Thursday, July 16, 2009

Listen Chickens...

...Your Mama has an unexpectedly crazy making sort of day ahead of us so we regret to inform that we are taking today off. Not only do we have a couple of paying gigs we gotta get our plate so Your Mama can pay the damn mortgage, we've also got Sister Woman, her baby daddy and their two cute but pathologically vociferous little gurls staying up in the house which means Your Mama has already downed a nerve pill and we are restlessly waiting for Nurse Diesel to arrive so that she can hook us up to an IV drip that will keep a steady flow of gin and tonics seeping into our veins all day long.

However, before anyone gets their panties all in a bunch and start sending Your Mama hate mail and death threats–a couple of Your Mama's kids are such naughty and angry little beasts who could use a good working over with a peach tree switch–we're gonna send y'all over to Russia to have a look-see at The Agalarov Estates, the brainchild of Russian billionaire Araz Agalarov who has more than once been given the dubious honor of being called the Donald Trump of Russia.

Located just outside Moscow, The Agalarov Estates, is meant to be an uber-exclusive and all-inclusive private community for Russian oligarchs with new money burning a hole in their Versace pockets. According to previous reports, the 250 elaborately detailed but architecturally suspect mansions measure an average of 10,000 square feet and cost an average $10,000,000 (US). A few flicks of the beads of our well worn abacus shows that converts to about 320,000,000 Roubles at today's rates.

In exchange for guarded gates, an 18-hole private golf course and clubhouse, a sports complex with indoor and outdoor tennis courts, equestrian facilities, a beach club on the shore of a private lake, a helipad and a 50-room hotel exclusively for guests of home owners, residents agree that they will not shoot off fireworks, keep a dog on the premises (even inside their house), or hang laundry out on a line out in the yard.

As bizarre as those things seem (what billionaire hangs laundry on a line?), most perplexing perhaps is that the ridiculously rich and security obsessed Russian residents who buy into Mister Agalarov's dream development also agree to forgo private bodyguards within the development. Mister Agalarov's reasoning is that with the amount of private security that many rich Russians drag around, his private paradise could easily look like a military installation iffin everyone had their armed Igors and Anatolys trailing them around the golf course and standing sentry next to their cabanas at the beach club. Mister Agalarov has kindly provided a holding pen for residents' private security guards near the main entrance to the development. Your Mama wonders if they'll be forced to check their firearms at the door or if they'll be free to walk around with glocks on their hips and AK-47s strapped to their backs.

Another tidbit we found fassinatin' is that the dee-luxe development sits slammed up next to an impoverished village and Mister Agalarov has spent big on thick landscaping the screen any views of their hovels and laundry lines. While practical from the point of view of a person buying into the development, there's just something so uncomfortable about living surrounded by such flashy luxury knowing that just on the other side of the 14th hole mothers can't afford to feed their children anything but beets and cabbage water.

photo: The Agalarov Estates

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