Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Ashley Dupre is responding today to the (possibly made-up) reports that Eliot Spitzer is thinking about running for elected office: "I was happy to see that Mr. Spitzer is moving on with his life and considering getting back into politics," she writes on Global Grind, the website owned by her occasional yoga partner/mentor, Russell Simmons. "Everyone makes mistakes.  Everyone deserves a second chance. Me too, right? Well, apparently not." She goes on to complain that people think she's making a fortune off her notoriety, but she really isn't, and that although she really wanted to write a book, publishers lost interest when she told them she wasn't willing to "sensationalize" the sensational details that made her famous in the first place. Oh, well. In any event, she finishes up the rant by directing readers to a "rough cut" of latest single, "Inside Out." More

Ashley Dupre has something to get off her chest! Or, rather, Russell Simmons wanted another publicity boost for his website and told Ashley that she had to come up with something ASAP if she expected another personal yoga session this week. In any event, Ash has lots of questions today, but she's still struggling to come up with answers:More

You didn't expect Russell Simmons to be counseling Ashley Dupre out of the kindness of his heart, did you? The pieces are beginning to come together: Dupre's heartfelt account of her new mentor and yoga master today just so happens to have coincided with Dupre's debut as a blogger on Simmons' news aggregation website GlobalGrind.com. And it's not just Ashley sharing her story on the site. Russell is now blogging about meeting Dupre for the first time, too—his piece is entitled "Meeting Miss Ashley"—and both articles are currently the featured stories on the site's homepage. For the past year, Hollywood studios, record labels, fashion brands, and adult movie companies have been running around in circles looking for ways to cash in on Dupre's infamy. But it looks like Russell is going to walk away with the PR victory.More