Beverly Park

Kelsey Grammer, whose TV fame began on "Cheers," has reason to toast his good fortune. A little more than two years ago, during the final season of the NBC sitcom named after his character Frasier, the Emmy-winning actor bought a Beverly Hills-area home for $17.5 million. He has now sold it for about $25 million. Grammer, and his wife, former model Camille Donatacci, have a home in Malibu. He bought the four-bedroom, 6,600-square-foot house on 5 acres in the hills in 1998 for $4.5 million.

This is a house built for entertaining in a neighborhood filled with entertainers and entertainment moguls. Sylvester Stallone, Denzel Washington, Reba McIntyre, Rod Stewart, Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence live in the area, and in another section of the community live Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck and Samuel L. Jackson.

Paulin Paris recently added a new mural technique to his repertoire that he calls "the new marquetry." The technique, inspired by a project for a client in London, involves cutting pieces of wood-print paper into intricate shapes and pasting the various grain patterns into a decorative design, much like pieces of real wood veneer are assembled in traditional marquetry. "Marquetry used to be found only on small objects or a piece of furniture," Paris says of the art that originated in Europe centuries ago. "But now, instead of having to cut down more trees, I can use paper instead and get the same effect on entire rooms.

PIERCE BROSNAN and his wife, CASSANDRA (CASSIE) HARRIS, have purchased a 6-acre Malibu estate. Their new ocean-view home is in the Paradise Cove area, near Barbra Streisand's beach compound. The seller, described as "an in-law to the Getty family," got nearly $3 million for the property, which has lush tropical grounds, a pool with a waterfall and is what Robert Rubenstein of Malibu Realty calls "a Mediterranean masterpiece." Rubenstein represented the Irish actor--probably most familiar as the TV detective Remington Steele, though he also starred in the NBC miniseries "Around the World in 80 Days," which aired in April--and his Australian actress wife, who co-starred in the '81 James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only."

Lee Harris of Burbank saw an alcoholic holiday beverage that was obviously tailored for Southern California imbibers. Its name: Smogg Nog. (Smogg Nog Alert: Don't drink too much or everything will look hazy. Well, hazier.) * MARTHA'S NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS! Betty Laslo of Palm Springs notes that the ever-fastidious Martha Stewart would be horrified to see a typo in her cookie recipe that lists "flower" as one of the ingredients (see accompanying).

Actor Noah Wyle has sold his Los Feliz home for close to its $3.8-million asking price. The buyer was Robert Richardson, who won an Oscar in 1991 for best cinematography for "JFK." The house, which actor Tim Curry also once owned, is a restored Spanish colonial estate. It is on about 1.5 acres of lush grounds and has three bedrooms and 3 1/2 bathrooms in slightly more than 4,000 square feet. The home has hand-carved, hand-stenciled ceilings, a pool, an amphitheater, waterfalls and fountains.

Media magnate Sumner Redstone has filed for divorce from his wife of five years, Paula Fortunato, citing irreconcilable differences. The split comes as the 85-year-old chairman of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. faces financial difficulties. His family-owned holding company, National Amusements Inc., is scrambling to restructure $1.6 billion in debt after it violated the covenants of its bank agreements.

Comedian and actor Howie Mandel and his wife, Terry, have put their Los Angeles-area home of a dozen years on the market at slightly more than $3 million. The comic, 44, filled in earlier this month for Regis Philbin, who was on jury duty, as a host on the syndicated talk show "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee."

Jack Jones' article (Jan. 29) about Beverly Hills "phantom" parking tickets was particularly interesting to me because in September of 1985 I received one of these citations. Fortunately, in my case, a letter of explanation to the Municipal Court of Beverly Hills was sufficient to bring dismissal of the charges. At the times my car was cited, I wondered if it was just a random error. The article provides some insight, however, in spite of the casual revelation of a 4% minimum error rate in processing traffic tickets by Stan Seidler, the Beverly Hills court administrator, I don't feel comfortable with the explanation.