Michael Bloomberg first mentioned he had a little thing for Salma Hayek a few years ago when he suggested he'd move into Gracie Mansion if Hayek moved in with him. It looks like the mayor is still clinging to the fantasy. According to Joyce Purnick, author of Mike Bloomberg: The Mogul and the Mayor, [deputy mayor] Patti Harris "has been known to scold him for his sly appreciations of the female form," and yet he still slips into "lusty reminiscences about celebrity conquests and equally colorful fantasies about how he would like to entertain Salma Hayek in Gracie Mansion." Could this be the reason Bloomberg has been increasingly "short-tempered, scolding, even petulant" in recent months? Let's hope someone gets these two in a room together so we can find out once and for all. [NYDN]

Victims of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme may have to wait 15 years before all of his assets are accounted for and re-distributed. Serving as the court-appointed receiver or trustee assigned to wind down a Ponzi scheme? That may be one of the most lucrative assignments around.

Today will go down as one of the hottest of the summer—thus far, at least—so if you can sneak out of your office and head to Central Park, this would probably be a good day to do that. Of course, this also means that the NYC is officially ten times smellier today, as the 93-degree temperatures take a toll on the four-day-old Chinese food sitting in the trash can on your corner. What can you do about that? Nothing, really, which may explain why the Daily News has decided to instead focus on how to make sure your husband or wife doesn't notice the scent of the man or woman you've been having a summer fling with:

Renee Zellweger walking through JFK to catch a flight to Spain with Bradley Cooper... Mickey Rourke walking in the West Village ... Michelle Williams getting ice cream with daughter Matilda Rose at Blue Marble in Brooklyn ... Julia Roberts on the set of Eat, Pray, Love set in Brooklyn ... Famke Janssen eating outside at Da Silvano ... Uma Thurman walking in the meatpacking district ... Kate Hudson watching a game at Yankees Stadium with Matt Franco, Kurt Russell, and Goldie Hawn ... Tracy Morgan sitting on a stoop with his dogs in SoHo ... Drew Barrymore on the set of her new movie in Central Park ... Teri Hatcher taking a photo of a friend on the street ... Justin Bartha leaving Ashley Olsen's townhouse in the Village ... Mischa Barton taking her dogs for a walk in SoHo ... Julia Stiles walking downtown ... and Yoko Ono leaving Da Silvano with Sean Lennon.

Two women who once worked for Carl Icahn have filed suit against the billionaire investor and his wife, Gail, over harassment they say they endured while working at his firm. Sandra Silva and Valerie Romano claim they were singled them out for abuse because they were "tech-savvy," and this stirred up jealousy in the office because Gail Icahn didn't know how to use email herself. (Go figure.) The two women, who were dismissed in late 2008 and are now seeking $1.5 million in damages, also claim that several execs "commented on their bodies" when they worked there and groped one of them, and that they had to endure ridicule for "having drinks with an unpopular coworker and trying to be friendly with the man who sold office supplies." [NYP]

• Kimberly Guilfoyle is moving on. The Fox News anchor, who announced in June that she was splitting from her second husband, furniture store heir Eric Villency, has picked up a new apartment. Guilfoyle paid $1.3 million for a three-bedroom co-op at 229 East 79th Street. Guilfoyle's first marriage was to Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco. [Cityfile]
• Donald Trump Jr. and wife Vanessa have closed on an apartment at The Sovereign on East 58th Street, which they went into contract to purchase earlier this summer. The couple paid $1.125 million for the 1,800-square-foot apartment. [Cityfile]
• Investor Enrique Foster Gittes is cutting another $2 million off the price of his 13,000-square-foot townhouse at 12 East 63rd Street, less than three weeks after dropping the price to $23.5 million. Priced at $28.75 million back in April, the home is currently listed for $21.5 million. [Cityfile, BHS]
• The triplex penthouse in developer David Walentas' Clock Tower Building in Dumbo has hit the market for $25 million, which is more than double the highest price ever paid for a home in Brooklyn. [NYT]

Fashion survivor Betsey Johnson turns 67 today. Real estate developer Harry Macklowe is turning 72. Actress Angie Harmon is 37. Author, political commentator and blogger Andrew Sullivan is turning 46. Model/actress Devon Aoki is turning 27. Rosanna Arquette is 50. Times art critic Roberta Smith is turning 62. Legendary federal judge Jack Weinstein is 88. Harriet Miers, who served as White House counsel under George W. Bush, is 64. Actor Justin Theroux turns 38. And Antonio Banderas celebrates his 49th birthday today.

• The case of the mercury-tainted sushi lives on: Chris Kattan ran into Jeremy Piven backstage during a taping of Alexa Chung's MTV show last week and made a crack about Piven's short stint on Broadway; a very offended Piven responded by calling Kattan's entire career into question. [NYDN]
• Madonna's Brazilian-born boy toy, Jesus Luz, is more than just a model: He's now a DJ, too. [P6]
• Bethenny Frankel is no fan of Gwyneth Paltrow: "I'd rather staple my eyelids shut than watch Gwyneth cook." We're going to assume the feeling is mutual. [NYDN]
• In what amounted to a two-way publicity stunt, Kathy Griffin and Levi Johnston (better known as Bristol Palin's baby daddy) turned up to the Teen Choice Awards last night holding hands. [Us]

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• David Chang's empire is about to get bigger. The Times confirms the rumor that the man behind Momofuku plans to open a French-Vietnamese spot in the former Town space in the Chambers Hotel sometime this fall. [NYT, TFB]
• The beer garden at Standard Hotel is now open. [UrbanDaddy]
• Andrew Carmellini is perfectly happy that Locanda Verde got two stars from the Times recently: "[T]he reviews have been exactly what we wanted." [W]
• Le Cirque founder Sirio Maccioni's favorite person this week? That would probably be the president of the Philippines, Maria Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who showed up with her entourage and dropped $20,000 on dinner. [P6]

A sperm bank in California is now allowing clients to choose an anonymous donor based on how much he resembles a particular celebrity. Want to be impregnated by a man who may (or may not!) look like Ben Affleck, currently the most searched-for celeb at the clinic? You now have that option! But don't expect any guarantees. Explains an employee of the sperm bank: "The goal was not to say you can have a baby that looks like Bob Saget," Brown said. "The goal was to say this donor happens to resemble this celebrity." Bob Sagat? Now that donor is going to be a busy man. [CNN]

This is sort of unfortunate, but not really. A federal appeals court today decided the news media will not be permitted access to the wiretaps that were used to bust Emperors Club VIP, the escort agency that employed Ms. Ashley Dupre and brought Eliot Spitzer's political career to a messy end last March.

• The New York Times Co. is now publicly shopping the Boston Globe. Meanwhile, the list of potential acquirers is getting longer: The firm that bought the San Diego Union-Tribune is now a possible buyer. [AP, NYT]
• Related: The Globe is going to start charging to access its Web site. [E&P]
• News Corp. and GE were hoping to "ratchet down the rhetoric" when they ironed out a peace pact between MSNBC and Fox News recently. Keith Olbermann didn't abide by it, of course. (And Bill O'Reilly returned the compliment.) But Olbermann is still pretending it never happened. [WP, HP]
• It seems one embarrassment this week wasn't quite enough for Olbermann. Because he's resorting to shameless (and familiar) excuses to try and explain away the Richard Wolffe conflict-of-interest fiasco. [Gawker]
• Profits at CBS dropped by 96 percent in the second quarter. [WSJ]
• Why did Twitter go down yesterday? Blame the Russians. [NYT]

The best college in the country? That would be the U.S. Military Academy (otherwise known as West Point), believe it or not—at least according to Forbes, which just issued its list of "America's Best Colleges":

It's been more than two years since restaurateur (and drama magnet) Nello Balan filed suit against Amy Sacco's Bungalow 8, accusing the club's bouncers of beating him up during a visit to the former hot spot back in May 2006. Nello came forward in the spring of 2007 to say that a bouncer had punched him in the eye and hit him over the head with a metal object (he also said his 21-year daughter was pushed), and the altercation left him with 10 stitches and a fracture to his eye-socket.

Padma Lakshmi announced in January that she was branching out with a "food-inspired" jewelry line. The items went on sale at stores like Bergdorf this past spring, and they've been selling briskly, according to WWD. So now it's time to expand, apparently. An ad campaign for the collection kicks off this fall, one that, per usual, plays to Padma's passion for not wearing clothes unless it's absolutely necessary: "The photos show a glistening, nude Lakshmi draped in her delicate gold and gemstone spices, which take inspiration from foods such as lentils and cardamom pods." [WWD]

Bernie Madoff's Montauk estate hasn't been sold off yet. Court-appointed trustee Irving Picard has yet to pick a broker(s) to handle the sale yet—possibly because he's been too busy counting his money—although the competition for the listing is fierce, according to Dan's Papers. And while Dan's debunks one myth that's been making the rounds—"Reports that a group of untidy pot smoking surfers are using the pad to hang out, party and chill is false"—it does offer up a rather tantalizing new rumor, one that may have you rushing over to pay Casa Madoff a visit this weekend:

From George Wayne's chat with Michael Kors in the new issue of Vanity Fair:

Mischa Barton heading into an Equinox with a friend ... Ed Westwick talking on his cell phone ... Kanye West hanging out with a friend outside the Jamba Juice in SoHo ... Linda Evangelista walking downtown with a bottle of water in hand ... Justin Long and Drew Barrymore playing football in Central Park ... Allison Janney shopping with her mom in Midtown ... Tyra Banks on location at the Ziegfeld Theatre for Gossip Girl ... Hilary Duff crossing the street with a bodyguard ... Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler riding in a convertible while filming a scene for The Bounty ... Bruce Willis crossing the street on the set of A Couple of Dicks in Brooklyn ... and Whitney Port sunbathing in Central Park.

Is that economic improvement we see? The Labor Department announced today that the unemployment rate dropped from 9.5 percent to 9.4 percent last month—even though analysts had been expecting it to increase—and while 247,000 American jobs were lost during July, that's the fewest number of losses since last August. It this evidence that things are going to be peachy keen from here on out? Not really.