How the other half lives

On Day Three of my parents’ visit, I indulged my mom and took her on a Malibu Celebrity Beach House tour. My dad had to work, and it didn’t take too much to twist Kenley’s arm into joining us.

The last time my parents visited (in May), Mom had wanted to do a “star tour” like this. We made fun of her then and said that, as Los Angeles residents, we would never be caught in one of those open-air vans full of gawkers. So during that visit, I instead googled homes of celebrities that we could find on our own. We located Spelling Manor, once owned by late TV mogul Aaron Spelling. It also was once the most expensive home for sale in the U.S. — at $150 million. HGTV recently featured a special on “Selling Spelling Manor,” which airs again Feb. 17. Take a tour of the home here.

The manor eventually was sold to a 22-year-old Formula 1 heiress for $85 million. Read more in this LA Times story. You can also read more about the first time the Hills visited the Hills here.

Later, when Kenley’s parents visited in June, I broke down and purchased an actual map of movie star homes. I took the Youngs on a private tour that included the Greystone Mansion, which is owned by the city of Beverly Hills and has been used in movies including “Ghostbusters,” “The Big Lebowski” and “The Social Network” (fanboy favorites).

The home where “The Osbournes” reality show was filmed is right down the street. Christina Aguilera used to live there with now ex-husband Jordan Bratman (Kenley once spotted the latter on Abbot Kinney Boulevard; he would have preferred to have spotted “X-Tina” herself.) The house is on sale for $13.5 million. Take a peek inside here.

You can read more about the Youngs’ first visit to Los Angeles here.

The problem with touring celebrity homes is that the houses are often far from the road, and all you can see is an elaborate gate or fence and large shrubs. The chances of actually seeing the homeowners are pretty slim. And, of course, what are you going to say if you do see someone? “Hello, I was just stalking your home. Can I take your picture and sell it for thousands of dollars?”

No.

But I figured, if nothing else, the Malibu Celebrity Beach House Tour would allow us to take a ride up the always-stunning Pacific Coast Highway.

The rich and the famous fiercely (and rightfully) guard their privacy, so it’s not easy to find their addresses. But they become public when a property is bought or sold, or when there’s a scandal at the property. So such tours always come with a disclaimer: Property transaction records indicate the celebrity owns the home or formerly owned it, but especially in the case of a beach house, it might not be the star’s primary residence.

We met our tour guide on the Santa Monica pier, where we grabbed some churros from a vendor. The guide clearly enjoyed his job driving up the PCH several times a day, and he seemed knowledgeable about the area. When he found out we were from South Carolina, he was eager to get our take on the S.C. Republican primary. Kenley held back.

We waived at former governator Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Santa Monica condo and drove past the luxury condominiums at 101 Ocean, where Robert Downey Jr. has a place. Condos there have recently gone for $1.2 million to about $4 million. Interested? Check them out here.

Once you get on the Pacific Coast Highway headed north toward Malibu, you pass a line of seemingly nondescript doors and garages. Those are the back doors of the homes. The front doors open onto the beach.

We passed the Osbournes’ Malibu home, which is for sale for $10 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. See photos on Realtor.com.

We came to a blue door where we were told The Dude abides. I couldn’t find any information online to “confirm or disconfirm” that Jeff Bridges owns the house.

“Glee” creator Ryan Murphy recently purchased Charlize Theron’s beach house down the street for $6.5 million. You can see the front of the house in this article from The Hollywood Reporter.

Janet Jackson also used to live down the street. Designer Kelly Wearstler and her husband purchased Jackson’s Malibu house in 2004 for $8.5 million. After Wearstler redecorated, the house was featured in Elle Decor magazine. The property was briefly put on the market for $21.9 million in 2010.

Leonardo DiCaprio owns several houses in Malibu. This is one of the relatively modest ones:

Leo reportedly bought it for $1.6 million in 1998. You can see the front of the house here.

David Geffen, the music mogul and co-founder of DreamWorks, owns five parcels along Carbon Beach, which is sometimes called Billionaire’s Beach.

Most beaches in California are public, so you are allowed to walk on the wet portion of the sand in front of the homes. Geffen fought for decades to keep the beach in front of his compound private, but he finally consented several years ago to a public-beach access adjacent to his property. Read The New York Times story about the day the “Geffen gate” opened here.

