MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said a faceless YouTube clip of him yelling at co-workers has been removed.
The incident "was 2½ years ago, three years ago," Lindell told me Tuesday. "They're taking it off. Our lawyers are getting it removed from YouTube. We're investigating it."
Ahh, yet on Wednesday an especially inept user of the Web and MEdia member had no trouble finding a YouTube clip of one of the two tirades sent to me recently.
Lindell said he believes two former employees and relatives — including one to whom he is related no more — were responsible for recording the embarrassing audio of the television infomercial star.
What caused this meltdown?
"I don't know. That was three years ago. Might have been five years ago," said Lindell.
In one clip I heard Lindell ranting, as you'd expect a businessman to do, over a problem with 150,000 orders while employees were sitting around instead of working.
"Don't shake your [expletive] head," Lindell says to a woman.
In the more colorful clip, in which Lindell is in full F-bomb tantrum, the woman (whose voice I did not recognize) is clearly not threatened by the boss' behavior.
"Omigod, you're [expletive] crazy," the female voice says to Lindell.
Lindell said the two clips I heard were "100 percent from the same incident." The tipster who provided my clips wrote in one e-mail's subject field: "his behavior daily in our office."
Lindell told me he no longer acts this way at the office. Lindell said MyPillow no longer employs the human resources executive I met at its Chanhassen HQ a year ago. "We have a company now that we employ [for HR]," he said. I told Lindell he needed to send himself to HR.
"Yeah, yeah yeah," he said with a weak laugh.
Vincent's 'Petite Fromage'
Chloe Neige Francoual has already experienced a Hawaiian respite from this harsh Minnesota winter, which shouldn't be a problem for a girl with her middle name.
Neige "means 'snow' in French," said her dad, Vincent Francoual, owner of Vincent A Restaurant on Nicollet Mall. Born Oct. 26 to Brenda Maurseth, snowy Chloe's already been to Chicago, too. "She has her French passport," Chef Vincent proudly told me. In other words, baby is ready for a trip this summer to France, where her paternal grandparents will see her for the first time.
A U.S. passport for the "Petite Fromage," as Daddy calls Chloe, is on her parents' to-do list.
Lange, the bird smuggler
The characters in Jessica Lange's children's book, "It's About a Little Bird," are her granddaughters, she recently told "Ellen."
"And it's a true story. It's about me telling them about the time I came back from Rome and smuggled a little canary in my pocket," Lange told the talk show host.
"Did it live?" Ellen DeGeneres asked. "It did. It lived a long, long life after I brought it home," Lange said.
It was another charming exchange between the acting great and the talk show host, who wanted to know about a tattoo on Lange's wrist.
"It's a Celtic knot," explained Lange, who said she normally tries to keep the 20-something-old tattoo covered.
"I have one more [tattoo]," laughed Lange. "On my hip. And that one is really old. I got that one soon after I moved to Paris when I was 19 years old. That's just a quarter-moon. A full moon would be fitting now."
Lange said she is about to sign off from her four-year stint on "American Horror Story," where she's played roles that are getting her recognized on the street for the first time.
"Well, I don't believe that," said Ellen. "I refuse. You made it up for the talk show. We don't buy it. You have to have a better lie."
"I take it back," said Lange.
C.J. can be reached at cj@startribune.com and seen on Fox 9's "Buzz." E-mailers, please state a subject; "Hello" does not count.
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