Derek Jeter Lists Manhattan Penthouse Pad

SELLER: Derek Jeter
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $20,000,000
SIZE: 5,425 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We know we're a little late to the rodeo children, but we're going to put this one through the wringer anyway in order to specifically meet the personal and private needs of one off Your Mama's pals, a gal we'll K.R. Kantgetenoughofderekjeter.

Earlier in the week it was widely reported that New York Yankees short stop Derek Jeter?who may or may not have cheated in a recent game against some other professional baseball team Your Mama ain't never heard of?heaved his midtown Manhattan condo on the market with an asking price of $20,000,000.

Property records and previous reports reveal that Mister Jeter picked up his sky high aerie at the 900-foot tall Trump World Tower building in 2001 for $12,600,000. Listing information shows the apartment is located on the 88th floor, but according to The New York Times there is some sort of funny bizness between the numbers that appear on the elevator buttons and the number of stories actually in the building. Mister Jeter's condo is, according to The New York Times, actually on the 70th floor of the building.

Lo-werd have mercy butter beans it gives Your Mama a nose bleed just to think of living up that high in the damn sky so it really makes no difference to us whether Mister Jeter's apartment is on the 70th or the 88th or the 998th floor. As far as we're concerned, it's just not right and too damn risky to live that high up. Of course, that elevation provides for some undeniably spectacular heaven-like views, but when we consider living on the 70th floor all we can think about is that black out in 2003 when Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter had to walk up 17 flights of stairs to get our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly and then walk back down 17 flights of stairs?in the dark with flashlights?so those pooches could do their terliting bizness. Do y'all know how many times we had to do that? Iffin we lived up on the 70th or 88th floor we'd have to let those canines crap right up on the wood floors because we'd sooner go mano-a-mano with ultimate fighter B.J. Penn than climb down and up 70 flights of stairs every time Linda and/or Beverly had to do their damn bizness during a black out.

Anyhoo, listing photos, which show the apartment bare as a penniless person's cupboard, shows the sky high condo either as it looked in 2001 when Mister Jeter bought it or the well-liked baseball stud has already done packed his jockstrap and decamped for other digs. The high floor spread, according to listing information, sprawls across 5,425 square feet with exposures on three sides and includes 3 bedrooms and 4.5 poopers plus a staff room with private pooper located just behind the kitchen.

Mister Jeter's apartment, which towers over the United Nations complex across the street, is wrapped in acrophobia inducing 16-foot high floor to ceiling windows that take in insane views of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, Central Park, the downtown Financial District, the Atlantic Ocean and the George Washington Bridge. For those of y'all not familiar with Noo York City, the George Washington Bridge is on the other side of Manhattan from this sky-high aerie.

A foyer opens into the condo's main living spaces that sweep a staggering 77+ feet along the south side of the apartment. The prairie-like living room, located in the prime southeast corner of the apartment, measures 25-feet wide by 41-feet long includes a fireplace accented with Udaipur slate from India. Situated between the leviathan living room and the 660+ square foot banquet hall sized dining room in the southeast corner of the apartment is what floor plan information labels a library. However, it does not appear to Your Mama that there is a single shelf for a single book in that so-called library.

The well equipped eat in kitchen looks like pretty much every other kitchen Your Mama has ever seen or been in in one of these hideously expensive and architecturally average residential towers that hairrific real estate developer Donald Trump puts up all over town. A long hall that shoots back from the gallery the separates the foyer from the dining room contains a powder pooper, walk-in coat closet, service entrance, laundry facilities, and a long storage closet. At the tail end of the corridor is one of the condo's two guest or family bedrooms that includes a private pooper and two walk-in closets.

The other guest or family bedroom sits just off the foyer and has its own private pooper and two standard depth closets. The master suite, also accessed right off the foyer, opens to a long "L" shaped hallway with two walk-in closets, two standard depth closets, and two windowless poopers, one with a separate tub and shower and the other with just a stand up shower. The bedroom itself measures 27-feet long and 17 feet wide which is plenty of room for a sleeping area and large sitting area or playpen.

The condo is kitted out with all the electronic gadgets and gewgaws one imagines an extravagantly paid professional athlete would want including a Lutron lighting and shading system which allows the window shades to be raised and lowered at the touch of a button, a Crestron audio system, a Panasonic IP phone system (whatever that is), and a 3COM managed wireless network system (whatever that is).

Records we accessed through Property Shark show that Mister Jeter also owns an 84 square foot storage unit in the building that he purchased in May of 2004 for $25,700. Presumably this will be sold off to the new owner or another current resident of the building.

Other residents or owners in the Trump World Tower include, according to property records, a lot of folks with foreign sounding names and the governments of Qatar, Afghanistan, India, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Since February of 2009, Mister Jeter's upstairs neighbor has been Blackstone Group private equity honcho Chu Chinh who paid a a toe curling $33,654,000 for three units?one entire floor and half of the floor above?that total 34 rooms, and includes 12 bedrooms, 16.5 poopers and 14,864 square feet. Also in residence at the Trump World Tower is cat-faced plastic surgery victim Jocelyne Wildenstein, who owns 2 adjacent condos, one of which she bought in October of 2007 for $3,500,000, plus two storage rooms for which she paid a total of $103,000 in June and October of 2009.

There is much media speculation the Mister Jeter may have listed his bachelor pad because he just might be fixin' to move in with or marry his longtime actress girl friend Minka Kelly (Friday Night Lights) who lives primarily in Los Angeles, CA. But of course, Your Mama don't know nuthin' about that. What we do know is that Mister Jeter?a bit of a real estate size queen?will be far from homeless when he manages to offload his Manhattan condo. In addition to the somewhat controversial 30,000+ square foot mega-mansion he's been building on three contiguous waterfront lots in the Davis Island neighborhood of Tampa, records show Mister Jeter still owns a 4,493 square foot house inside the gates of the Avila Golf and Country Club in Tampa, FL that he bought way back in 1997 for $625,000. He also reportedly owns a mansion in Marlboro, NJ and an historic castle-like mansion in Greenwood Lake in Upstate New York.

listing photos and floor plan: Trump World Tower

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Let's Talk About Paul Allen, Shall We?

BUYER: Paul Allen
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $25,067,500
SIZE: 5,794 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In early June of 2010, multi-billionaire Microsoft co-founder turned investor and philanthropist Paul Allen dropped a chilling $25,0067,500 for a crisp and clean lined contemporary on Malibu's pretty, pricey, and prestigious Carbon Beach. The purchase was reported far and wide but Your Mama thought it might be fun to revisit the matter and have a little look-see into a few of the other high-octane properties that crowd Mister Allen's porcine real estate portfolio.

