The Real Estalker

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BUYER: Leona Lewis
LOCATION: Astral Drive, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,850,000
SIZE: 3,946 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Stunning California Compound!...Security & Seclusion in a Private Gated Community! Designer Courtyard Entry has 4Bdrm Main House w/ Incredible High Ceilings, Exquisite Tuscan Details & Amazing Family rm/Kitchen! Across the Courtyard is a GuestHouse with its own Garage! 4 Separate Outdoor Entertaining Areas: Waterfall, Pool & Spa, Firepit, Garden Walkways, BBQ Kitchen, & Grassy Yard. Parking Galore!

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: First of all, Your Mama needs a damn nerve pill after reading that real estate description with all its damn exclamation points and Capital Letters! All that over emphasized punctuation and all those Capital Letters make Your Mama feel like the listing is screaming bloody murder right into our tender eardrums. All the real estates know that Your Mama does not care to bash and trash them. Heaven knows they get plenty of that from their clients. However, sometimes we just can't keep our trap shut. So listen up real estates, because Your Mama is about to offer you some unsolicited but sage advice: Stop Capitalizing Every Damn Word in Listing Descriptions and Stop Throwing Exclamation Marks Around Like They're Rice at A Damn Wedding! Lo-ward people, that kind of crap ain't nuthin' but distracting not to mention all kinds of aggravating to people who do not want to work in order to read a description the damn property.

Anyhoo, let's move on before Your Mama's blood really gets up on this. The last we knew of British singing sensation Leona Lewis, she was living in a leased crib up on Laurel Pass in the Laurel Canyon area of LaLa Land. Then, in early November we received a covert communique from Big Dave at Celebrity Address Aerial who pointed our nosy noggin towards a house in the Nichols Canyon area of Los Angeles which, according to property records, was purchased by the parents of the X-Factor winning and Grammy nominated singer. We did a little peeping and poking around ourselves and managed to turn up the listing for the property but Your Mama was so mortified and mentally mangled by some of the home's eyeball assaulting interior appointments that we quickly downed a gin & tonic and plum forgot all about the matter.

That is, until yesterday–or maybe it the day before that, we can't remember–when we heard from Mirakle Mike, another of our wildly well informed sources, who also directed Your Mama's limited attentions over to this same house in the Hollywood Hills at which Big Dave pointed. Then, another source, someone we'll call The Legal Eagle, turned our attention to a recent article in the Daily Mail–that's a tab in the U.K., children–that gushed about the "Tuscan-style villa" the songbird snatched up for £1,800,000.

In actuality, records and listing information provided by Babbling Babette reveal that young Miss Lewis did not pay 1,800,000 British pounds for the place–which, according to our currency conversion contraption, translates to $3,065,876US at today's rates–but rather 1,850,000 American dollars. Now that the money matters are cleared up, let's all have a wee look-see at the 3,946 square foot house which listing information shows includes 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers. The home's location near the tippy-top of Nichols Canyon, at the tail end of a private and gated street and up a long driveway should provide all the peace, privacy and quiet Miss Lewis might want or need. The unfortunately flesh colored, two-story, neo-contempo-faux-Tuscan compound includes a main house, a detached guest house, garaging for 3 cars and parking for 10 more.

The front door appears to open into an entrance hall/formal living room combination. We'd describe the wood floors that are so glossy Your Mama woudl not recommend a ladee in a skirt stand on them lest her naughty bits be reflected onto the floor and we'd discuss the marble tile staircase with the intricate wrought iron banister but our eyes are so harassed by those excessively pleated, draped and ass-uglee curtains that nothing else seems to matter. Your Mama can only hope that Miss Lewis has the decorative smarts to have those things ripped down ih-mee-deeuht-lee and let a nice gay, decorator replace them with something less desperate and more dignified. The unnecessarily dramatic curtain treatment continues into the dining room which also has marble tile floors laid at a 45-degree angle to the room, a crystal chandelier and a disturbingly off center window that looks out onto the gardens. We're not even going to attempt to describe the moldings in the dining room which we think might be–jeezis help us all–faux-gilded and have Your Mama hyperventilating with decorative upset.

As we would have predicted, the very beige eat-in kitchen has a chandelier over the breakfast table and a damn pot rack looming dangerously over the work island. A nearby family room has wood floors, off-center French doors that open to the back yard, a corner fireplace and more of that dining room molding that gives Your Mama the shivers.

Upstairs, the master bedroom has been fitted with wall to wall carpeting in the lightest of beige colors that blends almost seamlessly to the eggshell white walls. French doors open to a private terrace overlooking the back yard and there is another corner fireplace, the second of three on the property. The master pooper has a lot of beige tile work, a separate soaking tub and glass shower, and a light fixture on which someone appears to have hung all their pearl jewelry.

The property has, according to listing information, four separate entertainment areas: the swimming pool and spa area with it's double rock waterfall, a fire pit surrounded on two sides by built in stone benches, a barbecue kitchen for outdoor cooking as well as a grassy yard where the kiddies can play and the pooches can piddle and poop.

The truth is Your Mama knows little to nothing about Miss Leona Lewis other than that with the help of star maker Simon Cowell she has become a wildly successful R&B pop music super star. And bully for her for that. We just hope that she has enough sense to hire a nice, gay decorator to help her work out some of the serious kinks in her new house. Listen Miss Lewis, Your Mama knows you're new in town so iffin you need some assistance finding someone to work over your new digs, just give Your Mama a shout and we'll hook you up with someone as talented with the day-core as you are with the singing.

SELLER: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal
LOCATION: outside of Turin, Italy
PRICE: approx. €19,000,000
SIZE: 175 acres, 40+ rooms
DESCRIPTION: The renowned Castel of Castagneto Po, located on the slopes of the famous Turin hills, is in a lovely towering position and offers a beautifully panoramic view. The dwelling is surrounded by an English-style park with age-old trees of more than 70 hectares. The Family Bruni Tedeschi started important renovation works and turned it into one of the most refined dwellings in Europe as well as the venue of exhibitions and events of special artistic interest...

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: All the international real estate columns and blogs are atwitter and abuzz over Saudi billionaire biznessman Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud flipping the childhood home of fetching French first ladee Carla Bruni-Sarkozy back on the market just months after he purchased the historic 40+ room beast in the hills above Turin, Italy.

According to previous reports, the lavish living Saudi royal laid out around $25,000,000 for the humongous house in early 2009. Although some parts of house date back to the 11th century, listing information reveals that over the last several hundred years the regal residence has been rebuilt, remodeled, restored several times. The property stretches across approximately 70 hectores while the manse measures approximately 2,000 square meters, according to listing information. In Americanese, that's a whopping 21,528 square feet for the house and 173 acres for the land which includes orchards, flowering terraces, vegetable gardens, ancient greenhouses, a caretaker's cottage and a farm building of one sort or another.

The Castel of Castagneto Po was purchased for around $1,500,000 by arty-farty Italian industrialist Alberto Bruni Tedeschi–who was also an opera composer–in 1952. The Bruni Tedeschi family, whose wealth comes largely from tires, vacated the property in the early 1970s fearing reprisals and attacks by Marxist guerrilla groups who, at the time, were scaring the buhjeezis out of rich Italians. The family decamped for Paris but hung on to the historic property until early in 2009 when Miz Bruni-Sarkozy's mother Marisa Bruni Tedeschi sold it because, according to one report, "Nobody went there anymore."

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, who is worth more than a dozen billion dollars, clearly and quickly had a real estate change of heart after buying the castel because he reportedly never even moved a stick of furniture or a single dishdasha into the massive mansion before hoisting it back on the market with a reported asking price of around €19,000,000. According to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption, nineteen million Euros translate to 28,396,070 American clams.

The Saudi prince lives like, well, a damn Saudi prince. He reportedly shacks up a 317-room palace complete with 1,500 tons of marble, gold-plated faucets, four kitchens, a 45-seat cinema and a bewildering 250 boob-toobs. The prince is said to own upwards of 250 automobiles and takes to the seas on arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi's former yacht, which he picked up when American real estate mogul and global blowhard Donald Trump went bankrupt for the second time. Apparently The Donald's 282-foot yacht is not quite big enough for the mustachioed mogul's platinum plated taste because he's reportedly commissioned a $500,000,000+ yacht expected to measure between 530 and 560 feet long when it gets dropped into the water sometime in 2010. Think about that children...that's almost twice as long as a football field which means it's not a yacht its a damn cruise ship.

