• Private equity exec Chandler Evans has dropped the price of his duplex penthouse at 1165 Park Avenue (left) for the third time since listing it for $24.9 million last September. The four-bedroom spread, which Evans bought for $23 million in June '08, is now listed for $17.95 million. [Cityfile, BHS]
• Developer Gerardo Capo gone into contract to sell his 12th-floor condo at 15 CPW. The two-bedroom pad, which Capo bought for $3.5 million in April 2008, was most recently listed for $6.25 million. [Cityfile, IT Properties]
• Famed choreographer Paul Taylor has put his longtime home at 27 Vandam Street up for sale so he can move closer to his dance company's new rehearsal studio on the Lower East Side. Taylor's 20-foot-wide townhouse, which he purchaed for $140,000 in 1970, is listed for $4.75 million. [NYT, PDE]
• A unidentified buyer is picking up the 2009 Hampton Designer Showhouse. The home was listed for $8.495 million. [Newsday]

Ryan O'Neal is a creepy man, Billy Joel has a sad over the breakup of his marriage, Jude Law fell for the "I'm on the pill" con, David Beckham is scared of Shaquille O'Neal and Jessica Alba frolics.

Martha Stewart turns 68 today. Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback and father of Gisele Bundchen's fetus, is turning 32. Martin Sheen is 69. Tony Bennett is turning 83. Model Evangeline Lilly turns 30. Art-collecting heir Adam Lindemann is turning 48. Model Brooklyn Decker is 22. Sen. Roland Burris is turning 72. Mamie Gummer, an actress and the daughter of Meryl Streep, is 26. Actor Isaiah Washington is turning 46. And Salt-N-Pepa's DJ Spinderella turns 38 today.

• An Italian photographer is accusing Naomi Campbell of sending him to the hospital after she allegedly clobbered him with her handbag and scratched his eye with her nails. Naturally, this sort of behavior is totally unlike Campbell and couldn't possibly be true. [Daily Mail]
• Billy Joel is supposedly "completely distraught" over his breakup with Katie Lee Joel and is now trying to "rekindle the relationship." [P6]
• It looks like Mischa Barton is recovering nicely. She's "smiling again," according to the Sun. And Vanity Fair reports she made her "first appearance on the city’s social circuit" last night. [Sun, VF]

Jennifer Senior wrote a massive cover piece on the Obama communications machine for this week's issue of New York that is, to put it mildly, a nauseatingly fawning tribute to the communications genius of our president and his advisers.

Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs perform in front of a very large, watchful blue eye during the rain-soaked All Points West music festival in Jersey City over the weekend. [AP/Jason DeCrow]

A leading energy economist says that worldwide oil supplies are rapidly running out.

Well here's something that'll melt the ice around even the coldest heart out there: On Sunday, Professor Henry Louis Gates mentioned at a book-signing that he and Sgt. James Crowley might attend a Red Sox or a Celtics game together.

Since formally leaving office as the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has yet to fulfill her promise to start a new "less politically correct" Twitter account. Thankfully, Palin's hairdresser down at the Beehive in Wasilla is taking up her slack.

August 2nd @ 8:30pm Sitting behind me at a showing of 500 Days of Summer at Regal Union Square. Was able to distinguish it was him due to his trademark sausage-body form. [Submit your own Gawker Stalker sightings to stalker@gawker.com]

A Cameroonian woman living in Paris has been diagnosed with a strain of HIV scientists say originated in gorillas. HIV-1, the primary source of human infections, originated in chimpanzees. The woman is this new strain's first documented human case. [BBC]

Last week we noted how Rush Limbaugh hasn't lifted a chubby finger to follow through on a promise to move out of Manhattan, disgusted as he was with the high taxes and all. Maybe this ad campaign caught his eye.

Recently Tina Brown eulogized party-planner Robert Isabell, fondly recalling her decadent Talk launch party he organized in 1999, a party she modestly labeled, "the last social celebration of the pre-9/11 celebrity decade." Now David Carr's offering a sad remembrance.

The St. Petersburg Times - who we last heard from when publishing a report on scary Scientology leader David Miscavige - are at it again. They're moving forward with more reporting on accounts from Scientology defectors, basically waging war.

Well, as you've probably seen today, this website and a bunch of other websites like it weren't working because we were too busy stealing...coffee, from Variety! Great place. Anyway, here's a video of a sleepwalking dog.

Hollywood's been waiting for the answer to the question Does Judd Apatow have what it takes to be a "serious film" filmmaker? or at least wants to know about his bankability in drama. Take a guess what happened.

Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald posted a scathing column about the armistice between GE and News Corp meant to end Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann's fueding. It's a chilling read, and brings in a tangentially related player: Richard Wolffe.

Twitter: that quasi-poetic 140-character constraint that results in genius, poignancy, the lightening-fast transit of information, or unbelievable stupidity. Now, it's being used by scientists to determine how happy we are. And it's kinda fun!

We've made fun of her time and time again for her absurdly error-filled columns, but this takes it to an entirely new level: the New York Times publicly addressed The Alessandra Stanley Problem today in Clark Hoyt's Public Editor column.

Twilight's Robert Pattinson works with fictional teenage vampires professionally. Little did he know the rabid, bloodsucking adolescent desperation he'd invite by taking the gig. NYPD sources now claim that the cops are looking to take over his overwhelmed security detail.