Bill and Giuliana Rancic Buy Big House in Hinsdale, and etc.

MonetizeBUYERS: Bill Rancic and Giuliana (DePandi) Rancic
LOCATION: Hinsdale, IL
PRICE: $1,560,000
SIZE: 12,000 (ish) square feet, 7 bedrooms, 9.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The past few years have been a bit of a real estate whirlwind for celebrity news gossip Giuliana (Depandi) Rancic and her entrepreneurial man-mate Bill Rancic. Since getting married in 2007 the budding young couple have bought and sold a number of properties in both Los Angeles, CA and Chicago, IL including a recently acquired a mansion in a the upscale Chicago suburb of Hinsdale.

Mister Rancic, who once auditioned for that sicko show The Bachelor on which a dozen or so tarted up woman grovel embarrassingly for the affections of a single man, rocketed to fame in 2004 as the winner of the first season of Donald Trump's The Apprentice program. Prior to becoming one of Mister Trump's minions he made boo-coo bucks with an online endeavor called Cigars Around the World. Nowadays Mister Rancic earns an impressive living as a motivational speaker, reality television denizen, real estate developer and the host of a program we've never heard of on the A&E channel called We Mean Business.

Like her huzband, Missus Rancic also takes a multi-pronged approach to her career. Not only does she work her skinny stuff as the hostess with the mostess on E! News with Mister Vanilla Bean himself, Ryan Seacrest, she regularly fawns over the sartorial and tonsorial choices of famous folks at various red carpet events, sometimes co-hosting with that deeply troubling lavender haired Jay Manuel character from America's Next Top Model who regrettably wears more damn make-up than the late, great Tammy Faye Baker. Missus Rancic also appears on a program called the Fashion Police, an after the red carpet show show on which fashion, ahem, icons like Joan Rivers and Khloe Kardashian critique red carpet walkers. Thankfully, the people at Fashion Police have finally and recently installed some actual fashionistas like Kelly Osbourne and kinky haired celebrity stylist George Kotsiopoulos on the panel because, come on, Khloe Kardashian? Pleeze. Hasn't the world had enough of these Kardashians yet? Lord knows Your Mama has.

Anyhoo, in the mid 2000s he wrote–with the help of actual writers–a number of self-help style books about how to succeed in bizness and life and in 2007 she wrote a dating advice book for lonely women called Think Like a Guy: How to Get a Guy by Thinking Like One. Together, after they got hitched, they penned I Do, Now What?, a relationship advice book.

The apparently quite happy couple, who never, ever, EVER seem turn down an opportunity to have a tee-vee camera pointed at them, were married in 2007 in a fairy tale type ceremony in Italy that was watched on The Style Network by upwards of five million people. She settled in Los Angeles where she works most of the time and he in Chicago where his budding bizness empire is based.

In 2009 the couple swung open the doors of their private life for the world to watch on the reality program Giuliana & Bill. Since Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter prefer our reality television programs be of the tawdry and trashy variety, we've never actually laid eyes or ears on the couple's eponymous reality show. From our brief bit of research on the interweb we understand that much of the program revolves around the bumps and bounces of the very busy newlyweds who maintain an inter-state marriage.

The paper thin Missus Rancic has been wanting to get a baby up in her the last few years, a sad saga that has, we understand, played itself out on the couple's reality program. Her doctors suggested she try to put some meat on her bones in order to increase her chances of getting preggers. She gained a few pounds that no one but her could see and went through the expensive in vitro fertilization process since the normal way, while fun, just didn't produce the desired result. She did get to be with child, but in September of 2010 Missus Rancic had a miscarriage, an horrific and intensely personal event filmed for their reality program.

A few weeks ago on an episode of their reality program, the couple was seen hunting for a house in upscale Hinsdale, IL, due west of downtown Chicago. Ever since then Your Mama has received an unusual number of queries from the children who want to know which house shown on the show Mister and Missus Rancic purchased. A few minutes digging around the interweb one day didn't produce any real estate gold so we set the matter aside and promptly forgot about it until we until we received a covert communique last week from Suhneeta Snitcharoo who relayed all the 411 about Mister and Missus Rancic's new nest, which property records reveal they actually purchased in May of 2010.