The air travel options for the prince are no less mind boggling and booty clenching. The 50-something year old already scoots around the globe in a behemoth Boeing 747 custom converted to private use but he's also ordered an Airbus A380 to the tune of three hundred million smackers or more. For all the children who do know know, the Airbus A380 is a double-decker, wide body airborne beast that will seat as many as 850 people during commercial flights. Of course, Mister Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud's Airbus A380 will seat far fewer once he's spent $100,000,000 or more after having his over-hauled for private use. If rumors and reports are accurate, the flying mansion is scheduled to include a 600 square foot master suite, a game room, a desert themed lounge, and a damn whirlpool tub that can be emptied in seconds should it become necessary. Sorta makes this little castle in Italy seem like nuthin' but a little real estate child's play, don't it?

SELLERS: Oliver Hudson and Erin Bartlett
LOCATION: Norma Place, West Hollywood, CA
PRICE: $1,035,000
SIZE: 1,438 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Priced to sell!! Romantic and elegant updated 2+2 Spanish Home with detached guest house. Gated entry with Flagstone courtyard and fountain. Beamed ceiling, authentic style arches, picture window and fireplace. Updated, light filled kitchen featuring Granite countertops and office area with French doors leading to grassy backyard. Separate studio with kitchen and bath.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A couple of weeks ago, in late October 2009, Your Mama discussed the Los Angeles property recently acquired by Hollywood scion Colin Hanks, son of Tom. Today we're going to discuss the Los Angeles crib of another beneficiary of Tinseltown nepotism, Oliver Hudson. Mister Hudson is, of course, the son of Goldie Hawn and her ex-huzband Bill Hudson and the brother of Kate Hudson who is fast becoming better known for her dating activities than her acting chops. Anyhoo, about two weeks ago, the usually scruffy-faced Mister Hudson and his ack-turuss wifey Erinn Bartlett listed their West Hollywood, CA house with a price tag of $1,035,000.

For the past couple of years, Mister Hudson has starred in the silly sitcom Rules of Engagement opposite the diminutive comedian David Spade who, as far as Your Mama is concerned is one of the more spectacularly unfunny comedians making mountains of moolah in Hollywood. Mister Hudson previously appeared in The Mountain, Dawson's Creek and My Guide to Becoming A Rock Star, none of which Your Mama has ever seen. That's right butter beans, Your Mama never bothered to tune in to even a single episode of Dawson's Creek and we ain't afraid to admit it. Mister Hudson is married to and making babies with a blondie named Erinn Bartlett, a former beauty queen turned ack-tress whose rather lusterless resume includes one time appearances on the boob-toob programs Navy NCIS, Four Kings, How I Met Your Mother and Out of Practice as well as a bunch of petite parts in mortifying movies like Little Nicky, Raising Helen, and The Benchwarmer, a cinematic clunker in which she portrayed–the poor little lamb–the character "Salad Girl/Sarah."

Property records show the Norma Place property was picked up in January of 2004 for $912,000. The would have been, according to 411 we dug up on the interweb, just before the lovebirds made their engagement public. According to listing information, the Spanish casa measures 1,438 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms and 2 poopers plus a separate studio/guest house with another pooper.

The Hudson house is located in the tightly packed West Hollywood neighborhood known as The Norma Triangle. To the west is Beverly Hills, to the north the Sunset Strip and to the south and east the gay, gay, GAY city of West Hollywood. Your Mama loves nothing more, real estate wise, than a forbidding front facade and Mister Hudson's WeHo house presents a sufficiently and pleasantly unfriendly vibe with high hedges and solid wood gates that bar access to both the front courtyard and the back part of the driveway.

As in so many of the small casas in Los Angeles, the front door opens directly into the living room which has a huge arched window looking out at the fountain in the front courtyard, wood floors, a fireplace with a flat screen tee-vee mounted where there ought to be art, and a vaulted, wood beamed ceiling that is so dee-lishusly dark it almost looks charred. A trio of arches separates the living room from the dining room where a large arched mirror that mirrors the front window has been hung on the wall behind to the dining table which has been shoved up into the corner of the room. The dining area of the dining room is done up in a style that Your Mama might call "Mario Buatta goes to the Pasadena flea market" with mint green farmhouse chairs and built in benches lined with mint green and floral pillows.

Two walls in the dining room are covered with collections of mismatched framed photographs, presumably of the comely couple and their famous friends and family members. While we do think it's just lovely that Mister and Missus Hudson care enough about their peeps to have pictures of them in their home, we're is afraid all them bug eyed and smiling faces looking down towards the dining room table while we're trying to get our grub on would make Your Mama feel like an animal at the damn zoo. Perhaps this sort of homey photographic display is better left to a room where one does not eat...or evacuate, because let's be honest, most people don't care for an audience when performing that particular task either.

Beyond the dining room, a long kitchen has been fitted with blond maple cabinetry and flecked, black granite counter tops. Although it's all a tad country for Your Mama's particular decorative sensibilities and we loathe that freestanding piece of furniture in the middle of the room, it's really a nice sized kitchen for such a small house and we do love that baby Viking range and the French doors open the house to the back yard.

The ho-hum day-core makes a not entirely successful effort at sophistication in the cramped master bedroom and renovated bathroom where crisply white walls are set against chardonnay colored linens in the bedroom mottled champagne colored tile in the pooper. Someone rang up West Elm and ordered a $99 capiz shell chandelier for the ceiling and someone else thought it wise to mount a monstrous flat screen tee-vee mounted on the wall at the foot of the bed.

The small but cozy back deck has apartment house style wrought iron railings and leads down to a wee patch of grass dotted with swaying Queen Palms and the separate studio space which appears to be all done up like some kind of damn man cave. Lo-ward have mercy children, is there anything worse than the term "man cave?" Seriously, think about it. Mister Hudson's eyeball punishing "man cave" has putrid and patterned red wall to wall carpeting and a soul crushing butterscotch and brown vertical striped wall paper. Tucked behind a wall is a refrigerator and a stacked washer and dryer and pushed up against one wall is a poker table surrounded by six chairs with wheels–wheels!–that is lit by a stained glass light fixture so ass uglee Your Mama wouldn't wish it on the blind. It's all so damn tawdry and depressing it has Your Mama reaching for a gin & tonic and a big, fat nerve pill.

Listing information boldly declares the property is priced to sell at $1,035,000. We wonder if Mister Hudson knows that a beautifully renovated and similarly sized 3 bedrooms and 2 pooper house just two blocks away was listed on the 10th of October for $1,239,000 and closed just 19 days later at a significantly lower $975,000 negotiation? Something for him to think about when he gets his first offer. Presumably Mister and Missus Hudson are hunting for or have their eyes on bigger digs that will better accommodate their growing family. Your Mama wishes them all the best in their next home, wherever that may be.

Listen children, we know we are tardy for the party today but now that we are here, buckle your seat belts because Your Mama is really gonna give it to y'all today with a triple whammy of architecturally significant properties in Palm Springs, CA. Grab yerselves a snack, pour a tall glass of whatever fortifying liquid it is that gets you through the day and let's get on out to Palm Springs, the scenic and hot, hot, hot promised land of gays, greys and grey gays.

Some people collect stamps, art, or maybe kooky salt and pepper shakers. Others, like our concupiscent confrere Fiona Trambeau, collect notches on their bedposts. And still others, those with deep pockets and enviable credit lines, collect architecturally significant houses. One of those property collecting people is California-based bizness man Michael J. Kilroy who has amassed an undeniably impressive collection of iconic properties in Southern California. Please note that Your Mama does not have any idea how Mister Kilroy made his moo-lah, so don't bother asking. What we do know is that Mister Kilroy's father is an aeronautical engineer from Palos Verdes, CA whose name appears on a multitude of patents for toys manufactured by Mattel, which may or may not explain a few things about the younger Mister Kilroy's finances.

Anyhoo, property records show that Mister Kilroy, a forty something year old trophy property pack rat if there ever was one, owns a good number of prime properties including an ocean front doo-plex on The Strand in Hermosa Beach, CA designed by legendary architect Richard Neutra in 1938 as well as a magnificent Hollywood Regency style compound on N. Flores Street in West Hollywood, CA that was created and owned by Oscar winning actress Loretta Young who, it might please some of y'all to know, leased part of the property to hunky Hollywood homo Rock Hudson back in the day.

