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After appearing in Scarlett Johansson's music video, Salman Rushdie says that acting is an "itch that needs scratching." [Vulture]

Don't call that thing wrapped around Miley Cyrus a bed sheet! It's a "duchess satin stole, Champagne, specially made," says Vanity Fair. [Radar]

Sting likes to tight-rope walk in his garden in England. [P6]

Steve Martin has caught onto an important downtown hipster trend and is now wearing a fedora everywhere he goes. [P6]

Oh noes! All those pictures from the set of Sex and the City: The Movie might be carefully planned trickery on the part of the cast and crew to mislead us! [NY Daily News]

Girls gone litigious! Ashley Dupre was offered one million dollars by Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis within 24 hours of filing a $10 million suit against his company. [NY Daily News]

How'd Lenny Kravitz get pulled into a tabloid love quadrangle with Lenny Kravitz, Mr. and Mrs. Rod and Madonna? According to Page Six, it was the revenge of his manager Guy Oseary, whom he fired two weeks ago. [P6]

Lizzie Grubman will now manage her clients in addition to publicizing them. [P6] 

Ashley Dupré is reportedly in talks with the Los Angeles production company Handprint Entertainment and MTV to do a dating-based reality series in which she may be  "the next  Tila Tequila," says an unnamed source. [E! Online]

Stoical Exes: Sarah Larson isn't mad about being dumped by George Clooney; she's thankful for the career opportunities she's gotten out of dating him! [London Telegraph]

Kirsten Dunst was seen making out with Beatrice Inn DJ Matt Creed. [P6]

The Other Woman: A former stripper who also had an affair with A-Rod says she's rooting for Mrs. Rodriguez. [Boston Herald via Daily Intel] 

Speaking of New York, Bruce Wasserstein has reportedly moved on from wife Claude to a "young Asian beauty." [NY Daily News]  

The jewelry collection belonging to Christina Onassis, daughter of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, will be auctioned off at Christie's in London. It's expected to bring in about $5.8 million. [WWD]

Brandon Davis stopped into Lily Pond and Dune in the Hamptons over the weekend, but didn't pay for the bottle service. [P6]

Robert Downey Jr. thanked Burger King for helping him ditch his drug addiction. The fast food he purchased there while on a drug binge made him hit rock bottom. [NY Daily News]

Katie Couric danced with Jimmy Fallon at the Fresh Air Fund gala. [P6]

The tattoo above Ashley Dupre's bikini line might mean 'I have a strong patron' or 'my guardian was strong.' [NY Daily News]

Nicole Kidman will join the likes of Demi Moore and Britney Spears by doing a pregnant cover for the July issue of Vogue. [FWD]

More babies! Tori Spelling gave birth to a girl yesterday. [US Weekly]

Michelle Williams is reportedly feuding with Heath Ledger's family over the late actor's will. [P6]

Ron Perelman and his ex, Patricia Duff, are back in court because a court-appointed lawyer for their 13-year-old daughter says that the girl has been subjected to emotional abuse. [NY Daily News]

Ashley Dupre thanked her fans and critics on her MySpace page yesterday. [NY Daily News]

Helena Christensen will not shake your hand if you cross her. [P6]

Larry King's wife, Shawn Southwick King, has reportedly gone to rehab for her addiction to painkillers. [P6]

Bravo's Shear Genius stylists will give New Yorkers free blow-outs in Times Square today. [The Cut]

Ashley Dupre, the hard-working Jersey girl who we thought would be leaving us for L.A. to pursue a reality TV career, is still here, it turns out, spending her time in hotel rooms and going on shopping sprees with another married man.

Today's New York Post reports that Ms. Dupre spent 24 hours with 35-year-old New Jersey asphalt heir, Thomas J. Earle. The two were reportedly seen drinking, dining and shopping together in midtown, before checking into the Gramercy Park hotel on Tuesday.

Ms. Dupre and Mr. Earle left the hotel the next day, departing 10 minutes apart.

According to the Post, Mr. Earle lives less than two miles away from Ms. Dupre's family's Jersey home and has a "very stunning" wife and two children.