Property records and listing information show that Mister and Missus Rancic paid $1,560,000 for a not yet completed mansion that's a short hop from downtown Hinsdale, measures a monstrous 12,000(ish) square feet and includes a total of 7 bedrooms and 9.5 poopers. That's a lot of house and too many damn terlits for a child-free couple but iffin Your Mama had to guess we'd guess they'll soon jump back on the in vitro horse and ride again. Or maybe they'll adopt, who knows? By whatever method, the Rancics clearly plan to make or acquire babies. Now they have plenty of room to raise all the babies they've not yet had.

Listing information for the property that Your Mama teased out of the internets shows that all the cabinets, floors, plumbing, heating, windows, and doors–much of which had yet to be installed at the time of the purchase–were included in the purchase price of the hulking house that stands three stories tall. Listing information indicates the house has scads of stone and brick detailing, numerous stone columns, a double staircase to the upper level (plus an elevator for when they feel lazy), a wine cellar and media room. Your Mama presumes the completion and customization of Mister and Missus Rancic's somewhat recently purchased residence will feature prominently on future episodes of the couple's reality tee-vee program.

Now then, let's move on to the peripatetic pair's other recent real estate doings, shall we?

In July of 2007 Mister Rancic shelled out $1,500,000 for a single family townhouse on Chicago's Gold Coast. The 1908 residence was given a Rancic Re-do and flipped back on the market and sold in March of 2009 for $3,595,000. Listing information shows the 5,460 square foot townhouse has 3 bedrooms 3.5 poopers, a complete movie theater, exterior security cameras, radiant heated floors, a heated 1.5 car garage, and 10 flat screen televisions. Ten! We think 10 tee-vees is probably to be expected from a tee-vee couple but Your Mama would go out of our damn mind knowing there were 10 tee-vees in the house. We love the damn squawk box as much as the next person but we just can't understand the need of some people to have at least one in every room. It's unclear–or, rather, Your Mama has no idea–if Mister and Missus Rancic ever actually occupied the townhouse property.

In May of 2009, Missus Rancic took in $725,000 when she sold her Thom Filicia decorated bachelorette pad on the 20th floor of a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise in Los Angeles. Property records show Missus Rancic picked the place up in January of 2003–when she was still Miss DePandi–for $465,000. Missus Rancic first listed the 1 bedroom and 2 pooper pad in March of 2008 for $899,000 but by March of 2009 when Your Mama diss and discussed the condo it was listed at $749,000. Since Missus Rancic slings gossip and critiques clothes primarily in Tinseltown, we assume that she and the mister have purchased another Lala Land pied a terre but, honestly bunnies, Your Mama don't know nuthin' about that.

In June of 2009, Mister and Missus Rancic parted with $1,185,000 when they bought a foreclosed condo on high floor of a high-rise on Michigan Avenue's Miracle Mile. The 2 bedroom and 2.5 pooper aerie was given the Rancic Re-do and has been on the market since April of 2010 when it first appeared with an asking price of $1,650,000. The price has since dipped and dropped to it's current price tag of $1,499,000.
The 50th floor spread, seen frequently on the couple's reality program, has lovely matte finish ebony hardwood floors, acres of gleaming white walls, phenomenal views, an open plan main living area, and a sleek kitchen with dark flat fronted cabinets, marble counter tops and, strangely, a bright school bus yellow stove that glares out at you, smiles and hisses "What are you looking at, asshole?"

The poopers, wrapped in travertine and frosted glass, were all worked over in the renovation and the walk in closet in the master bedroom is a custom crafted corridor lined with cabinets and drawers that hide every belt, slipper and slip dress. Iffin Your Mama were the betting type we'd ante up our britches that the outside wings of the tri-panel mirror at the end of the closet corridor fold in like in a fain-cee department store dressing room and enable Missus Rancic to see all sides of herself when she's trying to decide what to wear. That's not an easy thing to do for Missus Rancic, choosing and outfit, because let's be honest, celery sticks, if beehawtcha's gonna be on the boob-toob smartin' off about the unfortunate fashion choices of other people in the public eye then she better be turning in out every damn time. There's no such thing as going to the 7-11 in a ratty-tatty pair of sweatpants and a tube top for Missus Rancic, you know?

