In other Gavin Newsomiana, the San Francisco mayor canned his press secretary, Peter Ragone, no doubt largely due to Ragone using pseudonymous sock puppets to praise the mayor on various websites. Far more bizarre is the restraining order filed by the SF city attorney versus one Han Shin, a "new age author" with a disturbing fixation on Newsom, purple latex gloves, and tawdry concordances between the two. Money quotes after the jump.

A tipster wrote us this past weekend:

Yes, that's Nancy Pelosi in bottom left foreground, but in the background, blurry San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom touches his face, and you know how we feel about that. Newsom was interviewed last night on CBS 5, and while there was much regret and mea culping, Newsom stopped short of calling himself an alcoholic. "I don't need to drink wine, and I don't think it's helpful right now," he said. But it sure could be helpful later on, am I right? Newsom also called rumors that he snorted coke "gratuitously erroneous," which is right on. Sometimes we're wrong just for the hell of it.

[Photo: Getty]

PAUL BOUTIN - San Francisco's city attorney is investigating more than $10,000 paid retroactively to Ruby Rippey-Tourk, mayor Gavin Newsom's former appointments secretary and mistress. Rippey-Tourk "received more than $10,000 in sick pay while undergoing substance abuse treatment after she left City Hall," according to an AP report. Ten grand makes a scary headline in Fargo, but here? Come on, I spend that on Zipcar.What can you get for 10K in the city?

In the scant few days before his sex scandal broke, San Fran Mayor Gavin Newsom attended the Davos conference once again (though probably not on the Google jet this time). Nevertheless, he managed to appear for a Reuters interview in Second Life, which is only slightly more boring to watch than sex in Second Life. Mostly dry fare, though Newsom notes that of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore, one of those three will not appear in photos with him due to the publicity around Newsom's marrying of gay couples. We're guessing the other two might be steering clear of him for awhile as well. Best quote about Second Life: "Just in case the public gets fed up with the real me, I can point them here." As can we.

Despite a mere hiccup in electoral support, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom may be enduring just the beginning of fallout from his affair with the wife of his campaign manager, Alex Tourk. Word around the Valley is that angel investor Ron Conway is cutting his ties with Newsom, making it clear that his loyalties lie with Tourk (Conway's wife Gayle is said to be particularly unamused by Newsom's antics). Further, Sequoia super-VC Mike Moritz has canceled a Newsom fundraiser, though it's unclear if it was to be a campaign event or something for Newsom's charity, SF Connect. The Mayoral Abandonment Watch is on. If you hear of anyone else heading for the lifeboats, let us know.

So what's up with Gavin Newsom, the handsome SF mayor who was apparently such an unregenerate drunk that he slept with his campaign manager's wife? Though he's set to enter some kind of friendly rehab-like "helping," it looks like he's also going to pay his campaign manager's salary until the poor cuckold finds a new job (the manager, Alex Tourk, resigned after confronting Newsom with the affair on January 31). Newsom's staff tried to find a way to pay Tourk's salary with campaign funds, but it looks like the cash will have to come from the mayor's personal hot pocket. Since we started a trend (two = trend) of running pics of Newsom touching himself on the face, check after the jump for our fulfillment of readers' demands (two readers = demand) for a gallery of such photos.

PAUL BOUTIN - Anonymous tip from a friend in town for RSA:

We might have hoped for a day free of news from Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's sexomatic mayor. However, it turns out that Mayor Newsom's "renewed vigor" involves entering a rehabilitation program to deal with his drinking problem. However, the Delancey Street Foundation program doesn't require residency, so Newsom won't be stepping aside as mayor. Despite Delancey's claims that it's "no lightweight or B.S." program, Newsom may not be getting "counseling" so much as "helping." In future, he promises to not to "screw the brains out" of his employees' wives so much as "get buzzed and cop the occasional feel."

What does a mayor have to do to lose the love of San Francisco? Just because he banged an employee-pal's wife, that's no reason to dislike the guy. SFist has more roundup links than you'll ever need, but read on for the very latest.

You know Gavin Newsom as the mayor of San Francisco who gay-married all those gay couples in 2004 (which was really awesome until it unwittingly energized the conservative base to vote for gay marriage bans and gave key battleground states to Bush). Unlike our Mayor Mike, whose girlfriend is boringly age appropriate (we imagine him cutting his Friday dates short because it's Silhouette Night with his mother), Dashin' Gavin, 39, is dating a 20-year-old model/waitress named Brittanie Mountz (not her stage name, sadly).

Last night, I cheated my way into a book party for California-based writer and web publisher Arianna Huffington at the San Francisco guest house of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and romance novelist Melanie Craft Ellison. First lesson: Don't go to a society event dressed for a Silicon Valley geek party. Second lesson: F. Scott Fitzgerald was right, the rich are not like you and me.

A final takeaway from the SF Chronicle's story on Gavin Newsom and the Google guys. On a chartered jet to Switzerland's Davos summit, Larry and Sergey gave rides to a few A-listers.

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom on choosing Google or another candidate to blanket SF with wifi:

SF mayor Gavin Newsom, explaining his friendship with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin:

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom pays the price of posing with every wealthy citizen in the Bay Area.