The East Hampton police have reportedly been extra strict this summer trying to keep Main Street from looking like a street fair. For the Fourth of July, the Polo Ralph Lauren store wasn't allowed to give out snow cones, Dylan's Candy Bar couldn't install a soda funtain, and Tiffany's was barred from having an a cappela group perform. [NY Daily News]

Kimora Lee Simmons' Fabulosity collection launch at Hiro and was less than fabulous. [P6]

The guys behind the Odin boutique in the East Village are opening a women's store nextdoor called Pas de Deux in August. [The Cut]

A New Jersey woman is suing Ashley Dupre for using her driver's license to appear in a Girls Gone Wild video. Now when she searches her name, images of Ashley Dupre come up. [NY Daily News]

Jennifer Garner's friends confirm that she and Ben Affleck are expecting with another child. [Us Weekly]

And Uma Thurman might be too. [NY Daily News]

Police in the Hamptons tell Page Six that headband-wearing socialite Arden Wohl was arrested on Saturday night in East Hampton for writing "Ralphy Lip-Shits" (and here we are filling in a few letters the Post rendered tastefully in dashes!) in red lipstick on the facade of Ralph Lauren's store there. But she showed American spirit for taking several miniature American flags that were part of the store's holiday decoration scheme. For which the police added a charge of petit larceny. [P6]

Ashley Dupré—when will we be done with her?—has made a very awkward social move, presenting herself at the Waverly Inn. It seemed to work! [P6]

Gossip Girl's Ed Westwick is reportedly in talks to design a clothing line! Expect to see many many shorts...[Fashionista]

Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook may soon reach a settlement, which means the crazy and mostly uninteresting details of their sordid marriage will presumably stop leaking to the press. [NY Daily News]

James Franco, of Spiderman and Freaks and Geeks, is moving to New York to attend graduate school at N.Y.U. [NY Daily News]

David Patrick Columbia of New York Social Diary is upset that his profile on Remy Stern's new Cityfile Web site identifies him as gay; also, he says, they got parts of his family background and past break-ups wrong. [P6]

Vanity Fair won't be holding its annual Oscar party at Tom Colicchio's Craft this year because Graydon Carter allegedly didn't like the restaurant's corporate feel last year. [P6]

Mary Kate Olsen's new best friend is model Jessica Stam. [The Cut]

And below for your viewing pleasure, the Observer's style desk presents Simon Doonan's latest wackness: an imprecation to shun bikinis in favor of classy one piece bathing suits!

Who would have thought that all you had to do to launch a singing career these days was hook up with the governor of New York? I mean, Tila Tequila had to steadily rack up more page views than any other artist on MySpace and host a trashy MTV dating show before people started to take her musical talents "seriously." Not so for "Kristen," a.k.a. Ashley Alexandra Dupré (birth name: Ashley Youmans), the former Jersey shore resident and aspiring songstress who recently made "The Luv Gov," well ... sing!

After the identity of the 22-year-old (or 32-year-old, by some reports) upscale call girl involved in the prostitution scandal that brought down Eliot Spitzer was revealed on Wednesday night, millions of viewers flocked to her MySpace page, on which she offered a sampling of what The New York Times described as "an amateurish, hip-hop inflected rhythm and blues tune that asks, 'Can you handle me, boy?'" (Her profile is now defunct.) The Times also reported, on its DealBook blog, that thousands of listeners have flooded the startup music site AmieStreet.com, where two of Ms. Dupre's tracks are available for purchase.

So is there a burgeoning star in our midst? Billboard asked some top A&R execs to weigh in on Ms. Dupre's prospects, and here's what they had to say:

"I think her song is absolutely terrible. If people are interested in signing her, then they shouldn't be in the music business. It'd be a shame to exploit her talent based on the unacceptable reality that she was involved in. Most importantly, it destroyed multiple families. I don't think the scandal will help her at all. In fact, I think the public is a bit smarter than we think they are. Even though she's had over a million hits on her MySpace, I think people are just going there to see her pictures and laugh at her attempt to pursue a music career."

-- CHRIS ANOKUTE, Capitol Records Senior A&R Director

"The funny thing about this is that I read the story this morning, about (Dupre) wanting to be a singer, and I thought to myself that I really wanted to reach out to her. I'd be interested in what the music sounds like. I sit around hours and hours every day trying to figure out ways to break new artists. Right now, she has a platform to reach the masses, which is the toughest thing for a new artist to attain. Whether it's a good platform or a bad one, either way she has it. It all comes down to the music at the end of the day. If the music is good, she'll be able to get it heard."

-- BRIAN BERGEN, Atlantic Records A&R Manager

"As an A&R (person) I wouldn't be interested in her music solely because of ... Spitzer. But people do say any publicity is good publicity and her recent headlines would help get her some exposure. She has a platform; its just a matter of spinning off negative and making it positive. Part of being good (at) A&R is knowing where the talent is, regardless of background. If the music is good, it's enough for me to keep my ears open and follow the story. Who knows, maybe a year from now she'll be in a completely different place."

