SANTA MONICA - What's a poor mogul to do? Your soon-to-be-ex wife gets the house and kids, and you're left with just the Malibu house, the New York pied-à-terre, and the Hamptons rental. Fortunately there's a building in Santa Monica on Ocean Ave that can cure what ails you. Known as the Hollywood Halfway house for divorcing media moguls, it's an apartment house that specializes in short-term rentals and post-separation therapy of sorts. According to Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke:
"It's just a bunch of rich guys walking around a very expensive, well-run place right on the ocean," one of them tells me. "We don't hang out. I wish I could say we even do a lot of business together, but I don't see a lot of them. I go in and up the elevator straight to my apartment." There aren't wild and crazy parties even though NBC Universal Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, who's famously single, also lives there. "I must not live next door to Ben. I don't hear the water gurgling from his bong," one of them told me. Meanwhile, I'm told that when Larry David moved in after splitting with his environmental activist wife Laurie, "he went to all the rooms and turned on all the lights."That'll teach her. [Deadline Hollywood] HOLLYWOOD - Although it seems like the city is the studio's permanent backlot, and every gimmick, promotion and party, no matter how hackneyed, will get the city's approval to shut down streets and wreck havoc with your commute, it seems the line has finally been drawn. Around red-meat-and-beer-loving, God-and-country-worshipping NASCAR fans. NASCAR and the California Speedway were hoping to shut down a few streets in Hollywood tonight to create a miniature speedway for Jeff Gordon to take a spin around - for charity of course. LA's transportation officials told NASCAR it "require[s] those applying to temporarily shut down a public street to obtain written permission from all commercial property owners or managers in the proposed closure area. And users of one Hollywood site refused to sign off on the plan." Oops. Instead, Gordon will provide valet service for the event headliner, Rihanna. Seriously. [LA Times]