UPDATE: Picture Issues

Okay babies...Your Mama is no computer guru. Some mornings it all we can do to get the damn thing to turn on let along get all this Blogger software to function like we want it to. None the less, we have heard your cries and made a few changes. The comments should not pop up in a new window which should make all our lovely and regular comment folks very happy.

Secondly, we have somehow managed to use the Blogger based work around to get photos to open up in the browser window again. We are working on trying to figure out how to make them open in a second browser window, but alas, we having figured that one out yet. If any of you computer knowitalls want to clue Your Mama in, feel free to shoot us an email.

Now leave Your Mama alone so we can finish drinking down this tall gin and tonic before the Dr. Cooter gets home.

Neverland News

Lawhd have mercy on Michael Jackson and his beleaguered finances. The once talented and accomplished black man's life seems to have started the long slow trip down the proverbial terlit since he transformed his visage into that of a middle aged white woman with a peculiar and unseemly penchant for hanging out with 9 year old boys.

Fox News reported the other day that the one time King of Pop turned tabloid freak show is in some deep financial doo-doo. Not only did he not cough up a court ordered $3,800,000 settlement to his former manager Dieter Wiesner that was payable on the 15th of November, he's having trouble with the refinancing and debt structuring that crazy talking Raymone Bain keeps screeching on about. And the bail bondsman is chasing the poor pale thing down too.

But the White Lady's drama does not stop there. Oh no children, he's got real estate woes to boot. As a result of the lack of financial folks willing to step up and bail out the single father of three very fair skinned children, he remains in default on the $23,000,000 loan secured by Neverland Ranch, his former home, private playground, and the scene of much the alleged child molesting for which he's been accused and acquitted. Fox News gossip Roger Friedman blabs that he was told that Jackson doesn't much care about his once beloved ranch and will likely allow the place fall into foreclosure sometime in January. Oh dear.

There are, however, reports floating about that say there are indeed interested parties who would be willing to purchase Neverland Ranch. According to Wigan Today, a UK based clothing magnate is actually negotiating to purchase the 2,700 acre spread. And, are the kids ready for this nonsense, the articles claims the Brit faces stiff competition from none other than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who are rumored to think their multi-cultural brood might enjoy the zoo and carnival. What!?

Your Mama seriously doubts that Brangelina would want to buy Neverland Ranch, unless they're planning on relocating a few Cambodian villages or all the residents of the storm torn Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the Santa Ynez Valley. Which would be a spectacular act of charity and publicity. But does anyone really think these two want to live up in that Tudor mansion that's tainted with the scandals and Jesus juice of Michael Jackson? Come on!

The glittery gloved one, his three shockingly pale children, and presumably that high-larious Raymone Bain lady are reported to be in Las Vegas. However, before heading to the desert, the NY Post reported that the Jackson clan, who have not had a permanent home since sometime in 2005, squatted at supermarket mogul Ron Burkle's beautiful and behemoth Beverly Hills estate Green Acres. Prior to that, the Jackson family spent three months camped out with sympathetic family friends in Franklin Lakes, NJ, and previous to that he was living in a leased and modest house in suburban Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C.

Why the broken down singer doesn't just move back to Neverland Ranch or to the house he owns on Hayvenhurt Avenue in Encino is beyond our little mind to figure out. Yes, he'd have to deal with his parents who reportedly live in the Hayvenhurst house, but isn't that better and less embarrassing than asking Ron Burkle for lunch money or sleeping on a hideaway sofa in some finished basement in New Jersey?

It's all just so sad. Even if you don't like him, and Your Mama don't, it's still sad. He's got kids. What's going to become of those kids? Lawhd have mercy on their souls.

P.S. Your Mama would like to thanks our dear gurl Belinda Sue Beaverman, henceforth to be known at B.S. Beaverman, for all her research and links.

Photo: Pacific Coast News

There Will Be No Tranquility For Greg Norman

SELLER: Greg Norman
LOCATION: S. Beach Road, Hobe Sound, Jupiter Island, FL
PRICE: $65,000,0000
SIZE: 17,825 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 11 full and 3 half bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Welcome to "Tranquility," a peaceful eight-acre estate with more than 16,000 square feet of air-conditioned space on Jupiter Island in Hobe Sound, Florida. The main house overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway with 370 feet of waterfront, and a 140-foot dock that can accommodate a large yacht with a lift for a smaller vessel...Estate includes a total of nine bedrooms , 11 full baths and three half baths in six structures.

