amarante

The law firm isn't suing her. It is the attorney for the bankruptcy trustee who is attempting to get as much of the assets as possible so that there is money for the victims Tom stole from. Erika is claiming that the $25 million paid to her corporation as well as gifts and some money from fees belong to her legally while the trustee is attempting to get them clawed back into the bankruptcy estate so that they can be distributed to the victims, I don't understand how Erika's legal defense is viable - anything of value was paid for by Girardi including the $25 million to her corporation plus she was evidently getting about $20,000 per month for some legal fees owed to the firm.

Sometimes one underestimates the acceptance of the older generation. Not quite the same thing but my father who was born in 1918 moved into an Assisted Living facility which had a population mostly of Jews from that era. Most of them weren't deeply religious but were definitely culturally so. When Proposition 8 was on the ballot in 2008, he told me that most of the other residents also voted to support gay marriage - there was also a great deal of support for Obama. My father who was 90 in that year manned a table for Obama at the Grove :-).

Brian Moylan recaps this show for New York Magazine. As you know, he was the writer of Erika's memoirs. His reviews have always been fabulously snarky - he generally manages to insert an insulting description of PK in every recap and they are all hilarious. Unfortunately he has let his friendship or paycheck really influence his recaps as he is bending over like a Cirque de Soleil acrobat to give her every benefit of the doubt. He was always Team Erika but now he is unwilling even to concede that while she may or may not be guilty of actual embezzlement, she is doing everything possible to retain ownership of all her ill gotten gains and her social media posts are truly disturbing. The comments are really what makes his recaps very interesting and almost all of them are calling him out and expressing extreme skepticism about Erika's ever changing stories including terrific posts on #mascaragate. Last night WWHL had four BRAVO bloggers/podcasters giving their opinions on all things BRAVO and when Andy asked them how they felt about Erika, they were all extremely skeptical of her fake justifications and excuses. What I found somewhat interesting was that Andy seemed a little surprised that there was such uniformity of opinion that was anti-Erika. Perhaps this doesn't augur well for her future. I participate in a BRAVO panel and I can't wait to rank this season in terms of Erika especially if there is no come to Jesus moment and Rinna and Kyle are not forced to come to terms with their hypocrisy. He was also surprised that they were pretty much anti-Leah but that's a different franchise Here is a link to the NY Magazine recaps - he also recaps RHONY. https://www.vulture.com/article/real-housewives-of-beverly-hills-recap-season-11-episode-9.html

I give a pass to Kyle worrying about Portia. I don't know any families who have suffered food deprivation because of the pandemic but the reality is that their children have been scarred emotionally because of what they went through by missing normal interactions with other children. Just because others have it materially worse doesn't mean that Portia - as a child - isn't having to deal with essentially being locked in her house for a year - yes it's a lovely house but children need to be around other children. I wonder what it is going to be like for the generation of children who were raised in the pandemic. My grandparents were raised in the Depression and then WW II and it definitely shaped them. They always assumed that disaster could lurk around the bend. Some of that was weird as they saved all kinds of things like string and whatever because they had lived through a time when everything was potentially precious and other stuff was actually very healthy since they lived below their means and retired and were able to have a fabulous retirement without any kind of financial worries. Kyle seems to have really been a great mother. All of her children are scandal free - graduated college or in college. From what I have read about how Kathy raised her kids, they were essentially left to fend for themselves and the son is a real neer do well - as I recall he was arrested a few years ago because of his behavior on a plane but they paid it off and so he went to rehab instead.

Interesting analysis. In many ways Lisa V was the antithesis of Erika. Ken is a bit older than she is but I never got the sense that she had married him for his money - it didn't seem like the kind of transactional marriage that the Girardi's obviously had. Lisa was a very shrewd businesswoman and greatly contributed to their business success - whatever one thinks of her. I always like Lisa as I thought she was the ideal HW - very wealthy - exquisite taste even if it wasn't MY taste specifically - and being witty and erudite and not boring. I also like Heather of OC and am thrilled that she is back with all of her fabulous pretentiousness. I am somewhat shocked that the HW seem to accept her explanations at face value - except of course for Garcelle who is smart enough not to really dig in the muck. But she at least has left herself with the ability with a straight face not to be called an utter hypocrite the way the others have set themselves up for. There is just no way one can justify going after Denise Richards for possibly having a lesbian fling or Lisa and the tiresome doggiegate and yet sanctimoniously say that Erika deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Why wouldn’t someone who has been working full times for several years and nit paying rent by able to afford he condos she was looking at. Presumably she was able to save quite a bit for the down payment. I was surprised by how much mediocre condos cost in the outskirts of Los Angeles. I live in LA and I am not shocked by high prices but didn’t think those areas were that expensive since I wasn’t impressed with any of the choices. I didn’t mind her as she reminded me of my younger self when my very construction knowledgable father accompanied me when I bought my condo and he was also concerned with plumbing and security. 😂😂 In terms of her wish list 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ She didn’t demand them and wound up with a hime that seemed to be the best fit and didn’t have high end fixtures.