In the early 2000s, Mister Allen enjoyed a net worth above $25,000,000,000. Today, according to Forbes, his fortune has dipped to a substantially less but still staggeringly high 12 or 14 billion bucks. In addition to his ventures and successes in the high-tech and telecommunications industries, Mister Allen also owns three professional sports teams: the Seattle Seahawks, the Portland Trailblazers, and the Seattle Sounders. Do not any of the children even consider asking Your Mama to identify what sort of sport each of these teams plays because we do not know nor do we have any inclination to care.

In addition to collecting Jimi Hendrix memorabilia and his extensive philanthropic gifts in science and medicine, the quirky Mister Allen is also well known for his somewhat bizarre investments in whackadoodle endeavors such things as SpaceShipOne, a commercial piloted space rocket that would allow private citizens up into space. He also gave many millions to the SETI Institute to fund research to scan outer space for signs of intelligent life.

In 1983 Mister Allen was diagnosed with and successfully treated for Hodgkins lymphoma and in November of 2009 it was announced by Mister Allen's family that he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and 40 other billionaires in the United States, in July 0f 2010 Mister Allen pledged to give the majority of their vast fortune to philanthropic organizations and causes.

Whatever amount of his fortune Mister Allen decides to leave to pet causes and philanthropic concerns, and however troublesome the cancer may prove to be, his twenty five million dollar beach house buy in Malibu shows he still wants to live large and spend some of his immense riches snatching up high priced trophy properties to add to his already long list of über ritzy residences.

The architecturally striking gleaming glass and stucco structure on Carbon Beach, purchased through a corporation according to property records and previous reports, was sold by L.A.-based clothing manufacturing magnate Charles Perez who purchased the property in January of 1998 for $3,700,000. Although extensively remodeled, the original house was designed and built by architect Jerry Lomax. Your Mama isn't sure who handled the exterior overhaul or who did up Mister Perez's barely there interior day-core, but iffin any of the children know, be sure and give Your Mama a holler.

The 5,794 square foot house first appeared on the open market in January of 2010 with an asking price of $29,500,000. Listing information shows the house sits on 80-feet of oceanfront and includes 5 bedrooms and 7 poopers and the sort of ocean views that make rich people open their purse and happily pour out millions and millions and millions of dollars.

The front of the house, which faces bizzy and often traffic jammed Pacific Coast Highway, presents an opaque and angled collection of textured planes. While some will surely disagree in the most vehement manner, Your Mama thinks front façade stops short of feeling like a forbidding and unfriendly fortress due to the bright white walls and small patch of landscaping that includes itty-bitty sea grasses and a lovely line of Eucalyptus trees. Solid exterior doors set into a wall of horizontal frosted glass panels that mimic the horizontal lines pressed into the stucco walls open from the large driveway?large for an ocean front home on Carbon Beach, anyway?and into a secured and serene looking if not exactly quiet courtyard. A wide path of large square pavers that may or may not be limestone crosses the courtyard at an angle and passes through another small stand of fragrant Eucalyptus trees.

As one moves towards through the courtyard towards the glass front doors, the first mouth watering peek of the the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean comes into view. The front doors open into a generously scaled and sky-lit double height entrance hall that acts and the primary traffic hub for the house and reinforces the strong sight lines present throughout that house that direct and pull the eye towards the magnetically appealing view.

The U-shape of the house delineates and defines the use of interior space which puts the long living room, decent sized dining room and well equipped kitchen on the ocean side of the house for maximum visual impact and enjoyment. Dark hardwood floors, which Your Mama's impudent housekeeper Svetlana believes in her heart of hearts must be murder to keep from getting scratched all to hell by the sand that gets tracked in on flip flops and bare feet, ground the very airy rooms and allow the white walls to float and the ocean view to be the primary source of color in the house.

Long walls of floor to ceiling glazing in the living and dining rooms glide open, visually merge and successfully distort the distinction between and the interior and exterior spaces. The kitchen, directly behind the dining room, anchors one end of the long living room with the other anchored by a flat white wall pierced by a vertical row of open shelves that sits just to the left of the simple rectangular firebox that has no mantle or any hearth space to speak of. The bright yellow chairs ad a vibrant pop of bright color that Your Mama is positive perfectly complements the electric oranges, bright reds, and hot pinks of a classic California sunset.

The two legs of the U-shaped house extend away from the ocean and towards the street to create the courtyard entry. One leg stretches back from the kitchen and contains a sky-lit family room where a flat screen tee-vee is mounted above a long horizontal slit in the wall that divides the kitchen from the family room and creates a kind of snack bar. Although we imagine Mister Allen's nice, gay decorator will put his or her own stamp on the room, Your Mama rather likes the simplicity of the tone on tone putty and gray day-core. As in the living and dining rooms, the furnishings and artwork are kept simple at a minimum which keeps the focus on the view, which is the real star of the show here. Beyond the family room is a 2-car garage and?we think but can not confirm?laundry facilities and a staff suite.

The other leg of the U-shaped house contains a home gym, a couple of bedrooms and a media room with a large projection screen set into a wall of built in cabinets that hide the electronic equipment. No one loves a white slip-covered sofa more than Your Mama but we would most certainly have chosen versions without those country house rolled arms. They're just not cohesive with the simplicity of the architecture. In fact they kind of fight with it. While we would have preferred the cabinets in the media room be done much darker so that they would disappear in the dark while watching a movie, what Your Mama does j'adore about this room is that it provides a brief lesson and particularly nice example of the dee-voonly rigorous nature of the building's interior architecture. The children will note that from the media room there is an unobstructed and long, long, long sight line that continues all the way down the corridor, across the living room, out the windows, and past the rolling sea grass covered dunes to the ocean in the distance. No matter how deep into this house one is, a glimpse or a panoramic view of the ocean is just a short step or a quick head turn away.

There are two ocean side bedrooms upstairs, both with private poopers and open to large and private ocean side decks. The master bedroom occupies a long stretch at the center of the house with a long and tall strip of frameless glass that sucks in the view, and a fireplace over which a flat screen tee-vee is set into the wall and around which are sleek open shelves with enclosed cabinets along the bottom. We could do without the rust colored marble around the fireplace. It's pretty and probably cost as much as Your Mama's big BMW but it is our humble and meaningless opinion it would be appropriate in a more architecturally traditional setting. Tucked into the corner of the room a cute little desk provides a perfect spot for Mister Allen to check the balances on his bank accounts first thing in the morning and last thing before bed. There really is no rest for the wicked or the rich, is there?

The master pooper, a large space with separate jetted tub and glass enclosed shower that opens to the deck through a sliding glass window, has heinous, rustic and distressed wood cabinetry and accents that are incongruous and totally out of harmony with the otherwise uncluttered and unadorned rooms. We can only hope that Mister Allen has the good damn sense to hire a smart architect and/or nice, gay decorator to go in there and whip that pooper into shape.

