CNBC "money honey" Maria Bartiromo thinks Lindsay Lohan should profit from her woes. Paparazzi agencies revealed last week that Lohan asked for money after tipping them off to her whereabouts, and she may blab for bucks to OK! mag. "Do I think it's a good move for her to sell her story?" Bartiromo told us as she celebrated her Hamptons mag spread. "I think as much as people are interested in what she has to say, she should capitalize on it."

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Usher's fizzled nuptials made one man chuckle Saturday night. "Some of my buddies were supposed be here," Quincy Jones said when honored by the Grammy Foundation in L.A. "But they went to Usher's wedding, instead. Hee hee hee." Kanye West, Herbie Hancock and Gloria Estefan were among the many who did honor the energetic 74-year-old, who told us his secret: "Count Basie told me to live each day like it's your last, and one day, you'll be right."

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Prince Frederic von Anhalt has trouble keeping his stories straight. The husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor somehow managed to dial cops while naked and tied to his Rolls Royce's steering wheel on Thursday. But our Patricia Towle reports: "When I interviewed Frederic, he told me he couldn't phone for help until he untied his hands from the steering wheel and retrieved his cell phone from the floor of his car." Yet the bindings were back on when paparazzi arrived to snap his wrinkly bod, which you can view if you can stomach it on tmz.com.

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David Blaine 's latest trick? Keeping himself from being thrown out of a Hamptons nightclub. According to witnesses, the high-spirited illusionist guzzled the drinks of two ladies he didn't know, then smashed their glasses on the floor. Bouncers were showing Blaine to the door when he produced a deck of cards. "If I can do these tricks, I can't be that drunk," he said. After mesmerizing club patrons at the front door, he was allowed back in.

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The knives are out for Tameka Foster following her canceled weekend wedding to Usher, although the singer himself insists all is well.

"Tameka and the baby are fine," he told Us magazine on videotape yesterday. "As of right now, we don't have a date, but we will let you know when we do."

Just after the wedding was scuttled, Usher flew alone to his estranged mother Jonetta Patton 's house in Atlanta, amid rumors that he couldn't go through with the ceremony without her. Foster, four months pregnant, followed him to Atlanta, telling People magazine she had a baby scare during the tumultuous weekend.

But sources close to Usher's family say she used the baby as a "ploy to get Usher to talk to her," and they are unsure whether there was a baby scare at all.

"Tameka is using a publicist and is trying to smooth this whole thing over in her favor," a friend told The News' Jo Piazza.

Says another source in the anti-Foster faction: "Usher wouldn't speak to Foster — and that's when she told him there were problems with the baby. She just wanted to get him to talk to her again."

The couple flew back to New York together this week.

"She made sure those magazines got their photo op with her and Usher after they left the Mandarin Oriental" yesterday, said the source.

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Naomi Watts got not just a firstborn son last Wednesday, but a diamond pendant from her baby-daddy, Liev Schreiber.

In Touch reports jeweler Neil Lane designed the diamond-and-platinum heart locket, which will hold a picture of baby Alexander.

"It was a very special gift for her," a pal tells the mag. "Liev helped Neil with it after hours."

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PULITZER prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler sent out an e-mail yesterday announcing that his wife had dumped him for billionaire Ted Turner.

"Put down your cup of coffee or you might spill it," Butler, 62, wrote to his graduate students and fellow professors at Florida State University in Tallahassee. "Elizabeth is leaving me for Ted Turner."

Elizabeth is Butler's wife of 12 years, Elizabeth Dewberry, 44, an author in her own right, who might be attracted to Turner, 68, because the media mogul resembles the grandfather who molested her as a child, Butler writes in the shocking e-mail.

"She has spoken openly in her work and in her public life of the fact that she was molested by her grandfather from an early age, a molestation that was known and tacitly condoned by her radically Evangelical Christian parents," Butler wrote. "And it is very common for a woman to be drawn to men who remind them of their childhood abusers. Ted is such a man, though fortunately, he is far from being abusive."

However, Turner, who has been married three times, is hardly an ideal partner. "She will not be Ted's only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous," Butler writes. "But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly and he gives them his absolute support when he does."

The jilted husband reveals Dewberry nearly died in March from an intestinal blockage while she was traveling with Turner in Argentina. The white-haired mogul also took Dewberry as his date to the May premiere of "Georgia Rule," which starred Turner's ex-wife, Jane Fonda.

"Rumors will soon be swirling . . . so I want to tell the full and nuanced story," Butler wrote. "This sort of thing can get wildly distorted pretty quickly."

Butler, whose books include "Tabloid Dreams" and "Mr. Spaceman," told Page Six he showed Dewberry his e-mail before sending it off and, "she was weepingly grateful to me for it. It's full of love and compassion." He said he was surprised one of the recipients then leaked it to several Internet bloggers. "Elizabeth and I are not Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston," he told us.

A rep for Turner had no comment.

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IT didn't take long for Uma Thurman to find a new man after breaking up with hotelier Andre Balazs. The star of "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" has been spotted playing kissyface with handsome Swiss banker Arky Busson, who was Elle Macpherson's man for many years and the father of her two kids. "With their arms wrapped around each other, the couple seemed oblivious to everyone around them," said one report. The two connected a month ago at the 45th anniversary parties in Rome for Valentino and at the brunch Busson held for the designer's partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, after the festivities.