Gizelle is messy as hell but I enjoy her as she doesn't seem to take herself all that seriously. I can't say I *hate* Karen but I do find her to be a pretentious idiot so I always experience massive schadenfreude when she is exposed or put in an embarrassing situation. I don't know why women try to hide their plastic surgery because these women know exactly what their castmates looked like before they had a procedure. I mean I probably wouldn't register a change in Wendy's ass but obviously someone in real life would. Also the producers might just as well have had a chyron stating TUMMY TUCK when they did a close up of Wendy's stomach in the surgeon's office with the tell tale creasing. I guess the Chris' baby mama gave permission for filming. I didn't see anything dysfunctional with how the kids were interacting with Candiace so I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt as I think she would probably be a fun stepmother. If the kids seemed uncomfortable I am going to chalk it up to being shy in the presence of cameras but so far the interactions don't seem as if the kids view her as the evil stepmother.

I think the problem with the only bathroom in the house being accessed through a bedroom is when there are overnight guests. I stayed with a friend in Manhattan on her living room pull out sofa and the bathroom was in her bedroom. Luckily I was young and my bladder was strong so I didn't have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night when she was sleeping. I grew up with one bathroom although we did have access to a toilet in the basement for emergencies :-). However I would never want to live without an ensuite anymore than I would want to live without a dishwasher or air conditioning which I also grew up without. :-) My grandmother grew up without indoor plumbing but she didn't begrudge anyone who thought indoor plumbing was a necessity either.

As others have posted, the term is being used incorrectly by idiot HH on the show. But that shouldn't be a surprise since I have heard them refer to a standard single bowl kitchen sink as a "farm house sink" as well. There are actually sit down showers that are part of the walk in bath tubs that are designed for old or infirm people who like to take a bath but can't safely use a bath tub and can't get up from the ground. I don't take baths so I have what I think of as the ideal shower. I replaced the bath/shower combination with a large walk in shower - not curbless which is another style) that follows the foot print of the original tub. I have a large built in bench at one end and I also have a hand held shower close to the bench so that I have access to water when I am comfortably sitting on the bench. FWIW there are shower "ledges" you can install which are like little platforms to hold you feet. Or if you are constructing a new shower you can build in a little niche a bit above the floor to hold your feet.

There is a bed and a couch in the living room. When my parents sold the family home, I often slept on the sofa if there was more than one guest. And althiugh they had a convertible sofa in the den, it really wasn’t much more comfortable than a Murphy bed. It wasn’t a real guest room as it was just a mattress to crash on. I never thought my parents were rejecting me by not having a spare room dedicated to me. And since the boys were probably living with the father, it really was a non issue.

I don’t know if having them on my DVR and not watching is counted. 🤷‍♀️ NY used to be my favorite franchise. Leah was awful last year but in combination with Eboni, the franchise has become unwatchable and I have a backlog since I haven’t watched since Leah was caterwauling about her dead grandmother and all I could think was what an awful person she was to attempt to get sympathy while not doing what most people would do which was to get home amd support the family I think what is truly putrid is that Leah uses Eboni to try to establish her "hip" credentials when she is actually just an awful person who represents no one except crazy alcoholic bullies. I just can't stand her smug expressions of her hipness. Eboni is a bore frankly and should take some lessons from Garcelle on the BH franchise who is a strong black woman who actually is interested in a dialogue - her lunch with Kyle and explaining why the accusation of not making the charitable donation was especially damaging to a WOC was a stellar example of educating a person so they come to a real understanding and are not put on the defensive by accusations.