The back of the house opens to a limestone terrace that surrounds a spectacular and spectacularly rare ocean side swimming pool and spa. At one end of the terrace a snug covered dining area has a tall wall of stacked stone with an outdoor fireplace. A frameless glass windscreen?that would surely be smudged and smeared with canine snot within 10 minutes of Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's arrival with our wet nosed and long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly?marks the edge of the tailored and manicured areas and the beginning of the natural environment. The house sits far enough back from the ocean to allow for an expanse of low dunes covered in beach grass between the beach and the house that we imagine makes a soothing rustling noise as the breeze blows through the reeds.

Information Your Mama managed to tease out of the interweb thanks to a helping hand from Babbling Babette shows that in addition to having the property on the sales market, the former owner?that would be the aforementioned Charles Perez?had the house out for lease during the summer of 2010 with breathtaking asking prices of $150,000 for the month of June and $200,000 for the months of July and August. We do know that the house was rented for at least part of the summer. We don't know to whom or for how much. Anyone?

Carbon Beach, as the children surely know, is often referred to as "Billionaire's Beach" due to the staggering number of billionaires (and other filthy stinking rich folks) who own ocean front homes on that particular strip of highly desired sand. Immediately next door to Mister Allen's new beach shack is the John Lautner designed dwelling currently owned by dueling and dee-vorcing duo Jame and Frank McCourt who bought the swooping and organic residence in July of 2007 for $27,300,000 from architectural aficionados Courtney Cox and David Arquette. The McCourts also own the house on the other side of the their Lautner that they bought for $19,000,000 as extra space for family and friends. Given the bitter state of affairs between the erstwhile McCourts, Your Mama would not be the least bit surprised if both of these houses were soon hoisted on the market.

Other denizens of coveted Carbon Beach includes Jeffrey Katzenberg who owns a Gwathmey Seigel designed compound, former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel whose funky digs were done by Michael Graves, gay gajillionaire David Geffen who has a four-lot compound reminiscent of the Hamptons, prolific action film producer Joel Silver, and restaurant mogul Peter Morton who has relatively recently completed dee-voon domicile designed by architect Richard Meier. Other Carbon Beachers include Eli Broad, Lou Adler, Haim Saban, and tech tycoon Larry Ellison who owns at least 8 homes on Carbon Beach. The estate of deceased philanthropist Nancy Daly currently has her former Carbon Beach house listed at $47,000,000 (reduced from $57,000,000) and the hulking ocean front house of real estate financier William Chadwick was recently re-listed at $35,000,000 after first hoisting the property onto the open market in the summer of 2008 an improbably high $65,000,000 price tag.

By all accounts, Mister Allen calls a vast multi-parcel compound on Washington State's fancy-schmancy Mercer Island home. According to previous reports and property records, Mister Allen first began to assemble his compound on the western side of Mercer Island along the shore of Lake Washington in 1985. Your Mama spent some time peeping and poking around the public property records and counted at least 10 parcels, some on the water and some across the street on the land side. With the assistance of our trusty and bejeweled abacus Your Mama counted nearly 50,000 square feet of interior space spread through out 7 or 8 separate residences that combined cost Mister Allen almost $20,000,000 to purchase.

In the mid-2000s, the government of Mercer Island?or whatever entity makes these decisions?declined Mister Allen's request to put a helipad on one of his properties. Ever the problem solver, Mister Allen skirted around the matter and purchased a funky, flat-topped watercraft that on top of which a helicopter can land. The famous floating helipad chugs out into Lake Washington where the whirlygig sets down and then returns to the dock. Problem solved and, it seems, a big ol' fuck you to the people who declined his request for an onshore landing pad.

In Los Angeles, Mister Allen owns a 12,952 square foot Mediterranean style mansion in Beverly Hills, CA that is famous for the funicular that ferries folks from the pool deck the tennis court that sits lower on the hillside and atop, we hear through the real estate gossip grapevine, a massive underground garage. The mansion was built in the early 1990s on the property where closeted silver screen icon Rock Hudson died of AIDS in 1985.

Mister Allen, according to property records, purchased the property in April of 1997 through the same corporation through which he purchased his new home in Malibu. The seller was writer/producer/director John Landis who is perhaps best known for writing and directing Michael Jackson's Thriller video. He also directed The Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House, and The Blues Brothers just to name of few of the long list of films and tee-vee programs with his name on them. Nearby property owners include supermodel turned entertainment mogul Tyra Banks, horror film honcho Clive Barker, aqua-queen Esther Williams, and Greek shipping heir (and former Paris Hilton paramour) Paris Latsis.

Mister Allen's real estate portfolio bulges not only with notable stateside properties, he also owns the Villa Maryland in the South of France (Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat). The Florentine style hilltop villa, built in 1904 by British ship builder Arthur Wilson, was lent (or leased) to peripatetic superstars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and their ever increasing band of multi-culti celebutots who shacked up at the villa in the spring of 2008 while they awaited the birth of their twins.

Like all multi-billionaires in a seemingly endless and desperate race to keep up with the Joneses?and the Al Mahktoums and the Ellisons and the Abramovichs?Mister Allen owns a couple of floating mansions that rank among the longest and most luxurious on the planet. In the spring of 2010 it was reported that Mister Allen had put his smaller boat, the 303-foot Tatoosh, on the market with an asking price of ?125,000,00. At today's rates, according to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption, that is a face smacking $163,079,000 to all us American folk across the pond. The Tatoosh , according to marketing materials, has 5 decks and accommodates 24 guests in 12 staterooms plus crew of 35. The big boat's full width wood paneled main salon has hardwood floors and a carved limestone fireplace and there is a shaded swimming pool on the aft section of the main deck that's equipped with a floor that at the touch of a butten can be adjusted to a depth of six feet. Other luxuries, according to reports, include a movie theater, fitness center, two helicopter decks, a 40-foot launch, a 40-foot sail boat, and 5 Sea-doos.

Although there is some scuttlebutt among yacht gossips that due to the financial implosion of Charter Communications?the cable company that Mister Allen owns 51% of and which declared bankruptcy in 2009?may also want?or need?to sell his larger boat, the 414-foot long Octopus that reportedly costs Mister Allen a dumbfounding $384,000 per week to maintain. A few quick flicks of the well worn beads of our bejeweled abacus shows that comes to $19,968,000 per year just to keep the damn boat afloat, a number, the children should keep in mind, that does not as far as we can tell include the hundreds of thousands of clams it costs to fill the freaking gas tank. The super-sleek and midnight blue hulled Octopus reportedly requires a crew of 60, and includes necessities such as a swimming pool, music studio, basketball court, 7 launches, 2 submarines, and 2 helicopters.

listing photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Westside Estate Agency

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UPDATE: Let's Talk About Paul Allen, Shall We?

