SELL BUY PROPERTY

BUYER: Mark Pincus
LOCATION: San Francisco, CA
PRICE: $11,500,000
SIZE: 11,500 square feet (approx.),

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The stock price of social media game developer Zynga (CityVille, FarmVille, CastleVille, and etc.) may be plummeting at an alarming rate but its iconoclast tech-tycoon founder Mark Pincus is clearly rolling in financial clover as evidenced by his recent, $16,000,000 purchase of a rather massive mansion in San Francisco's ultra-posh Pacific Heights 'hood.

The essentially symmetrical, red brick and grey shingled Dutch Colonial Revival residence sits down a long, private and gated driveway on an elevated 14,000 (or so) square foot lot in an area of Pacific Heights known as the Gold Coast, so called because it's extra fancy even for fancy pants Pac Heights. The front of the house, with a suburban 7-11 parking lot-sized motor court, is all but hidden from the street while the back of the house sits high and proud with commanding bridge, bay and city views.

Marketing materials Your Mama teased up out of the internets indicates the four-floor mansion was designed and built in 1907 by noted Bay Area architect Albert Farr and originally owned by entrepreneurial businessman Edwin W. Newhall whose family has owned it for more than a century. Mister Newhall had a debilitating stroke in 1914, at which time the awkwardly located elevator was installed, and went to meet his maker in 1915. The property passed to his widow Virginia who eventually bequeathed the behemoth house to their son Edwin Newhall Jr. (and his wife) who in turn turned the house over to their only daughter Jane who occupied the premises until her death in summer 2011 at the ripe old age of 97.

The impressive (if woody) interiors spaces retain much of their original architectural details such as wood paneled walls, herringbone pattern wood floors, exposed beam ceilings, six red brick fireplaces, period light fixtures, and diamond-paned windows.

The mansion also adheres largely to its original floor plan which, while spacious and grand, has a few uncomfortable moments not conducive to modern living. The children will note, as did our eagle-eyed house gurl Svetlana, the fairly compact, galley style main floor kitchen that Your Mama imagines may (or may not) have originally been a service pantry.

The larger, original (and adjacent pantry and "Food Prep Room") is located on the lower level and connected to the upper level kitchen via a switchback service stair that continues to climb all the way up to the (unfinished) attic. A kitchen on the lower, service level was probably a fairly standard set up in the homes of the wealthy in 1907 when residents would have maintained a small army of domestic staff to attend to their cooking and cleaning needs but it's not exactly how most young (and very rich) people live nowadays.


Listing information we peeped shows Mister Pincus's new pad in Pac Heights has 7 bedrooms and 6 full and 4 half bathrooms. However, our perusal of the floor plan(s) turned up 7 bedrooms (plus two more rooms that could, if desired, be pressed into use as sleeping chambers), five full and four half bathrooms plus two additional staff areas—one in the basement the other on the third floor, each with three cell-sized bedrooms and one shared bathroom.

A wide stairway and raised front porch with six Doric columns leads to the main floor living areas that include an impressive front hall with charming, arched inglenook, a living room big enough to be a ballroom with drop dead views, a smaller library with fireplace and built-in book cases, and a banquet hall-sized dining room, also with electrifying view and massive fireplace.

The lower level service areas include the aforementioned original kitchen and trio of cell-sized staff rooms plus a wine vault, exercise room, commodious storage rooms, a big ol' boiler room, and a laundry room large enough to make Luwanda the Laundress weep with envy. A dumb waiter in the central hall on the lower level conveniently lifts groceries and other small items to the upper levels and a narrow carport at the side of the mansion shades one or maybe two, tandem-parked cars.

The monumental master suite stretches across the entire rear of the second floor and encompasses a vast bedroom (with fireplace and spine tingling view); a sizable, separate but connected sitting room/office (also with fireplace); two walk-in closets; and direct access to—depending on how you count—1.5 or 2.5 bathrooms. Three other guest/family bedrooms on the second floor each have direct (if not entirely private) access to a bathroom.

An unusually grand staircase in a sky lit central atrium connects the second to the third floors where two more large guest/family bedrooms share a divided bathroom and a third, smaller guest/family bedroom has no direct or even convenient access to a lavatory.


Also on the third floor is a downright dee-voon  family room labeled on the floor plan as "The Ship Room" due to its exposed wood architecture very closely resembling the rib-like interior hull of a wood-built ship as well as an office/sitting room (with adjoining wet bar/storage area) and three more itty-bitty staff bedrooms that share a lone bathroom.

Exterior space is somewhat limited to the over-sized motor court in the front and a slender, landscaped terrace along the back of the lower level that provides (mostly) unobstructed city, bay and bridge views. The back yard slopes precipitously to a towering brick rampart that Your Mama would be quite surprised if Mister Pincus didn't build up for privacy and/or otherwise equip with a state of the art security system that may or may not include an armed guard or two with a nervous eye tick and a hair trigger.

