Welcome to SV Confidential, the Valleywag court watch that starts with Day 1 of the Congressional hearings for Hewlett-Packard. Today, Congress starts figuring out who to blame for an espionage case that may be just one of scads of corporate investigation scandals.
The Broward-Palm Beach New Times has a lengthy, disgusting story about a local multimillionaire named D. Bruce McMahan who, at the age of 65, married his 35-year-old daughter, Linda Marie Hodge McMahan Schutt. We'd rather not go into the details (save for the bit about their DNA being found on Linda's dildo), but the marriage ended in a nasty legal disaster. What makes this all relevant is an aside about one of McMahan's many ex-wives, Melinda Ewell, who herself had an ugly divorce from McMahan sometime before he tried to seduce her daughter:
Via Grub Street, some disturbing news about Chinatown Brasserie, the restaurant for those who want great Chinese food but don't want to wade through the aromas of Chinatown and will happily pay three times the price for the privilege. It seems Executive chef Tyson Ophaso attempted to intervene in an altercation between three men and the restaurant's ma tre d', "the biggest and youngest... man then dragged the hapless chef by his feet onto the sidewalk and proceeded to beat him up, despite the best efforts of Brasserie staff — but no other onlookers — to protect him."
Former Megu waitress Satomi Southward has filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit against the Japanese megaplex, seeking $20 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The suit alleges that Southward endured all sorts of nasty things at the Tribeca joint: head chef Mitsuo Endo sexually humiliated her in front of the staff and inappropriately touched her with utensils (oh, those dirty spatulas); line chef Lawrence Herman accused her of blowing a banana; and, rather horrifyingly, Southward claims that she was drugged during the restaurant's holiday party, only to regain consciousness to Herman "shoving his fingers in her vagina." Don't you love Christmas in New York?
Production on an episode of CSI: New York was halted yesterday when a building engineer discovered an actual mummified corpse near the shooting locale. The CSI set was on the seventh floor of a downtown Los Angeles building; the body was found on the fifth floor after the engineer checked on an incommunicado tenant. Neither Gary Sinise nor any of his unfeasibly snacky assistant necrophiliacs were on hand at the time (or so they claim), but the message is clear: Film a NYC show in LA, and people are going to get hurt, capice?
Under what has to be our favorite headline since "Revealed! Seahorse Sluts," Kati Cornell reports that reputed crime figure "John "Junior" Gotti made a failed bid to turn himself into a publishing king by investing in a celebrity-packed magazine for prison inmates called Hottie." We're going to forego the obvious suggestion that perhaps Maer Roshan missed out on an alternate opportunity to fund Radar and just point out the fact that even Victoria Gotti thought this was a bad idea, and she doesn't say no to anything. Still, we're not sure that her judgment was correct in this case: We've obtained a test cover Junior put together, and we think the thing shows potential. You'll find it after the jump.
These two items didn't actually appear next to each other in today's Post, but it kind of strikes us as a missed opportunity.
This week's tech news is all about "pretexting," the method that investigators hired by Hewlett-Packard used to get the personal phone records of reporters and HP board members. But what is it? You'd better know, because it's about to blow up the business world.
Breaking: We're hearing that Kevlar spokesman and hip-hop role model 50 Cent, innocently driving his silver Lamborghini just like any of us would, has been arrested on the corner of 35th and 8th, possibly for cocaine. Per usual, this is completely uncomfirmed, based on rumor and hearsay — and yet totally believable.
Charles Kushner — convicted tax evader, prostitute dispatcher, and father of new Observer owner Jared Kushner — was released from his New Jersey halfway house last week. He wasn't exactly serving hard time, of course. However, it turns out that Kushner was originally sent to a prison camp at Alabama's Maxwell Air Force Base, but in addition to time off for good behavior, Kushner got his sentence further reduced by completing an alcohol abuse program. This raised a few eyebrows among those that knew him, since his drinking problem was news to them. The emancipated Kushner decamped to his Long Branch mansion for the Labor Day weekend, and was supposedly set to return to work at his real estate company, Kushner Cos., as of yesterday — though it's unclear what he'll be doing there, since he stepped down as chairman before going to jail. Something tells us he'll be taking back the big chair and knocking back a few stiff drinks by Friday. If you spot Charlie in the office, let us know.
Q. What's the difference between HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and once-jailed hacker Kevin Mitnick?
A. One's a pretexter, the other's a convicted pretexter!
The reason for venture capitalist Tom Perkins's resignation from the HP board of directors became clear today when Newsweek reported that chairwoman Patricia Dunn sniffed out directors' home phone records using possibly illegal methods of "pretexting" (obtaining personal info under false pretenses).
From this weekend's Styles section, a little nightlife preview:
