Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Joanne Beckham
SIBLING: David Beckham
CAREER: Hairdresser / Tweeter / WAG
QUOTE: "Just seen my bros new advert for db HOMME !!! Great advert !!! And I must say I just smelt it and smells amazing ! Reminds me of him !!"
"Does any1 eva dine alone .... I'm in wagamamas all by myself ... But don't feel embarrased lol !!!"
"Well impressed wit my new flip flops..."
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Actress, Style Maven and New Momma Selma Blair's Hollywood House Up For Grabs
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,780,000
SIZE: 2,918 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Anyone who knows any thing at all about real estate knows there are four main reasons a person—specifically a person of substantial financial means—sells a house and/or buys a new one: death, divorce, debt and diapers, otherwise known in the property bidness as The Four Ds.
Given that actress and celebrity style icon Selma Blair (Kath & Kim, Hellboy, Legally Blonde) had a baby last summer—an out of wedlock boy-child with her much-tatted and adventuresome fashion designer man-beau Jason Bleick—it's not much of a surprise then that this week she hoisted her house in a leafy section of Hollywood on the (open) market with an asking price of $1,780,000.
Property records show Miss Blair paid $1,315,000 for the fully modernized 1922 bungalow in November 2004, shortly after she hitched her marriage wagon to now ex-husband Ahmet Zappa, the actor/writer son of iconic artist/musician Frank Zappa.
Anyhoo, listing information for Miz Blair's fully-fenced and high-hedged house, tucked in to a leafy, upscale pocket of Hollywood where the foothills turn to the flats, shows there are 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 2,918 square feet of almost entirely white interior space with matte, milky white walls, lustrous milky white painted wood floors and scad of cabinets, entertainment units and bookshelves all painted—you got—milky white.
The west-facing, courtyard-like front garden—turned out more like a back yard, perhaps, than a conventional front yard—has a wee patch of grass dotted with a random assortment of concrete stepping stones that link the front walk gate to the deep and wide covered front porch perfect for whittling away shaded afternoons. An impossibly narrow gated driveway hidden by a towering hedge runs up along the opposite side of the property and in between there's a dining terrace and a small, elevated concrete spa (or fountain) with cantilevered wood bench.
From what Your Mama can surmise, Miz Blair's Hollywood digs lacks a proper front door opting instead for two sets of wood-framed glass doors that open from the front porch directly into the main L-shaped living space divided into a sparely furnished foyer/lounge area with fireplace (and Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Couch) and a homier family room/den with a full wall of built-in cabinets with flat-screen tee-vee.
A separate office/library has built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with actual books, some sort of antler chandelier, and lots of windows that include wood-framed glass doors that make classic California indoor-outdoor living easy with direct access to the covered front porch and front yard.
Frosted glass panels divide the foyer/lounge area from the dining room where a built-in buffet offers both closed storage and open shelves for art, objet and book display, and a wide wall of wood-framed glass doors open to the backyard. The adjacent sky lit (and all-white) kitchen has snow white cabinets and counter tops, a huge center island with veggie sink, under-counter wine fridge and snack bar, cute little cookbook cubby, a pantry/storage wall with integrated flat-screen tee-vee, and a full complement of commercial style stainless steel appliances.
The master suite, privately situated at the extreme rear of the residence, has a second fireplace, chunky built-in cabinet at the foot of the bed from which a flat screen tee-vee rises at the touch of a button, a small but cozy sitting area with built-in window seat and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves—filled, again, with actual books—and a pair wood-framed glass doors that open to the backyard. A crisp all-white bathroom is anchored by a black floor and kitted out like a five-star hotel with high double sinks, separate make-up vanity, soaking tub and separate stall shower.
Rooms at the back of the house connect to a graphically-minded backyard where a tree-shaded concrete dining and lounging terrace steps down to the grass and gravel lower level where a cushioned, built-in concrete sofa bench makes a sharp right angle around a built-in concrete fire pit.
As for Baby Daddy Bleick, property record show at just about the exact same time in April 2006 he sold a ho-hum house in his hometown of Huntington Beach (CA) for $750,000 he dropped a $1,275,000 wad on an 1,873 square foot, city view mid-century modern residence on quiet cul-de-sac in the star-studded Oaks neighborhood where high profile residents/property owners include Brad Pitt, Christina Ricci, Justin Long, Kevin Spacey, and Mitch Glazer and Kelly Lynch who own a spectacular John Lautner-designed house
In a 2009 interview in Coast magazine Mister Bleick revealed he had leased his house and was then living in a teepee somewhere—we're not sure exactly where—five minutes from the beach. However, we suspect now that's he's got a youngin in diapers and a stylish celebrity baby momma—and, no doubt, a thousand dollar Bugaboo—he's given up teepee living for the time being.
No word on where Miz Blair and Mister Bleick plan to decamp but iffin we were the betting type, and we're not, we'd wager they'll stick to the artsy-fartsier east side areas of Los Angeles but eventually settle into a larger, more kid-friendly residence with a big(ger) backyard.
listing photos: The Agency
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Penelope Cruz Biography,Wallpapers And Movies
Penelope Cruz Sanchez height 5'6" known as Madonna of Madrid born April 28,1974 is a Spanish actress.Born in Madrid to Eduardo(retailer) and Encarna(hairdresser). She is the oldest of the three siblings , her younger brother Eduardo is a singer and her younger sister Monica is an actress.At the age of 15 Cruz made her acting debut in a Spanish pop song video.After studying ballet and jazz for nine years at Spain's National Conservatory, she jumped into acting in year 1992.At the age of 18, she made her first film debut in a comedy drama film Jamon,jamon and in the same year she appeared in another academy award winning movie Belle Époque .In the movie Jamon, jamon she played the role of a poor daughter of a village prostitute while in the latter she appeared as one of the four lusty daughters of a wealthy man. In the movie Jamon,jamon she appeared nude and had to do erotic scenes.Belle Epoque proved to be a big success as it received large number of awards and an Oscar for best foreign film and this gave Penelope international recognition.From year 1993 to 1996 Cruz appeared in several Spanish and Italian movies and made her first appearence in English movie 'The Hi-Lo Country' in year 1998. Suddenly her career began to rise with her roles in 'All the Pretty Horses' in year 2000 and Blow in year 2001.Thus she became a prominent face in Hollywood industry and appeared in her first biggest Hollywood movie the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film:''Pirates of the Caribbean:On Stranger Tides" in the year 2011.
Regarding Cruz personal life ,she had three year relationship with Tom Cruise which ended in January 2004 then she dated actor Matthew McConaughey from February 2005 to June 2006.Cruz dated co-star Javier Bardem in 2007 and married him in early July 2010 at a friend's home in Bahamas.Cruz gave birth to her first child Leo on 22,January 2011.
Movie/Year/Character:
Regarding Cruz personal life ,she had three year relationship with Tom Cruise which ended in January 2004 then she dated actor Matthew McConaughey from February 2005 to June 2006.Cruz dated co-star Javier Bardem in 2007 and married him in early July 2010 at a friend's home in Bahamas.Cruz gave birth to her first child Leo on 22,January 2011.
Movie/Year/Character:
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides/2011/Angelica
Sex and the City 2/ 2010 /Carmen Garcia Carrion
Nine /2009/ Carla
G-Force /2009 /Juarez
Broken Embraces/ 2009/ Lena
Vicky Cristina Barcelona /2008 /Maria Elena
Elegy/2008 /Consuela Castillo
The Good Night/2007 /Anna / Melodia
The Passion Within /2007/ Lupe Sino
Volver /2006/ Raimunda
Bandidas /2006 /Maria Alvarez
Chromophobia /2005 /Gloria
Sahara /2005/ Eva Rojas
Noel /2004/ Nina Vasquez
Head in the Clouds /2004/ Mia
Non ti muovere /2004/ Italia
Gothika /2003/ Chloe Sava
Fanfan la tulipe /2003/ Adeline La Franchise
Masked and Anonymous /2003/ Pagan Lace
Waking Up in Reno /2002/ Brenda – Spanish Woman
Vanilla Sky /2001/ Sofia Serrano
Sin noticias de Dios /2001/ Carmen Ramos
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin /2001/ Pelagia
Blow /2001/ Mirtha Jung
All the Pretty Horses /2000/ Alejandra
Woman on Top /2000/ Isabella Oliveira
Volavérunt /1999/ Pepita Tudó
All About My Mother /1999/ Hermana Rosa
The Hi-Lo Country /1998/ Josepha O’Neil
The Girl of Your Dreams /1998/ Macarena Granada
Talk of Angels /1998/ Pilar (as Penelope Cruz)
If Only… /1998/Louise
Don Juan /1998/ Mathurine
Abre los ojos /1997 /Sofía
Carne trémula /1997/Isabel Plaza Caballero
A Scent of Paradise /1997/ Doña Helena
Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health/ 1996/ Diana Balaguer
Not Love, Just Frenzy /1996/ Laura
La Celestina /1996/ Melibea
Brujas /1996/ Patricia
El efecto mariposa /1995 /Party guest
Entre rojas /1995/ Lucía
Todo es mentira /1994/ Lucía
Alegre ma non troppo /1994 /Salomé
La ribelle /1993/ Enza
The Greek Labyrinth /1993/Elisa
Per amore, solo per amore/ 1993 /Mary
Belle epoque /1992/ Luz
Jamón, jamón /1992 /Silvia
Friday, January 27, 2012
Denise Rich Lists Epic Fifth Avenue Penthouse
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $65,000,000
SIZE: 12,000 square feet (approx.), 7 bedrooms, 9 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Perhaps emboldened by the recent record breaking (and bone chilling) $88,000,000 sale of Sandy Weill's Mica Ertugun-decorated penthouse at 15 Central Park West to a twenty-something year old heiress to a Russian fertilizer fortune, or maybe, as stated in the New York Post this morning, with a desire to downsize, songwriter/socialite/philanthropist and big-shit political fundraiser Denise Rich has hoisted her legendary, super-sized Fifth Avenue penthouse on the market with a $65,000,000 asking price.
The price makes it the most expensive co-operative apartment currently on the open market in New York City, edging out the monumentally scaled (if somewhat awkwardly configured) duplex at 740 Park Avenue that Time Warner widow and philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross officially put on the block late last year with a sixty million dollar price tag.
Miz Rich, for those who don't know, was married for thirty years to disgraced (but still filthy rich) financier Marc Rich who famously fled to Switzerland in the mid-1980s after then U.S. Federal Prosecutor—and eventual mayor of New York and pie-in-the-sky presidential candidate—Rudy Guiliani filed charges against him for tax evasion and illegal oil trading with Iran or some such other nefarious money-minting nonsense. Mister Rich, the more politically conscious children may recall, was very controversially pardoned by Bill Clinton in the dying hours of his presidency in 2001.
Miz Rich remained wedded to Mister Rich until 1996, long after he became a fugitive living a relatively quiet, heavily-secured and extremely deluxe life in some of Switzerland's swankier locales. Although divorced five years earlier, Miz Rich is rumored to have been an overnight guest at the White House the night before her ex-husband was pardoned in 2001 and she not surprisingly invoked the 5th Amendment when she was later questioned at a congressional hearing convened to determine if her ex-husband's pardon might have been brought about as a result of her considerable contributions to the Democratic Party in general and the Clinton Library in particular.
Despite her billionaire ex-husband's vast wealth—and her rumored $1-200,000,000 divorce settlement—Miz Rich earns plenty of her own moolah penning pop songs for radio-friendly stars like Natalie Cole, Celine Dion, Jessica Simpson, Marc Anthony, Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige. She has thrice been nominated for a Grammy but, sadly for her, always a bridesmaid at the Grammys but never a bride....
Anyhoo, Your Mama isn't sure exactly when Miz Rich purchased her suburban mcmansion-sized penthouse atop the the all but architecturally featureless post-war Park V building. That's pronounced in the French, natch, as Park Sahnk. The limestone-based building sits heavy on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 60th Street across from Central Park and shares a fah-fah-froo-froo block with the much more swellegant, architecturally articulated, uni-towered (and plainly phallic) Sherry Netherland Hotel. The building offers residents white glove services (all the door men, concierges, and etc. a songwriting chatelaine could require) as well as a access to a private garage and an in-building fitness room. Of course, Miz Rich has no need to embarrass herself in front of her neighbors with visible sweat stains since she's got a small gym of her own located on the lower level of her penthouse with panoramic Central Park and city views, a steam shower, sauna, and bidet-equipped bathroom.
The comparatively puny formal dining room seats 22—as per listing information—and opens to a slim planted terrace with head on Central Park views. The main service areas of the penthouse, as expected pushed back behind the dining room, encompass an industrially-minded stainless steel and granite kitchen, separate walk-in pantry, spacious laundry room with two washers and two dryers, and 1 full and 1 half bathroom. Just off the kitchen a tucked away staircase winds down to the penthouse's lower level staff and service wing that includes an office, second eat-in kitchen and, squirreled away behind the service elevator, a prison cell-sized staff bedroom and compact, windowless bathroom
Back upstairs on the other side of the penthouse, a library lined with lustrous, custom-milled Fiddleback mahogany offers Miz Rich cozier quarters with a wood-burning fireplace, slim private terrace, hooch-hound lovers wet bar, and a slew of built-in shelves villed with dozens of framed photographs.
The colossal master suite consumes the entire southwest end of the gigantic penthouse's upper floor and includes a living room-sized sitting room, big bedroom with gas fireplace and private terrace, a couple of walk-in closets, a pair of fitted dressing rooms, and two bathrooms, the larger with private cubicle for the terlit and bidey, more counter space than most Manhattan kitchens, and a separate jetted tub and over-sized, double-headed, glass enclosed shower stall.
