September of 2009 there were no fewer than 4 price chops before it was removed from the market.

Mister Lewis is, apparently, ready to pack his bags and load his sassy house woman Zoila up into his Mercedes SUV and head off to greener, or at least newer, real estate pastures. Your Mama expects that the all the dormant house flippers in Los Angeles will be eagerly and anxiously awaiting Mister Lewis' success or failure with regards to unloading his house.

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West coast based Funnyman Will Ferrell finally closed on his Manhattan loft-condo, paying $4,200,000 for a 2,699 square foot crib with 2-3 bedrooms and 2 poopers on West 13th Street in the far West Village. The property was never on the open market according to the folks at Curbed, but public records show the seller, hedge hog Joseph Lanasa the third, paid $4,400,000 for the condo in 2006.

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In other New York City celebrity real estate news, former first lady and (alleged) closet cigarette smoker Laura Bush and her Yale educated daughter Barbara were spotting house hunting in the West Village where the younger Miss Bush currently occupies a rental apartment. According to the Curbed kids, Miss and Missus Bush were eyeballed at 2 Jane Street where the only apartment currently on the open market is a 6th floor walk-up with 700 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 pooper, a sprawling 1,500 square foot roof terrace, and an asking price of $975,000.

While it's not strange that young Miss Bush might be ready to settle down into a pre-marriage nest, Your Mama does find it odd and even a wee bit suspicious that a pampered princess like Miss Bush–or rather Mommy and Daddy Bush–would consider coughing up nearly a million dollars for digs that require schlepping 6 flights of stairs every damn day but, than again, what do we know about anything?

According to two of Your Mama's informants, Miss Bush currently resides in a 1 bedroom apartment at the back of a very lovely townhouse just off lower Fifth Avenue in a building recently sold by Luke Janklow, the tall and sexy literary agent who brokered a million dollar book deal for Anderson Cooper and who also recently sold the West Village townhouse he owed and occupied with his former wife Julie.

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We will probably be smote down dead by the angry hands of the celebrity real estate gods for discussing this matter and believe Your Mama when we tell the children that we are deeply troubled that we can't keep ourselves away from this bit of "celebrity" real estate bizness, but here we go anyway. Brace yourselves buckaroos because Your Mama is all kinds of bent out of shape about this and we're feeling particularly sharp tongued.

Reality tee-vee "star" and plastic surgery addict Heidi Montag wants the world to know that she and her huzband–the ludicrously and stoopidly volatile buffoon Spencer Pratt–are getting a dee-vorce and that she's done moved herself and her many plastic body parts out of their unkempt crib in Pacific Palisades and into a fancy, new house in Malee-boo.

According to all the too many reports on the matter, Miss Montag and her quadruple double D's have leased a 5 bedroom and 6 pooper contemporary on the land side of the Pacific Coast Highway near Point Dume. Listing information for Heidi's new house shows the recently renovated residence sits on 1.17 landscaped acres, measures 6,636 square feet and, among other luxuries, includes a master suite with vaulted ceilings, double-sided fireplace, dangerous looking sunken soaking tub, a television in the shower–which is stoopid–two walk-in closets, a wet bar and a wall of windows that open to the back yard where a long lap pool runs alongside the hous and overlooks the lovely and lush grounds..

Property records show Heidi's new (rented) house was purchased by it's current, non-celebrity owner(s) in May of 2009 for $4,750,000. The house was flipped back on the market less than six months later and, as best as Your Mama can surmise, was last offered for sale at $5,500,000 and for lease with an asking price of $19,000 per month. It bedevils, betwixts and baffles Your Mama that a seemingly talent-free gal like Miss Montag can parlay her faux fame into a fortune that allows her the financial wherewithal to alter her body and face beyond recognition and to have enough cheddar left over to live up in a multi-million dollar dwelling in Malee-boo. Life ain't fair is it poodles? Listen, Your Mama don't begrudge a person their fame or wealth. We just prefer they to actually do something besides pout, whine and have plastic surgery to get it. But we digress to the point of needing a damn nerve pill.

According to some reports, Miss Montag and her behemoth bazooms plan to live and film a reality program in the house with a couple of other vacuous windbags who, like their friend Heidi, probably don't have much more to offer than large breasts and an embarrassing ambition to be famous. Word to the wise dollies, fame is fleeting and Your Mama recommends you squirrel a few pennies away each month because 5 years from now it's quite possible you'll be living up in some tawdry apartment complex in Pacoima–or maybe Van Nuys, if you're lucky–desperately trying to sell semi-nude photos of yourself over the interweb. Uucchh. Gawd. Pleeze. As far as Your Mama is concerned–and we're utterly ashamed to be concerned at all–the Montag/Pratt dee-vorce drama is just an ugly and (barely disguised) ploy to procure free publicity to promote her new reality tee-vee program, because, you know, that's how Heidi and Spencer roll. Anything for fame. Eh-nee-thing. Your Mama may have stooped so damn low as to write about the real estate "news" of these two, but we can assure the children, there isn't a torture invented that could get us to sit through even 2 minutes of whatever insipid reality program that will come slithering out of this house in Malee-boo.