The Mystery of the “Melissa & Joey” House

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In February, I received a challenge from a fellow stalker named Jill who wanted to know about the home belonging to Melissa Burke (Melissa Joan Hart) on the ABC Family sitcom Melissa & Joey.  The residence looked familiar to her and she was fairly certain that it had been used previously in another series.  She was not alone in that belief.  One quick Google search of “Melissa & Joey house, same as” led me to several message boards in which commenters queried about where they had seen the property before.  I had never actually watched an episode of Melissa & Joey, but was immediately intrigued, so I streamed the show on Netflix.  The Burke residence did not look at all familiar, though.  Thus began the mystery of the Melissa & Joey house.  And y’all know how much I love myself a good mystery!  Fellow stalker Geoff, of the 90210Locations website, did manage to track the dwelling down shortly after Jill posted her challenge and while I ran right out to stalk it, I have yet to figure out why the place looks so familiar to so many viewers.

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Several of the message boards I came across featured commenters asking if the Melissa & Joey house was the same property used in Reba, Step by Step or Boy Meets World.  As you can see in the collage pictured below, though, the Melissa & Joey residence bears virtually no resemblance to the Reba or Boy Meets World house.  And while it does look similar to the Step by Step house, they are clearly not one and the same.

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To me, the Melissa & Joey house is reminiscent of both the Mama’s Family and Old School homes, but, again, is obviously not either one.

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So I will put it out there to my fellow stalkers.  Do any of you recognize the home from another production?

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Melissa & Joey is set in Toledo, Ohio, but the Burke residence can actually be found in Hancock Park.  Of the property, series’ executive producer Boy Young said, “Her house is a house here in Los Angeles that we selected because it’s architecturally believable from Toledo.  Our production designer basically surveyed architectural styles of Toledo and tried to find something here in L.A. that resembled that.”

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In real life, the picturesque, two-story dwelling, which was originally built in 1914, features four bedrooms, three baths, 3,005 square feet of interior space, and a 0.22-acre plot of land.  It last sold in April 2008 for $1.795 million.

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Several message board commenters also stated their beliefs that the interior set – which exists inside of a soundstage at CBS Studio Center in Studio City – was recycled from another series, as well, although it does not look at all familiar to me.  So I will once again put it out there to my fellow stalkers – does anyone recognize the interior of the Melissa & Joey house from another production?

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On a side-note – I am BEYOND excited to announce that I wrote a small article about the Double Indemnity house for the April 2014 issue of Los Angeles magazine, which is on newsstands now.ScreenShot538That’s me buying out the Palm Desert Barnes & Noble of every copy of the magazine that they had on Saturday.

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For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.  And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Jill for challenging me to find this location and to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for tracking it down!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Melissa & Joey house is located at 102 North Norton Avenue in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.

The “Horrible Bosses” Movie Premiere

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Last Thursday afternoon, fellow stalkers Mikey, of the Mike the Fanboy website, Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, Scotty, CB, Anushika, and I all headed out to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Downtown Hollywood to do some stalking of the world premiere of my girl Jen Aniston’s latest movie Horrible Bosses. As amazing as it may sound, prior to that day, I had never before stalked a movie premiere. While I randomly found myself at the premiere of He’s Just Not That Into You back in February of 2009, I was only able to stick around for about ten minutes or so, and while I attended the premiere of Friday the 13th, also in February of 2009, I actually had tickets to that one and watched the movie from inside the theatre. So this was the first time that I would truly be stalking a premiere, i.e. showing up hours early and standing along the fan barricade on Hollywood Boulevard. Both Pinky and Mikey had warned me that not only were premieres not the greatest place to get photographs with celebrities, but that Grauman’s was the worst, least fan-friendly venue of them all. Because I suffer from eternal optimism, though (it’s something I get from my mom), I headed out there on Thursday afternoon emboldened with extremely high hopes. In fact, Mikey suggested I might want to take some sort of pill to calm my spirits. Winking smile

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Adding to my optimism was the fact that I had asked my dad to overnight me his camera for the event (his is far better than mine) and when it arrived, I opened up the box to find the above-pictured note from my mom. Smile See, in my family we just can’t help but be positive!

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Because of some obligations I had to take care of in Santa Monica that morning, I could not get to Grauman’s until 3 p.m. on Thursday, but thankfully CB headed out there bright and early at 10:30 a.m. and saved me a spot along the barricade. THANK YOU, CB!!!!! Oddly enough, there were not a whole lot of people there when I first showed up and I couldn’t help buy wonder why Pinky and Mikey had been so negative about the place. Oh, how naïve I was!

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I had asked Pinky to bring her super cute dog, Sammy, to the premiere as Jen is a big dog-lover and I figured that if I was going to try to get a picture with the star, I would need all of the help I could get. Which also explains why I was wearing my “Team Aniston” sweatshirt, despite the 90-degree heat. Winking smile

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The celebrity arrivals did not begin until 6:30 p.m. and, as always, we all had a FABULOUS time hanging out beforehand. In fact, I enjoyed that portion of the day much more so than I did meeting the various celebs who were in attendance. Needless to say, Pinky has the absolute BEST group of friends!

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At around 6 p.m., the professional autograph seekers (aka the “graphers” as Pinky likes to call them) showed up and it was at that point that things started to head south. The crazies also started to show up around that same time, including this guy, who was absolutely convinced that Jen had made him homeless. Um, OK. At one point he got into a VERY heated argument with someone about his claim, although he was, not surprisingly, entirely incoherent. When I heard him yelling, I turned around and saw his “Jen, You Made Me Homeless” sign and asked Mikey, who, due to his height, had better room to maneuver in the fan pit than I did, to snap a pic. Mikey’s response, “Oh, I already did!” LOL Love it!