“Friend” Courtney Cox and David Arquette lived in a house designed by famous architect John Lautner (a student of Frank Lloyd Wright) on Carbon Beach. They sold the house in 2007 for about $30 million to Frank and Jamie McCourt, who have been fighting over assets including the Dodgers in a divorce. Check out the Lautner home here.

Cox recently showed off her newest Malibu home to Elle Decor. The Lautner home? The “post-nup” said Jamie got to keep the property, but post-divorce, the speculation is that it might soon be on the market.

Fellow “Friends” alum Matthew Perry’s Malibu home is on a hill overlooking the ocean. You can buy it for $13.5 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. Take a look at photos on Realtor.com. Perry has been active in the Los Angeles real estate market, according to this article in Forbes.

We eased off of the PCH onto Malibu Road, where we saw homes owned by the Hiltons, Eva Longoria, Jeremy Piven and Adam Sandler.

We then stopped to stretch our legs and walk on the public-access beach.

Back on the Pacific Coast Highway, we saw by far the largest home on our tour: Cher’s 13,000-square-foot Italian Renaissance-style villa on 1.7 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The breathtaking property was most recently listed in 2009 for $41 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. You can see photos of the house, before it was redecorated, on the Cherworld fan website.

As we drove south back to Santa Monica, the tour guide pointed out houses in the Malibu Hills overlooking the Pacific. Milwaukee Brewers star Ryan Braun got the large house in a foreclosure for $4.8 million in 2004, according to the Los Angeles Times. Braun made headlines recently after he tested positive in October for banned substances. He faces a possible 50-game suspension, and the ruling on his appeal could come as early as this week.

“Get the Party Started” singer Pink and her husband, motocross racer Carey Hart, live nearby. See more photos of their house here.

The house where Britney Spears lived with ex-husband Kevin Federline is perched on top of a hill in a gated community. The couple reportedly paid $7 million for it and sold it for $10 million after the divorce. It’s on the market for $15 million. You can see photos here. Spears and her fiance, Jason Trawick, recently rented a mansion in suburban Thousand Oaks, which you can see here.

Later that night, we met up with Dad and headed to Hollywood to see the Cirque Du Soleil show “Iris,” which debuted at the Kodak Theatre this summer. We had a pre-theater dinner at Wood & Vine, a small-plates restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard that is said to have the best chicken and waffles in town. So obviously we had to check it out.

The restaurant is in the 1923 Taft building, which was the home to the first offices of Charlie Chaplin and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. It has an old-school, clubby vibe. The chicken and waffles are served with a maple glaze and sage butter and are indeed several notches above Roscoe’s (though we dig that place, too). And the prices were reasonable by Hollywood standards. This would be a fun place to revisit for brunch or happy hour cocktails.

Then it was on to the Kodak, which (for now, anyway) also hosts the Oscars. There have been reports that the awards show could move after 2013 and that Kodak, which recently filed for bankruptcy, wants to end its naming rights. Read more in The Hollywood Reporter.

“Iris” is the first long-running Cirque show in Los Angeles, and it’s a very abstract journey through the world of cinema. It mostly presents behind-the-scenes action and often celebrates technology in film. The stage sets are detailed and elaborate, and it’s hard not to appreciate the choreography and amazing acrobatics, even if you’re not quite sure what they are supposed to represent. You can easily recognize the silent films of the 1920s, as well as the bombshells and film noir of the 1950s. And in fact the noir crime scene is one of the most entertaining. The production level is fitting for the home of the movies, and it’ll be fun to say we’ve been inside the Kodak Theatre come Oscar time.

There’s a loose love story in “Iris,” but the Cirque show really has more of a (sometimes unfocused) theme than an actual plot. Some might prefer to take in the latest Broadway production down the street at The Pantages. Here’s the Los Angeles Times review.

It was a pretty night, so we walked about a mile down Hollywood Boulevard back to our car. It was an interesting stroll. We passed the Church of Scientology’s “Winter Wonderland” display; scantily clad club-goers; and establishments advertising “girls, girls, girls.” Not places you’d necessarily want to take your parents.