Yesterday Your Mama blew a gasket discussing many of the über posh properties and floating mansions of billionaire Microsoft co-founder turned investor and philanthropist Paul Allen. Thanks to some whispered words from a couple of The Children, Your Mama learned that our rundown, as exhaustive as it seemed, was incomplete. In addition to his colossal compound on Mercer Island, WA, the new $25,000,000 beach house in Malibu, a mansion in Beverly Hills, and the fantastical Villa Maryland in the South of France, Mister Allen also owns a number of other notable homes.

Although Your Mama missed every reference to it in our research, it's been widely reported over the years that Mister Allen owns a swank townhouse in London's hoity-toity Holland Park neighborhood, the same general vicinity as rich and famous folks like brash billionaire Richard Branson, chesty entertainment mogul Simon Cowell, and legendary musician Sir Paul McCartney.

In addition to his London digs and all his west coast abodes Mister Allen maintains an east coast outpost. In 1996, it was widely reported by all the New York City real estate gossips that Mister Allen paid real estate ma">real estate magnate Martin Raynor $14,000,000 for the 11th floor co-operative apartment at Manhattan's high nosed and stiff necked 4 East 66th Street. The children will recall that 4 East 66th Street is the very same white glove building that faces Fifth Avenue and Central Park where?with her feet firmly in a financial fire?socialite Veronica Hearst sold her 6th floor Renzo Mongiardino designed digs for a stunning $36,500,000 to 30-something year old hedge hog Chase Coleman III and his finance heiress wife Stephanie.

The children might be amused to know that Missus Coleman, née Ercklentz, appeared in Band-Aid heir Jamie Johnson's 2003 documentary Born Rich in which she dropped a number of revealing and bewildering bon mots like, "I love purses. They are so easy to buy. I have shelves and shelves of them...It's not a big deal. I want a Gucci purse, I buy it...I would have to marry within my [social group], because I couldn't have a husband who would freak out if I bought a $600 Gucci purse." Doesn't that just make y'all love her like the damn dickens?

Anyhoo, property records show other owners of apartments in the heinously expensive 4 East 66th Street include pharmaceutical honcho Howard Soloman, hedge hog Daniel Nir and his wife Jill Braufman, and Deutsche Bank director Kevin Parker and his wife Ulla. Our high society snitch, The Social Butterfly, told us ages ago that Texas based billionaires Sid and Mercedes Bass also maintain a residence in the buttoned up building.

Mister Allen owns a couple of very large properties in the scenic San Juan Islands just off the coast of Anacortes, WA. In 1988?some reports say it was in 1992?Mister Allen purchased an entire island in the San Juans known as Allan Island (above). The island, it should be noted, is not named after Paul Allen (with an "e") but rather it was named in 1841 after some dude in the Navy named Captain William H. Allan (with an "a").

Your Mama does not know how much Mister Allen paid for Allan Island, but we do know that in 2005 he heaved the rugged island on to the market with an optimistic asking price of $25,000,000. We also know that five years later Mister Allen is still trying to unload Allan Island, which remains available but with the much reduced asking price of $13,500,000 and steep 2010 annual taxes of $113,381.

Although Mister Allen reportedly had plans drawn up for a woodsy but contemporary family compound, the island remains virtually undeveloped except for a 1,212 square foot log-style contemporary caretaker's cabin that sits up above a dock that juts out into a small protected bay where boats and sea planes can be parked. According to listing information, the cabin is equipped with water, septic, and a generator plus, somewhat strangely, some sort of hot tub or spa located in or near the cabin.

As well as by water, Allan Island can be accessed by private plane on the grass airstrip that cuts a wide, ugly and angry scar across the otherwise nearly untouched landscape that includes rocky but pristine beaches and thick stands of trees that tower over rocky outcroppings that creep dramatically out into the water.

If Your Mama has said it once we've said it 17,000 times, rich and famous folks can be incredibly fickle about their real estate, quickly forsaking one property for another. It seems that before Mister Allen got very far with his plans to develop Allan Island, he set his real estate sights and family retreat dreams on another property in the San Juan Islands.

In the mid-1990s, amid a bit of brouhaha, Mister Allen paid around $8,000,000 to purchase the 387-acre Sperry Peninsula on Lopez Island. Since 1945, the property was the site of the popular Camp Nor'Wester. Many former campers and architecture aficionados mourned and beefed over the loss of the popular children's summer camp that had at least six buildings designed by Paul Hayden Kirk, a granddaddy of the modernism movement in the Pacific Northwest.

Regardless of the pedigree of some of the structures at Camp Nor'Wester, Mister Allen "dismantled and moved" several of the buildings to other locations on the peninsula in order to make way for a granite, glass, and cedar compound designed by another of the Pacific Northwest's well known modernists, Harold Moldstad.

According to a 1997 article in The Seattle Times, architectural plans filed with San Juan County showed five new buildings: a main mansion for Mister Allen, a beach house and a bunkhouse for his mother Faye, a third residence for his sister Jody Patton, and a 2 bedroom caretaker's cottage situated near the entrance to the property. All of the structures were to be completed by the turn of the century according to a spokesperson for Mister Allen and although we can not confirm, Your Mama assumes that the compound is indeed complete.

Mister Allen's main mansion, according to The Seattle Times, was designed to measure in at a sizable 13,000 square feet with 8 bedrooms, 5 poopers, 4 fireplaces and second floor den with its own kitchenette, fireplace, and deck.

A beach house, which plans label the Chapel Rock House, was designed to sit across the swimming pool from the main house and include 3,150 square feet with 2 changing rooms, 2 fireplaces, 1 pooper?and, for some reason, 4 terlits?and an outdoor barbecue area. This sounds, to an ignoramus like Your Mama more like a damn pool house than an actual residence. A nearby bunk house with 5,440 square feet was planned with a 32-foot high ceiling and a 9-foot wide granite fireplace in the main living space plus 9 bedrooms, most with private poopers and decks. Both the bunk house and the Chapel Rock House were, according to plans, designed for use by Mister Allen's mother Faye.

The house designed for Mister Allen's sister Jody Patton, at 3,160 square feet, was planned with 2 bedrooms, 2 poopers, a fireplace, and a mudroom. In order to skirt around certain legal technicalities and building permit issues and etc., plans called for both Sister Jody and Momma Allan to lease each of the buildings built for them at two grand a month apiece. Of course, Your Mama don't know a piece of driftwood from a car accident but we'd bet our long bodied bitches that both Sister and Momma are slipped a couple grand a month extra to pay for their so-called leases at the family's Sperry Peninsula compound.

When the article in The Seattle Times was published, architects had yet to decide where the tennis court complex with its barbecue pit and pooper were going to be built. We imagine that problem was solved long ago.

