Gisele's pregnant! Or so says an unnamed source...

I once had the opportunity to be an unnamed source. I was in college and working a crappy telemarketing job. It was fun though because three of my friends worked there and if you weren't doing well a boss would tell you to go "monitor" someone. This meant you would take a break from soliciting and listen in on someone who was doing better. This was right when the Jerky Boys hit and we would take on these Frank Rizzo- or Sol Rosenberg-type voices when we were being monitored.

There were a bunch of interesting people who worked there. I forget his name but there was this really charismatic black dude fresh out of jail who was the highest-earning caller at one point. They were really big on publicizing the stats and rankings of each caller. The only way you could make more than 6 bucks an hour was to have a high enough dollar to call ratio which would place you on the "grid" as they called it. I think I managed to stay on the grid for like 2 or 3 shifts. I wasn't terribly motivated. Anyhow, it turned out the high-earner guy was completely fabricating his stats. He was in cahoots with the "verifier" who agreed to verify his phony gifts and credit card numbers. They were both fired shortly thereafter. Real brain trust those two were... not sure why they thought this was a sustainable racket.

There was also a bunch of punk rockers who worked there. These were the O.G.-type punk rockers. Not those skinny-jean scenesters you see today. These kids were squatters and Food Not Bombs activists; more into the politics of punk than the fashion. Anyhow, one of these kids was Jenny Nickles (misspelling intentionally); daughter of the famous film director Mike Nickles. He's probably most famous for directing The Graduate and being married to Dianne Sawyer. Jenny had a short stint as an actress; she's in my all-time favorite Woody Allen movie: Crimes and Misdemeanors. Anyhow, she was cool. I only really hung out with her once; a bunch of us went to see Reservoir Dogs when it first came out.

A buddy of mind told me who she was. The story around the office was that she was estranged from her father. She had rejected her ruling-class lifestyle and was determined to epater la bourgeoisie. She lived in a building with no electricity or running water and when her father tried to help her out, she ripped up his $300,000 check! So I'm at a bar one night and I meet a woman and somehow this story comes up. I tell her the whole bit, just as I described above. We exchange numbers and the next day I get a call from some British guy from The Globe! He tells me that they want to run the story about Jenny ripping up the check. Would I be the unnamed source, he asks me. I said no way--not interested, sorry. He says, "Well, you will be compensated, sir." I reconsidered temporarily and asked how much. I think it was like a thousand bucks or so. I decided against it because, a) I still worked there with her; b) I didn't even know if it was true; and c) it all was so unseemly. I guess at the end of the day I'm a relatively principled person.