-- CONRAD DIMANCHE, A&R consultant for Bad Boy Records.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loves Sex and the City; bums cigarettes from Sarah Jessica Parker. [Intelligencer]

Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky are getting ready to wed in October. Marchesa's Georgina Chapman is reportedly designing the gown. [P6]

Salman Rushdie's 11-year-old son thinks four wives is enough. [Intelligencer]

Kate Moss will not host your party unless you let her use the bathroom with her friends. [P6]

The New York City Opera will adapt Brokeback Mountain for the fall. [NY Daily News]

Ashley Dupre reemerged with her mother over the weekend on Sea Girt's beach in New Jersey. [New York Daily News]

Jessica Alba gave birth to a girl over the weekend. [US Weekly]

If the economy plunges further, if the recession becomes a depression, if there’s blood on the streets and panic in the air, short sellers, the investors who make money by betting that stocks will fall, will be seen as an evil coterie of cackling villains that profited from downturns they may have encouraged.

More than John Paulson (who made $3.7 billion last year by betting against subprime mortgages) or David Einhorn (who may be helping Lehman Brothers go the way of Bear Stearns), James S. Chanos, the president and founder of a hedge-fund group called Kynikos (from “cynic” in Greek), may be the best short seller of them all. He’s at least one of the most lauded, considering that he started shorting Enron in November 2000, practically a year before the rest of the world, which Barron’s called “the market call of the decade, if not the past 50 years.”

Now he has a five-bedroom, 14-room triplex penthouse overlooking Central Park to reward his hard work. According to a source in the building, Mr. Chanos is in contract to buy the penthouse at the iron-fenced mansion 3 East 75th Street, listed for $24,850,000 by Paula Del Nunzio, who would not comment.

The triplex, one of seven units carved out of the 50-foot-wide Beaux-Arts mansion when it was converted into condominiums, is the kind of place with a fireplace in the master bedroom and one in the master bathroom, too. According to the listing, there’s 7,800 square feet of interior space and 3,600 square feet outdoors, spread over spaces like that master suite’s rear terrace and a high-walled front terrace.

The Post reported that Robert De Niro “came this close” to buying the penthouse. In a separate story, that paper also pointed out that Mr. Chanos knows Ashley Dupré, the prostitute that felled Eliot Spitzer. He reportedly introduced her to guests at his clambake on the East End last summer as a house-sitter. She called him Uncle Jim.

While “everyone was out on the beach partying, she was in the kitchen helping … with the dishes,” the short seller told the paper. “She’s got her heart in the right place, but maybe not her head.”

mabelson@observer.com

If Hillary Clinton doesn't make it this week, SNL's Amy Poehler will begin doing Ralph Nader impersonations instead. She's already been practicing, you see. This sounds funny, like the movie Baby Mama! [NY Daily News]

Harrison Ford pierced his ear after a "semi-drunken" lunch with Ed Bradley and Jimmy Buffett. Oh, Harrison, it could have happened to anyone. [P6]

Shia LeBeouf tried and tried, but couldn't score a date at The Beatrice Inn. [P6]

Ashley Dupre has been looking for a New York public relations agency to represent her and reportedly scored with the Susan Blond agency. Stay tuned for movie deal and a possible endorsement for a brand of men's socks. [NY Daily News]

Evan Rachel Wood can hardly handle Marilyn Manson's Mansinthe. [Intelligencer]

Gossip Girl is officially the most important show on televsion. [NY Mag]

Laura and Jenna Bush talk about collaborating on their children's book. [NY Daily News]

Eli Manning wed his fiancee in Mexico over the weekend. [NY Daily News]

Elton John's fund-raising concert for Hillary might be a federal violation of campaign rules. [Washington Times via Radar]

Ashley "Kristen" Dupre used to man the reception desk at Corcoran Sunshine in Chelsea and often got reprimanded for dressing like, well, a prostitute and coming on to clients. [P6]

Summer in the Hamptons will not be the same this year as the popular Hampton Social concerts that have featured artists like Billy Joel, Prince and Dave Matthews are not happening. [P6]

Carla Bruni tries her hardest to fill the first lady role and impress the Queen. [The Cut]

Kimora Lee Simmons has officially filed for divorce from Russell Simmons. [Daily Intel]