Yesterday, Your Mama also discussed Mister Allen's yachts, the 303-foot Tatoosh?currently for sale for $163,000,000?and the 414-foot money pit he dubbed Octopus that reportedly sucks up a truly shocking $384,000 per week to maintain. In addition to his big boats, Mister Allen also has a thing for luxury airplanes. Your Mama isn't sure exactly how many or what type of planes Mister Allen currently owns, but at one time, according to previous reports, his fleet included 2 Boeing 767s for long hauls and several smaller jets for shorter hops. Just to give the children an idea of just how big a 767 is, keep in mind that when used as a commercial craft it can seat upwards of 180 people. He reportedly keeps his fleet in a vast hangar at Seattle's Boeing Field.

Nothing like a long long long list of a billionaire's private real estate holdings and high-priced trinkets and toys to make a body feel financially deprived or morally indignant depending on your point of view.

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Does Martha Stewart Want Huguette Clark's Spread?

Your Mama isn't sure why this little nugget of celebrity real estate scuttlebutt didn't find longer legs because it's 49 kinds of juicy even though it probably doesn't have a lick of truth to it.

According to a September 13th (2010) report on the something called Times of the Internet (via the not always reliable National Enquirer), billionaire domestic diva and trophy property collector Martha Stewart "covets" the 42-room Fifth Avenue spread of reclusive centenarian billion-heiress Huguette Clark.

As the children know, there has been quite a bit of brouhaha and ink spilled the last few months regarding the mysterious copper heiress Huguette Clark, her vast fortune estimated to be around half a billion bucks, and her three residences located in three of the country's ritziest zip codes. It's been reported that Miz Clark has not been inside her titanic apartment New York City at 907 Fifth Avenue at for more than 20 years, visited her vast estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara, CA since sometime in the 1960s and, despite having added an entire wing, never even stepped foot on the secluded New Canaan, CT estate she purchased during the 1950s as a kind of real estate security blanket in the event that the cold war got hot and she wanted to get out of New York City.

According to the National Enquirer's so-called "insider," Miz Stewart, who we hear from several sources already owns a smaller unit in the building with a kitchen that looks like a damn science lab, has "got the whole apartment redecorated in her mind. The deal seems to be all she can think about."

This "insider" also claims that Miz Stewart, a gal who makes other women (and gay men) feel totally and completely inadequate in their crafting and baking skills, is so intent on buying Huguette's 42-room beast on Fifth Avenue that she once sent a plate of her famous cream puffs up to Miz Clark's apartment as a kind of Trojan Horse. But alas, by that point Miz Clark had long been sequestered in a New York City hospital and the cream puffs were returned tout de suite by her staff.

Sometime after her cream puffs were rebuffed, according to this "insider," Miz Stewart went to the doorman of the undistinguished white glove building and "angrily demanded" that he tell her where Miz Clark was. But alas, the doorman did not know and once again Big Bad Martha, allegedly, was thwarted in her attempt to buy the epic-sized crib even before she really got started. Now chickens, please keep in mind that we don't know if these cream puff and doorman stories have a shred of veracity. However, iffin the stories were true it chills Your Mama to the core to ponder the icy resolve and quiet anger that we imagine would have slowly crept across Miz Stewart's face and into the marrow of her 68-year old bones. She is, after all and as we all know (or think we know), not used to not getting what she wants.

What's interesting about this report in the National Enquirer?which we are unable to find online?is that it does not include the most important detail regarding Huguette's 42-room "apartment." In actually Huguette's 42-room digs are two unconnected units on two different floors of the building. One is a full floor prairie like spread and the other a half-floor apartment where it has been reported Huguette keeps her extensive collection of dolls and dollhouses. Getting from one apartment to the other requires a short but inconvenient elevator ride.
A typical 14-room half floor apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue?as it was originally laid out (above)?would have included a 4-5 bedrooms, a 46-foot long entrance gallery, a 31-foot long living room with fireplace, formal dining room with fireplace, small library, and a kitchen with large butlers pantry. Live in staff would be accommodated in 3 cell-sized rooms that share just one pooper and a small servant's hall is where the live-ins would take their meals and quietly complain and gossip about the demands and proclivities of their wildly wealthy employers. According to the materials sent to Your Mama by one of The Children whom we'll call Hamilton Hasthefloorplan the fourteen room half floor units at 907 Fifth were first marketed with yearly lease prices of?are y'all sitting down??$10,500.
Thanks to Hamilton Hasthefloorplan, Your Mama now has a seizure inducing floor plan for a 28-room full floor apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue that includes two 40-foot long drawing/living rooms, a 30-foot long library, dining room, colossal kitchen with pantry, six family bedrooms, and 5.5 poopers. The apartment's vast staff quarters include laundry facilities (with a drying porch), a maze of hallways, 9 punishingly small staff bedrooms that share 2 poopers, a small servant's hall, and a decent sized bedroom with private pooper for the housekeeper. The full floor apartments at 907 Fifth Avenue, according to marketing materials, were first offered with a yearly lease price of?sit down again and grab a nerve pill, puppies?$30,000. Lo-ward have mercy children that's a damn fraction of what Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter payed in annual rent for a much smaller 3 bedroom and 3 pooper downtown doo-plex.

Listen chickens, Your Mama does not know a peg leg from pin cushion so we haven't any idea whether either of these floor plans reflects an accurate layout of either of Huguette Clark's Fifth Avenue apartment(s). What they do reflect is how the apartments were laid out early in the building's history. Let's be honest though, whether they represent the layout of Huguette's two apartments or not, they are fascinating and jaw dropping bits of floor plan porn to pour over while sipping on an early afternoon gin and tonic.

floor plan image (half floor): Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library

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Hilary Duff Lists the Duff Family Digs

SELLER: Hilary Duff
LOCATION: Toluca Lake, CA
PRICE: $7,000,000
SIZE: 9,827 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was only in June of 2010 that Your Mama dissed and discussed the downsized digs in Beverly Hills, CA that former Disney cash cow Hilary Duff and her hockey stud huzband Mike Comrie snatched up for $3,850,000.

Mister and Missus Comrie's new crib of newlywed bliss?a sort of Southern Plantation meets Greek Revival meets suburban Los Angeles style affair?sits behind the guarded gates of the celebrity friendly Summit community. The Summit happens to be the very same community where pop superstar Britney Spears lived when she came apart at the mental seams in 2007 and 8 and where, we hear, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale have recently embarked on a major remodel of big booty diva Jennifer Lopez's former house, a long and low single story contemporary they scooped up in August of 2006 for $13,250,000.

Now that the recently hitched Mister and Missus Comrie have a new nest to feather up in the Beverly Hills (Post Office), Miss Duff has, not surprisingly, heaved her hulking quasi-Mediterranean style mansion in Toluca Lake, CA on the market with an asking price of $7,000,000.