The Gold Coast location of Mister Pincus's palatial new pad does not get better when it comes to San Francisco real estate with bigwig and muckety-muck neighbors like Oracle bajillionaire Larry Ellison, social world staples Gordon and Ann Getty, University of Phoenix's billionaire owner Peter Sperling, social networking nabob Michael Birch, Oracle heiress Nicola Miner and her novelist husband Robert Mailer Anderson, and eco-socialite author Sloan Barnett and her nutritional supplement pusher husband Roger Barnett who dropped some big bucks last year on the lavish manse of (deceased and) deliciously eccentric international social figure Dodie Rosekrans.

Mister Pincus and his wife have been on a real estate merry go round recently having just sold not just one but two separate San Francisco residences. He took a knee-knocking $960,000 loss (not counting carrying costs, improvements and real estate fees) when he sold a highly stylized bungalow in the Cole Valley neighborhood for $1,890,000 in January (2012). In March (2012) he unloaded a far more grand, four-floor mansion with six bedrooms in the exclusive Presidio Heights 'hood for $8,200,000. He paid $8,100,000 for the towering mansion just about 2.5 years earlier.

listing photos and floor plan: Pacific Union International

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 When I first got the Xoom about a week ago I turned it on and I really wasn't blown away. I use lots of devices, and my first impression of the Xoom just wasn't stellar. However, I could see the potential, and so I kept using it, I got some apps, I started to learn the interface and the depth of the features.

Sometime during day 2 of using the Xoom it really hit me. The Xoom and the iPad are like chess and checkers. When you first start playing chess (or trying to use the Xoom, in my amazing analogy) you feel overwhelmed and confused. You can't really do things smoothly, you don't understand the options, it just is not a great first impression. On the other hand, your first game of checkers (or using the iPad) is probably going to be pretty smooth. It isn't complex, most all the options and concepts are obvious and easy to understand and your first game is going to be pretty similar to your hundredth.

However, as you start to understand the Xoom (or chess) it really starts to grow on you. You understand what you can do, how to do it, the amazing depth and possibility in the device. While the iPad (or checkers) players are still having roughly the same experience time after time, with the Xoom every day of experience with the device makes it more powerful and enjoyable to use. In the end, the Xoom becomes a much better device than any of the competition; it just takes some time for you to learn what it is capable of and how to make the most of it..........................


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The all new slimmer PSP 3000 comes in with a couple of new upgrades over the 2000 model. Primarily for the Skype functionality, a microphone is onboard along with a reduced glare 4.3" screen. Its a given that fingerprints will still be a continued issue for the PSP line. Thankfully, the age old problem of ghosting has yet to appear on my new PSP 3000.

One of the sweeter features now is an upgraded (AV) video output support. Owners can now operate their systems with regular (NON HD) TV. I suggest buyers pick up a good composite or component cable. With the usual collection of great games, improved graphics is a major plus.

As with all previous models, control buttons layout are very much like the classic Play Station. One area of concern is that load times for the UMD (Universal Media Disc) seemed to drag a bit. Its a given that purchasing the kit which includes the proprietary MS Duo Card is more cost effective in the end. Its obvious that Sony missed the boat when it went with its own proprietary format instead of the more widely used and less costly SD standard....................

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Delivery was fast(around 4 days after my order was placed).After checking cables,motherboard,and fans the PC started right up,and booted its OS with no questions asked.Smooth..No bloatware whatsoever in the machine,and I received all of my full recovery,graphics,and OS disks.The initial video graphics card sent was weak(Geforce gt 520),but after upgrading with a reasonably priced Nvidia gt 440 it was a noticeable boost.Memory,and Quad core work beautifully together on sweet little gigabyte micro atx board.Very lightweight,and quiet machine compared to my past gear(a customized old gateway).Great price,but plan on upgrading video cards.Awesome machine,and well put together.Id recommend to any novice to mid level gamer/graphics creator.......

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photos: Walt Danley Realty

...professional basketball dribbler Jason Kidd of the New York Knicks listed his 13,523 square foot, vaguely Mexican hacienda-style mansion in Paradise Valley, AZ with an asking price of $5,995,000.

photo: Clark Dugger Photography for Bulldog Realtors

...Shabby Chic queen Rachel Ashwell coughed up $930,000 to buy an itty-bitty and already Shabby Sheeked two-bedroom cottage in Venice (CA).

photos: Heidi Krauss

...Super Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps, winner of more medals than any other athlete ever, has reportedly sold his four-floor Baltimore townhouse at a punishing $400,000 loss.

photo: Islands.com

...Formidable octogenarian French multi-billionaire heiress Liliane Bettencourt sold off her private island in the Seychelles for £39,000,000. A quickie consult with our currency conversion contraption shows that comes to 60,973,400 American dollars at today's rates.

Madame Bettencourt—the largest shareholder in cosmetics and beauty juggernaut L'Oreal, founded by her father—has owned D'Arros and a few surrounding islands since the late 1990s when she secretly paid a member of the Iranian royal family (around) $18,000,000 (US) for the tropically picturesque, pill-shaped coconut plantation island (and a few surrounding atolls) that includes a luxurious main residence as well as separate quarters for guests and caretakers.

Iffin any of the children don't know the truly scandalicious story of Madame Bettencourt and her (admitted) tax evading ways, her (alleged) "payments" to French politicians including former president Nicholas Sarkozy, and the 1.3 billion dollars in gifts and insurance policies to much younger man-pal b.f.f. François-Marie Banier—now cut out of Madame's will after a bitter legal intervention by Madame Bettencourt's daughter who argued her elderly mother is not longer competent to handle her own (financial) affairs—then you should. Y'all can read all about Madame's difficulties and dramas in a 2010 article in Vanity Fair.

BUYER: Mariska Hargitay and Peter Hermann
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $10,700,000
SIZE: Big with 6 bedrooms and 5 full and 4 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Mariska Hargitay—Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning She-Ra of the interminably long-running police procedural Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (L&O:SVU)—and her handsome, 6-foot-five-actor husband Peter Hermann (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Our Idiot Brother, A Gifted Man) have plunked down $10,700,000 on a fully updated and recently renovated townhouse on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Miz Hargitay, the fetching and chastely smoldering daughter of busty pin-up babe Jayne Mansfield and former Mister Universe Micky Hargitay, was crowned Miss Beverly Hills in 1982, speaks five languages, will reportedly earn around half a million smackers for each episode of the 14th season of L&O:SVU and has three young children with Mister Hermann, one she birthed in 2006 and two more they adopted last year. German-born Mister Hermann matriculated at Yale, speaks four languages and before he was an actor he taught ESL and was a fact checker at Vanity Fair magazine. Don't they just kinda make you feel sick with inadequacy? No? That's just Your Mama? Anyhoo...

Listing information and other marketing materials we snake-charmed out of the interweb does not state the square footage of the of  townhouse—we guesstimate it at around 5,000—but does show it was built in 1900, is conveniently well-situated between Central Park West and commercial Columbus Avenue, stands a fairly narrow 18-feet wide, and rises six floors above ground with an additional, elevator-accessible and fully-finished basement with several storage rooms and half bathroom. Listing information also states the townhouse has six bedrooms and nine bathrooms but a quick perusal of the floor plan and Your Mama counts five actual bedrooms and five full and four half bathrooms.

The traditional brownstone exterior belies the completely contemporized interior spaces worked over by the real estate investor sellers who paid $4,400,000 for the house in the last days of 2009.

The parlor floor entry at the top of the delicious stoop—we do love us a good God damn New York City stoop—opens directly into a slim but spacious and decidedly spare open-plan entry/living room/library that stretches approximately 50 feet long front to back. The street-facing entry/living room area has a gas fireplace with a broad, minimal-minded chimney breast; there's a powder pooper tucked semi-discreetly near the stairs that descend to the lower level; and a barely-there glass railing at the library end of the room allows for an unobstructed view of the surrounding townhouses out the double height windows that stretch up from the kitchen-dining-lounge one floor below.

A second, under-the-stoop entrance on the garden level opens a bit clunkily directly into the formal dining room separated from the kitchen only by a short and wide corridor flanked by the elevator, powder pooper and storage closets.

Radiant heated floors warm the tootsies on cold winter mornings in the sleek, eat-in Euro-style kitchen fitted and finished with dark chocolate-colored cabinetry, white counter tops of unknown but no doubt high-grade material, and top-quality stainless steel appliances that include two dishwashers and integrated, side-by-side fridge and freezer.

The center island kitchen (with extra-long snack and booze counter that easily accommodates four) opens to a small sitting and dining area with soaring double-height ceilings and massive glass windows and doors that connect out to an ipe wood-walled garden with built-in barbecue station.

The celebrity-style master suite takes up the entire third floor with sizable, street-facing bedroom, separate (but connected) office/dressing room with terrace access, two walk-in closets (plus a small dressing area), and a blindingly white and windowed marble bathroom with double sinks, make-up vanity, and separate soaking tub and glass-enclosed steam shower.

Each of the four spacious guest/family bedrooms on the upper levels has direct access to an un-shared and attached bathroom. One has three slender floor to ceiling windows that open to a street-side Juliet balcony and another has direct access to a private, garden-side terrace. A small but convenient laundry room sits between the bedrooms on the fourth floor and a narrow study/playroom sits between the two others bedrooms on the fifth.