That would be a fairly low fee for a building like hers. As I recall it had a pool, the dog park and a 24 hour concierge. Utilities like water and possibly electricity would also be included and of course all of those utilities for the common areas would be paid from the monthly assessments. Common area utilities are surprisingly expensive and keep going up. There are also significant common area equipment that needs to be maintained like the elevators and the plumbing systems. You would also have a good number of staff who would be cleaning the common areas; maintaining the facilities (e.g. like the super in an apartment building) and maintaining the grounds. I live in a condo and that would be typical for that type of building. The only thing the building didn't have was valet parking which would have added about $400 per month. ETA - To give a sense of how much if costs to run this kind of condo, there are 8736 hours in a a year which means that just for the 24/7 concierge the cost would be about $175,000 - I used a $20 an hour cost which would cover actual wages plus FICA, Workman's Comp, vacation and sick leave and other benefits. My building provides some form of health insurance to our employees plus paid time off. Most of New York City has unionized doormen so hourly costs would be higher. Assuming there are 100 units in the building the cost PER MONTH for each unit is about $145 just for the concierge. I live in a building with a 24/7 concierge and whatever it costs is worth it to me. There is complete security as no one is buzzing in just anyone and no one is sneaking in behind someone who is going into the building. And the convenience of having someone signing for packages and letting people into my unit if I am not home like my cleaning lady. A building like this generally also has an on-site manager of some kind as well who makes a decent salary.

She said she was born in Vietnam and the family left when she was two. Her father had been in the Army. She would have left when the US conceded the war and left. There are pictures of the fall of Saigon since it was assumed that anyone who had collaborated with the US would be killed or imprisoned.

It is generally more than ten steps to the front of the houses I have seen and those steps add up if you are setting a table. Bringing in the food and condiments and then clearing the table. Why don’t you keep track of everything you bring to a table when serving dinner and then carry all his items to the far point of your house and carry them back again. I doubt whether dining rooms that are distant from kitchens are actually used as dining rooms on any kind of regular basis.

She mentioned that none of her children live with her full time so either he is at boarding school or living with the father full time. Not to be sexist but once kids reach a certain age they can choose where they want to live and teenage boys often opt to live with the father. The loft she was moving from didn't seem to be particularly child friendly either - not that there is anything wrong with that.

She posed in their underwear. I am sure it was one of the social promotional type of things where she posted the shots on her social media accounts and credited underwear to Fenty. That kind of thing is how one monetizes a social media account. Whenever a celebrity is pictured in a product, using a product, going to a restaurant or resort it is all based on promotional benefit to the celebrity. Like all of those "fake" pictures where stars are surprised at the grocery store or drug store just happening to be showing a shampoo to the camera :-).

Not sure about the exact configurations of specific houses but a quite common configuration is new homes is to have the "dining room" at the front of the house and the kitchen at the back of the house. If you are using the dining room you have to bring food, table settings and etc. a distance and it all has to be carried back again. My experience with bringing food to a patio which is distant from the kitchen is that it is inconvenient since everything has to be taken there and then back again. Perhaps I am exceptionally lazy but if I wanted a functional dining room it would have to be a room that was next to the kitchen. This is a functional reason why dining rooms are traditionally contiguous to the kitchen.

Am nit sure where Rinna’s house is but it is a significantly nicer home with beautiful grounds and a lovely view. It looks like it is in the hills. Erika’s home is in a neighborhood thst was originally built for middle class families. Because it is in a desirable neighborhood - as I recall it is in the area which is around the museum district housing prices are very expensive based solely on location. It has been renovated nicely but it was built originally for a normal family and not for a wealthy family it is after all just a modest three bedroom two bath room home with a living room. The pool was added later but takes up most of the yard. Don’t get me wrong as the house is now intended for a person of means but it isn’t the same kind of grand home that any of the others live in I think the Pasadena home resembled a funeral home on steroids and it is going to be renovated by whoever buys it because the bathrooms and kitchens are awful. However the grounds are magnificent.

Except that she will be getting exactly what she wants and is not paying for someone else's taste or quality level. Her mother seems to have been a decorator at some point and she also seems to know what she wants and how to achieve it. It was a no-brainer to me that they selected the true fixer upper especially since they now had a great budget for renovations. Her comments regarding the second house being a hodgepodge of styles wasn't strictly based on the furniture as the architectural details including built ins were all over the place and didn't feel visually cohesive. There was a built in that was true Mission/Craftsman style and many of the rooms were standard "traditional" in terms of the trims and molding.