Property records show that Miss Duff picked up the Toluca Lake property through a trust in March of 2004 for $3,500,000. That would have been about when Miss Duff was a young, dewy and noo-bile 16 or 17 years old. Say what y'all want about Miss Duff, her big fake teeth and her all too frequent cliché roles in money making tween yawners like Agent Cody Banks and A Cinderella Story, but beehawtcha bought a multi-million dollar house long before some moe-rons even managed to graduate from the damn high skool.

Anyhoo, listing information for Miss Duff's digs shows it measures in at a whopping 9,827 square feet and includes 6 bedrooms and 6.5 poopers. The gated and secured property occupies a double wide parcel that, while it does not actually back up to Toluca Lake, still has access to the private 6-acre lake where Miss Duff toodles around on an 8-seater electric boat that she's offering as a free gift with purchase of the house.

Call us a real estate and decorative snob and cynic?which we are?but after seeing the architecturally not quite right house that Miss Duff and Mister Comie picked up in the Summit community, Your Mama is rather surprised to see that the interior spaces and the done, done, done day-core of her house in Toluca Lake are so well conceived and thoughtfully executed. The quite large house, a mansion really, manages to feel both grand and intimate and the utterly mouth watering antique French oak floors laid down in most of the house were a brilliant and inspired choice that inject a comforting patina into the interior spaces that could easily gone down the decorative terlit like all those impossibly banal and way too beige mcmansions that litter the landscape in Los Angeles and just about every other suburban place in America.

A large living room on the main floor sets the decorative tone and tight color story for the entire house. In here we find a well ordered and thoughtfully chosen mix and match of furniture styles, shapes and time periods and a soothing, sophisticated and muted palette of mushrooms, taupes, milk chocolates, and very dusty blue and green accents. This does not to Your mama look like the home of a very young woman, but rather the residence of a person with a keen, somewhat quirky (and well financed) sense of style and taste. Or, at least, the home of someone with the smarts and deep pockets to hire someone with a keen and eclectic eye for the day-core.

What's absent throughout the house, as far as Your Mama is concerned and can see, is a critical mass of proper artwork. There do appear to be a few things such as the orange and purple camouflage patterned painting in the dining room but, hunnies, a half dozen flat screen tee-vees mounted on the walls and that swirly and scary sun-shaped mask mounted on stick and set on the chunky credenza with decorative paneled doors in the den/family room do not count as art in any way, shape or form. It is our humble and meaningless opinion that the mask, with its treacherous curly-cued tentacles, is one of the few mistakes made with Miss Duff's day-core, and is it ever a damn doozie of a decorative blunder. Lo-ward have mercy puppies it causes Your Mama to need a nerve pill just to think of that thing falling over and slicing and dicing whatever unlucky person might be sitting on the sofa directly behind it.

Anyhoodles, there are at least four indoor eating areas, which is sort of odd for a house that belongs to a very thin woman who has spoken out about the pressure women feel to be impossibly thin if they want careers in Hollywood. The largest is in the dramatic double height atrium space that's surrounded by arched colonnades. A proper dining room with built in wet bar was did up with a casual nod to the modern with an oval shaped Danish dining room table and leather padded chairs, a funky crescent shaped glass chandelier, and an even funkier leather sofa that looks like a good place to plop down after over-eating. This, puppies, is Your Mama's favorite room in the house. We'll let you make of that and say of that what you will.

In addition to the more "formal" dining areas, there is a breakfast room with Mexican paver tile floors, a carved wood table, wacky wicker chairs, and taupe colored walls. In the huge sky-lit kitchen?which barely even looks like a kitchen?a large island has plenty of room for a snack counter. The antique French Oak flooring that we like so well continues into the kitchen that has mud colored cabinets, sleek stainless steel appliances, and a built in banquette covered in mushroom colored velvet (or velveteen or whatever). Your Mama particularly appreciates the open shelving for the cook books that gives the room a needed blast of color and we love love love the plant growing out of the gnarled stump on the island and we're pretty sure we like that totem pole like light fixture that has a bunch of Sputnik-like rods with light bulbs sticking off of it.

Other rooms in Miss Duff's house, according to listing information, include a billiard room, game room, cognac room?which seems like a silly sort of thing to have?a wine cellar wrapped in racks that hold a boatload of booze bottles, a fitness room crowded with body torture devices, and?just like Candy Spelling?a gift wrapping room. All of our life Your Mama's momma, a goosey gal well known in her circle for giving extravagantly and meticulously wrapped presents, has sat on the floor to work her gift wrapping magic so we don't really understand why these pampered Tinseltown types need a damn room to run some ribbon around a box covered in pretty paper. But then again, iffin Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter were custom designing a huge house like this we'd probably have an entire room built our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that would include a dog-washing station, down padded banquettes, a television and radio, and built in cabinets with plenty of shelving space for all the food, toys, poo bags, vitamin supplements and nail clippers that currently to clutter up our kitchen and pantry.

The heavenly antique French oak floors continue up into the master suite that has a gorgeous vaulted wood ceiling, and a bank of French doors that open to a loggia that overlooks the backyard. In addition to the big bedroom that's plenty large enough for a generous sitting area with a dusty blue sectional sofa with rolled arms there are, according to listing information two walk-in closets and two poopers. One of the private poopers in the master suite has sexy shimmery pearlized tile walls, heated stone floors, a free-standing egg-shaped soaking tub, and a large glass enclosed steam shower in which Miss Duff's nice, gay decorator has placed a stunning petrified wood stump that Your Mama would pull out most of our fingernails to have sitting on the floor of our shower.

In addition to the quartet of loggias that run along the back of the house on both the first and second floors, Miss Duff's digs in Toluca Lake contains several additional outdoor living and lounging areas. A sizable and private interior courtyard with a ceiling of tangled vines has a gurgling fountain and hundreds if not thousands of twinkling white Christmas lights wrapped around the massive beams that stretch over the space. A vine and trellis covered lounge area with an outdoor fireplace and cushioned seating?some of it built in some not?for 15 or 20 guests sits off to one side of the back yard adjacent to the small but perfectly adequate swimming pool and spa. We're sort of surprised that with the level of sophistication seen on the inside of the house that the swimming pool still has very pedestrian brick coping and concrete terracing.

Although the house does not back up directly onto tiny Toluca Lake, it does open to a community controlled and maintained green space that leads down to the water's edge where, we imagine, Miss Duff keeps her little 8-seater electric boat-thing that?if she was so inclined?could use to putt-putt down to the lake front house of that poor unlucky in love ack-turuss Jennifer Love Hewitt (Ghost Whisperer).

