Nine short months ago, employees at Random House were silently urinating in their knickers after a new CEO seemed poised to drastically cut budgets. Now, they're poppin bottles. What changed? Dan Brown!

If you get into a taxi and you notice the name of the driver is Gulam Mustafa, Haron ur Rashid, Fabio Perlta, Tareque Ahmed, Sergio Castillo, Deniz Getting, or Jack Dym, consider yourself lucky. These were the seven NYC cab drivers—out of a total of 20 from around the country—who were honored for their "character and compassion" yesterday at the annual Driver Recognition Ceremony, hosted by the International Association of Transportation Regulators and the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. It's sort of like the Oscars for cab drivers, albeit with fewer fake breasts and not quite as many designer gowns. [NYT]

Bernie Madoff's home in Montauk, which went up for sale two weeks ago, has found a buyer. ABC News reports the beachfront home has been sold to an unidentified person in an all cash deal "over the asking price," according to Joan and Raymond Hegner of the Corcoran Group. Interest in the fraudster's property was "fast and furious," say the brokers. Maybe it was it the water pressure that sealed the deal? [ABC News, previously]

He's just a gigolo and everywhere he goes, people know the part he's playing. At least now they do. Do they know the role of the actor with herpes or the actress who dissed the Real Housewives of New York?

Twitter is poised to close a $50 million funding round that values the microblogging startup at a staggering $1 billion, according to TechCrunch and AllThingsD. Since closing its last venture round in February, then, the startup's value has grown fourfold.

Raymond Clark III has gone from "Person of Interest" to accused perp. The Yale lab tech was arrested this morning and charged with killing Annie Le. At least all the scrutiny wasn't misdirected. The latest news makes him sound worse.

Douglas Hannant previewed his spring collection in the Terrace Room of the Plaza on Monday night, which is located just upstairs from the designer's brand new, Geoffrey Bradfield-designed boutique. Given Hannant's popularity with the Upper East Side moneyed set, a long list of society fixtures turned up to pay tribute to Hannant, including Tinsley Mortimer, Cece Cord, Bettina Zilkha, Jennifer Creel, Annie Churchill, Alexandra Lebenthal, Gillian Hearst, and Valesca Guerrand-Hermès. Roving party reporter Douglas Marshall caught up with Beverly Johnson, legendary model and the first African-African woman to appear on the cover of Vogue, to ask her about the modeling biz today and Tyra Banks.

• Neil Hirsch, the man who founded Telerate (sold to Dow Jones in 1990 for $1.5 billion), co-founded the Bridgehampton Polo Club in 1995, and was once married to comedy club queen Caroline Hirsch, has put his five-story townhouse at 15 Sutton Place on the market. The 3,919-square-foot manse with patio, terrace, multiple balconies, four fireplaces, and elevator (and "enclosed by a 19th Century wrought iron gate"), is listed with Stribling for $12 million. [Cityfile, Stribling]
• Alex Roepers, the founder of Atlantic Investment Management, and his wife, Shafi, have paid "about $17.5 million" for ex-Warnaco CEO Linda Wachner's 4-acre parcel of land on Meadow Lane in Southampton. The couple is reportedly planning to use the land to build a new home, which will be designed by architect Peter Marino. [NYP]

Director Baz Luhrmann turns 47 today. Gossip Girl's Matthew Settle is turning 40. Joe Bastianich, the restaurateur and partner of Mario Batali, is 41. Russian supermodel Eugenia Volodina is 25. Supreme Court Justice David Souter turns 70. American Idol contestant-turned-Broadway star Constantine Maroulis is turning 34. One of the Miller sisters, Princess Marie-Chantal, is 41. Rapper Doug E. Fresh is turning 43. Lakers head coach Phil Jackson is 64. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley turns 76. And Paula Jones is 43, although she probably shouldn't expect a birthday card from Bill Clinton.

• Does Lindsay Lohan have a beef with Taylor Momsen? At the G-Star show on Tuesday night, LiLo (with sister Ali in tow) refused to pose for pics and then started casting aside seating cards for celebs like Juliette Lewis, Christian Siriano, and Gossip Girl emo teen Taylor Momsen. When event staff intervened, Lindsay got all aggro and dropped an F-bomb, naturally. But give the girl a break. She was apparently just trying to position herself near her crush, True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten. [P6, NYDN]
• At the G-Star after-party at the Bowery Hotel later that night, Mischa Barton was a little unsteady on her feet and was slurring her words. She then hit the DJ booth, where she "danced in her own world" for an hour. [P6]
• While other celebs were at Fashion Week, Chris Brown rocked a neon orange vest over, quite appropriately, a wife-beater, back home in Richmond, Virginia. He started his year-long community service for assaulting Rihanna by picking up trash and cleaning police horse stables. Next up, graffiti removal and washing cars! [Us, NYDN]

A Hofsta University student who claims four men raped her now admits she was fibbing.

Damn! New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's assault on potentially corrupt banks continues in earnest: he has subpoenaed five Bank of America directors. And this is just the beginning...

Lindsay Lohan tried to pull rank on Taylor Momsen — and failed. Megan Fox successfully summed herself up. And Princess Margaret burned Princess Diana. Oh, yeah! It's your Thursday morning Gossip Roundup!

Good grief! Australian authorities have arrested a man who stands accused of imprisoning his daughter for 30 years and repeatedly raping, and thus impregnating her. Unlike some similarly disturbing cases — Josef Fritzl and Phillip Garrido — he remains anonymous.

Now here's a Big Apple-based show we could love. Spike Lee and Robert De Niro are coming together to bring Showtime a new drama series about the nitty-gritty 80s-version of the once-fearsome Alphabet City. It's called Alphaville. [THR]

Despite the fact that Democrats and the White House are distancing themselves from him, Jimmy Carter refuses to budge on his assertion that many of Barack Obama's opponents are racists.

Have the political gods gone crazy? It would appear that way, because the Senate voted to allow Americans, who aren't always the most stable of folk, to carry unloaded and locked guns on Amtrak trains. How can this be good?

There may be bad news for Raymond Clark III. The 24-year old has been a "person of interest" in Annie Le's strangulation death, but now police have reportedly matched DNA that implicates Clark in Le's murder. Good news for justice?

When New York news anchors mess up, they mess up big! Remember Sue Simmons and her "What the fuck are you doing here" outburst? Well, Fox 5 anchor Ernie Anastos puts her to shame.

Twitter's become quite the superstar, and it could only get bigger now that the company may soon wrap a round of funding that will bring its value to the $1 billion mark. Are ads the next step? [Reuters]