The sixth floor, penthouse level sun room—the only floor of the townhouse not accessible, the lazy and infirm will want to know, via the elevator—has a crisp clean-lined entertainment kitchen, a compact walk-in closet perfect for board game storage, a handy-dandy half bathroom, and two wide banks of mahogany-trimmed windows and French doors that connect to north- and south-facing terraces. The smaller north terrace overlooks the back gardens and rear façades of the neighboring townhouses and the larger, street-side south-facing terrace is girdled by a tall and privacy ensuring, horizontally installed ipe wood fence.

This is hardly the first time Mister and Missus Hargitay-Hermann have popped up in property gossip columns and Your Mama has discussed their real estate activities on numerous occasions over the years. At one point the Hargitay-Hermanns maintained multi-million dollar residences on both coasts. In April 2007 they took in $2,650,000 when they sold a nearly 3,000 square foot house in the so-called Bird Streets area above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles (CA) and in October of the same year they unloaded a 2,700-plus square foot, Jeffrey Bilhuber-decorated duplex penthouse on Beach Street in TriBeCa home, sold for $5,100,000 to a couple of financial industry fat cats.

They moved from their TriBeCa duplex penthouse to a substantially larger duplex penthouse atop the cast iron-constructed O'Neill Building located on busy, wide and quite loud Sixth Avenue. Property records and previous reports suggest they paid $7,000,000 for the 4,167 square foot penthouse in October 2007. They quickly caught a severe case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and flipped the cupola-sporting penthouse almost exactly one year later for $8,150,000.

Most recently we discussed the Hermann-Hargitay's real estate doings in June 2010 when they upgraded their real estate circumstances in the Hamptons by coughing up well over seven million smackers for a 7,000-ish square foot cedar-shingled mansion in East Hampton (NY).

listing photos and floor plan: Prudential Douglas Elliman

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I am very happy with my Samsung Chromebook. I had been looking for a computer that was fast, easy to use and did not keep breaking down so when Google announced the Chromebook Pilot program I signed up and got the CR-48. I really liked my CR-48 and therefore bought the Samsung Chromebook with 3G at the Gilt flash sale. I've had it now for a few days and am very happy with it.

The Samsung Chromebook is very light weight and portable; and I like its clean looks and solid finish. The keyboard is amazing and the trackpad is HUGE. It also feels a lot faster than the CR-48. The software on the CR-48 kept improving and getting better in the 6 months I had it and it feels like its gotten even better on the Samsung Series 5. There's now a file manager and a media player and it is super easy to upload photos to Picasa. And ofcourse it has Chrome which is fast.

The setup was ridiculously simple. As soon as I logged in all my apps, bookmarks and settings came in and it felt like I was back on my old computer. In all I think I went from closed box to fully ready in a couple of minutes. This was truly amazing. All the other benefits of the CR-48: the fast boot, quick resume and built in 3G are all there in this Chromebook...........................


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 Technical Details

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Product Description

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (10.1) is the new addition to the Galaxy Tab line-up of the Korean manufacturer. It comes to succeed the Tab 10.1, which was among the thinnest tablets around. However, the Tab 2 (10.1) has grown up a bit, now measuring 9.7mm of thickness. Of course, this doesn t mean that it won t perform exceptionally on the hardware fron........................

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I've only had the SX40HS for 1 day , but in comparing the photo's from the SX30is I own to the SX40hs the quality of the photo's are much sharper with true to life colors, the biggest improvement I see is in low light. The low light photo's are sharp and bright but with that natural lighting look.I purchased the SX30IS last fall and was generally happy with it. When I heard that the SX40HS was to have the new Digic 5 processor I jumped at it. I love the fact that it's an all in 1 camera, HD Video, zoom and wide angle photo's. The SX40HS has the new Canon DIGIC 5 Image Processor and a high-sensitivity 12.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor dropped down from 14 Megapixel in the SX30IS. This advanced Canon.............................

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I almost didn't buy it, but since I was already dropping over $100 on the Lifeproof system, I said what the heck. It's great. I use MapMyRide to use GPS and map my bike route, which is great for analytics in terms of the total amount ridden. This thing is solid and secure, and puts the phone in the right place for use.............................

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To start off, I'd like to say that X-Box Live is amazing and worth every penny. Online gaming is incredibly fun and quite a good way to pass time.

That aside, there are downsides to X-Box Live that can be avoided through prepaid cards. Number one, you always run the risk that unwarranted transactions will be made if your credit card information is stored on your X-Box 360 system. It may not happen all that often, but it's best to avoid it all together.

The biggest reason to buy prepaid Xbox Live card is the renewal process that happens when you don't use one. If you order X-Box Live through your system, it'll renew every time your subscription runs out. This wouldn't be a problem except that it's not that easy to cancel. Instead of canceling through your system, you have to go through the hassle of actually calling X-Box Live support. Even then, depending on the representative you get, you may be hassled to keep your subscription because they really don't want you to cancel it. I'm guessing that's part of their job to convince you to keep it, but it still is frustrating to the person that is trying to cancel it...............................