What's more disturbing: Ivana Trump and her younger fiance, Rossano Rubicondi, fighting so much that cops have to be called to hand-cuff Rubicondi, or the fact that the happy couple lives on a street called Jungle Road.[P6]

Mayor Bloomberg asks for a senior discount at the movies. [P6]

Before Nancy Reagan publicly endorsed John McCain she was kinda mad at him for divorcing his first wife. [P6]

The New York Post is glad to announce that it's demotic as in popular, not demonic. [P6]

Bill and Hillary Clinton turn into schoolgirls in the presence of Mick Jagger. [NY Daily News]

Fashion Week might move to the Tenth Avenue rail yards. [NY Daily News]

Tom Freston has put Andy Warhol's East 66th Street apartment on the market for $38.5 million, according to Page Six. The 12-room, six story apartment was originally bought by Mr. Warhol for $310,000 in 1974; Mr. Freston bought the property in 2000 for $6.5 million. [P6]

Thanks to Eliot Spitzer and Ashley Dupre's infamous rendezvous, the Mayflower hotel's gift-shop has seen a major boost in sales due to people buying up souvenirs adorned with the hotel's logo. Thank you former Gov. Spitzer for boosting another city's economy. [NY Daily News]

Another day, another power-lunch. Barbara Walters and Judith Giuliani were seen lunching at the Four Saesons within feet of Anna Wintour, who was with Marie-Josée Kravis, Lachlan Murdoch, Leonard Lauder, Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan, Tommy Hilfiger, Pete Peterson and Jack Rudin. Meanwhile, this week's Saturday Night Live host, Christopher Walken was spotted with Lorne Michaels, Mayor Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, and Andrew Murstein in front of the Yankee Stadium. [P6]

A bloody fight allegedly broke out yesterday between two extras at a Pharrell Williams video shoot at the Madison Club in Chelsea. Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson--the two are featured in the video--showed up after the commotion. [P6]

Chloe Sevigny was a no-show at Nylon magazine's ninth-anniversary party that she was scheduled to host because she reportedly came down with a viral infection. [P6]

Heather Mills may be shopping for an apartment in New York after being awarded a hefty divorce settlement. [NY daily News]

Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson presided over a karaoke contest at Angels and Kings involving Lydia Hearst and Damien Fahey. [NY Daily News]

Zani Gugelmann, Maggie Betts, Alex Kramer, Lydia Fenet, and Karen Larrain attended a dinner at Bette hosted by Elle Decor after a Christie's auction preview. [Park Avenue Peerage]

On Tuesday, Meryl Streep, Liz Smith, Katie Couric, Graydon Carter, Candace Bushnell and others gathered at Lincoln Center to read a little poetry in honor of National Poetry Month. [NY Social Diary]

Bittersweet Symphony? Ashlee Simpson may not be welcomed back to Saturday Night Live after her 2004 appearance exposed her lip-synching talents. Also, Page Six hears that the young Mr. Simpson was not exactly a hit with the show's producers. [P6]

The Aussie relatives of the late Heath Ledger continue to provide made-for-tabloid muck; now an uncle claims Matilda Rose Ledger may not be the actor's only offspring. [NY Daily News]

Donald Trump wants to send Ashley Dupre to charm school to teach her some debutante manners. And film the whole thing for a reality series, of course. Yes, Donald, let's class up that joint! [NY Daily News]

Moby tells New York magazine that he hasn't had a month off from the city's nightlife since 1981, and he is not slowing down despite the fact that he finds it a bit depressing. [Intelligencer]

Even the gossipy bit—Who's That Girl?!?—that all of the tabs were after all day yesterday (us too, in fact) is broken first by The Times: Spitzer's prostitute "Kristen" is in fact known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, though she was born 22 years ago as Ashley Youmans, in New Jersey. [The New York Times]

Anderson Cooper is shocked at the cost of hookers these days, but the King of All Pimps explains that Dupre was getting $1,000 an hour, so it's kind of a victimless crime. Also, the King of All Pimps thinks Dupre is the "girl next door," and exactly what you would expect for $1,000 an hour. Oh, and "they don't do it for the sex, they do it for the cash." [Gawker.com]

Michelle Williams speaks about Heath Ledger in Interview: "For as long as I'd known him, he had bouts with insomnia. He just had too much energy ... His mind was turning, turning, turning — always turning. He had an uncontrollable energy. He buzzed. He would jump out of bed.” [via PageSix.com]

Rosie and Kelli O'Donnell show up to buck up the spirits of Clay Aiken during his current Broadway stint. [JustJared.com]