As for the day-core? Meh. There's nothing really wrong with it; It's all very non-threatening, contemporary and camera friendly. There's little Your Mama sees besides the cockamamie and ill-chosen artworks that will challenge or should offend any delicate decorative palettes. It looks to Your Mama like every stick of furniture here came from the same showroom or shop. That's a convenient way to go if your bizzy–and these two are bizzy little beavers–but it also leaves the place with precious little real personality, like a tee-vee set or an expensive but generic suite in a huge chain hotel that's trying to masquerade as a chic boo-teek hotel. You know what we're saying?

Your Mama imagines that if Mister and Missus Rancic have not yet completed their Rancic Re-do and moved into their new mansion in Hinsdale, they'll soon be doing so, setting out pumpkins, hanging a sheet ghost in the tree, laying some dried wheat across the mantle or whatever it is wealthy suburban people do to decorate their mansions for Halloween. Even though Your Mama can't fathom why anyone might want to bring a child into this world–we are at our core a socio-political cynic–we genuinely hope that Mister and Missus Rancic soon get what they want, a slew of baby Rancics running around and filling up some of the seven lonely bedrooms of their humongous house.

listing photos (Hinsdale): Coldwell Banker
listing photos (Chicago): Baird & Warner

Winona Ryder Does Not Live Here Anymore

SELLER: Winona Ryder
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
SIZE: 3,765 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
PRICE: $4,095,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to the eagle eyes of our trusted snitch The Rolling Stone, Your Mama learned that actress Winona Ryder put her long time home in Los Angeles, CA on the market with an asking price of $4,095,000.

Arguably, Miss Ryder's professional salad days as an in-demand a-list actress who could pull in the sort of box office receipts that make executive producers swoon with delight were in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then she worked her somewhat ethereal and gauzy stuff in seriously successful films such as Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids, The Age of Innocence, and Little Woman, the latter two earning her Academy Award nominations. Since those heady Hollywood days and except for those few years right after she was picked up for shoplifting $5,500 worth of merchandise at Saks in Beverly Hills, Miss Ryder's worked steadily even though her star status was unquestionably dimmed. Recently, the spritely and quirky actress has experienced an upsurge in her career. In 2009 she starred in 3 feature films including The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and in 2010 she appeared in two more including Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and she has at least two more films in the hopper including Tim Burton's next cinematic extravaganza Frankenweenie.

Records show that Miss Ryder picked up her soon to be former Spanish casa in Tinseltown in March of 1998. She paid $2,600,000 for the 1936 abode that was formerly owned (or occupied), according to the mens at Movieland Directory, by one time model and ack-turuss Angie Everhart and, before her, Bernie Taupin, otherwise known and Elton John's songwriting collaborator.

Listing information shows the two story house, wrapped in towering privacy hedges and dripping in wisteria vines and prickly but pretty bougainvillea, measures 3,765 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers, three of which feature finely maintained vintage tile work. Although powdery pink and baby blue are hardly the colors we'd pick and choose our private master pooper, it's damn refreshing to see these old relics of pooper days gone by preserved rather than ripped out and replaced with some tumbled stone this and black granite shit that.

One need only get their eyeballs on the fake the tee-vees mounted on the walls and the reedonkulous chenille blanket tossed and draped "perfectly" across the bed in the master bedroom to know that that Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota has been up in here and removed every trace of Miss Ryder's day-core and replaced it with a bunch of bland beige crap and neutral knick-knacks that won't give any potential buyer a reason to think a person with style or taste may have actually occupied the home. Your Mama is certain that if we look hard enough we'll find an orchid or two but, seriously people, we can't stomach another orchid making a show of itself in a staged home.

Although Your Mama is not sure if he did up the now removed day-core in this house, we understand from our reading around the interweb that Miss Ryder had nice, gay decorator Kevin Haley do over at least one of her homes. Coincidentally, Mister Haley, who has worked on homes for other famous folks like Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz, has put his casually decadent house low in the Hollywood Hills on the market too. More on that at a later date.