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SELLER: Marcus Giamatti
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $999,000
SIZE: 2,310 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial (and a listing that brazenly announces the home is "celebrity owned"), Your Mama learned that actor/musician/writer Marcus Giamatti—older brother of Oscar-nominated actor Paul Giamatti (Sideways, John Adams, Saving Private Ryan) and the son of a former president of Yale who later became the Commissioner of Baseball who banned naughty-naughty Pete Rose from baseball—listed his house in the Hollywood Hills last week with an asking price of $1,049,000, already reduced to $999,000.

Mister Giamatti, not as famous and lesser lauded than his younger brother, has none-the-less been toodling reasonably successfully around Tinseltown since the mid-1980s and claims a long list of television credits that include a couple of stints on daytime soap stories (The Young and the Restless, Another World, Guiding Light). Over the years he also shook his Yale-trained money maker in scads and scores of boob-toob programs that include (but are far from limited to) Medium, The Mentalist, Monk and, recently, Revenge. He is perhaps best known as Peter Gray on Judging Amy, canceled back in 2005, and is a well-regarded stage actor with numerous credits both on- and off-Broadway (Young Man From Atlanta, Measure for Measure).

He maintains a side-gig as an accomplished bass guitarist and session musician. He swam varsity at tiny, artsy Bowdoin College, has a degree in African Ethnomusicology—his thesis was on Ashanti Tribal Funeral Music—and currently writes an occasional feature article for some baseball publication we've never heard of (MLB Insider's Club Magazine).

Clearly he's an interesting guy with deep and thoughtful interests and that's reflected in his and his missus's chosen day-core and furnishings that strike an admirably eclectic if—hmm, well, uh—nerve-wracking hodgepodge hot mess where English Country floral prints mix like oil and water with a dollop of Victoriana, a dose of Arts and Crafts, a smattering of 1980s contemporary (glass block), a soupçon of French bistro and a little bit of a whole lotta other things. This may be any number of people's ideal of decorative perfection but, in all honesty, for Your Mama it's a difficult-to-digest stew. Our opinion on the matter is of little consequence and, certainly, much of the frippery will exit the scene with the Giamatti family when they decamp to their next place of residence, wherever that may be.

Property records show Mister Giamatti and his not-famous second wife purchased the property in the Hollywood Manor neighborhood January 2008 for $827,000. Current listing information shows the updated and upgraded two-story house of unknown architectural style—listing information calls in a "Mid Century," which, technically if not stylistically, it is since it was built in 1940—spans 2,310 square feet and contains a total of 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

A sharply curved front façade and roof line hint at the rather peculiar shape of some of the interior spaces including the curved, multi-sided living room with hardwood floors, fireplace and screened French doors to the spacious back deck. The adjoining formal dining room also has a curved wall and wood floors that run in a different direction than those in the living room.

A wide opening joins the dining room to the fully-renovated if florid center island kitchen complete with snack bar; custom, Colonial blue raised panel cabinetry, some with leaded glass doors; granite and riveted copper counter tops; medium-grade stainless steel appliances; and a chunky, two-tub copper farmhouse sink.

For some most perplexing and deeply distressing reason the honey-colored hardwoods in the living and dining rooms ends abruptly at the kitchen where the floors are darker and redder, like cherry or mahogany. We get that the kitchen designer was trying to—ahem—set a mood in the kitchen but to install two different colors of wood floors in the same house where they butt right up against each other is, in our humble and utterly meaningless opinion, a decorative crime of punishable proportions. Now, children, if the kitchen designer how opted for an appropriately chosen tile or stone floor material, that may very well have made some damn sense. But two radically different hardwoods like that? Hunny, no. It gives Your Mama a body-wide case of the hives.

Anyhoo, two of the four bedrooms and one of the three bathrooms are located, as per listing information on the main (upper) level. A third guest/family bedroom (with private bathroom) and the master suite (with attached bathroom, private deck and two walk-in closets) are well situated for maximum privacy on the lower level.

The back of the house opens through numerous screened French doors to a huge deck with over-the-tree-tops canyon views. A step-down portion of the deck is shaded by a slatted ramada for tempering the hot glare of the scorching (and somewhat relentless) southern California sunshine and a long and sorta-grand stairway (fashioned with oh-so-humble railroad ties) connects the various nooks and crannies of the landscaped and terraced grounds that include flat grass pads and—as per listing information—a handful of plum and lemon trees.

The hardly fancy Hollywood Manor 'hood is home to a number of (fairly low wattage) Showbiz types who include Morgan Fairchild (who has lived there for years), Brigitte Nielsen (who recently paid $600,000 for a fixer), and Paul DiMeo (whose house is also currently on the market for $1.1 million. Not a lesbian in real life L Word Actress Erin Daniels just sold her house in the Hollywood Manor (for a bit more than asking) and moved a mile or so down the hill to a contemporary crib in Toluca Lake.