While waiting for the valet to return with our car, Kenley spotted actor Bryan Dattilo, who is best known for playing Lucas Roberts/Horton/Brady in the long-running “Days of Our Lives” soap opera. Don’t ask me why Kenley recognized him.

OK … so I, too, recognized that he was a celebrity of some sort, but Kenley came up with the “Days” connection. My mom was so sad that he had crossed the street before she could catch sight of him.

“Days” fans will be excited to know that Soap Opera Digest confirms that Dattilo returns to the show this month! Don’t know who he is? Or just don’t want to admit it? Visit his IMDb page to see photos and credits.

You can read about days one and two of my parents’ December trip to L.A. here.

The doctor is in

Kenley and I were excited when our friend Jeff Dinkins told us he and his girlfriend would be in town a few days before they headed up the coast to San Francisco, where Jeff was attending a conference.

Jeff graduated from the University of South Carolina and is a doctor in Nashville. For the past several New Year’s Eves, he has hosted a big group of friends at a beach house in Folly Beach, S.C. It is always a blast.

So Kenley and I were happy to return the favor and host Jeff and Ashley on their first trip to Los Angeles.

The couple arrived on the Sunday that Kenley and I got back from Pete Johnson’s wedding (see previous blog post) in San Francisco.

We had dinner at Eveleigh on the Sunset Strip. While the Strip has a rowdy reputation, Eveleigh is kinda like walking into someone’s farmhouse. Some say it is one of the best new restaurants of 2011. There’s a large enclosed deck in the back with a nice view of the city. But our corner table was a little chilly on an October evening. I ordered pappardelle, which was nice and hearty. Kenley had hangar steak, which was juicy and flavorful. He was bemused by his potatoes, which had been cut into salty squares. He initially mistook them for Wheat Thins.

I want to go back for brunch and enjoy the deck on a warmer day.

On Saturday, we took Jeff and Ashley on an abbreviated version of what Kenley now calls the Shellevation tour. We started at The Grove, an outdoor shopping and entertainment center near Beverly Hills. We spotted TV show host and former “Saved by the Bell” hunk Mario Lopez filming the entertainment news show “Extra.” We watched as he filmed his intro with producers, who watched it back and then asked him to do another take. I’m not sure Jeff and Ashley were too impressed by this star sighting, but then neither were Kenley’s parents when they visited The Grove.

Instead of eating from one of the vendors in the Farmers Market, we ate at Marmalade Cafe, which is a bright, cheery mini-chain in the Los Angeles area.

We then drove into the Holllywood Hills along the winding Mulholland Drive, with stops to look out on University City to the north and the Hollywood sign to the east.

We ended up at Hollywood and Highland, where we looked at the stars on the sidewalk in front of the Kodak Theatre and the hand-and-feet imprints of the stars in the courtyard of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

We stopped for a snack at Crumbs Bake Shop, where I got a pumpkin cupcake. (I’m just a bit obsessed with anything pumpkin-flavored during the fall months. The promised blog post dedicated to my obsession is coming soon.) For those of you who share my pumpkin obsession, the Crumbs cupcake was like a carrot cake, made with raisins and walnuts. I’m not a big fan of raisins (which Kenley can’t quite understand), but it still had that yummy pumpkin flavor. And it was topped with pumpkin cream-cheese icing!

Later that afternoon, after we dropped Kenley off at work, we got cocktails at Coast, the oceanside restaurant at Shutters on the Beach, one of the most exclusive hotels in Santa Monica. It’s a sunny room that looks out on the boardwalk and the Santa Monica Pier. It would be a pretty place to have breakfast or a light lunch before a day on the beach, but there are better places for happy hour with more dramatic views of the ocean.

I had mentioned earlier that Lindsay Lohan lives in Venice Beach. Ashley was interested in seeing where some of the stars lived, so we googled “Lindsay Lohan” and “Venice address” and easily found this article in LA Weekly.

So yes, I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but we drove by. We might have even parked the car nearby and walked by on the way down to the Venice boardwalk. But I won’t admit it if you ask.

LiLo and I are practically neighbors, since my apartment complex is off Venice Boulevard. I didn’t see any paparazzi parked outside. And she didn’t come out and invite us up to her rooftop.