DESCRIPTION: Your Mama knows we're a little late to the party on this one having been reported in the Wall Street Journal, Golf.com and any number of blogs and websites. But we feel like chiming in. So if you don't want to read more about Mister Greg Norman, well too bad. But before we begin we'd like to thank Miss American Pie for sending us a bit of information on the property.

Golfing may be a dignified and genteel sport where a lucky few professionals make obscene amounts of money hitting tiny balls around meticulously manicured courses. But dee-vorce can be ugly, bitter and acrimonious, even for a screamingly successful and revered professional golfer like Australian Greg Norman who topped the PGA rankings in the 1980s and 90s and in the process amassed a serious fortune worth a reported $3-500,000,000.

After 25 years of marriage, Mister Norman filed for a dee-vorce from his wife Laura. Initially, the split seemed smooth and civil. Then all hell broke loose and the couple feuded, battled and publicly threw verbal darts and bitter barbs at each other. The mister argued that his wife was trying to bleed his bank accounts and the missus proclaimed that he cut off her credit cards and changed the locks on the couple's jaw dropping Jupiter Island estate, which in happier days they dubbed Tranquility. Meanwhile, Mister Norman was spotted frollicking on his long yacht Aussie Rules with tennis great Chris Evert, a situation that further inflamed the already blisteringly heated situation.

Apparently, amid all the turmoil at Tranquility, both Normans moved out of the big Hobe Sound plantation style house, because according to a report in the NY Post, the mister bought the soon to be ex-missus a $4,000,000 Palm Beach residence and spent another $400,000 on a down payment for a Hamptons hideaway. He packed his clubs and decamped to a $7,000,000 estate in luxe Le Lac, that is conveniently walking distance his new ladee lover Chris Evert's house on Horseshoe Lane. Not that they actually walk back and forth, but they could.

Now that the angry and sparring couple have reportedly inked a dee-vorce agreement, the humongous Hobe Sound estate that sprawls across 7.4 acres fronting both the ocean and the Intracoastal waterway has been put on the market. The ear piercing $65,000,000 asking price is a massive and unseemly amount of money now matter how your slice it, particularly when you consider that Urban Outfitters founder Richard Hayne paid just $17,000,000 for a nearby 6 acre property in 2004, and in late 2005 golfer Tiger Woods and his blond wifey paid a record setting $44,000,000 for their 12 acre ocean to Intracoastal Waterway Jupiter Island spread just a few doors down.

Although property records reveal the split couple purchased the property in May of 1991 for just $4,900,000, it was recently assessed at $21,000,000 with an impressively high $135,000 per year tax bill. So where does this $65,000,000 price tag come from pray tell? Come on! Sounds to Your Mama like someone doesn't really want to sell the old family homestead.

The once happily married Normans bought the estate from real estate investor and developer John Kessler who along with Limited Brands head honcho Les Wexner developed New Albany, Ohio, the upscale enclave outside Columbus Ohio where many Limited Brand execs live in big houses that surround the tremendous 1000 acre equestrian estate of enormously wealthy Mister Wexner, who had blue hair and a very handsome male assistant the last time Your Mama saw him...but that's another story for another day.

According to listing information, the Norman property is made up of several habitable structures making up 16,000 square feet of air conditioned space including a 4 bedroom main house dating from 1902 that sprawls across 9,254 square feet and includes a 2,500 bottle wine cellar, a cute little 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom guest house that fronts 172 feet of the roiling Atlantic, a coach house with three bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and a carriage house with gym, steam room, bathroom, reception space, a boardroom and a couple of offices. Altogether this is garage space for 17 damn cars, because one family needs 17 gas guzzlers, right?

Sixty five million clams also buys a ridiculously Richie Rich a classic and achingly long wealthy man's driveway terminating in a huge circular motor court, a grill house adjacent to the tennis court and fifty foot swimming pool where the private chef whips up backyard barbecues with the rotisserie, icemaker, and microwave oven while the Lily Pulitzer clad guests watch reruns of the Augusta National on the television with surround sound stereo. A couple of golf greens and 370 feet of Intracoastal Waterway frontage with a 140 foot dock for parking the yacht completes the package.

Nothing like a modest little shack by the beach, right?