GEORGE Hamilton, here playing a Bob Evans-type producer in a new Woody Allen movie, buying safari jackets, shirts and pants at the Beretta gallery on Madison Avenue . . . JOAN Collins and her beau Percy Gibson dining at Orso with designer Nolan Miller and playwright Charles Busch after seing Busch's Tony-nominated "The Allergist's Wife" . . . GUS Van Sant, who directed River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho," eating pastrami with a River lookalike in torn jeans and a T-shirt at Canter's Deli in Hollywood.

NEW York Times columnist Maureen Dowd needs to learn the first rule of e-mail: anything you send might become public, just like Polaroids. The Hollywood-hooked Pulitzer Prize-winner, who once dated Michael Douglas, has been having a "long and rather wild e-mail correspondence" with "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin, according to foxnews.com's Roger Friedman. The digital exchange began before Sorkin's arrest last month for possessing magic mushrooms and crack cocaine. Friedman reports the two shared dozens of "randy" e-mails, like one that referred to the election snafu in Florida to the effect of "I'd like to hand-count your vote." The messages came to light when several were mistakenly sent to Times mergers and acquisitions scribe Andrew Ross Sorkin instead of TV's Aaron Sorkin. A flabbergasted Andrew Sorkin was said to have contacted Dowd about it, but the messages kept coming anyway. A rep for the Times declined comment. Dowd did notreturn calls.

THE race is on to see who can finish a book about Sean "Puffy" Combs (above) first - Puff Daddy himself, or Village Voice reporter Peter Noel. Combs is writing his memoir with a woman named dream hampton. But Noel has "That's Gangsta" (the title of a tune by Shyne), due in stores in December. "Peter Noel's fascination with Mr. Combs is borderline unhealthy," Puffy's rep told us. "It's astonishing that he will capitalize on Sean, a subject he knows little about, as evidenced by his articles."