Anyhoo, the front door opens into a wide entry hall with stained glass windows, Spanish tile floors, dark murals that look to Your Mama like they depict the Garden of Eden or some other sordid story, and a loopy scrolled wrought iron banister that swoops down the sweeping staircase that Norma Desmond, and any other queen who likes to make an entrance, would love. Also very glam, is the downstairs powder pooper complete with burgundy colored vintage tile and an antechamber blessed built in vanity table where guests can conveniently reapply lipstick, do a few lines, and/or check to make sure their chi-chis aren't coming up out of their strapless dinner dress.

Miss Ryder's soon to be former home also has a long formal living room with picture window, hardwood floors, French doors that open to the backyard area, and corner fireplace with carved wood mantel and surround, a dining room, and a narrow paneled pub room with some built in shelves, a couple of emaciated "beams" running across the ceiling that are probably just decorative, and a built in wet bar for getting one's booze on. Somewhere in there, according to listing information is a staff room and a body torture chamber more commonly known as a home gym.

The cook friendly kitchen has an oddly rustic feeling–some might call it charm, but it is decidedly not Your Mama's brand of charming–with hardwood floors, exposed antique brick walls, white cabinetry, beige counter tops, and a venting hood over the range top so big it looks like it could hoover up anyone who might dare to turn it on and stand under it. An adjacent breakfast room opens up into the quiet courtyard that separates the main house from the garage.

The well preserved house and garage wing wrap themselves around a cozy courtyard paved with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern and warmed by an a raised outdoor fire place that could probably double as a barbecue. The courtyard opens up to a classic California kidney shaped swimming pool separated from a small flat patch of grass just large enough to exercise a couple of long bodied bitches like our Linda and Beverly.

Your Mama can't be knowing if Miss Ryder's real estate plans include a downsize, an upgrade or if she's packing up and leaving Los Angeles altogether. Property records–and the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial–show that Miss Ryder continues to own a home in her home town of San Francisco, CA. All signs and signals indicate Miss Ryder paid $1,300,000 for her 3,436 square foot single family residence in the Cow Hollow neighborhood in April of 1995.

Until June of 2008, Miss Ryder owned a New York City pied a terre in the lovely Gramercy Park neighborhood at 1 Lexington Avenue that she sold for $2,200,000. As far as we know, which is next to nothing, she hasn't purchased a new pad in Manhattan or anywhere else on the east coast.

listing photos: Westside Estate Agency

Jason Lee Lists at a Lower Price

SELLER: Jason Lee
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,250,000
SIZE: 2,205 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Ooo-wee children. One of Your Mama's all time favorite celebrity owned properties is back on the market and it's looking even better than before. Back in late 2007 three time Grammy winning R&B singer and guitarist Robert Cray sold his long time compound located in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles for $3,350,000.

Even before the ink was dry on the deed Your Mama had heard from several well connected sources including the always spot on Lucy Spillerguts and the the serious celebrity real estate insider Gabriella Gabsaboutit that the buyer was 2-time Golden Globe nominated actor Jason Lee. Less than three years later the property has been hoisted back on the market with an asking price of $3,250,000, otherwise known as $100,000 less than was paid for it near the very top of a once white hot real estate market.

Mister Lee, a former professional skateboarder, busted into showbiz in the mid 1990s when he appeared in the movies Mallrats and then Chasing Amy. He went on to roles in Almost Famous and Vanilla Sky (with fellow Scientologist Tommy Crooz). By the mid-2000s he was a bone fide tee-vee star on the program My Name is Earl in which he played a mustachioed and well meaning dummkopf who won a bit of money in the lottery and spent all his time doing good deeds in order to atone for his previous life as a petty criminal. The show was canceled in 2009 and Mister Lee quickly got another job sans mustache as a quirky police detective on Memphis Beat on the TNT. Like so many other actors and actresses, Mister Lee has lucratively lent his voice to a number of animated films throughout his career.

Mister Lee's private life is his own beeswax, of course, but he is a public figger after all and for those interested in these things he is currently married to the Turko-Australian model Ceren Alkaç with whom he made one baby a couple of years ago and he has another 10 or 11 year old child with the unconventional name of Pilot Inspektor who he made with another lady to whom he was engaged but not married. He also, allegedly, sits on the Board of Advisers for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a "nonprofit organization dedicated solely to eradicating mental health abuse and enacting patient and consumer protections" founded by those wacky folks at the Church of Scientology. As best as Your Mama can tell, the CCHR's primary concern is to make psychiatrists out to be little more than drug pushing devils.

According to current listing information, which proudly announces that it is a "Gated & Private Celebrity Compound," the property stretches across 1.41 terraced hillside acres and includes a modestly sized 2,205 square foot main house with 3 bedrooms and 3 poopers plus a pool house, detached office/studio space, and a detached 2-car garage where Your Mama imagines Mister Lee keeps at least some of the vintage motorcycles he's known to collect.

There is, of course, nothing "modest" about a modestly sized home that is priced well over three million clams, but the single story main house, built in 1948 and sited with views of the Hollywood sign and Griffith Park Observatory, has an architectural simplicity and honesty that gives Your Mama the good kind of goose bumps. The drive gates open to a large motor court and detached two car garage with adjacent office/studio space. An extra wide gravel path leads to the front door set into the center of the front facade that is literally dripping with foliage in a very purposeful but haphazard sort of way.

The living room has chestnut colored hardwood flooring, a beamed wood ceiling, and opposite the super extra long window that looks out into the gardens there is a monolithic but discreetly designed stacked Arizona flagstone fireplace with a raised hearth reminiscent of something one might find in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home. The day-core is a smart, warm and dee-voonly eclectic hodge-podge of classic mid-century modern pieces, a variety of mis-matched and multi-colored rugs laid willy-nilly on the floor, photographs leaning against the wall and along the window sill, and stacks of books on just about every flat surface including on the floor, on the hearth, and on the Isamu Noguchi coffee table.

Your Mama would like the children to notice that there does not appear to be a boob-toob affixed to the wall, mounted above the fireplace or, indeed, any television anywhere at all in this room. Your Mama adores the tee-vee and all the banal and jaw dropping crap programs that come pouring out of it night after night. We even more love a room designed for conversation, contemplation, reading, crossword puzzling and listening to music. How rare is this in a day and age when so many folks seem to think that the height of luxury is having cable television in their damn shower.

Just beyond the living room is the dining room that has a concrete floor with custom tile border and wall of collapsing French windows that slide open to create a seamless interaction between the indoors and the outdoors. A 1950s desk-like dining table lit by a single glass orb pendant light (that we think is hung a tad too high) is surrounded by vintage Emeco aluminum chairs. A low table at one end of the room is stacked with more books and a built in wet bar is the perfect spot for a boozer like Your Mama to camp out during a party or during the long slog of the mid-morning hours.

The petite but well equipped kitchen has glossy hardwood floors with custom tile border, concrete counter tops, open shelving, which we love like the dickens, and a white porcelain farmhouse sink with industrial style hardware that sits in front of a long window that echoes and smartly ties in the long window in the living room. See how that's done, kids? Someone was really thinking here. Anyhoo, we're not so fond of the natural wood raised panel doors on the lower cabinets and we're a bit miffed that the refrigerator is located in the adjacent pantry, but these are quirks we could happily get used to.

Each of the three bedrooms opens to the terraces and patios that surround the house and the well-sized master bedroom has a private garden surrounded by a vine covered wall, and an attached pooper with a most unusual tub/shower combination with a curved section that juts out into the room. Of course we don't know a nail head from a book end, but we imagine that bump out is a step to make it easier to get in and out of the thing.

On the hill side of the house an expansive terrace leads to an art and book filled office/studio space with saltillo tile floors that rather interestingly climb up about 1/3 of the bottom part of the walls with the remainder covered with woven grass wall coverings. We don't really recommend running the tile up the walls, but iffin the room were cleared out it could be hosed out without destroying the walls, which isn't an entirely bad thing, right?