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Anyway, once the graphers showed up, our little group (whom you can see above) got completely squished up against the barricade. Pinky graciously allowed me to share the stool she had brought to stand on, so I had a good vantage point from which to take pictures, but unfortunately the people standing behind me were pressed up so close against me that I literally could not move. Or breathe! At one point I told Mikey that I was fairly certain I had dislocated my hip. It was NOT FUN!

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Jason Sudeikis was the first Horrible Bosses’ star to show up and he came right over to sign autographs and take pictures.

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Jason was SUPER nice and spent a LOT of time signing autographs for people and taking photos, but sadly there was a big ol’ shadow across my face on the one that he took with me.

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Jason Bateman arrived next and also came over to sign autographs, but he seemed very reluctant about it and was not at all friendly, which shocked me.

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Jason signed a fair amount of autographs (not nearly as many as Jason Sudeikis did, though), but flat-out refused to take any pictures. UGH!

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Jamie Foxx arrived next and literally JUMPED out of his limo and IMMEDIATELY started walking over to the fan barricade to sign autographs and take photos. How incredibly cool is that??

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Because I was so squished up against the barricade, I could not get my camera in position to take a picture, so Pinky took one of the three of us. It didn’t exactly come out (you can just barely see me in the bottom of the frame LOL), but I was floored nevertheless just due to the fact that Jamie had been so darn friendly and nice. There’s something seriously unbalanced in the universe when Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx is taking pictures with fans, but Jason Bateman is refusing them!

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Jesse Metcalfe arrived next and Pinky and I went absolutely batsh*t over him, much to Mikey’s dismay. Winking smile We immediately called for Jesse to come over and he yelled back, “I don’t think I can!” and pointed to the countless cars zooming across Hollywood Boulevard in front of him. He didn’t realize that there was a security team in place ready to walk the stars across the street via a nearby crosswalk. When he spotted Jamie Foxx signing autographs, though, I guess he decided to go for it, because the next thing we knew he was running across four lanes of rush-hour traffic right towards us, sans security! LOL

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And what a sweetheart Jesse turned out to be!!!! He signed countless autographs and posed for countless photos.

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Including one with me! Smile And he even thanked Pinky and I for calling him over. Sigh.

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Joey Lawrence showed up next and Pinky started screaming for him (and singing the words to his latest single), but he flat out refused to come over. When he yelled over to us, “I can’t!”, a security guard walked up to him and said she would escort him across the street, but he turned her down. Sad smile

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My girl Jen was the last to arrive and, let me tell you, I have never in my life experienced anything like what happened when she got out of her car. It was as if the entire crowd moved forward in a wave and the volume in the area increased about one hundred decibels. The people behind us began to very aggressively push us forward and the barricade we were standing against started to give way and tip forward. There was a massive amount of screaming and, although I tried yelling at the people behind us to stop pushing, not only could they most-definitely not hear me, it was fairly obvious they would not have cared even if they had heard. The barricade kept tinkering farther and father forward and came thisclose to toppling over entirely. One more millimeter and I am fairly certain that our entire little group would have fallen right into the middle of Hollywood Boulevard – and either right on top of Jen or right under several moving cars. It was one of the scarier moments of my life and I was crushed so strongly against the barricade that I could hardly breathe.

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I managed to snap a couple of pics of my girl amidst the chaos and while Pinky kept yelling out, “Please take a photo with my friend, she’s your biggest fan!”, the screaming was so loud that Jen did not even hear her. And sadly, in chaos such as that, there was absolutely no way in heck that anyone could have gotten a picture with the star. Such a bummer! I have to say that Jen looked ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS, though! It is mind-boggling to me that she is 42!!!! Sigh!

Jennifer Aniston signing autographs at Horrible Bosses premiere
You can watch a video that Mikey took of the Jen madness by clicking above. As you can see, Jen had a security team of no less than six people surrounding her at all times and, due to all of the pushing and shoving, they would not let her get within five feet of the fan barricade.
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After the celebrity arrivals were over, I was thoroughly beat and pretty much intent on heading straight home. I felt like I had been through a war! LOL But Pinky convinced me to stick around for a couple of hours to try to catch some of the celebs leaving the premiere and I figured since I had already come that far, I may as well stay. And I am so glad that I did as, shortly after the movie ended, we ran into Zachary Levi, from Chuck, who was a complete and total sweetheart! Not to mention a total cutie!
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We also saw Oscar Nunez from The Office . . .
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. . . and Joey Lawrence, who was sadly not as friendly as I assumed he’d be.
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Ioan Gruffudd, from Fantastic Four, also walked by, but he was ABSOLUTELY mobbed. He is standing somewhere in the middle of that mass of people pictured above, so I did not even attempt to get a photograph with him. Pinky, who always gets her man, still had the strength left to brave the masses, though, and did get a picture! What can I say, the girl has got mad skills. We also spotted Trevor Donovan from 90210, but he FLAT-OUT REFUSED to take a picture with us. Pinky and I were the only ones who even approached him, but he still turned us down big time! Ah well. All in all it was a fun night, but I don’t know that I would ever do it again. It was just a bit too crazy and out-of-control for me. Sad smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is located at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the theatre’s official website here.