Eric Brown, Yahoo's new head of PR, just started work on Monday. He's ostensibly in charge of enforcing Bartz's edict to "dropkick to fucking Mars" any employees caught leaking things to the press. But before he does that, he'd like to tell you about his love for champagne, reading the Kindle in bed and his "couple of very close friends" that he frequently crashes with in Paris three or four times per year (sounds cozy!).

Kara Swisher at All Things D got Brown's companywide introduction email. This guy is going to be awesome.

—-From: Eric Brown (SVP Global Communications) Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 6:00 PM Subject: It' s great to be here!

Global comms team,

Thank you so much for the wonderful intro materials you gave me. I' m going to spend quite a bit of time on the org charts, budgets, plans, and results package you compiled for me. But I' ve been especially thrilled with the personal profiles you sent my way. I' ve seen other people whose phobias are the same as mine: spiders and heights; enjoyed how many of you put Paris as your favorite place on Earth; and am impressed with how many amazing books this group has collectively read.

I must also admit to being slightly intimidated by all of you who put " bad grammar" as a pet peeve and will triple check this email to avoid any grammar infractions…

I know I have a Thursday group meeting with you, but thought the least I could do on day one is return the favor and complete my own handbook profile. So here goes…

Date I joined Yahoo!: today (6 July 2009), though I did spend two days at the senior leaders meeting in mid-June and thank all of you who were there for the warm welcome in Half Moon Bay.

What I do here: lead a team of amazing, intelligent, motivated people who put Yahoo! in the best light possible and tell our story in compelling ways that make users and advertisers around the world want to embrace Yahoo! heartily.

Where I grew up: Warsaw, Virginia– a tiny town about 90 minutes from Richmond, Virginia and 150 minutes from Washington, D.C. For those of you who are American history buffs, Warsaw is about 10 minutes from the birthplace of Robert E. Lee and 15 minutes from the birthplace of George Washington.

Where I live now: Sunnyvale, California. Can' t beat the commute.

College: William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. BA in English. Loved lit crit. Senior honors thesis was on post-WWII masculinity in American society as represented by the works of Norman Mailer.

My first job: an internship for the U.S. Navy (my parents' employer-they were civilians) analyzing different process flow diagram software packages for a team creating warship defense systems. For the rest of high school and college, I had LOTS more fun as a waiter at dive restaurant called The Stagecoach. The food was ghastly; the people were amazing.

What I did before Yahoo!: I ran comms (PR, social media, internal comms, and exec comms) for NetApp, managing a global team of about 60+ people doing amazing enterprise and B2B work in 30+ companies worldwide. I' m very excited to learn " consumer" from all of you– and equally excited to share experiences from my almost 20 years in the business in return.

What I do when I' m not here: I love travel (had a super 3 days in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney two weekends ago), cooking (yes, seriously-cooking is very therapeutic and relaxing for me), and reading (though I haven' t picked up a Norman Mailer since my undergrad days).

If the Internet didn' t exist, what I' d be doing right now: teaching literature to high school students. I believe that at some point in my life, I have to return to society what it has given me. And I' d be a better teacher than firefighter or doctor!

Favorite place on Earth: Paris. I try to go there 3 or 4 times a year and have a couple of very close friends who are kind enough to let me crash with them. Second favorite is Hong Kong.

Proudest accomplishment: professionally– being part of the " inner counsel circle" for NetApp execs on a variety of comms and marketing issues (which I hope to be here at Yahoo! as well); personally– being a good friend, partner, and family member.

Favorite Yahoo! moment: there have only been 3 days of them so far-and all have been great. I felt very honored and lucky to be part of the Half Moon Bay leadership summit– and meeting people from all over Yahoo! there was inspiring.

Favorite book: someone who majored in literature can' t just name one, so I'll split them into categories… Favorite works of literature: The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Favorite work that kindled my imagination: The Hobbit by Tolkien. Favorite works that make me laugh: anything by David Sedaris (the man is wicked funny).

Favorite movie: two– Moulin Rouge and Orlando– both visually stunning.

My first car: a Buick Skyhawk in a horrible shade of brown– the thing was so ratty that I had to add oil to it every other day so it wouldn' t break down– it made its last hurrah on a cross-country trip from Virginia to California and made it over the Rocky Mountains without any issues but then was quite unhappy crossing the Sierra Nevada range.

My next vacation destination: somehow I think I' m going to be very busy for the next few months so I' m not planning any big trips, though I have told a friend I' ll attend his 50th birthday party in Munich and from there I' ll try to drive to Vienna for a few days.

My hidden talent: navigating subway systems when everyone else insists on taking a taxi (the exception: Tokyo– because it is just too darned crowded).

My favorite online video: I like online videos to catch up on things that MTV no longer carries– like videos from Gus Gus (though I only see one of their videos on Yahoo! Music… )

My guiltiest pleasure: ice cream in bed with the Kindle (yes, just as Elisa put in her email)– the ice cream HAS to be Ben & Jerry's (LOVE being on this floor with the conference room names!) and my favorite is Peach Cobbler.

I have an intense fear of: spiders and heights– I even had a spider vacuum for a while so I didn't have to come near ‘ em or smash ‘ em– but then I was scared they'd survive the suction and electric shock and crawl back somewhere– so now they' re routinely smashed.

My biggest pet peeve: beating around the bush– tell me what you want me to know because I' m not telepathic and say it without a lot of metaphor or subtlety– if you really want me to know something, please make it crystal clear.

My best celebrity encounter: dinner with friends in the outdoor section of the Restaurant du Palais Royal in Paris on a gorgeous May evening– next to us was Tom Ford (at the height of his Gucci power)– I have never wanted to NOT eat so much in my life.

Something few people know about me: I abhor cava (sorry to those of you in Spain)– champagne is my favorite drink on Earth, prosecco will do in a pinch, and New World sparklings are hit and miss– but I universally detest cava.

Best for advice for working with me (yes, a little changed from what you all submitted): honesty really IS the best policy– unless I' m having a bad hair day in which case please just don' t say anything about that at all.

Thanks again for having me here– and we'll speak more on Thursday.

Best regards, Eric

And his wife responded, "She said she likes daddy's show." Very nondescript and laid back.

Golf champion Woods and former Secretary of State Rice both went to Stanford, you see. They were tight.

I once sat with him at a Stanford-Duke basketball game. Stanford won on a buzzer beater, and we stormed the court together. With that kind of bonding, whom else would I pull for?

So when it came time for Rice to attend her first Masters tournament, there was no question who she wanted to follow around the course. When organizers asked, Rice writes, "I said, 'Duh?'"

Sadly, Woods groupies were lined up at the first tee two hours before he started, so Rice pretended she didn't care and was all, "that's fine, I'll just chill at the 16th tee and watch whoever."

Then in the middle of the tournament, when Woods was doing well, Rice had the chance to say "hello." But she didn't, because she didn't want to distract him. Now she has to regret that decision for the rest of her life, every time she leafs through the old Sports Illustrated Woods stories she keeps in her hope chest.

Not that it mattered: Woods choked anyway, after Rice got to see him on the 12th role. She hasn't lost faith:

When Tiger's ball hit that tree at 18, I felt like Joe Montana had just thrown a pick in a two-minute drive in the Super Bowl. But you know that Tiger will be there to do it right the next time...

When Tiger is on the course and starts one of his surges, it feels like Magic Johnson or Jerry Rice, one on one with an opponent.

Condi Rice, loyally sticking by a surger, no matter how badly he appears to have blown things. Sounds about right.

The CNN anchor and Vanderbilt family golden child went on DeGeneres' show today. Having seen Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer play along with the daytime talk show host's "dance with me" routine, he knew better: "No one really wants to see a middle-aged guy with silver hair, wriggling.

"I was raised to supress all my emotions — I can't be publicly expressing things."

You don't say!

Dowd's dad was born in Ireland, and during a trip back to her father's homestead in County Clare when she was 17, Dowd fell in love with some Irish roughneck who broke her heart and moved to Australia! Doesn't this sound like a quirky little faux-indie film that'd star Colm Meaney in a supporting role? But no, it is columnist Maureen Dowd's life.

Anyway, 2-year-old Maureen Dowd: adorable. 57-year-old Maureen Dowd: taking credit for changing the face of the presidential race by running a column where David Geffen criticized Hillary Clinton. Also here is some of that trademark Dowd wit:

She was intrigued that Obama's Irish ancestors hail from a town called Moneygall in Co. Offaly. Immediately she began, as she always does, playing around with the word.

"That's what this crisis is all about," she said. "Money and the gall of people and how they treated it."

So look for that line in a column.

The red-carpet interviewer tried to get everyone to shout their foreign and strange and difficult long names at the same time, a futile effort. "That didn't go well," he said. Indeed! Nor did the next thing.

But then Seacrest was quiet for a little while and let the kids talk, to adorable effect, thus rescuing the moment. Clip above.

(NB to Seacrest: Next time an Indian film is widely favored to win Best Picture, maybe brush up on those tricky South Asian pronunciations.)

Jessica Wakeman's New York Press feature on Charm School is, for the most part, more polite than all that. She likes the guys trying to learn how to meet women in bars. They're kind of adorable. Including the one with Asperger's syndrome. And the one who looks like the King of Queens and awkwardly twirls her on a subway platform. The one with three minimum wage jobs. Even the one who implies he'd like Wakeman's tongue piercing all over his... fantasies.

They're nice guys; most have a natural, friendly charisma, and they're not afraid to make an ernest effort and self-improvement. Wakeman can relate: "I spent three and a half hours with men who were awkward, who said strange things and tried way too hard, but I'd had a great time with them."

And yet... they're spending $3,500 per weeklong class, and they still have nothing on natural charmers like "Nick," a "very attractive," "smooth-talking New Yorker who could take home any girl he likes."

When a sweet but schlubby guy like Brian is up against an old pro on the pickup scene like Nick, it's apparent how charming he already is.

SNAP.

Here's the thing, though: a guy like Nick has to start somewhere. This particular Nick worked with Wakeman at magazine a few years ago (so either New York or Radar). And he went on to write an undercover article about pick-up artist classes. If this guy is anything like writer Neel Shah, and we're guessing he's exactly like Neel Shah, he wasn't always so smooth:

At one point, Big Business invited me to open a set with him using the mustache routine.., "It'll be easy!" he promised. Sure, for him. I barely lasted five minutes before feebly excusing myself to go get a drink; he had his girl in stitches.

Have some faith, Wakeman. The "Nicks" of the world are made, not born. (Though not at $3,500 per week. That's ridiculous.)

(Photo by jakeliefer on Flickr)

Producer David Manilow relived the experience for the Chicago Tribune:

Obama ended up dominating the conversation.
"It was unbalanced," Manilow said, "to put it charitably."

So the show never aired, but now they're putting it on on Jan. 16, as warning to future White House chefs.

Obama waffles. He panders. He admits to "mistakes." The hippie chick clearly adores him. THIS IS OUR FUTURE. If only because so many of us will be working in food service a year from now.

It comes from the Springfield 8 Theater! In Missouri!

Pitt grew up in Springfield, and still has a bevy of relatives there, like brother Doug and grandmother Clara, who the movie star often visits. Our tipster was apparently at Kickapoo High there with Pitt. And recently attended a screening at the Springfield 8, where the rumor mill was churning furiously. You know how debauched the scene at those motion picture houses can get!

I have never done anything like this before in my life and I certainly don't want my name in any magazine. However I thought I might pass along a tip I heard standing in line at the Springfield Mo. 8 theater yesterday. As you more than likely know, Springfield is the home city for Mr.B. Pitt and his family comes to visit Grandma and all the,Aunts and cousins pretty often. That big billboard on one of our streets of his brother who sells real estate is a traffic stopper for lots of women in town!