Turns out she was a little busy. Lohan has been working two days a week at the county morgue after she didn’t show up for her court-mandated community service at a women’s shelter. Read the story in the Los Angeles Times blog. She also managed to find time for a Playboy shoot and reshoot at Hugh Hefner’s request. Read more about the Playboy shoot on the FOX News website if you want to. And in case you’re interested, Lohan will grace the pages of the January issue of Playboy, which will hit newstands in late December. Happy New Year!

For dinner, we headed back to Santa Monica for sushi at sugarFISH. Jeff and Ashley found the restaurant on Yelp!, but there’s another location in the shopping center where I work, and I had been wanting to try it. SugarFISH is either one of the best sushi restaurants or the worst, depending on how you feel about raw fish. The chef, Kazunori Nozawa, is known for embracing traditional sushi over the American style that many of us are used to. To be fair, the menu comes with a warning:

Each dish is to be enjoyed with the balance of
ingredients based on Nozawa’s recipes. All dishes
with sauce should not be dipped in soy.
Please understand he does not honor requests for
extra sauces, salt, or additional rice.

We decided to order a la carte rather than the strongly encouraged “Trust Me” menus. I ordered organic edamame, plus the two pieces of Nozawa Shrimp and two pieces of tuna sushi. I’m usually not all that adventurous when it comes to sushi, and I usually order spicy tuna rolls, which of course are not on the menu at sugarFISH. In fact, there are no tuna rolls at all.

But these pieces of tuna sushi (small slabs of raw tuna on top of blocks of sticky rice) melted in your mouth. I also sampled one of Jeff’s and Ashley’s blue-crab rolls, which was salty but tasty, kinda like crab salad inside a sushi roll.

The people at the table next to us apparently weren’t familiar with the sugarFISH way and did not understand why the chef could not make a tuna roll when there was tuna sushi on the menu. The waitress tried to explain. The chef came to the table, and I think he ultimately said he would accommodate their request. But they apparently were so put off, they decided to leave.

Next time, I must try the albacore, which was voted one of the best by LA Weekly in its annual “best of” edition. And I can’t wait to see what Kenley thinks. I was there when he tried sushi the first time. For a moment, I thought he was going to lose it. But he kept the Philadelphia roll down and now even craves sushi every once in a while.

If you’re like me, dessert is a must after sushi. Luckily, Ashley felt the same and there was a Pinkberry yogurt right around the corner on the 3rd Street Promenade.  And guess what the featured flavor was? Pumpkin!

(Two side notes: You should click on the Pinkberry link above just to listen to the company’s theme song: “Sorry, ice cream.” Well, Kenley and I both love you, Pinkberry, but we’re afraid nothing can take ice cream’s place. And don’t worry, Angie and Kristine — the Pinkberry pumpkin yogurt is not nearly as good as “The Shelley” from Marble Slab, which is pumpkin and cinnamon ice cream mixed together with a caramel swirl in a waffle cone. Try it. You’ll thank me.)

The Real Housewife of Bentley Avenue

One of the few good things about Kenley working some nights and weekends and me working part time is that when Valentine’s Day and my birthday fall on Mondays (they’re a week apart, if you didn’t know), we both have the day off.

Kenley fails to see how having V-Day and my birthday that close together is ever a good thing.

But since we didn’t get to celebrate Christmas or New Year’s together, we (mostly I) decided we should splurge.

We began our Valentine’s Day weekend on Sunday with a not-so-romantic but oh-so-good lunch at In-N-Out Burger, which owes its cultlike status in part to (you guessed it) “The Big Lebowski.” It was our second visit in two weeks. We would probably go more often if there weren’t always a line for the drive-through that extends into the neighboring shopping center parking lot.

How’s the burger? Better than McDonald’s, but not in the same league as Five Guys or Rockaway’s. “Those are good burgers, Dude.”

Sunday afternoon we were invited to a post-wedding party for our friends Carrie and Dave from Columbia, who got married in St. Lucia over Thanksgiving weekend. Carrie’s family lives in the Los Angeles area, and Carrie was nice enough to include Kenley and me in the celebration, which was held at a beautiful restaurant overlooking the water in Long Beach, about 30 minutes south of L.A. It was great to see familiar faces, and it was fun to meet some of Carrie’s friends who live in L.A. — all of whom, it should come as no surprise, could hold their own behind a karaoke mike.

