BUYER: Bryan Callen and Amanda Humphrey
LOCATION: Calabasas, Calif.
PRICE: $1,307,000
SIZE: 2,754 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: It was first snitched to Your Mama by The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that veteran comedian and actor Bryan Callen and his wife, Amanda Humphrey, recently coughed up $1.307 million for an aggressively snoozy tract house in an upscale if perfectly ordinary gated development in Calabasas, Calif.
Mister Callen, in case his name does not ring a bell, is a lower-profile but busy working actor and stand-up comedian whose big showbiz break came in the mid-1990s as one of the original cast members of the comedy program “MadTV.” If any of the children have never experienced Mister Callen do his cockamamie, semi-lurid, bikini-clad “Dance of the Pool Boy” on “Dixie Wentworth’s Cabana Chat,” well, you really should give it a look-see because it’s crazy. Anyhoodles, since “MadTV” Mister Callen has gone on to nab a bevy of small(ish) but recurring roles on a slew of smallscreen programs (“Oz,” “7th Heaven,” “Fat Actress,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “The Goldbergs”) and he regularly pops up on the big screen, including in the first two “Hangover” movies. He has roles in several upcoming movies, appears frequently as a comedic commentator on a program Your Mama has neither seen nor heard of before called “World’s Dumbest…” and, like most comedians nowadays, he hosts an eponymous podcast (“The Bryan Callen Show.)
Listing details show the perfectly pedestrian if not exactly inexpensive four-bedroom and three bathroom pseudo-Mediterranean style abode was built in 1987 on a slightly elevated .26-acre parcel, measures in at 2,754 square feet over two floors, and includes homeowner’s association dues of $180 per month.
Looking beyond the banal, barely-there day-core of the non-celebrity sellers we find plenty of the predictable pieces of a standard, circa late 1980s SoCal mock-Med tract house puzzle: Combination “formal” living and dining space with vaulted ceiling, an over-articulated staircase, cookie-cutter crown moldings and — natch — neutral-colored wall-to-wall carpeting. There is a (gas) fireplace in the living area and a wide glass slider in the dining area that opens to a puny concrete patio and a wee patch of grass barely bigger than a decent-sized studio apartment.
The efficiently proportioned kitchen looks to have been redone at some point since 1987 in an inoffensive, high-humdrum style with ebony raised panel wood cabinets, mid-range stainless steel appliances, mottled beige and brown bull-nose edged granite counter tops, and back splashes of tumbled stone or — perhaps more likely — porcelain or ceramic tiles molded and tinted to look like stumbled stone. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this kitchen — and, indeed, Your Mama does appreciate the wood flooring because we’re partial to wood floors in kitchens — but it certainly doesn’t have much personality, does it?
The kitchen opens to an informal dining area and family room with lots of windows and at least one glass slider with direct access to the pool. We were, to be totally truthful, somewhat relieved to see glossy honey-blond wood floors in the kitchen extend in to the family room but our positivity was somewhat diminished by the flat screen television above the fireplace that is mounted so high and close to the ceiling it gives Your Mama a psychosomatic yet still severe kink in the rolls of our neck.
There’s a guest/family floor bedroom with glass sliders that access to the backyard on the main floor and three more guest/family bedrooms on the second floor plus an additional playroom. The also upstairs master suite has wide bay window with open sky views, more wall-to-wall neutral-toned carpeting, and a serviceable if snoozy white-tiled bathroom with two-sink vanity, garden tub and separate stall shower.
The glass slider in the family room open to a partly trellis-shaded concrete patio that wraps around to a simple, built-in barbecue station. Listing photos show one of those godawful and thankfully removable, shoulder-height child safety fences that makes and tight girdle around the swimming pool and raised, semi-circular spa. We know that parents of small children find these things practical and even necessary but they’re just so damn unsightly.
Our research indicates that previous to purchasing his ho-hum tract house in suburban Los Angeles, Mister Callen owned several homes, at least one in Silver Lake and at least two in Venice, once of which, a 3 bedroom and 3 bathroom cottage on one of Venice’s many walk streets, he sold in June 2012 for $1.33 million.
Listing photos: Coldwell Banker