Extra fun fact: Mister and Missus Giamatti's real estate agent is a fella named Alastair Duncan who happens to be a part-time actor (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Batman) and who's marital wagon is hitched to Emmy-nominated actress Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad, The Practice Deadwood).

listing photos: Hollywoodland Realty

...in case any of y'all care, soon-to-be-divorced Tom Cruise is rumored to be looking at swank (and private) spreads in some of the more expensive communities around New York City where he can play daddy-host to daughter Suri when his visitation times come around.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So the story goes in the New York Post this morning, Mister Cruise recently took Suri along to peep and poke around an unlisted, 11-acre waterfront spread with a 13,500 square foot main manse in the sleepy river side enclave of Sneden's Landing, NY.

Mister and soon-to-be ex-Missus Cruise already maintain a number of luxury residences that include a Beverly Hills estate bought in 2007 for just over $30,000,000, a gated compound above Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills—bought for close to $10,000,000 in 2005 and rumored by celebrity (property) gossips to be some sort of Scientology retreat, but we don't have any proof of that—a secluded mountain estate in Telluride, CO that Mister Cruise owned long before he ever married Katie, and at least one apartment at the American Felt Building in lower Manhattan's East Village.

There are rumors and reports Tom and Katie coughed up $15,075,000 for a six-story, 8,000+ square foot brownstone in Greenwich Village in summer 2009 but, in truth, we're not convinced they did and certainly we haven't seen any hard evidence of that.

And, of course, let's not forget the New York City apartment soon-to-be-third-ex-Missus Cruise secretly leased—or "secretly" leased, depending on your level of cynicism regarding the matter—as part of her marriage exit strategy. Other high-profile (full and/or part-time) residents of the building are rumored and reported to include Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, Lisa Stansfield, Bobby Flay, Kyle MacLachlan, and, up in one of the penthouse pads, Nick Jonas.

In case you ain't already heard...

According to the New York Post, procreating international entertainment industry power couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z coughed up several hundred thousand clams to lease a significant estate in the Hamptons for the month of August (2012). But, seriously, does that surprise even the most half-hearted of celebrity (real estate) watchers among us? These are, after all, the same lavish living lovebirds who regularly drop hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent mansion-sized boats for a few days at a time.

The hip-hopping couple, who each possess the sort of fame and super-stardom that allows them to be known around the planet by just one name, like Cher, Oprah, Madonna and Charo, reportedly shelled out somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000 to lease Sandcastle, a hokey-named, Hamptons-famous estate in sleepy but impossibly swank Bridgehampton, NY currently listed for sale with a reduced from $50,000,000 but still boo-tox blistering asking price of $43,500,000.

The children may (or may not) recall that two summers ago direct marketing lady-mogul of a certain age named Cheryl Mercuris plunked down a bone rattling half a million bucks to lease the behemoth Sandcastle for just two weeks in August. Miz Mercuris, bless her Tampa (FL)-based heart, made no bones about the fact that she wanted to spend a little time in the Hamptons so that she could do the hokey-pokey (or whatever) with some quality, wealthy men. She did not, so the story goes, snag a man that summer of it but she must have had a sufficiently good time that the next summer (2011) she returned for the entire month of July.

Anyhoo, the best way to take in the shopping center-sized Sandcastle is not with a bunch of over processed "prose" from Your Mama but rather by the numbers and with listing photos.

Sandcastle, just about 1.5 miles from the beach, encompasses 11.5 pancake flat acres and includes a gated and complicated series of interconnected driveways and motor courts, farm views, and (approx.) 31,000 square feet of luxury living on three full floors, including a 40-foot long living room with two fireplaces and a library/office sheathed floor and ceiling with high gloss wood work and paneling.

Altogether the compound-like estate has, according to current listing information, 12 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, including a sprawling, 2,800 square foot master suite with private sun deck and a marble- (or maybe onyx-) floored lady's pooper far larger—we guesstimate—than the average two-bedroom tenement apartment in lower Manhattan.


In addition to all the usual accouterments to be expected in a super-pricey summer rental in the Hamptons—60-foot swimming pool, spa and sunken tennis court with pergola-shaded viewing terrace—the self-contained estate also includes a 4,000 square foot poolside entertaining pavilion with adjoining outdoor kitchen; a 10-seat home theater with swanky adjustable seats; a full spa with massage area and steam room; a state-of-the-art two-lane bowling alley and squash/racquetball court, media lounge with (at least) five tee-vees sunken into the wall—breathe, breathe, breathe—a disco with full bar; indoor rock climbing wall and skateboard half-pipe—because everyone needs one of those in the basement; a children's performing area—whatever that is; an 8-car garage with hydraulic lifts and, not to be outdone by Jerry Seinfeld, a baseball diamond in the back yard.

