Does Lady Gaga Have Island Fever?

If the children will jump in their mental time machines and go back to the fall of 2010 they should recall the deafening crush of whispers and reports about global superstar Lady Gaga's (alleged) hunt for a hideaway house on the almost preposterously preppy Martha's Vineyard. It was snitched at the time that Miss Gaga loved the Vineyard and thought it would be a perfect place to vanish and rejuvenate after her Monster Ball tour wraps up in 2011.

It wasn't so long ago that Miss Gaga shacked up in a dingy tenement building on the Lower East Side, just a few blocks from where Your Mama lived for about a hundred years. Miss Gaga–nee the far more prosaic Stefani Germanotta–has earned a vast and growing fortune in a very short time and can now well afford to live how and where she wants but ever since becoming wildly and filthy rich always bizzy beaver has had a somewhat bumpy real estate ride.

Last year Your Mama heard from an unimpeachable source that Miss Gaga considered the purchase of a $16,500,000 house in Beverly Hills, CA that we also heard that Nicole Kidman–who already owns a house in the 'hood–made an offer on. However and instead, the sartorial daredevil leased a mansion in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles for $25,000 per month owned by the same folks at the $16,500,000 house she thought about buying. Her manager–or agent or somebody who makes a lot of money from Gaga's gyrations–gave her a vintage convertible Rolls Royce to drive. Alas, Miss Gaga quickly decided she didn't like life in L.A. and high-tailed it back to her native New York City where she led celebrity property gossips on a wild goose chase as she toured just about every apartment and penthouse in downtown Manhattan with a monthly rent above $20,000.

Last summer there was a lot of confusion and scads of reports that Miss Gaga might be interested in purchasing a multi-million dollar mansion in the Hamptons. Some reports speculated that she'd opted to and already had leased a house for the summer. Your Mama, iffin we're being honest, has no idea if Miss Gaga spent time in the Hamptons last summer or not.

The latest gossip on the topic to come straight out of Martha's Vineyard suggests that Miss Gaga is not buying on Martha's Vineyard proper but building a Haus of Gaga on Chappaquiddick, a separate island at the eastern end of the Vineyard island that feels doubly remote since it is accessible only by ferry from Edgartown. Chappaquiddick, Chappy in local parlance, is perhaps and for better or worse most famous for being the locale where in 1969 Senator Ted Kennedy's car went off Dyke's Bridge into Poucha Pond and killed his lady friend Mary Jo Kopechne.

Anyhoo, according to the latest whispers around Chappy and Edgartown, Miss Gaga is engaged in building a "coo-coo and contemporary" style crib right up next door to the rather attractive island getaway of trout-pouted actress Meg Ryan who had her house featured last year on the glossy pages of Elle Decor.

It's hard to imagine that Miss Gaga and Miz Ryan will become the sort of neighbors who share gardening tips or get drunk together on Thursday afternoons like Your Mama used to do with our sassy and much-missed neighbor Rosemary when we summered on the east end of Long Island. But then again, maybe they'll become fast friends as they lallygag the summer away braiding each other's hair on their rather remote spit of land on Chappaquiddick.

Now kids, keep in mind that this is all just rumor and gossip that floats around on the ferries and gets passed along on the deep shaded porches all around the island. We scooched around in the property records for a few minutes but came up empty handed and there seems to be no available confirmation from her people that Miss Gaga is or is not buying or building a house on Martha's Vineyard. We'll just have to buckle in and wait to see.

Miz Ryan, the current paramour of John Cougar Mellencamp, also owns a spectacular house in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles that sits next door to smoldering fashion designer/filmmaker Tom Ford and is currently leased out to Oscar winner Diane Keaton who recently sold her Beverly Hills house to Nip/Tuck and Glee creator Ryan Murphy who is, we hear through the celebrity real estate grapevine, interested in buying the home of yet another Oscar-winning lady. It is, children, a tangled web these celebrities weave with their myriad and near-constant real estate machinations.

A short list of other notable homeowners on the dee-voon Martha's Vineyard include tech tycoon turned art collector Peter Norton, Naomi Foner and Stephen Gyllenhaal–although with their dee-vorce and alleged money troubles we're not sure of the status of that house, chat show host and Donald Trump mocker David Letterman, Emmy-winning lefty-lib writer/producer Larry David and the most marvelous earth-momma Carly Simon and her big ol' teeth.

Now then, what does a meat dress donning gal like Gaga wear the beach? A bikini of glass shards and butterfly wings? A one piece number made of tin foil with a dangling train of sea shells and bottle caps? A bedazzled burqa? Anyone?