*Points and laughs*

altho I would like to get my hands on a Banksy duplicate! funny how she never sang live at her promo parties. So I hear.

***

off of FoxNews.com:

Paris Hilton: No More Singing

Well, it was a fun idea while it lasted. But Paris Hilton’s debut album has sold a paltry 120,000 copies. It’s already pretty much off the charts, too.

With new releases from Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson and other big actual recording stars, Paris’ foray into the music business is about to become a Trivial Pursuit question.

However, the melody lingers on like bad fish. The costs on Paris are said to be ridiculously high, probably around $1 million considering travel, video and dog food. The album itself was also costly, with production fees usually seen on albums by — ahem — actual recording artists.

For Warner Bros., that’s not great news as they head into the fourth quarter. The label has no CDs with its name on it anywhere on the charts except for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ now fallen recent album.

While competitors like Universal Music and Sony BMG barrel ahead with one Top 10 release after another, Warner Bros. remains stricken by a failure to launch.

The Paris disaster could signal a sea change at Warner among execs. I'm told by insiders that Warner Music Group overlord Lyor Cohen did not want to do Hilton's album, and that it was pushed by label chief Tom Whalley.

That jibes with what Paris herself said last winter when she gave this column an exclusive listen to her brand of anonymous Europop. She exclaimed: "Tom Whalley is really behind this. He thinks it's the greatest album."

Warner's success rate may change next month when Sean "Diddy" Combs releases his new album, "Press Play." It was shepherded not by Whalley but by Cohen's secret weapon, Kevin Lyles.

As I told you in July when Combs played me excerpts from his album, he may have a sizeable hit on his hands. Combs’ Bad Boy Records, which releases through Warner’s Atlantic division, has actually had a couple of middling hits this summer. This much can be said for Bad Boy: they’re trying at least.

As for dear Paris, a recording career was only one of many ways for her to market herself. She still has jewelry (designed by someone else), books (written by someone else) and drunk driving (that she does herself).

The strangest thing about Paris might be her publicist. Since John Lennon’s murder in 1980, Elliot Mintz has fashioned himself as Yoko Ono’s public barricade and keeper of the Lennon flame. It’s hard to imagine two clients less alike than Paris and Yoko. But in Hollywood, money talks, and that’s the bottom line.