Good grief.

Call Your Mama old fashioned—and Lord knows we've been called far worse—but iffin we we're gonna spend big bucks and a few weeks in the Hamptons this (or any other) summer, we'd much prefer something less, well, all-inclusive. All Your Mama requires for few weeks beach vacation happiness—and we really could use some beach vacation happiness—is a simple and charming shack on (or even near) the beach, a beat-up bicycle, 10 pounds of fresh corn and tomatoes, a handful of novels including at least one preferably unauthorized biography, a couple of Costco-sized bottled of gin, a smart phone—we're beholden and handcuffed to a base level of daily technology just like everybody else, and a diverse and endless supply of candy.

Whatever do people like Jay-Z and Beyoncé do with all this house? Do they ride the half pipe? Climb the rock wall thingy? Do they take 8 cars on vacation? With 12 bedrooms, the compound easily sleeps 24. Do they have a dozen more house guests at any one time? Is that how they roll? With a dozen or more family members, assistants, domestic staff and hangers on lurking around at all times?

listing photos: Corcoran

BUYER: Pete Wentz
LOCATION: Studio City, CA
PRICE: $1,050,000
SIZE: 2,000 square feet (approx.), 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen chickens, we know many of y'all prefer to hear about the real estate doings of tawdry reality denizens like Teresa Giudice, Promethean sports figures like Tim Tebow and Michael Phelps and/or mega-stars like itty-bitty tweener tycoon Justin Beiber. We do too. But sometimes we gotta dip down to the lower echelons of fame if only to clear out the celebrity real estate cobwebs that sometimes clutter up the desktop of my trusty laptop computer.

One of those cobwebs to be swept away is the modest (if not exactly cheap) residence 30-something year old entrepreneurial musician Pete Wentz scooped up a few months ago for $1,050,000 in the conveniently located San Fernando Valley community of Studio City, CA.

Once upon a time Studio City was the Brooklyn of Los Angeles. Wasn't so long ago nobody rich and/or chic in New York went to Brooklyn or—heaven forfend—actually lived there and if they did they certainly didn't admit it to anyone socially or professionally important. Howevuh, like Brooklyn, over the last 10 or so year it has become a lot more geographically acceptable to live in Studio City. Of course, Brooklyn was infiltrated by arty-farty hipsters and Studio City went to young families with good jobs and ludicrously expensive, hi-tech strollers, but still there's a kind of real estate parity. Oh my, how Your Mama wanders when we have gin for breakfast...

Mister Wentz, tatted up like a convict, reached the to-date pinnacle of his success and celebrity in the mid-Aughts when he was the kohl-eyed and boy-kissing lead singer of a rock band called Fall out Boy. Remember them? Since long before and since Fall Out Boy went on a semi-permanent hiatus in 2009 and his brief marriage to "singer" and (h)actress Ashlee Simpson went kaput in 2011, Mister Wentz has stayed busy as a greeter at Wal-Mart with a new-ish experimental electropop-ska duo called Black Cards, a record label (Decaydance Records), clothing company (Clandestine Industries), a not very active film production company (Bartskull Films), and a budding bar franchise (Angels and Kings).

The  original, downtown New York City Angels and Kings closed some time ago but there are now versions in Barcelona, Chicago and Los Angeles. Interestingly, at least one of the AK bars is co-owned by celebrity gossip slinger Perez Hilton who, some may recall, frequently and regularly gave Mister Wentz's ex-wife Ashlee scathing how-tos and what-fors on the Twitter and on his ridiculously trafficked blog. Those two bitches just hated each other and now he's in business with her ex. Ouch. Anyhoo...

In June 2006 Mister Wentz, then single and in his mid-20s, dropped $1,625,000 to buy a 2,700 square foot, privately-situated bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills. It wasn't long after he hooked up with, quickly impregnated and then married Miss Simpson, the younger and less successful sister of bubble gum pop singer turned pioneering reality tee-vee star turned retail clothing super-tycoon (and new mommy) Jessica Simpson.

He packed up and moved in to her much larger, celeb-style 7,100 square foot Beverly Hills (Post Office area) mansion just down the winding road from Demi Moore and Mark Wahlberg she'd bought in the early days of 2007 for $4,500,000. In October 2008, a few months after their May nupitals, he finally unloaded his bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills for $1,600,000.

We're not sure where Mister Wentz went in the immediate aftermath of his split from Miz Simpson in early 2011 but we do know that she took a hair-raising loss of nearly a million bucks—not counting carrying costs, maintenance, improvements and real estate fees—when she sold her/their big house in Bev Hills in April 2011 for $3,699,000. For some celebs losing a million bucks ain't no thang to kvetch about but we can imagine for an increasingly low wattage Showbizzer like ex-Missus Wentz it might, maybe sting a little. But we digress into ex-Missus Wentz's real estate bidness yet again...

