SELLER: Kenneth Wilson a.k.a. Ginger Fish
LOCATION: Sunnynook Drive, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,096,000
SIZE: 1,974 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Charming 1929 Two Story Spanish Estate Home. Countless upgrades have been done to this home including, refinishing the wood floors, new high efficiency air conditioner, new water heater, new basement laundry room with front loaded top of the line Kenmore Washer and Dryer, New Kenmore Elite refrigerator, new gas fireplace, new tile in kitchen, and tile downstairs in bathroom with jacuzzi claw foot tub, new custom master bathroom Steam Room/Shower Combo, new tile balcony.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While combing through listings in some of the less pricey zip codes around Los Angeles, Your Mama recently came upon one described as a "Charming 1929 Two Story Spanish Estate Home." With that description, we jumped in feet first where we found that listing photos show a slew of framed up CDs leaning up on the mantel and hung on the wall over a grotesque, ca-ca colored leather sofa in the living room. Even though we recoiled in horror over the college student day-core, we got still got that special tingly feeling in our spleen that tells us we're looking at a celebrity owned property. So we did what we always do, we started sifting through the property records. It didn't take more than a minute or two to discover the casa is owned by a man named Kenneth Wilson who is otherwise known as Ginger Fish. It took a few more minutes to figure out that Ginger Fish is the oft injured drummer for the macabre, theatrical and controversy courting rock star Marilyn Manson. A few more taps on our trusty lap top computer revealed that Mister Wilson, er Mister Fish, listed his Atwater Village property in late August of 2009 with a somewhat wonky asking price of $1,096,000.
According to Wikipedia–which isn't always the most reliable source of information–Mister Fish's stage name is derived from a combination of the names of dancer Ginger Rogers and Albert Fish, "an American serial killer, cannibal and pedophile," Is any further personal information about this man necessary to get a firm handle on his inner essence and sense of humor? No, it's really not, is it?
Property records show Mister Fish purchased the Sunnynook Drive domicile in October of 2004 for an undisclosed amount of money. The 3 bedroom and 2 bathroom house is located in a modest section of Los Angeles called Atwater Village, a neighborhood with a Silver Lake zip code that borders Glendale, Elysian Valley, Glassell Park, Los Feliz, and the sprawling Griffith Park. Being the hub in a geographic wheel certainly makes Atwater Village accessible to and from many parts of the Tinseltown but, as far as Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter are concerned, it's far to hot and smoggy for our delicate constitutions in that particular neck of the Lala Land woods.
From the looks of things, Mister Fish's property is gated with a small motor court leading to a front door tucked up into the corner next to the garage. What little of the front facade we can see in the listing photographs looks satisfactory and appropriately Spanish. However, despite a mite of architectural integrity on the exteriors, once you get in the front door all decorative hell breaks loose.
Although listing information indicates that "countless upgrades" have been made to the property including newly refinished floors, a new air conditioning unit, newly installed tile in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom, a new fridge and a new front loading washer and dryer set up in a new laundry room located in the basement, the house is such a decorative hot mess that we don't even know where to begin. Do we start with that ornate, carved, commode-like vanity thing in the bathroom? Or do we begin with the utterly awful satin quilt bed linens? Or maybe we should go with the taupe and burgundy patterned curtains that Your Mama could only describe as "Appalachia Chic," the sort of drapery Dolly Parton might have aspired to before she actually got rich and figured out that rich people do not have curtains made of fabric that looks like it was ripped off a sofa bed from Levitz? Or will we be forced to embark on our journey through Mister Fish's interior trappings with all that crap sitting on top of the cabinets and refrigerator in the kitchen? What about the trio of water bottles in the bedroom that someone could not be bothered to remove before putting a million dollar asking price on the house? Or the fuzzy white stuffed animal sitting on the mantel in the bedroom? Ugh, it all makes Your Mama want to run bamboo shoots into our eyeballs. When we were just a wee thing our brassy and high-larious Auntie Jennie used to tell Your Mama, "If you don't have something nice to say, come sit next to me." But let's be honest butter beans, sometimes picking apart bad day-core is like shooting a dead cat...it's too easy and there's really no benefit to doing so. Dead is dead.
However and despite our Auntie Jennie's exhortation, Your Mama always tries to find some good to discuss even if we're looking at a pile of decorative doo-doo so with some trepidation will say that with a few twists and tweaks–including removing the coffee table tsotchke and Mister Fish's portrait of himself hanging over the fireplace–it really wouldn't take much to work the living room over into something cozy and appropriate for the drummer of one of the world's most illustrious rock stars.
Out back, Mister Fish's house has a small balcony over looking the back yard which has a brick terrace and a some sort of stone floored shelter where he has set up a bunch of manly looking work out contraptions that scare the bizness out of Your Mama. We know that many people like to bend and stretch and lift and contort themselves into physical perfection, but larhrd have mercy, Your Mama would know better how to remove a gall bladder with a whisk and a spoon than to use all that forbidding and torturous gymnasium equipment.
Naturally, since Your Mama doesn't know a hole in the ground from a tractor trailer, we haven't an iota where Mister Fish and all his shiny linens, exercise apparati and water bottles will be moving next. However, if we may offer a little unsolicited advice to Mister Fish: Hunny, if you want to sell that house in Atwater Village for a million bucks, Your Mama suggests letting us send our imperious but hard working house gurl Svetlana over to spend a few days cleaning that place up so at least it looks as good as it can in listing photographs because the current ones, alas, ain't doing you any financial favors. Do you know what we're saying?
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