A 30-foot long media room and adjoining billiards/dining room at the extreme rear of the lower level both have easy access to a small(ish) third kitchen and three family/guest bedroom suites, each with ample closet space, private bathroom and access to a planted terrace, line up along the north side of the apartment. Besides the family quarters and service areas, the lower level of the penthouse also includes the aforementioned park view gym, a room marked "bedroom" on the floor plan but more likely—we imagine—to be used for massages and yoga, and a separate (elevator) entrance that connects to Miz Rich's own million dollar (and we hope fully sound-proofed) recording studio.
The third level roof terrace measures, by our rudimentary count, nearly 4,000 square feet and is only accessible, apparently, by traipsing through the apartment's service area and climbing one of the building's two interior service stairs. While access to the roof terrace lacks a je ne se qua one might logically expect in a $65,000,000 penthouse, it does offers the exact sort of city and park views of which many New York City real estate dreams are made.
Miz Rich is a well-known party thrower, both for fun and to support her various philanthropic involvements. She's an impressively Rolodexed, globe-trotting gal with her bejeweled finger in lots of social pots who can pull in a lot of high profile power players from the media, entertainment, social and political worlds. It is at one of Miz Rich's dinner parties where conversation companions might include the likes of Patti Labelle, the Dalai Lama, Donna Karan, Nancy Pelosi and Guy Laliberté.**
**Use yer noggins nuggets, we have no idea if any of those people have ever, actually set a foot in Miz Rich's penthouse. We're just illustrating the genre and tenor of the guests one could easily expect to find wolfing down canapé, sucking down white wine and marveling vapidly about the view during one of Miz Rich's notoriously lavish dinner parties or fundraisers.
So the story goes, one winter Miz Rich hosted a party at her penthouse for which she—no doubt at great expense—transformed her roof terrace into an outdoor ice skating rink. While guests nattered on about the weather and the G8 Summit—or whatever fancy people talk about at winter-time parties held in 12,000 square foot Fifth Avenue penthouses, professional ice skaters dressed in little more than gold body paint swooped and salchowed across the ice. We're not sure whether to be amused, flabbergasted or depressed by such an (alleged) occurrence.
A 2001 article in Vanity Fair, which succinctly and accurately described Miz Rich's penthouse as a "mammoth two-story creamy-beige marbled apartment," revealed the jet setter rolls with small army of staff that at that time included, "six maids, two butlers, a cook, and a secretary, as well as two drivers, two masseuses, a hairdresser, a trainer, a yoga instructor, and a personal photographer on call." She also, at that time, maintained staffs at her luxury homes in both Southampton (NY) and Aspen (CO). A later report from 2007 in the New York Observer stated Miz Rich "reportedly has a staff of 20 (personal healer and yoga guru included)," that includes "something named a 'wardrobe calibrator,'" whatever the holy crap that is.
In July 2007 one of Missus Rich's daughters, stand up comic Daniella and her money manager man-mate Richard Kilstock, dropped $3,900,000 for a lower floor crib with a mirrored entrance hall, formal living and dining rooms, 2 bedrooms, 3.5 marble bathrooms, and a staff room/office with Murphy bed.
The Park V is the same building, New York City real estate watchers will recall, where Los Angeles-based billionaire businessman David Geffen dropped $14,170,000 in early 2010 on a full floor, two unit combination spread he purchased from entertainment industry executive Robert A. Daly and his extraordinarily accomplished Oscar- and Grammy-winning singer/songwriter wife Carole Bayer Sager. Your Mama hears from someone in the position to know that Mister Geffen's newly remodeled spread—all worked over by Rose Tarlow, we're told—includes a major park view master bedroom where an entire panel of glass in the bathroom can, at the flip of a switch, go from fully opaque to completely clear so that Mister Geffen (and his shower sharing friends) can have a view of the park through the bedroom windows.
We're a bit muddled on the exact holdings currently in Miz Rich's real estate property portfolio. She once owned (and may still own) a ski house in Aspen—but, of course, dahling—and property records show in the late 1990s she paid $3,200,000 for a near 3-acre estate a block from the beach on the expensive shore of Coopers Neck Pond in Southampton (NY) with a 7 bedroom and 9 bathroom main mansion. At some point, we're not sure exactly when, records show Miz Rich sold her Hamptons house for an undisclosed price to New York City-based investor and property developer Steve Witkoff. We'd be somewhat shocked if Miz Rich doesn't own another high-maintenance mansion in the Hamptons where she spends but a few summer weekends each year but our not particularly thorough or unscientific crawl through the internets didn't turn up any direct evidence of such a thing.
Miz Rich told the New York Post she planned to downsize into a smaller apartment—one that will no doubt be three or four times the size of the average American home—and split her time between New York City and Europe where her both of her surviving three daughters—and ex-husband—live.
listing photos and floor plans: Corcoran
boat photo: Charter World
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