Property records (and the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial) show that in February of 2006, an 18 year old Miss Duff laid out $1,650,000 for a walled and gated Mediterranean style residence with 2,420 square feet and 3 bedrooms and 2 poopers. Since Your Mama really does not know a fishing pole from a ceramic bowl, we can't really say whether Miss Duff will hang on to this house or if she'll opt to cash out on this one too. Iffin we had to guess we'd say she'll keep it because her sister Haylie and her parents need someplace to live now that she's unloading the Duff family homestead.

Like the celebrity packed Hidden Hills, CA community, a person can not swing a cat or anything else without smacking a famous person across the face. Other residents of Toluca Lake with identifiable names include Disney queens Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale, and Demi Lovato, actor Eric McCormack (Will & Grace), Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry, not particularly funny comedian George Lopez, former Baywatch babe Brook Burns, actor James Marsden, one of Puff Daddy's several baby mommas, Beverly Hills 90210 alum Jason Priestley, Beverly Hills 90210 alum Jennie Garth and her man-mate Peter Facinelli (Nurse Jackie) who listed their huge house in June of 2010 for $5,995,000, and comedy's reigning king Steve Carell who has long lived in the star-studded 'hood and recently shelled out $6,000,000 for the old Jonathan Winters house and tore it down to make way for his own Barbie Dreamhouse.

listing photos: Keller Williams

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Let's Talk About Paul Allen...Again, Shall We?

Even though Your Mama spent two days and way too much time discussing and poring over the residential property holdings of multi-billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, it seems that we managed to miss at least three very significant pieces of his vast real estate puzzle.

The previously discussed Beverly Hills estate and the gleaming new beach house on Carbon Beach in Malibu are not, as it turns out the only residential real estate holdings in southern California that take up space in Mister Allen's porcine property portfolio.

In 1997 Mister Allen dumped $20,000,000 on The Enchanted Hill, a near mythic estate perched along a ridge at the tippy-top of Angelo Drive above Benedict Canyon. Much to the chagrin and anger of just about everyone, Mister Allen razed the legendary Wallace Neff designed house (above) that was built in the early 1920s for prolific screenwriter actress Frances Marion and her silent screen star husband Fred Thomson.

The original estate contained about 24 acres and included a sprawling Spanish Colonial style main house, horse stables with mahogany floors, a riding ring or two, tennis court, swimming pool, and acres of formal gardens. Miz Marion and Mister Thomson dubbed the estate The Enchanted Hill, a name that became a bit of an inside joke between two-time Oscar winner Miz Marion and her media mogul boss William Randolph Heart who named his colossal castle confection in San Simeon, CA the same name only in español: La Cuesta Encantada.

In 1929, not long after Mister Thomson stepped on a rusty nail and died of the tetanus, the estate as sold for $540,000 to Texas oil and mining magnate Lejeune Barnes. Paul Kollsman, who made a fortune from his invention of altimeters, barometers and other instruments and doo-dads used in flying airplanes, purchased the property 1945. Over the years that Mister Kollsman and his wife Baroness Julie Dorothea Baronin von Bodenhausen owned the property it ballooned to about 120 acres.

Mister Kollman went to meet the great inventor in the sky in 1982 and his widow, that would be Baroness Julie Dorothea Baronin von Bodenhausen, sold the property in 1997 to our man Paul Allen. Your Mama read somewhere?we no longer recall where?that Mister Allen spent some effort and money revitalizing the residence. Whatever the case, by 2000 the somewhat eccentric Mister Allen decided to tear the Wallace Neff beehawtcha down to make way for, according to one of Your Mama's better connected sources, a steroidal 50,000 square foot mansion.

Not surprisingly, Mister Allen's decision to bull doze all that was beloved up on The Enchanted Hill worked the nerves and the fired up the wrath of architectural buffs and historians. Yes puppies, it was and is his property to do with as he pleases. None the less, in Your Mama's humble and utterly meaningless opinion it was a crying damn shame for Mister Allen to tear down the rambling, multi-winged mansion that defined a particular sort of California architectural dream.
Making matters worse is that Mister Allen?perhaps as a result of his architectural vilification or perhaps due to a case of The Real Estate Fickle?has done little but clear the property, improve the road that winds through the hilltops and canyons and connects Angelo Drive to Benedict Canyon Drive, terrace a few hillsides, and clear what appear to be a number of potential home sites.

We are, it could probably go without saying, thrilled that Mister Allen has not proceeded to build a hotel-sized house but it's devastating to think he got rid of something so extraordinary for what, 10 years later, seems like no reason at all. That said, better that he razed The Enchanted Hill and did nothing with the property than developed it into a gated enclave of monster mansions that would probably appear as ornate pimples on an otherwise unspoiled terrain.

There are many online references that make it no secret that in 1993 Mister Allen bought a former sheep ranching operation outside of Tetonia, ID known as Teton Ridge Ranch. The 4,000+ acre spread located on the rugged western flank of the Grand Teton National Park near Yellowstone and Jackson Hole is, as far as Your Mama is concerned, pretty much the middle of freaking nowhere near the border of Idaho and Wyoming.

For many years after Mister Allen purchased Teton Ridge Ranch, it was operated as an exclusive resort style property with 10,000 square foot luxury lodge and just five suites each kitted out with wood burning stove, spa, and private porch. Guest could choose from indoor activities such as eating, drinking, reading and playing pool on an antique billiard table or they could head out of doors where options included hiking, horse riding, and mountain biking trails as well as fishing and skiing. As of March of 2009, according to the answering machine that picks up the phone at the ranch, Teton Ridge Ranch is no longer open to the public. Presumably Mister Allen wants free and unfettered access to the ranch without those pesky vacationers hanging about.
The property records for Teton Ridge Ranch in Idaho lead Your Mama's wandering eye to the Big Island of Hawai'i where records and online sources reveal that Mister Allen owns an historic Hawaiian hideaway behind the gates of an exclusive oceanfront community in Kailua-Kona, HI. Although they have been somewhat scrubbed clean, public property records indicate that Mister Allen shelled out $7,500,000 to scoop up what is (or was) known as the Thurston Estate in Kailua-Kona, HI.

Whatever he may have paid for the place and when might not be entirely clear, what does not seem to be in question, according to a June 30, 2009 hearing transcript of the Leeward Planning Commission in the County of Hawai'i, is that Mister Allen owns and occupies the 10+ acre former Thurston Estate.

Thanks to materials sent to Your Mama by the ever intrepid and resourceful Lil' Gay BOy, we've learned that the Thurston Estate was formerly owned by Lorrin P. Thurston, former owner and publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser and the one-time Chairman of the Hawai'i Statehood Commission. Mr. Thurston, a direct descendant of missionaries Asa and Lucy Thurston who arrived on the shores of Hawai'i in 1820 to inform all the natives they were a sinful lot and going straight to hell without a handbasket if they didn't quickly repent and convert to Christianity, purchased the property in the 1930s and spent the next 50 years building and landscaping the magnificent property.

At the time Mister Thurston owned the property it was called Lanihau-iki which translates, according to an old Kona Properties brochure, as "The place where the forces of heavens and and of the earth meet and all is quiet and peaceful." Your Mama, who does not have a tongue for the languages marvels at how such a extensive description comes out of one hyphenated and not very word. Sometimes these rich folks like to put their own stamp and name on their properties and Your Mama does not know if Mister Allen has maintained the Lanihau-iki moniker.

Prior to the property being purchased by Mister Allen there was, in addition to the long and low 12,000 square foot main house, an employee residence, garage space, a beach house, a boat shed and boat launch that dropped watercraft into the amoebic private boat harbor. A short bridge connects the grounds to a small island that sits in the wee harbor. At the ocean's edge are a couple of tiny private beaches, dramatic lava outcroppings, and several tide pools. Lo-werd hunnies, this island wonderland makes that place in Kailua-Kona that Cher built and sold at auction in late 2009 look like a damn dump.

In addition to cataloging?or attempting to catalog?the full extent of Mister Allen's residential property portfolio we also discussed some of his toys such as his airplanes and his yachts, the jaw dropping 414-foot Octopus and the 301-foot Tatoosh which Mister Allen currently has up for sale with a price tag of about $163,000,000. As it turns out Mister Allen owns?or owned until recently?a third yacht, a 199-foot long sea-mansion called Méduse, equipped with a helicopter, movie theater, and a recording studio. There are reports from 2005 that indicate that Mister Allen wanted to sell the boat for $52,500,0000, but it's unclear if the big boat was indeed sold or remains in Mister Allen's armada of floating mega-mansions.

photo (The Enchanted Hill, top): Wikimapia
photo (The Enchanted Hill, bottom): Bing
photo (Teton Ridge Ranch): Robb Report
photo (Kona Kailua): Bing

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Russell Brand and Katy Perry Purchase Pied a Terre

BUYER: Katy Perry and Russell Brand
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $2,900,000 (list)
SIZE: 1,500 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter are currently on a bit of a holiday in the perfection that is Santa Barbara, CA it's only appropriate that we discuss the recent real estate doings of one of the coastal city's native daughters, Miss Katy Perry.

Miss Perry, for those who don't keep up with the gossip, has the last few days been faced with a shit storm of righteous anger from letter writing prudish parents of toddlers upset with the amount of cleavage she bared in a Sesame Street video duet with Tickle Me Elmo. The powers that be at Sesame Street kowtowed to their choleric constituents and chose not to air the video, which y'all can see here iffin you care.

First of all, Miss Perry?oh, gurl, pleeze?despite the tough to stomach inanity of your little pop ditties, you are riding a massive wave of popularity at the moment so we really don't know why you'd even do something so silly and desperate seeming as a stoopid duet with a damn Tickle Me Elmo puppet.

Secondly, to paraphrase the sassy and saucy comedienne Chelsea Handler, we are outraged that anyone has a stick so far up their butt that they'd actually bother to be outraged by something so ridiculous. While the yellow outfit might have been a poor choice?it's just plain ass uglee as far as we're concerned?Your Mama can't find anything even remotely vulgar about the video. We just hope these uptight and naïve parents who made the bizarre effort to stomp their feet and whine like ninnies to the people at Sesame Street don't do anything as careless as, say, take their innocent offspring to the beach or the community swimming pool where, by comparison to Miss Perry's bouncing boob-tops, there's a virtual pornographic cornucopia for Sesame Street age children to ogle.

Anyhoo, worse even than the breast brouhaha itself is that the whole thing got our blood got all up. It's just crying over spilt milk that we don't even want to drink, you know? Lo-wered.

Miss Perry, a fashion maverick and sartorial hot mess if there ever was one, is engaged to nappy and stringy looking British jokester Russell Brand who recently sold his louche London townhouse that was on the market with a guide price of £2,500,000. According to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption that's $3,937,200 at today's rates for all us Uhmereecanos.

Mister Brand and Miss Perry have been on quite a real estate spree. In late December of 2009, they shelled out $3,250,000 for a 4,706 square foot house in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Now, less than a year later, world slip slides down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that the quirky couple just closed escrow on a modestly sized if not exactly inexpensive penthouse apartment in New York City's star studded TriBeCa neighborhood.

According to the reports, the mixed-nationality pair paid $2,700,000 for an approximately 1,500 square foot doo-plex penthouse. The wee aerie sits atop a building that sits just around the corner from Nobu Next Door where a body can eat some pretty damn good sushi iffin they have the dollars to do so. According to The Post, the soon to be newlyweds purchased a place in New York City to help with their taxes.

The renovated and oddly shaped penthouse has a living room with built in cabinets to hide the electronics, gew-gaws and other assorted celebrity paraphernalia, and three large south facing windows with framed by built in bookshelves. The small but well equipped kitchen is open to the decent sized dining room where the ceiling of exposed beams take part in an architectural stand off with the sleek stainless steel cabinetry in the kitchen.

A small bedroom in the back of the apartment has loads of closets and a skylight but, regrettably, not a proper window. Can it even be called a bedroom if there's not an actual window? Aren't there laws about these things? A laundry closet with stacked machines and a large pooper slathered in limestone complete the lower level. However, and unfortunately the door to the pooper opens directly in the kitchen and dining room, which is a real no-no and should be avoided if at all possible for a myriad of obvious olfactory reasons.

A custom built cherry stair case winds up to the second level loft bedroom?the so-called "master bedroom" on the floor plan included with marketing materials?where there are plenty of windows and a small private pooper with a space saving concave wall. There are not, however, any closets. Not. A. Single. Damn. Closet. In. The. Master. Bedroom. Clearly this awkwardly laid out penthouse is what one might call a couple's apartment meant to be utilized as a one bedroom apartment with a large dressing room.

At best, the layout is inconvenient and while those who don't like, live in or want to live in New York City will surely take serious umbrage with the layout, the truth is New Yorkers tend to be a more forgiving of unwieldy floor plans in exchange for luxuries like a manageably sized south facing terrace that offers a make-your-friends-jealous view of the delicious wedding cake-like Woolworth Building like this one does.

Given that Miss Perry and Mister Brand own a much more significantly sized home in Los Angeles, we expect they'll dig deeper roots on the west coast and use their new penthouse pad in New York as a kind of pied a terre. Awkward as the layout may be and although we might chosen something else, we should all be so damn lucky as to be in the financial position at 26 damn years old to buy a 2-point-7 million clam pied a terre in New York damn City. So la-de-dah. We don't listen to or care for your particular brand of pop music Miss Perry, but you go on witch yer bad real estate self now, hear?

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