But it's not Mister Kilroy's West Hollywood or Hermosa Beach properties Your Mama wants to dish and discuss today, it's his Palm Springs properties. In addition to the former Jack Benny estate on W. Vista Chino that prop records show the architectural connoisseur scooped up in March of 2001 for $1,775,000, the prolific property collector owns a trio of notable residences on swank Southridge Drive, all three of which he recently hoisted on to the market for a quite substantial combined total of $20,250,000.

SELLER: Michael Kilroy
LOCATION: Southridge Drive, Palm Springs, CA
PRICE: $13,890,000
SIZE: 8,901 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Literally one of THE most architecturally significant homes in all the wold. Known as The Elrod House, this John Lautner-designed home was commissioned by designer Arthur Elrod in 1968 and has been featured in numerous books, magazines and museum exhibitions. It is the iconic home perched at the very tip of the Southridge enclave, easily viewable throughout Palm Springs. Organic shapes, monumental construction and world class design create and extraordinary experience of space that Lautner himself described as "timeless" architecture.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: By far the most expensive of the three Southridge Drive domiciles that Mister Kilroy heaved on to the market a few days ago, listed with an eye-popping asking price of $13,890,000, is the monumental Elrod House designed in 1968 by superstar architect John Lautner for interior designer Arthur Elrod. Iffin any of the children do not know who John Lautner is, we suggest you get in your hoopdies and head on down to your local library or bookstore and start reading up on the iconoclast who not only pushed the boundaries of residential architecture way out of its comfort zone, but re-imagined the very notion of how private residences should look, function and feel.

Property records show that Mister Kilroy purchased the wonderfully weird and wacky and Elrod House on gated Southridge Drive from supermarket mogul Ron Burkle in November of 2003 for $5,500,000. As best as Your Mama can surmise from peep and a poke around the property records, when Mister Kilroy purchased the property from Mister Burkle it encompassed 5 lots totaling 22.25 acres. However, listing information indicates the 8,901 square foot architectural rara avis is being offered with just two lots that total 6.5 acres. We don't know why that discrepancy. Although The Elrod House was originally built with only 2 bedrooms, a large Lautner-designed extension containing a guest house and staff quarters was added in 1970 or 71 which increased the bedrooms to 5 and pushed the pooper count to 5.5.

The front door of the sleek, sexy and powerfully organic Elrod House, featured in the 1971 James Bond flick Diamonds Are Forever and–as y'all might imagine–used for a number of Playboy shoots of boobie baring babes, is approached along a curving path of bewitching, herringbone patterned black slate that continues right into the voluminous and intoxicating main space of the residence. The Elrod House is perhaps best known and most easily recognized by its epic, dome-like concrete roof, perforated by nine angled, triangular sections fitted with skylights that allow indirect light to seep into the soaring and circular two level living room area which has an astonishing 60-foot diameter. Two 25-foot wide glass curtains on the lower level of the living room slide open at the touch of a button obliterating any difference between indoors and outdoors and transforming the living room into the most decadent and dee-voon covered porch on which Your Mama has ever had the pleasure to focus our blurry eyeballs. Mister Kilroy has smartly and sparsely furnished the space with several sofas that follow the gentle curve of the architecture and lay low enough so as not to interfere with the glittery view of Palm Springs below and craggy Mount San Jacinto in the distance.

The long and narrow galley style kitchen is separated from the main living space by a long, curving wall and appears to have a number of yellow, flower-like Dale Chihuly glass sculptures affixed to the wall near the ceiling. Listen babies, Your Mama is definitely not a Chihuly hater. In fact, we often enjoy the obvious spectacle of his Medusa like glass chandeliers and sculptures. However, it gets Your Mama's blood up to think of one of those yellow glass flowers detaching itself from the wall while we're fixing the Dr. Cooter a bowl of ice cream and going all Edward Scissorhands on our face.

The massive master bedroom is defined and even dominated by by a monstrous boulder with custom fitted, seamless glass that follows the contours of the top of the boulder and allows the scorching light of the harsh desert sun to be gently filtered into the space. According to a recent article in Palm Springs Life–which has some a-may-zing photographs of the property, in addition to seating, sleeping and dressing areas, the master bedroom includes a bar and refrigerator hidden behind walls of meticulously matched exotic woods, numerous closets lined with cork and a bazillion pull out Lucite drawers, and a luxuriously appointed pooper with a gigantic sunken, T-shaped bathtub that sits in front of a wall of glass but is protected from view by a stand of bamboo and another big ol' boulder.

The free-form shaped, infinity edged swimming pool sits off the lower level of the living room space. When the gigantic glass curtain walls are opened up, the pool is outside and when the windows are closed, part of the pool is indoors. What Your Mama has always wondered about this type of indoor/outdoor pool situation is can someone just swim under the wall and into the house? That would scare the bejeezis right out of us to know that we could be sitting in the living room enjoying the soothing effects of a nerve pill mixed with a gin and tonic only to have a Speedo or wetsuit wearing intruder rise up out the indoor part of the swimming pool like the damn Loch Ness Monster and ruin our substance induced bliss.

The guest house and staff quarters are accessed via a spiral staircase from the pool deck that leads down to a concrete and glass lined space that looks to Your Mama like to most glammy bunker or bomb shelter we've ever seen. Although we would not recommend anyone follow suit, Mister Kilroy has used at least part of this section of the house to house his gym equipment. Surely there is a better location on the property for all these torture machines, like the garage. The lower level has a herringbone patterned floor similar to that in much of the house, a fireplace and yet another curving wall of floor to ceiling glass, Lo-ward children, just imagine the monthly budget for window cleaner in this house. Mister Kilroy must have a full time minimum wage gurl who does nuthin' but wipe the damn windows all day long.

While there certainly would seem no shortage of architecturally minded individuals who would happily pee their pants in public in order to own this house, it'll be interesting to see what prospective buyers might be willing to pay. Remember chickens, not only has the eternally young Suzanne Somers had to hack the asking price of her Palm Springs hideaway from $35,000,000 to a significantly lower $12,900,000, The Kaufmann House, another legendary and architecturally significant residence in Palm Springs, failed to bring in anywhere near as much as the $25,000,000 that was hoped for when it was put up for auction in the spring of 2008. Although a $19,000,000 contract was drawn up, the buyers backed out and the near mythic modern manse was later put on the open market for just $12,900,000. The pristine property is currently still for sale with an undisclosed asking price.

Your Mama's point is that there just don't seem to be that many buyers in the $10,000,000+ range who want to own high maintenance properties in Palm Springs regardless of their impressive provenances which means that real estate lightening is going to need to strike for Mister Kilroy to sell The Elrod House for more than ten million clams in an economy and property market that is, at best, still limping.

LOCATION: Southridge Drive, Palm Springs, CA
PRICE: $3,470,000
SIZE: 4,493 square feet, 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Previously owned by the famous actor, Steve McQueen, this home is a mid-century time-capsule of Palm Springs' past. Located high on the ridge above Palm Springs in the prestigious Southridge community, it has the seclusion, glamour, history and mystic of the 60s and 70s Hollywood elite. A double door front entrance with brass lion head doorknobs soars two stories. Inside, the split-level terrazzo foyer is adorned with hand carved, braided wooden and metal railings. The living room is a steel I-beam and glass Modernist box projected into the magnificent city and mountain views and is surrounded by a cantilevered wrap-around balcony with sliding glass door entries to the pool & private yard....

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Sometime in 2005, the property immediately next door to Mister Michael Kilroy's beloved Elrod House became available for purchase and records reveal that in October of 2005 he forked over $2,500,000 for the glassy mid-century modern house. It's unclear what, if anything, has been done to the property since it was purchased by Mister Kilroy, but Your Mama hopes that at least some improvements were made because it has hit the market with a substantially higher asking price of $3,470,000.

The property, perched atop a ridge overlooking Palm Springs on gated Southridge Drive, was once owned by Steve McQueen, the studly actor sometimes referred to as 'The King of Cool.' Mister McQueen, himself a devastatingly handsome specimen of masculinity, often played almost stereotypically manly parts in films like The Sand Pebbles, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, as well as The Magnificent Seven, The Thomas Crown Affair–the original one, not that silly remake with squinty eyed Pierce Brosnan, Papillon, and The Towering Inferno.

Listing information shows the boxy house was built in 1964 by Palm Springs architect Hugh M. Kaptur for someone with the last name Griffing, whom we can't identify as anyone other than a guy with a thing for modern architecture. Property records show that when Mister Kilroy purchased the property, it encompassed two parcels totaling 1.98 acres and included a 4,493 square foot house with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Listing information, however, shows a 4 bedroom and 5 pooper house that sits on a 1 acre parcel. We're absolutely certain there is a simple explanation for these discrepancies, Your Mama just does not know what it is.