NC couple didn't say where family was located but the woman said she had moved from San Diego to complete her PHD studies. I would imagine their adult children would be coming and they might have children as well. The woman also mentioned that she wanted a bedroom on the ground floor for her grandmother when she visited. Maybe she is also thinking that grandmother might move in permanently at some point when she can't live independent - they didn't mention where grandmother still lived. I think often you need extra bedrooms in some areas to get large common areas like living rooms and kitchens. While extra bedrooms might be needed, a more modest 3/2 for example would also come with smaller living room and kitchen as well as not have a dining room. I did agree with her comments regarding the "dining room" configurations being removed from the kitchen. I also think this makes no sense if one is actually planning to use the dining area because unless you have a butler and footman to bring in the food and serve, everything has to be brought into the dining room and then removed. A lot of work. I live in a place where the balcony is removed from the kitchen so cooking and eating on the balcony is a bit of a hassle since you have to shlep everything there and back again.

Very old homes were generally built before there were any kinds of housing codes. Not sure when it started in other places, but NY first enacted requirements for ventilation in 1879 and then revised them in 1901. Homes built between 1879 and 1901 are called Old Law Tenements and after 1901 are called New Law Tenements. If you are familiar with New York City housing much of the housing stock in a place like the East Village is Old Law which required that all rooms have some form of ventilation. Typically this was achieved by the use of an air shaft which is hardly what most people would think of as adequate ventilation. New Law Tenements can be recognized because they were built around large central court yards. They were typically large apartment buildings. A lot of the housing on the main avenues on the Upper West Side are New Law tenements although there are some on Second Avenue below 14th Street which were constructed for a more affluent resident than those on the side streets. The brownstone townhouses were originally built as private homes although some were remodeled as the neighborhoods changed but they were not constructed as being Old Law Tenements. I don't think there was a closet requirement

LOL - I had forgotten about the dust covers. There was one episode where there was a lot of furniture in the same place and it was pretty obvious when it was off for the end reveal. Of course now they try to hide bulky items like pool tables or large dining room tables by stating that seller is including them or leaving behind or whatever But the biggest current "tell" is the house that the seller has mysteriously stopped renovating right in the middle of the renovation. I have never seen a HH where the house in mid-renovation wasn't the one chosen. There was one in Florida where the house was only in the early stages of being built and they were fake dithering about whether they wanted to deal with the stress of building. :-).

And occasionally they bought nothing and there were a few shows where they toured a lot of homes. Some were perfunctory but the chyron showed House #43 or whatever.

One disadvantage of a completely open kitchen in a relatively small space is that you lose storage because without the wall you lose upper cabinets. Also with an open kitchen in a small area you are REALLY in that kitchen area and so you would generally not be able to hide any mess. A closed kitchen (especially a galley style) is generally a very functional use of square footage. You also have a wall in the living room which can be functional as well in terms of optimally configuring a room. An island - however trendy - doesn't provide the same amount of functional storage and actually takes up more room than a wall with cabinets and a counter would since it is generally deeper. It is ironic since at one time the kitchen against the wall was considered to be the lowest type of sad apartment. At any rate - different strokes for different folks. Does anyone seriously think Georgetown guy is spending lots of time "entertaining" in his kitchen. When I was at that stage of life if I had people over it wasn't for dinner. At most people might meet for drinks before heading out and I would set out some good takeout snacks I bought for the occasion. He is not going to be isolated in the kitchen whipping up dinner while his guests frolic in the living room :-).

You can build rooms without a closet - you just can't call them a bedroom as a bedroom needs a closet and a window. I don't see the issue with the lack of closet as many people live in older homes where there is a tiny closet because people didn't have vast amounts of clothing until cheap disposable clothing became available in the past few decades. Different homes appeal to people at different stages of life and with different needs. As a new graduate in my 20's I opted for a studio in a recently converted loft with a raised sleeping area. It was in the Village and my lifestyle was such that I loved being able to walk out my door and have any kind of adventure plus my commute was two subway stops. I would never have wanted to live in the boroughs in order to have a larger apartment - why would I want or need a larger apartment when my lifestyle was working and enjoying everything New York City had to offer. Georgetown software engineer didn't need or want large closets or a suburban lifestyle. He wanted a good commute - access to some great running trails and not have to deal with mass transit or a car ride to meet up with friends or take advantage of urban pleasures.