The large, rectangular swimming pool with its surround of irregularly sized flagstone is sunk directly into the lawn of a large flat area just below the house. A small pool house, which Mister and Missus Lee use as an apparel design studio, has a wide covered porch for escaping the scorching southern California sunshine and the inside has saltillo tile floors and a vaulted wood beamed ceiling. There does not appear to be a pooper in the pool house which is a real shame because it's a bit of a drag to have to schlep a gin filled bladder back up to the main house even if it isn't really very far. Like with the the kitchen issues, it's an inconvenience Your Mama could get used to even though for three million clams we would prefer not to have to climb any stairs at all in order to do our bizness.

The property has a rough around the edges we-didn't-do-up-the-landscape sort of landscaping that we'd bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly cost a fortune to install. A couple of unexpected architectural gems dot the property including a tree house that Your Mama would have chopped off a limb to have as a child and and a vegetable garden enclosed in very contemporary structure wrapped with chicken wire to keep out the many critters who, believe it or not, roam the streets and byways of most if not all of the hillside neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Listen butter beans, Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter are not nor will we ever be in the market for a three million dollar property but iffin we were ever to find ourselves with pockets that deep we would have surely called Mister Lee's real estate people yesterday and made an offer. A grand and meticulously manicured estate is a lovely thing to behold, but our personal real estate preferences are really more in line with the arty-farty boho sort of thing going on at Mister and Missus Lee's compound.

One has to wonder why the Lees would choose to leave their little slice of paradise in Los Feliz so soon after settling in. Then again, famous folks are a funny lot and who are we to know anything about or question the fickle real estate ways of the rich and famous?

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty / Beverly Hills

Sacha Baron Cohen Lists and Goes Big In Los Angeles

OWNER: Sacha Baron Cohen
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,900,000
SIZE: 2,806 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Now that colossally and constantly controversial British born comedian and provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen is playing with the big boys girls in Tinseltown and earns $20,000,000–plus many millions more on the back end–just to make a damn movie, he and his Australian actress wife Isla Fisher have turned into some serious, a-lister style real estate size queens. More on that big buy later.

Since the Baron Cohen clan is decamping for a dee-luxe new compound high in the hills above Laurel Canyon, they're no longer in need of their much more modest current home, also in the hills high above Laurel Canyon. Thanks to the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial, Your Mama has learned that the sassy and scathing satirist recently put his family house on the market for $2,900,000. The property is also listed for lease with the unnecessarily complicated asking price of $11,995 per month. Lo-ward have mercy Your Mama hates these crazy real estate numbers. Why can't they just call it twelve grand a month? Why go through all the numeric rigmarole that just gives people a damn headache?

Anyhoo, as most of the world is well aware, Mister Cohen's comedic stock in trade involves creating fictional characters who go around the world, talk to strangers, act like a damn fool, and ask probing, provocative, and often tasteless questions until his subject reacts in sometimes funny and often revealing ways. He unquestionably uses stereotypes to poke fun of others, but he arguably does it in the service of exposing barely under the surface bigotry and hatred for Jews, black, homosexuals, and any number of other historically marginalized groups of people. Mister Baron Cohen has his detractors for sure but there also seem to heaps and hordes of folks happy to pay $10 or $13 bucks to watch him mercilessly pillage, plunder, and disembowel the social construct at the expense of folks not in on the joke.

Mister Cohen started up his ladder of fame in the late 1990s when he achieved notoriety as the ignoramus "whigga" poser Ali G, a character that parodied the very real and very strange phenomena of privileged suburban white kids adopting the patois and mannerisms of inner city hip-hop culture. As popular as Ali G was in Britain, the character that put Mister Cohen on the entertainment world's global map is without question the bumbling buffoon Borat Sagdiyev, a dim-witted rube from Kazakhstan whose constant and only schtick is that he says inappropriate things to the unsuspecting. Next up for Mister Cohen was Brüno Gerhard, a flouncy homosexual fashion reporter from Austria who pissed off a just about everyone from the The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militia group with his excessive narcissism and sexually suggestive questions. Mister Baron Cohen's cinematic modus operandi reminds Your Mama of the old Candid Camera program only with the more high minded aim to use low brow humor to gleefully expose the soft and ugly underbelly of racism, homophobia, religion, taboo, and etc.