At some point Mister Wentz decamped his marital homestead in the Hills of Beverly and eventually he began to hunt for a new bachelor pad. In April of this year (2012), according to property records and previous reports, Mister Wentz shelled out a probably financially practical but very-modest-by-celeb-standards $1,050,000 to acquire an updated and upgraded 1940s cottage nestled into a quiet and thickly treed hillside above Studio City, CA.

Listing information from the time of the sale shows the two story residence—set behind that detached two car garage and a tall teak fence Your Mama imagines is now equipped with state-of-the-art security cameras—measures in at 2,000 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms plus separate guest quarters with an additional bathroom. For the record, the Los Angeles County Tax Man calls it at 1,653 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

The main, open plan living space has yellow-blond wood floors, a wood-burning fireplace (oddly) tucked under the stairs, and a wide bank of mullioned French doors that connect a pergola-shaded and wisteria draped red brick patio enveloped in a forest of trees and the full width of the rear of the residence.

We sincerely hope Mister Wentz has already made or plans to make alterations to the galley-style kitchen where listing photos from the time of his purchase show the counter tops slathered in (not entirely awful) azure tiles with bone-colored grouting and the (dated-looking) flat-front cabinets painted white. We can certainly cotton to a white kitchen cabinet, but these just look so ordinary, like Gene Simmons without all his war paint. The appliances are—or were—mid-grade and also white and the hulking, white refrigerator is, technically, located in the adjoining laundry room.

A den/potential bedroom (and bathroom) on the lower floor also open up to the lushly planted backyard. There is a second bedroom (and bathroom) upstairs along with the master suite. We're not really sure where the separate guest quarters mentioned in marketing materials are located.

Either Mister Wentz likes to tinker and putter around in a teeming, high-maintenance garden or he doesn't mind having Jefe and his brother Jaime on the property several times a week pruning, trimming, and taming the the grounds as necessary. In addition to the wisteria-draped veranda, there's a large brick terrace to the side of the house, on which the previous owners installed a very modern, free-standing outdoor fireplace, and various pathways that connect a tree-shaded spa, Japanese tea house—a teak ramada, really—a children's play house, waterfalls and an architectural koi pond.

Now children, use yer noggins, okay? The furniture and day-core seen in listing photos belongs to the seller of the property and does not reflect the personal style and/or whatever sort of decorative sensibility Mister Wentz may (or may not) have.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

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If you're considering a tablet, the only rational choice is the iPad 1 or the iPad 2. Anything else you there is too expensive/too buggy/lacking support/etc. As someone who owns a desktop but no laptop, the iPad 2 is just perfect. A laptop would often be redundant, though it would be handy for working outside of the home. With the iPad, I will use it all the time both in the home and elsewhere.

I will try to add some comments that haven't been covered:

* I find that 16gb is fine, though this may change if app sizes get much larger. I don't intend to store my music or a bunch of videos on this. Videos can be streamed, or added as-needed, and I rely on DropBox to store files - it lets me view and edit files between my desktop and my iPad.

* Part of the reason the iPad is perfect for travel is that you can use it in any position, unlike a laptop, where you have to find a seat.

* It won't ever got hot or overheat. Personally, I've had a couple laptops expire on me due to overheating. You always have to keep them on a firm surface so you don't block the vents. The iPad doesn't have these problems (I think that the Macbook Airs similarly will never overheat). You no longer have to grab a tray or giant book to set your laptop on when using it in bed........................


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As long as you know exactly what you are getting with the Hauppauge HD PVR, you won't be disappointed with the performance of this little black box. It is designed for PC Windows users only, although Mac owners can use it with some add-ons.

First, you'll need to understand and accept what this PVR does not do: without any memory or hard drive inside, it does not store video itself, making the PVR label somewhat misleading, and it does not burn video to DVD. To use it, you must hook it up to a PC or Mac (more on the Mac later) for both recording and playback. And it relies entirely on software running on your computer to record, edit, program, and burn Blu-ray format DVDs. The box itself has no controls other than a power button. It has component, composite, and S-video connections (no HDMI) for video, and optical and stereo audio inputs.

So what does it do? It takes the HD signals streaming into it and compresses them in a format that preserves the HD quality in a savable AVCHD file; you can record/save manually or on a schedule. These signals can come from a set top box, camcorder or other video source that can connect with the above inputs. The included ArcSoft Media software for Windows allows you to record on either the computer hard drive or an external one. Once the files are saved, you may use your computer's DVD-R drive to burn a Blu-Ray-compatible DVD or HD-DVD, edit, play back on your computer or television, convert to iPod-, Xbox-, or PS3-friendly format (MOV, MP4, M2TS, or WMV), or share playback within the same wireless network. The included IR blaster can change the channels on your set top box to the one you've programmed to record. Note: the blaster works with the included software and therefore only on Windows....................


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