Weekend Mish Mash

1.
It's baaaack. After disappearing from the market several weeks ago, the much altered but still lovely to look at Richard Neutra designed house in Bel Air that was built for Teledyne tycoon Henry Singleton and is currently owned by octogenarian hair guru Vidal Sassoon is back on the market with an asking price of $19,950,000, which is exactly the same asking price it was listed at before.

Due to it's architectural pedigree, the house garnered lots of publicity and attention when it first hit the market last summer. Your Mama even heard that talk show maven and house hopper Ellen Degeneres went up for a look see. But alas, no one with big bucks and modernist dreams stepped up to buy the 5-acre Mulholland Drive property.

Now, all you architectural purists go scream and yell in the comments section about how Mister Sassoon butchered this house during the renovation, because we know you want to.

2.
The $22,500,000 house in the Holmby Hills that every gossip glossy thought Ben Garner and Jennifer Affleck (or whatever their names are) were gonna buy is back on the market with a substantial $3,000,000 price reduction. Perhaps the new $19,950,000 asking price will attract some filthy rich exercise nut who will gleefully consider the exceptionally long walk from the motor court to the front door as an opportunity to work a little extra cardio into their day.

3.
Aussie singer/actress Olivia Newton John seems to be getting sear-ee-us about selling her Malee-boo mansion and recently karate chopped the asking price of her 6,482 square foot sprawler up in the guard gated enclave of the Serra Retreat from $14,000,000 to $12,950,000. Miz O.N.J.'s 5 bedroom and 6 bathroom crib sits di-rectly next door to the Love Shack where much on the mend Britney Spears and her Fed-Ex used to live in wedded bliss before she lost her damn mind and starting flashing her baby maker all over town. Remember those days kids? Your Mama is happy as a clam that Miss Spears is pulling her shit together, and Miz Newton John is prolly even happier that those two young muffins sold their house next door because hovering helicopters filled with paps trying to snap pix of their tawdry doings might have been a real problem for a potential buyer.

4.
All the New York City real estate gossips and property fiends are on pins and needles waiting for deceased society doyenne Brooke Astor's Park Avenue duplex to hit the market. The NY Observer reported earlier this week that Mrs. Astor's suspicious son Anthony Marshall and his rather controversial wife Charlene (who left her preacher huzband to be with the Astor heir) recently interviewed a handful of high end brokers to determine who would get the plush and plum listing.

It's expected that the two floor terraced co-operative apartment at hoity toity 778 Park Avenue will have an eye popping asking price of $46,000,000 or more. That gigantic number isn't so difficult to fathom when you consider that this is the very same super swank building where billionaire industrialist Ira Rennart recently and ever so generously forked over $33,600,000 (in cash) to purchase Vera Wang's full floor 14-room apartment for his daughter Yonina. Lucky damn Yonina.

Anyhoo, Miz Astor's legendary duplex reportedly includes several fireplaces, three to five bedrooms depending on who you ask, extensive staff quarters, a separate apartment for guests or staff, and interiors by the inestimable high society decorator Albert Hadley who famously did up the library with lacquered red walls.

There has been much public hullabaloo and scads of private outrage over the care Miz Astor received in her last few years (or the lack of it by some accusations) as well as serious questions regarding her wills and wishes since her death in August of 2007. If you care to read up, here's a good article that covers the salacious situation.