Mariah O'Brien in Los Feliz

SELLER: Mariah O'Brien and Trae Carlson
LOCATION: N. Vermont, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,750,000
SIZE: 5,218 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Gated Mediterranean Compound with Lush Tropical Landscape and large grassy lawn. Rotunda entry with Vintage Tile and Stenciling, Large Beamed Living Room with Hardwood Floors and Fireplace, Separate Family/Media Room, Formal Dining Room, New Vintage Kitchen, Breakfast room and Powder. Upstairs Huge Master with Sitting Room & Walk-ins, plus three family bedrooms. Outside Huge Moroccan Covered Patio overlooks salt water pool & spa. Huge Guest House with Guestroom/gym/media and upstairs office

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We're dumping this one in today because Mariah O'Brien just happens to be the actress ex-wife and baby momma of Giovanni Ribisi, who we discussed briefly this morning. Ribisi and O'Brien, a couple of Scientologists, were dee-vorced in 2001, but not before they had a daughter they named after an ill-fated heroine in a Donizetti opera. Which is so cultured and arty we can hardly stand it.

Anyhoo, after getting un-hitched from Ribisi, O'Brien went and found herself a new man in Trae Carlson. Now there's no reason you'd know Mister Carlson's name, but he is a film and music producer who was once married to Carol Burnett's daughter Erin Hamilton.

According to property records, the couple purchased this house on a gorgeous, tree lined section of N. Vermont in December of 2005 for $2,700,000. The Mediterranean style house includes a rotunda entry featuring a sweeping stair case worthy of a Norma Desmond moment. Note the humongous Helmut Newton book SUMO propped up in the entrance hall on the Phillip Starck designed display rack. Impressive if you're into these things since only 10,000 were printed. Each was signed and numbered by Newton himself and sold for a whopping $6,500. It's filled with portraits of people in various stages of nekkidness. So, not really a book for the kiddies to be flipping through with their sticky peanut butter and jelly fingers.

While not to our particular taste, the house appears to be very tastefully, elegantly, and thoughtfully decorated. However, if you don't look closely at some of the artwork on the walls, you would be forgiven for thinking this house looks like it is owned by much older people. We are beside ourselves with delight seeing all the books in book shelves and picture books stacked on tables throughout the house. If we've said it once, we've said it twice, books help to make a house a home. And they make it look like someone with brains lives up in the crib.

We're not feeling that blood red dining room. We're uncomfortable with that glass fronted, country-looking cabinet, and we feel mixed on the expensive silk Fortuny chandelier--we've always been a wee unsure of them. But the gold leafed ceiling is pee your pants delicious.

We swoon over the covered space on the back of the house overlooking the pool, which has been kitted out as an outdoor room complete with ceiling fan to stir up the air. Could there be a better vantage point from which to sip a mai-tai and watch shirtless Pablo the pool boy skim the leaves?

And the guest house, well, it does look like something in Key West, but we do so love a guest house. Nothing better than having a separate structure for housing the less favored guests and family members.

We have no idea where the couple will be moving, or if they're even still a couple (anyone?), but given the purchase price in 2005, they are looking to make more than a million smacks in less than two years. Not bad.

Sources: Taschen, Internet Movie Data Base