Listing information states the property is a "time capsule" with all the "seclusion, glamour, history, and mystic" of Palm Springs' heydays when the sleepy desert communities of the Coachella Valley attracted visitors and property owners like Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Christina Onassis and the lovingly flamboyant Liberace. And a damn time capsule it is children, with dark paneling and brown wall to wall shag carpeting in the family room, white laminate counters and an intricately patterned linoleum floor in the kitchen, and some freaky-ass carpeting in the master bathroom which is also, sadly, being punished with woven window treatments that Your Mama has quite happily not seen since sometime in the mid 1970s.

Listing information indicates the hillside house is entered through two-story tall double doors with brass lion doorknobs that open to a split level foyer with terrazzo floors and a spectacular towering wall of glass. We don't know about the children, but those front doors with those ka-razy lion doorknobs sound dee-voonly campy and very Palm Springs, a look that uber-decorator Kelly Wearstler might have "borrowed" for the Viceroy Hotel.

The fabulosity of the foyer is carried through the formal living room which is surrounded by a wide, cantilevered balcony and floor to ceiling glass on three sides. Like the rest of the day-core, the furniture in the living room isn't doing the space any favors, partick that putrid Holiday Inn-ish table and chairs. However, in the deft hands of a nice, gay decorator smart enough not to do up the house with as a silly, retro-vintage cliché of Palm Springs circa 1962, this living room could be the sort of space Your Mama would never want to leave except to eat and use the damn terlit.

Each of the bedrooms, according to listing information, has the luxury of its own private pooper, a situation that pleases both Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter immensely for obvious reason. Listing information also indicates there is a separate guest unit with a full bathroom, a situation we like even more than secondary bedrooms with private poopers. The master bedroom, which is, quite frankly, not done justice by the listing photographs nor the upsetting, hodge-podge and unsophisticated vintage day-core, stretches along the second floor with a long wall of floor to ceiling glass that looks down on the swimming pool below and out over the lights of Palm Springs.

The backyard, large enough to comfortably entertain a few friends and sunbathe in the buff but no so large as to require a full staff and landscapers be on the property day in and day out, has the customary swimming pool. At first we were a mite disappointed not to see a kidney shaped number, but upon second thought we realized that would be mid-century modern overkill or, as our good friend Virginia Slim so succinctly and cleverly says, flooding the car. Not that it matters because Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter ain't moving to Palm Springs a minute before we turn 70, but we really do think we'd expire from heat stroke iffin we didn't hire our volatile house gurl Svetlana a good looking assistant whose only job during the murderously hot summer months was to make ice cubes and dump them into the swimming pool to cool the water.

Obviously whomever buys this house will either need to go weak in the knees for faux-wood paneling from the 1970s or have enough money left over to strip the house of it's bad elements, modernize it and over-haul it with enough sensitivity and sensibility to leave the bones alone because, as fer as Your Mama is concerned, this place has all the makings of a wickedly sexy yet perfectly cozy winter getaway for someone with a few million to spare for desert digs.

LOCATION: Southridge Drive, Palm Springs, CA
PRICE: $2,890,000
SIZE: 4,400 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Truly a spectacular piece of contemporary architecture, located in the premiere Southridge community, and affording a magnificent 270 degree view overlooking all the Coachella Valley and the mountains around it. Commissioned by race car driver James Jeffords and designed by architect Michael P. Johnson, this architectural marvel is symbolically named The Boat House both for its shape and the way it creates the illusion that your are emerging from the hillside on a voyage across the valley floor below. From the infinity pool deck and inside the home, with its soaring 24 foot ceilings and high glass walls, the house appears to be projecting into the view....

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: According to property records, the third property that completes Michael Kilroy's real estate triple whammy along Palm Springs' gated Southridge Drive was purchased by the real estate maven and another gentleman with the last name Bishop in August of 2005 for $3,100,000. A couple of years later, in late 2006 or early 2007, it appears that Mister Kilroy bought out Mister Bishops stake in the property. At least that what it looks like to Your Mama. Or it's possible, given the records, that Mister Kilroy bought the house from Mister Bishop in January of 2007 for $2,300,000. Whatever the details and dates of the purchase, Mister Kilroy has listed the property with an asking price of $2,890,000.

