More Housewife Nonsense

Put on your safety belts butter beans because like it or not Your Mama is going to discuss the recent doings and sad but not surprising turn of events of The Real Housewives of New Jersey's Teresa Giudice and her huzband Joe. The couple, who have made a display of themselves on national tee-vee as big spenders, filed for bankruptcy back in October of 2009 with claimed debts of around $11,000,000.

Although she's been publicly saying that everything is all cool and copacetic, word is starting to slip and slide down the real estate gossip grapevine that the contents of Tee-tee's tremendous and ticky-tacky Towaco, NJ mansion are about to be sold at a bankruptcy auction scheduled for the 22nd of August, 2010.

This bit-o-biznes comes right on the heels of "news" that Mister and Missus Giudice–that's pronounced jew-dice or gee-oo-dee-chay or something like that–failed to disclose significant income and assets to the bankruptcy court. Oh dear. Your Mama ain't no brain surgeon and half of our brain is rotted out from booze but even we know you can't go messin' with and hidin' assets from the bankruptcy people.

A few of the items to be sold off to pay Mister and Missus Giudice's elephantine 11 million dollar debt include (but are far from limited to):

–a Schaefer & Sons grand piano
–48-inch Wolf brand stainless steel range
–pair of shell leaf carved crest leather & fabric sofas
–six-foot tall ceramic Satsuma Temple urn
–mahogany poker table & chairs
–a faux marble chess set
–Sea-Doo Bombadier X20 jet boat
–10-foot tandem axle dump trailer
–and a damn snow plow.

Listen celery sticks, nobody including Your Mama would be dancing on the real estate and financial grave of Mister and Missus Giudice iffin Miss Thing weren't so damn obnoxious on the national tee-vee driving around in a damn Maserati and bragging about how much moolah she and the Mister spent on their 9-year old's birthday party all the while running up millions in debt.

We recognize that the economy may have soured and good bizness investments went bad for many almost overnight. But, pleeze, $11,000,000 of the sort of debt they have–credit cards, etc.–don't just creep up on someone overnight. It builds up over a period of time. Had those Giudice's had a full brain between the two of them they would have tightened their damn Gucci belts instead of having the Bravo TV cameras over to film while they had a huge housewarming party complete with valet parking and gave their daughter an expensive atv and took all her little loud friends for a limo ride to a sad little beauty parlor where they do up little girls in grown up make-up and hair dos.

All that seems to Your Mama is like a sad and depressing effort to keep up with the damn Jones family whoever they are. They'd have curried a lot more sympathy from folks like Your Mama had they been upfront and honest back then and told the Bravo TV cameras that like so many other people in this suck-ass economy they were having a rough go of it and as a result were cutting back on unnecessary expenses like chinchilla furs and bitchy party planners.

Although they have denied it, the couple's over-blown faux chateau that backs up to the very busy I-287 freeway was indeed on the market earlier in the year for $3,999,999. We have a copy of the listing, thank you very much. The property no longer appears on the open market and Tee-tee has repeatedly declared that her home is not for sale and not in foreclosure. However, once the vultures swoop down and buy her bedroom set and range top, Tee-tee might just wish she'd done sold that 10,000 square foot white elephant a long time ago.

It seems that slick spread in a recent issue of Life & Style magazine was really Tee-tee's swan song and farewell to all us people in the public having the apparently false impression that she's a free-spending rich lady with a insatiable hankering for marble and onyx.

Your Mama still thinks that maybe Tee-tee and that might-be-a-lesbian-ladee Danielle may want consider burying the hatchet and going in together on two-family house in Parsippany or Paterson or Passaic or one of those other "P" places in New Jersey until they can get back on their feet. Just a thought.

Weekend This and Thats

1.
Your Mama's a little late to the rodeo on this one, but in case y'all missed it, details about porn purveyor Bob Guccione's old Manhattan townhouse–bought by hedge hog Phil Falcone and his wife Lisa Maria for $49,000,000–are starting to seep out of the limestone.

Among other ridiculously dee-luxe amenities, the Falcone's 25,000+ square foot double-wide townhouse mansion will have two elevators–one for the staff, natch–a swimming pool, and a press room. No puppies, that's not a room for on-site publicity peeps, but a room in the basement where Lurleen the Laundress will spend her days and nights ironing sheets and working the stains our of the Falcone's napkins and undergarments.

