The Spelling Manor Sale Closes... For A Measly $85 Mil!?

Poor Tori Spelling- can she ever catch a break? First, she got caught drunk at the prom and had to rely on the support of Jason Priestly and Ian Ziering just to graduate, then her mom stiffs her on the inheritance, and now, the most ignoble moment of all- the shame of knowing that she merely grew up in a double-digit million-dollar home instead of a triple-digit one, after the Spelling Manor sale closed today at the low, low, why-didn't-I-just-go-buy-this-myself price of $85 million, a far cry from the $150 million asking price. So what's Petra Ecclestone going to do with the leftover $65 mil?

If you're a little late to the party, The Spelling Manor is a downright Babylonian 123-room manse built for the late television impressario Aaron Spelling, designed primarily to make other exorbitantly wealthy Beverly Hillsians feel like pathetic poor people for only being able to afford pedestrian 20-50 room mansions. In the last month, we've reported on its imminent sale to Formula One heiress (and the closest thing England has to Paris Hilton) Petra Ecclestone, but all of that reporting was done under the assumption that this house would sell for at least $100 million. Now, we just don't know what to think. Sure, $85 million is a lot of money, but it's juuuust under that threshold for "so exorbitantly expensive that even a movie star couldn't afford it," which is really what we were going for. Knowing that Shia LaBeouf could probably afford to buy it now kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn't it? I could just picture him driving his pickup truck into the foyer, chain-smoking American Spirits on the private tennis court, praying for a paparazzi to take a picture of him so he could do his whole angry-clown thing and get written up again.

But hey, good for Petra, I guess? Now she's got enough scratch left over to buy that new iPod she had her eye on, when her dad was all "you can have either the house or the iPod, but not both," because dads are so uncool like that, you know? Even Petra's dad Bernie Ecclestone, who seemed like a pretty cool guy, the way he totally apologized for telling people that Hitler "got things done." I think your daughter's new neighbors might frown on that point of view, Bernie!

Here's my thought, Petra: take some of that leftover money and throw a Carmageddon party. I know a place on Bundy that does $65 High Life kegs, and BevMo! is running a special on Stoli. You can even let me handle the invites, if you're tired from moving stuff into 123 rooms. Text me?

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