While waiting to buy our tickets a Woman was saying that on her street (same street as the Pit family) the big news was that Brad and Angelina had announced to the family that they are expecting a new baby again in a few months.

I though you might like to check that one out and see what you hear on your end. His family is very nice and well liked in our community. I graduated a year ahead of Brad from Kickapoo.

Hot diggity!

Unfortunately, reps for Pitt and Jolie have been swatting down pregnancy rumors basically every week or so for the past two months, usually in the lesser celebrity magazines. First the rumor was Jolie was pregnant, then it was denied. Next she was said pregnant with twins, then it was, inevitably, denied.

But, you know, In Touch claimed Pitt simply wasn't ready to go public yet. It's possible that, having told his family, he's now ready. But we wouldn't bet our popcorn on it.

Heard anything? Perhaps while waiting at the Springfield Starbucks or whatever? We're all ears.

(Getty pic above taken Dec. 9 at the premiere of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Black can be very slimming!)

Laugh childishly along with the GMA crew in the clip above, courtesy intern Bette Bentley

The Secretary of State ended up with "an emerald and diamond necklace, ring, bracelet and earrings," reports AP — and that was before the end of January.

The box for those gifts was valued at $5,000.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah upgraded Rice from emeralds to rubies, and threw in a bracelet and ring. $165,000 in loot for one trip!

Of course it's just our own oil money, coming back to us. Uselessly, since it will sit in a General Services Administration warehouse, because no one gets to keep the gifts under federal law. What a hilarious way to waste money!

Rice made the best of it, though: She "forgot" until now to disclose a "$170,000 flower petal motif necklace," received from Abdullah in 2005. Ha.

Remnick hired a guy named Ari Zenelman to bludgeon the magazine's famously coddled staff contributors into doing more posts, according to the Observer. So basically all journalists everywhere have some kind of quota now, just like at Gawker! Just wait until they start breaking Web traffic down by writer, New Yorker people.

Anyway, the writers are clearly outside their comfort zones, or maybe just our comfort zones.

Television writer Nancy Franklin actually wrote the following in a post Tuesday she dubbed "Nancy's Fancies," about her top TV moments of 2008: "David [Letterman], this is between you and me. I loved you in 2008 as I have always loved you. You will be my favorite late-night talk-show host 4ever..." (Emphasis added, although it does jump off the page in the original.)

Also yesteday, the magazine's George Packer got totally snarky with actor Sean Penn, sarcastically calling him a "veteran foreign correspondent" and mocking his writing:

Travelling in the company of Douglas Brinkley, the noted actor, and Christopher Hitchens, the world-famous hedge-fund executive and philanthropist, Penn was the invited guest of President Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela, well-known as an advocate for the Social Gospel, and of Raúl Castro, Cuba’s humorous, wonky, and athletically gifted new chief executive. ...Good interviewers also know how to analyze the material they work so hard to elicit, and Penn treats his readers to gems such as “Inside, I’m wondering, Have I got a big story to break here? Or is this of little relevance?”

Then Packer writes that Penn should "stick to what you do well," acting, and stop attempting journalism, "which isn't his job."

Speaking of which: Stay in your lane, Packer. We'll take the bitchy media meta-commentary from here, thank you very much. (Although, in the meantime, our friend's sister's boyfriend heard some dirt on Penn that might make a good blind item; what's your "tips" email??)

It was moving to see Michelle Obama on stage with her husband, and she's not a woman we would ever cross. She's also elegant! But what was the story with that dress? A lucky garment of some sort, perhaps?

A special comment to Keith Olbermann: The American people do not appreciate being misled, SIR, by your branding lies. But they do think your Special Comments are kind of adorable, and your ratings will probably go through the roof, so no harm no foul.

Below, the first Special Regular Special comment, about the "divisive ugly paranoid bleatings of this presidential race."