Another tidbit about the townhouse that Your Mama found inneresting, is that one of Missus Falcone's two dressing rooms will include a wet bar just in case the ladee of the house feels like getting drunk while getting dressed. Lo-urhd knew we do sometimes.

2.
Brace yourselves butter beans because another "housewife" from The Real Housewives of New Jersey has hoisted her hideous home on the market.

Earlier this week a listing for too tan Teresa Giudice's church of conspicuous consumption popped up that showed her mansion listed at $3,999,999. Tee-tee subsequently tweeted that her mansion of marble is not for sale and the online listing has since vanished. Make of that what you will.

This time it's former stripper turned suburban soccer mom turned sex tape maker Danielle Staub. Miz Staub, a woman who comes off on her reality program as being about as stable as an earthquake, had her house on the market in the fall of 2009 for $1,495,000. It's now back on the market at with a hugely reduced asking price of $1,095,000.

Maybe Danielle and Tee-tee should consider going in together on an affordable two-family in Union City or something. Ugh.

3.
The deal is reportedly done on property developer Mohamed Hadid's insanely ginormous Bel Air mansion Le Belvedere. However he's being a bit cagey on the final sale price of the 10 bedroom and 14 pooper property telling the L.A. Times only that the buyer paid between fifty and $72,000,000.

Transaction records have yet to clear but while peeping and poking around the public property records this morning, Your Mama unexpectedly turned up an unexplained name on some recent records, that of a man named Sarp Turanligil. A quick search on the interweb indicates there is a man named Sarp Turanligil who is the chairman of Divan Hotels, a Turkish hotel group.

Listen puppies, Your Mama is not sure if the Mister Turanligil shown on the property records is the same Mister Turanligil of Divan Hotels. We're also not sure if Mister Turnaligil's name showing up in the property/title records is some sort of error, if he was an investor in the property, loaned Mister Hadid money, or if perhaps he's the deep pocketed buyer.

Basically we don't know nuthin' other than that name now appears on the property records. Time will tell and we shall see.

UPDATE: Records show the house transferred for fifty million clams.

4.
Although he may be living there all by his lonesome, the very contemporary Jupiter Island, FL home being built by bed hopping professional golfer Tiger Woods looks like it's nearing completion. Like his nearby neighbor Celine Dion's new Jupiter Island home/water park, Tiger's got two side by side swimming pools too.

Tiger's spread includes a 10,000 square foot main house and a 9,500 fitness facility that recent reports reveal will include an oxygen therapy room, whatever the hell that is.

5.
Legendary country crooner–and plastic surgery victim–Kenny Rogers has hoisted two Georgia mansions on the market. One beast of a house in the Buckhead area of Atlanta previously carried and asking price of $7,950,000 and is now listed at $5,900,000, and another, a kind of Polynesian paradise sort of place located just outside of Athens, is listed at $3,200,000.

6.
In other Hotlanta celebrity real estate news, actress/activist/fitness video maker/born again Christian Jane Fonda listed her Atlanta, GA loft condo a just over a month ago with an asking price of $4,500,000. Somebody must have hit her with the sensible stick because thanks to Georgia Justwantsyalltoknow Your Mama has learned that Miz Fonda Vadim Hayden Turner has slashed the price of her 4,700 square foot doo-plex by a whopping $2,000,000. The 3 bedroom and 3 pooper condo with it's bee-zar womb-like entrance hall is now listed at a far more reasonable $2,500,000.

Your Mama's west coast sources say that big, bad Barbarella has leased herself a dumpy 1 bedroom apartment in the star-studded Sierra Towers building in Los Angeles where her neighbors include other old-school divas such as Cher, Elton John and Joan Collins.

UPDATE: Teresa and Joe Giudice

Something is fishy in fancy pants Franklin Lakes. Or, rather, something is amiss about 15 miles away in the not quite as affluent town of Towaco, NJ.

Your Mama has just learned from Tittering Tina that earlier today The Real Housewives of New Jersey's resident table turner and phrase maker Teresa Guidice too to the Twitter and tweeted, "MY HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE!!!" This despite an online listing for Tee-Tee and her huzband Joe-Joe's elephantine faux chateau that clearly showed the Giudice family spread for sale with an asking price of $3,999,999.

That's right butter beans, Tee-Tee says her mausoleum like mansion of marble and onyx ain't for sale. Well, hmm...maybe Tee-Tee and Joe-Joe's monster mansion is not for sale today, but according to the listing Your Mama saw and scoured on Realtor.com, the Giudice digs were in fact first heaved on to the open market on the 20th of May, 2010. That means the Giudice's property was for sale for three whole weeks before Tee-Tee and Joe-Joe got around to asking the alleged listing agent(s) to remove the allegedly erroneous listing from the interweb.

Here's the thing. While it ain't none of no body's bidness but their own, least of all Your Mama's, we just can't help but wonder how Tee-Tee and Joe-Joe are planning to keep that particular roof over their heads. According to their October 2009 bankruptcy filing, the couple carries a hefty mortgage of at least $1,700,000 secured with their titanic Towaco mansion. A few flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama's trusty, bejeweled abacus shows that at current rates, a mortgage that size adds up to something just over $10,000 per month.

It doesn't take a mathematician–or even a very smart person–to see that a mortgage of 10 or 11 grand a month far exceeds the $6,583 per month in pre-tax income Tee-Tee and Joe-Joe claimed on their bankruptcy filing. There is also, don't let's forget, that extra ten grand a month the Giudices claim to get as gifts from family members. However and by Your Mama's rudimentary calculations, even when adding up their claimed income and their gifted income, after the gubbmint takes their pound of flesh and the fat mortgage gets paid, the notoriously profligate pair will have barely enough dough left over buy their bedazzled brood of screeching gurls Happy Meals at Mac-Donalds.

Your Mama fears that, as our not yet fully rehabbed gal pal Fiona Trambeau often says, "It can only end in tears, it can only end in tears." We shall see.

Another Housewife Bites the Real Estate Dust

SELLERS: Joe and Teresa Giudice
LOCATION: Towaco, NJ
PRICE: $3,999,000
SIZE: 10,000 square feet (approx.), 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It seems the financial fat ladee has done sung for yet another of Bravo's allegedly wealthy housewives. This time its one of the blinged out guidettes from New Jersey. All week long there's been a big brouhaha a brewin' in the tabs and everywhere else about how The Real Housewives of New Jersey's too tan baby factory Teresa Giudice and her grunting huzband Joe filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy back in late October of 2009. The large livin' couple claimed an astonishing $11,000,000 in outstanding debt–$10,853,648.04 to be exact–and only $79,000 a year in taxable income, plus another ten grand a month in "assistance" from family members. It doesn't take a brain surgeon–and Your Mama ain't no brain surgeon–to figure out that it was only a matter of time before the over spenders heaved their trés tacky mansion in Towaco, NJ on the market.

That's right buckaroos, fasten them seat belts because Mister and Missus Giudice–that's pronounced gee-oo-dice or jew-dee-chay or something like that–have hoisted their mammoth, marble, granite, and onyx encrusted crib of questionable architectural provenance or integrity on the market with an asking price of $3,999,999, otherwise known as four million clams.

Oh lo-wurhd have mercy, that whackadoodle Danielle Staub is going to have a field day with this one, isn't she? She's going to take to the airwaves and clatter up to the rooftops to shout and scream some kind of crazy nonsense about how this is divine justice, the unforgiving retaliatory hand of fate coming down to chop the evil Giudices down to size. Can't y'all just see her head spinning round like Linda damn Blair in The Exorcist?

Anyhoo, according to previous reports and their fascinating bankruptcy filing–which Your Mama is embarrassed to admit we actually read–the Gee-oo-dice's (or Jew-dee-chays) have managed to rack up a staggering $104,000 in credit card debt, owe $12,000 for fertility treatments, and another $2,300 in phone bills. And that, puppies, is just the tip of their ice berg of debt. Crimeny sakes, who has $2,300 in phone bills? What kind of person has $104,000 in credit card debt? Have mercy. It drives Your Mama to drink in the morning just to think about that sort of financial hole. And furthermore, if these two have $11,000,000 in debt, where did Tee-tee get that toilet paper roll sized wad of cash last season that she used to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ass-uglee furniture for their newly built monument to excess? Certainly they didn't wrack up eleven million bucks in debt in a single year.

Most mystifying, mortifying, and psychically destabilizing to Your Mama are the 8 mortgages that total $2,600,000 that the Jew-dee-chays (or Gee-oo-dices or whatever) carry on three homes. Whaaaaat? Somebody please grab Your Mama a damn nerve pill and slowly explain to our booze addled brain how these people managed to secure 8 mortgages on 3 properties totaling $2,600,000 with an income of $79,000 per year? It's no wonder the gubbamint had to step in to save the damn banks last year or whenever that was.

Previous reports indicate the deeply indebted duo have already handed two of the three properties back to the bank and one imagines that iffin they don't get their vulgar manse in Towaco sold quick–or big, bad, and rich Caroline Manzo doesn't step in to save their impoverished butts–then Tee-tee and Joe-Joe are in jeopardy of losing the family's faux chateau to foreclosure.

As best as Your Mama can tell, Mister and Missus Gee-oo-dice (or whatever) paid $530,000 for the 3.77 acre property in December of 2001 and subsequently took out a second mortgage of $1,720,000. Listing information shows the Giudice's residential beast measures around 10,000 square feet and includes 6 bedrooms and 5.5 poopers including a master suite with fireplace, separate sitting room, dressing room, walk-in closet, and steam shower. Please, do not, we beg of the children, think about or discuss anything related to Joe-Joe and Tee-tee taking a steam together.

Other amenities of the 16-room residence, according to listing information, include a train station sized entrance hall with double height ceiling and twin curving staircases with intricate wrought iron balustrades, a gigantic great room, formal living and dining rooms, game room, wine room, media room, den, office, gourmet eat-in kitchen with center island, and a separate staff or guest suite with private pooper.

Thank heavens listing information does not include photographs of the interiors because Your Mama would rather slowly saw off our left leg than look at the decorative train wreck that is the Jew-dee-chay (or Gee-oo-dice or whatever) mansion. We know of what we speak, poodles, because like millions of others, we've had the misfortune of repeating peering inside the wing-ed doors of that pile o' architectural doo-doo on The Real Housewives of New Jersey program.

The barely landscaped grounds include a long, red driveway composed of crushed granite or brick or something, a prairie sized motor court, large expanse of lawn–or weeds cut down to look like lawn–and two ponds including one with an man-made waterfall of stacked stone. Listing information states that "privacy and tranquility reigns" at the Gee-oo-dice (or Jew-dee-chay) digs but Your Mama has to wonder how much tranquility there really can be at a property that backs up to I-287, an extremely bizzy, 4-lane highway.

Listen celery sticks, we kind of like this Teresa gal and her amazingly explosive temper that causes her to occasionally upend tables in public places and holler brilliant barbs like "PROSTITUTION WHORE!" She makes for good (reality) tee-vee. We just think–and it is only Your Mama's meaningless opinion–that poor Tee-tee and Joe-Joe don't have a cotton pickin' clue about making good architectural choices or creating tasteful interiors...or, apparently, managing money. All the children know that Your Mama really doesn't care to dance on any one's real estate grave. However, we have a very difficult time feeling bad for someone–that would be Tee-tee–who's drowning in $11,000,000 of debt and then hauls her big balls onto national tee-vee and brags about how much cheddar she spent on her 9-year old daughter's birthday party. It's unseemly, not to mention bordering on immoral.

Where or where will Tee-tee, Joe-Joe and their band of bedazzled gurls go next? Maybe that touchy-feely Dina ladee will take them in. Or possibly the kind and well meaning but mealy mouthed Jacqueline can put them up in her basement next to that scary gun cabinet of hers. Somehow, even though they are tick as teeves, we sort of doubt Momma Manzo, a sensible if somewhat frightening woman, would take in a charity case with four children and $11,000,000 in debt. For what it's worth–and it's worth nothing–Your Mama thinks Joe-Joe and Tee-tee ought to get rid of the $1,280 a month Escalade they clearly can't afford, buy a used Kia car, and rent a crappy three-bedroom apartment in Secaucus, NJ with an affordable rent that's in line with their income. Just a thought.