Council member: I heard you need my John Doe on something.
Clerk: I need your signature on some documents.
Council member: Yeah, my John Doe.
Clerk, laughing: You mean your John Hancock — John Doe is an anonymous dead body. [Council member looks puzzled.] John Hancock has the biggest signature on the Declaration of Independence — that's where the term comes from.
Council member: Oh.
This is the craziest thing we've heard in a while. And we at Valleywag hear some crazy things. Which Silicon Valley founder was ousted as CEO after an incident where he stumbled into work blind drunk, unbuckled, and peed on the carpet? What makes this tip more outrageous is the claim that he probably would have gotten away with a slap on the wrist, if not for the presence of a visitor. Specifically, a less-than-amused female marketer from Intel, there to talk ad sponsorships. That slipup provided the board with the excuse it needed to oust him. Any guesses who it was?
CEO Eric Schmidt, in carrying on with women he's not married to, has apparently set the tone for the rest of the Google C-suite. We hear that another top executive, although he has a stunningly beautiful wife, is seeing another Google employee on the side, putting his marriage in jeopardy. Anyone care to venture a guess who it is? Leave a comment or send in a tip.
CONFONZ — Ah, yes. the age old topic of security at Microsoft. Two great tastes that just don't seem to have ever made it into the same sandwich. With old MS demanding attention for its reinvigorated security efforts in Vista, you'd think they're have hired the right people to lock that sucker down. But as it turns out, this little lady, who remains safely hidden beneath the veil of secrecy we call the Blind Item, is a sure fire loser with a cheating past and a complete lack of skills. According to the buzz around her credentials, the only reason this hidden lass became so well known at Symantec before MS poached her is because she had help crafting exploits from someone very close to her. Too bad she decided to cheat on him, because when MS asks her to perform, she'll have no one to do her work for her!
• A celebrity is openly doing lines while wearing a dirty brown shirt. Fine. But smelling like drugs? That's just tacky. [Hotel Chatter]
• Lance Bass goes on a gay date with his gay boyfriend. Because he is gay. [TMZ]
• Literary journal n+1 successfully raises $3,000 to give to thief. [NY Sun]
• Comedian earns spot in NY Post's list of "25 Sexiest New Yorkers." Which makes sense, as he has been running through our mind of Mencia all day. [The Apiary]
• Hurricane Ernesto leaves devastating puddle in its wake. [One Park Reality]
• The originator of the Valerie Plame leak steps forward. Not Karl Rove or Dick Cheney, yet still very, very ugly. [NYT]
• Elizabeth Spiers' racy tell-all about the founding of Gawker omits the sexy scene where she and Nick Denton meet at a Metafilter party. [BeE Magazine]
I think they call these "virals" or something. CMP Media has been running a lo-fi news show (called "The News Show") since last August, covering business news (which is really tech news when you back up a bit). This week they started a feature, "Who am I?" To spare you five minutes of cheaply produced video, here's a transcript:
Blind item: What music company exec got a little too tipsy at CES Vegas? Maybe this man thought he'd wandered into a party for the nearby AVN conference — or maybe "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" was an unwise motto.
Wherein we retire to the palace drawing room, press a pinchful of snuff to our powdered nostril, and attend to the impenetrably layered, fugue-like prose of E! gossip maestro Ted Casablanca. In today's masterful blind concerto, Casablanca serenades us with the tale of Vamperella Vein-Pop, who forgoes the love of a commoner for the nobler allure of celebrity suitor Slick Brick. But just when you've heard all the notes before, Casablanca adds a gay-bomb coda to his composition. Douse yourself in expensive perfumes and lace up your tightest corset before succumbing to One Bodily Fluid Blind Vice:
We'd never think of sending you off into the weekend without your blind item guesses. But first, relive the magic of One Forced Fagola Blind Vice:
From today's Gatecrasher, a new frontier in blind itemization: Ben Widdicombe's Friday Word Puzzle!
We admit we were just a touch skeptical about the alleged New York mag assistant editor who was refused admission to a Meatpacking hotspot. It's tough to imagine a magazine person who'd pull that move in person — telling the bouncer, "You're denying entrance to an assistant editor for New York magazine?" If it were us, we'd call in advance and try to pull media cred to get a reservation, because the risk of refusal at the door is too high — and would be too public.
Outside of a certain Meatpacking District "hotspot" this past Saturday night, a Gawker spy witnessed the following exchange between a tall, 30-ish brunette and the venue's iron-fisted doorman:
