New Home Puts on Its Face at the Last Minute
On the morning of Friday the 13th, Jim Slemons’ spanking new home in Newport Beach was a construction site.
It had no lawn, no walkway to the front door, no flagstones surrounding the back-yard pool. There was hardly a stick of furniture in its white-whiter-whitest rooms.
“This morning there were 37 pickup trucks out front,” said Slemons, a car and boat dealer.
That night--as luck would have it--the custom-built, 10,000-square-foot house was ready for inspection, which is just what it got.
About 60 of Slemons’ friends drove to the place the owner called “the top of Newport”--a slice of hilltop real estate in the gated Harbor Ridge section of town.
There they walked up the newly laid gray stone path, past a toy black cat curled by the door--the only Friday the 13th touch--and into a party.
Three of Slemons’ employees--tousle-haired young women dressed in black hot pants, spike-heeled pumps, white dress shirts and tux coats--greeted guests. They proffered a guest book, poured glasses of champagne, snapped souvenir photos for their boss.
“On a clear day,” Slemons told one visitor, “I can see Los Angeles.”
In the sunset mists of the 13th, the view from Slemons’ vast windows was limited to the cube shapes of Fashion Island and a swath of shimmering sea.
But there was much to see inside.
There was, for example, a white grand player piano in one corner of the living room, plinking its own ghostly tunes. There were more than a dozen antique slot machines in a basement that also featured a fireplace, a pool table and an oak-shelved wine cellar (fully stocked). There was a cherry paneled study, with artfully arranged leather-bound books.
A sandwiches-and-salads buffet was spread on the dining room table. Mariachis serenaded pool side. A fortuneteller read Tarot cards and tossed “astral dice” at a table near the self-possessed piano.
On the host’s arm was L.A. Gear tennis shoe model Donna Piccioni, a vision in turquoise Spandex. Piccioni said she also works as a marketing executive for a water bottling company. “And Jim (Slemons) hired me for the 1990 posters for his boat company,” she said.
Among early arrivals was former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who parked his red convertible Mercedes with “MARS GUY” license plates right in front of Slemons’ front door. (When his wife, Lois, arrived an hour later, she parked her red “MOON GAL”-plated Porsche right behind it.)
Also attending were Virginia Knott Bender and Paul Bender, Alice and Frank Mead, Renate and Bill Shafer, Linda and Warren Bauer, Jana and Ken Knapp, and Steve and Robin Marmor.
