That doesn't look like a multimillion-dollar estate -- that looks like a junkyard in Van Nuys. You'd think at $15 million, you'd be able to buy something a little more turnkey, but it seems like George and Amal didn't exactly think their dream home was dreamy enough. Among other upgrades, they were looking to add a new swimming pool, tennis courts (plural), and a home cinema, presumably to rewatch Batman & Robin with the splendor it deserves. Apparently, those weren't boxes that the realtor was able to check off in that price range.
With all that construction came a lot of nonsense for the people who paid a lot of money specifically so they didn't have to live in a noisy neighborhood. Traffic was backed up, dirt was being flung everywhere, and it probably looked like something out of a bad indie French film.
Unlike everyone else in this article, however, it seems the Clooneys did feel pretty bad about it. They handed out little "We're Sorry" gift packages to neighbors they knew had been impacted by the mess. And by "little," we mean "Compensation Valued At 45,000 British Pounds," including a 30,000-pound lump sum, a trip to the Greek island of Corfu, and a six-week stay at a luxury hotel. Shit, George Clooney can come break up our home any time he wants. (In any sense.)
1
Fox News's Roger Ailes Takes Over A Tiny Upstate New York Town
Around ten years ago, recently deceased Fox News founder/man accused of sexual harassing women all the live-long day Roger Ailes casually took a trip north of New York City to a small town called Garrison, only to discover that he'd found his new home. But in order to really make it home, he had to turn the whole town into a paranoid hellscape like the one raging inside his mind at all times.
First, Ailes quickly decided he needed to buy up all the properties surrounding his new house so that he could have a Soviet Union-style property buffer zone.
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Bing
He didn't mean for the vegetation to die and the animals to ooze black liquid from their eyes, but it was a welcome development.
On top of that, Ailes put together an underground bunker filled with approximately six months' worth of survival rations -- you know, just in case some Kenyan Muslim got elected president or something. Further terrified that "liberal New Yorkers" might get to him or his family somehow, he got the family a German Shepherd that went everywhere with them and was trained to patrol the grounds before Ailes got out of the car upon arriving home. However, what good is a bloodthirsty dog if it can't also bring you a truly fair and balanced newspaper?
And so, in addition to hand-picking his own Republican candidates to run for local office, Ailes went and bought up two of the three newspapers in the county and installed his own editorial staff.
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Putnam County News and Recorder
Not that you could tell.
The biggest key piece of that was the hiring of Joe Lindsley, a young and upstart conservative writer, as their editor in chief of The Putnam County News & Recorder. The relationship was going great there (Lindsley was attacking Obama and quoting Ayn Rand in editorials), but circulation was down. Small-town shop owners didn't want to carry Ailes' particular brand of scorched-earth jackassery in their stores.
Ailes, ever the cool-headed thinker, believed that his staff was secretly plotting a betrayal of him, and started using Fox News security to track them and spy on them all throughout town. Lindsley didn't take long to see what was happening and call it quits, because nobody needs that kind of shit when your readership just wants to read about the goddamn apple festival or whatever.
Isaac has a deep-seated suspicion of his neighbors because of the movie Edward Scissorhands. Follow him on Twitter.
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Isaac Cabe
via 
USA Today
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