The Boat House, as the aggressively geometric residence is commonly called, sits just inside the gates and directly across the street from Mister Kilroy's other two architecturally significant houses on Southridge Drive, the John Lautner designed tour de force known as The Elrod House and the linear mid-century moder formerly owned by actor Steven McQueen.

Listing information and property records show the triangular and difficult to develop parcel measures 1 acre. The 4,493 square foot modern masterpiece was commissioned by contemporary architecture buff and race car driver James Jeffords and designed by soo-blimely smart and accomplished architect Michael P. Johnson who, some of the children might like to know, has created a fair number of mouth watering architectural morsels including the Ellsworth Residence in Arizona and the Parr Residence on Shelter Island, NY.

Anyhoo, listing information indicates that The Boat House contains 4 bedrooms and 5 poopers including a lofty, mezzanine-style master suite on the second floor that has a hearth-less and mantel-less fireplace with a flat scree tee-vee mounted to it, a private patio, and a humongous hexagonal skylight, which glides open at the flick of a switch so that the owner need never leave their bed in order to search the sky for comets and falling stars. The master pooper is a serene–if unexpectedly ordinary–space with pink veined marble counter tops and a seamless corner window above a jetted bathtub that looks like it might be large enough to accommodate two good sized people. That is iffin yer into sitting in a giant vat of filthy water with another person, which of course Your Mama is not. Listing information and a 2008 article in Palm Springs Life indicate that the guest rooms are well separated for seclusion and each contains a private pooper. A first floor guest room also offers a sitting area and private terrace while the upstairs bedrooms have office and lounging areas which means house guests need never actually spend time in the rest of the house if they so choose.

The unusually shaped house is not a result of the architect trying to be clever or coy, but rather an solution to a problematic and queerly shaped lot. The odd lot defined the configuration and flow of the house, pushing and forcing the dramatic–or perhaps even melodramatic–24-foot high living room into a wedge shaped space to the front of the property where it can take advantage of its elevated perch high above Palm Springs. The living room, which has a glass fireplace, a sunken wet bar, a built-in modular sofa and tall walls of glass that are seamless at the corners, spills out onto the terrace where an infinity edged pool has been fitted into the tip of prow-like triangular space. Because of siting, the narrowing shape of the house and the continued narrowing of the terrace, an thrilling bit of eye trickery takes place that creates the dee-lishusly disorienting sense that the house is plowing, ship-like, across the the desert floor below. If listing photos are to be believed, the optical hocus-pocus is even more convincing and more theatrical at night as the glistening lights of the streets and houses below mimics moonlight on water.

Behind the living room and slightly elevated so as to share in the same ship-like view as the living room are the dining room and kitchen. The dining room, unusually shaped like the rest of the rooms in the house, has a terrifically tactile and organic stone floor, built in cabinetry and is open to the galley style kitchen which has rich, caramel colored cabinetry and a black porcelain sink that Your Mama finds to be sinister, uninviting and way to early 1990s for our delicate decorative sensibilities. Large sliding panels can be used to close off the kitchen from the dining room and rest of the house, which is nice because who wants the dirty dishes–or their glowering, temperamental house gurl Svetlana–staring them down while trying to enjoy a nice dinner. An adjacent family room offers a less dramatic and more cozy spot to wind down and watch the boob-toob.

Interestingly, each of Mister Kilroy's Palm Spring properties up on Southridge Drive–as well as those in West Hollywood and Hermosa Beach–are available for leased short term through Pure LA Villas. Although prices for Mister Kilroy's Palm Springs properties are not revealed, his Neutra designed doo-plex in Hermosa Beach is listed at $11,800-$14,900 per week and the the 6 bedroom and 8 pooper former Loretta Young house–which is really in West Hollywood and not Beverly Hills as it's listed–can be had for just $32,500...per week. Rent them while you can children because who knows if the new owner of Mister Kilroy's trio of posh properties in Palm Springs will be so generous–or, as one old Palm Springs queen told Your Mama, desperate–as to let virtual strangers bunk down in the houses.

Phew! That concludes our lengthy and exhausting spin through Mister Kilroy's real estate extravaganza. We suggest the children unbuckle their seat belts and get thee to the liquor cabinet.