Because his three most well known characters are now so easily identified by the public, Mister Baron Cohen has retired them. Next up for Mister Cohen, according to reports, is a goat herder and a deposed foreign dictator who will appear in an as yet unnamed movie scheduled to be released in 2011.

Property records show that Mister and Missus Baron Cohen purchased their mid-century modern-ish house in December 2005 for $2,450,000. Listing information shows the single story house measures 2,806 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 2.5 poopers, a count that may or may not include what listing information calls a "detached guest room with steam shower."

The property presents a fairly fortified facade to the street with an electronic gate that slides open to a small motor court, two car garage and front entry. The entry leads to the primary living space which is a gigantic living/family room with hardwood floors, a pitched and beamed wood ceiling, large windows and French doors that open to the back yard, and a massive, extra-wide river rock fireplace with a raised hearth where two table lamps flank the firebox. The room is divided into two distinct areas. A more formal area in front of the massive, extra-wide river rock fireplace contains two indentical sofas covered in a dee-lishusly tactile dusty baby blue fabric that square off over a clean lined and low wooden coffee table. The second less formal area has a seal gray sectional sofa, several poufs and ottomans for overflow guests, and a vintage Vernor Panton capiz shell chandelier...at least we think it's a vintage version but it could be a custom Panton inspired thing.

The dining room, an extension off the living/family room, has high ceilings, lots of windows and French doors with views of the surrounding mountains and canyon, and a large dining room table with 10 chairs over which hang a trio of classic George Nelson saucer-shaped pendant lights. The adjacent kitchen is a gray and white wide-galley style affair that opens on one end to the dining room and a breakfast area at the other where the Baron Cohens have a round Saarinen dining table surrounded by four white Saarinen designed tulip chairs. The winter white kitchen cabinetry has a lovely gloss that our sometimes difficult house gurl Svetlana tells us are probably very easy to clean and the appliances, as expected, are of the high grade stainless steel variety. The children will note that the clever kitchen designer has accommodated the microwave in an under counter cubby so it isn't settin' out looking a hot mess on the counter top. Hanging over the work area in the kitchen is a Cellula chandelier that retails for $2,600 at the mid-century and modern design emporium Design Within Reach, a store that that carries product that are not, in fact, fiscally in reach for most people.

The not particularly large master bathroom has a very high beamed ceilings painted white, a wall of windows with thick white mullions, a low built-in cabinet below the windows painted a gleaming shade of white, white wall to wall carpeting, and a walk in closet with custom built-ins. On the tall wall behind the bed black and white wall covering that looks to Your Mama like a bunch of birch trees without any leaves. It's all very stark, but at the same time it looks like a serene room in which to slumber. The home's clean lined design continues into the Baron Cohen's private pooper where there is a grey tile floor and an extra long vanity fitted with two sinks that have exposed plumbing under the counter and are divided by a large window, half of which is frosted for privacy.

In addition to the lagoon-style free form shaped swimming pool and spa that's surrounded by grey flagstone, the property includes a covered terrace where the Baron-Cohen's have a very expensive and new-fangled picnic table lit by a satellite style chandelier, several decks with very contemporary furniture and hammock, and an outdoor gym with any number of body torture contraptions, free weights and a large mirror. Can someone please explain to Your Mama why people like to watch themselves in the mirror when they're strain to lift weights and do other exercise?

Although no property records confirm a transaction, two of out better sources whispered in our ear that the reason for the move is because Mister and Missus Baron Cohen recently dumped a butt load of money on a huge, a-listers only spread above Laurel Canyon last on the open market with a price tag of $18,900,000.

According to listing information that we dug up courtesy of Babbling Babette, the Mister and Missus Baron Cohen's new compound crib sprawls across several park-like acres and has multiple structures including a mansion sized main house with 7 bedrooms and 10 poopers, plus a guest house pavilion/pool house, detached theater, and caretaker cottage.

listing photos (lease): Sotheby's Int'l Realty Sunset
listing photos (purchase): Sotheby's Int'l Realty Beverly Hills