On Valentine’s Day, we had breakfast at S&W Diner in downtown Culver City, which I’m sure will also become a favorite, partly because it’s cheap but mostly because they serve pancakes with Oreo crumbles and fresh strawberries! Kenley had the bacon-and-cheddar waffle.

They also had grits on the menu, which I had to test. I can make them much better.

A romantic day should include the beach if there’s one nearby, so we took Malia for a walk to the Santa Monica pier, where once again she got all the attention amid the small, yippy dogs, the buskers and the food vendors.

From the beach, we went to the Culver City ice-skating arena — something I wasn’t expecting to find in our new neighborhood. But it’s still not quite surfing weather out here yet.

We had pre-dinner drinks at Bottle Rock, a wine bar and shop similar to Cellar on Greene in Five Points. They offer $20 bottles of wine on Mondays, so another spot is added to my list of places we’ll definitely go back to. It will be a great place to take any of the wine-club girls when y’all come visit.

I had booked dinner reservations at a French bistro called Saint Amour, which was a very authentic French experience, complete with rude, French-speaking waiters. But Kenley’s mussels and frites were the best I’ve had since the Fat Hen in Charleston with Leigh and Dan several years ago. It was perfect for Valentine’s Day.

Tuesday was my first day working at the Loft. I’m working 12 to 15 hours a week to help earn my keep (and keep my discount) until I can find a full-time job. The store is in Marina Del Rey, which is a small resort town just south of Venice Beach. The store is expected to move in May and become one of a handful of new boutiquelike concept locations for Loft.

The following Sunday, we were invited to Kathy Bryja’s apartment for dinner. Kathy, a former features designer at The State, is an associate art director for The Hollywood Reporter. She and her fiance host a dinner for several couples every Sunday. You BYOB and drop $5 to $10 in a bowl, and Kathy and Justin cook. Not gonna find a cheaper meal than that in L.A. (not even In-N-Out Burger), and it’s nice to have a standing social engagement. We’ll go there Sunday to watch the Oscars, since you can’t actually get anywhere near the Kodak Theater on awards night.

In preparation for the Academy Awards, Kenley and I have watched all the nominees that are available at Blockbuster (still no Internet access for Netflix). Surprisingly, “Toy Story 3” was the one that made me cry. I found “The Social Network” interesting, “The Kids Are Alright” entertaining and “Winter’s Bone” depressing. As you can imagine, everyone here likes to talk about the movies, whether they’re in the biz or not.

I certainly never dreamed I’d be underemployed and living in Los Angeles on my 37th birthday. To celebrate, I planned a day around things you can do only in L.A. We had lunch at Fraiche, one of several restaurants in L.A. (and a couple in our neighborhood) nominated for the James Beard awards, the Oscars of the restaurant industry. I ordered a croque monsieur, which is probably not the dish that got the chef nominated, but it was still rich and decadent.

Kenley balked at paying $14 for what essentially is a glorified grilled-cheese sandwich. But at least I didn’t order the foie gras.

After lunch, we drove uptown to Hollywood because I wanted to at least see where the movie stars would walk the red carpet in about a week. The bleachers were set up on Hollywood Boulevard outside the entrance to the theater, but the only “celebrities” we saw were wannabe actors paid to dress in costumes and charge tourists to take photos with them. Kenley and I didn’t want to be mistaken for tourists, so we got out of there as quickly as possible.

Our next stop was Beverly Hills, where we waited in line for a Sprinkles cupcake, which is one of the first places the cupcake trend started. We also did some window shopping on Rodeo Drive. One goal is to buy something on Rodeo Drive before we leave this town. Kenley says it will probably be a sock.

For dinner, we went to Waterloo & City, also nominated for a James Beard award. It’s another gastropub, and I liked it much better than Ford’s Filling Station. I had vegetable pot pie and, for dessert, bourbon-glazed doughnuts.

But now it’s back to chicken fingers and microwave meals. We (mostly Kenley) have decided to stop the insanity; our splurging must come to an end. At least until we can afford that sock.