Eight Gold Medals, Seven World Records And You Can’t Ring A Stupid Bell?

Come on, “golden boy”:

The traders at the New York Stock Exchange went berserk on Tuesday over the hottest commodity at the Beijing Olympics, circling Michael Phelps like sharks.

There was barely room to breathe on the floor as people pushed to get close to Phelps, who won a record eight gold medals and set seven world records.

Phelps rang the opening bell, or at least that was the original plan. On the platform alongside his fellow United States Olympic swimming champions Ryan Lochte and Natalie Coughlin, Phelps was so tired that he was tottering, so Coughlin discreetly did the honors.

“Michael was just kind of jet-lagged,” Coughlin said.

On the floor, he was besieged by autograph seekers. One trader held up a magazine with Phelps on the cover for him to sign and said, “My wife wants to marry you.” When told that Phelps, who was in the middle of a television interview, would not be signing anything more, the trader said, indignantly, “Is his hand broken?”

Or was that Las Vegas trip a little draining?

Ironic Brooklyn Just Folded In On Itself

Just like a three-card monte game where the rube walks away a winner:

I was trying to find out from a very harried looking cameraman why a full film crew was following around the worst dressed group of young people at last night’s packed Semi Precious Weapons show at Rebel.

“They’re nobodies,” said the cameraman trailing them around the club. A friend whispered to me that they weren’t just any nobodies, they were the cast of the new The Real World in Red Hook. The lights, cameras, VIP status, bottle service and fawning by wannabe socialites was explained.

MTV had the kids well trained. “I’m sorry I can’t divulge that,” the cast members would tell me when I pressed them for any details on life in the Pier 41 house. But Chet Bannon, the Mormon who the producers are trying to have de-flowered, was too nice not to talk. By far the most suave of the yahoos, he was wearing an H&M scarf, Elvis Costello glasses and had his short blonde hair spiked. Best of all, he admitted that they were indeed the cast of The Real World.

“I love glam rock,” Chet told me as he sipped a Shirley Temple, “you just don’t see anything like it in Salt Lake.” As if on cue, Justin Tranter, the mascara-wearing, teased, peroxide-haired frontman of the Weapons, put a medallion around Chet’s neck, whispered something in his ear, then strutted off.

“Wow, that’s just so cool,” Chet — who’s engaged to a girl back home — gushed.

There was trouble in paradise, however, and the young man needed to get something off his virginal chest. “When we go to Williamsburg we get harassed. The hipsters throw things at us and say ‘Why are you here? Go home! Ten years ago none of them were there either.'” He looked hurt and wondered, “Why are the hipsters so small minded?”

Grandstanding The Grandstanders

Believe me, the Mayor can hang with the best of them:

The city has urged the United Nations to stop all public tours of the East Side complex until fire dangers are dealt with — and is stopping public-school tours there, officials said yesterday.

The city had no choice but to make the move for this school year, after the UN spent over 12 months promising heavy-duty renovations to make the complex safe — only to drop many of them, citing the high cost, according to a letter from Marjorie Tiven, the city’s commissioner to the UN.

“The city has no choice but to suspend public schools’ visits to the United Nations,” Tiven, Mayor Bloomberg’s sister, wrote in the letter dated Monday.

The complex lacks a full complement of fire doors that could seal off each building, officials said. Fires could spread quickly in the many open corridors, officials said.

When the United Nations abandoned its promise to install such major fire doors last May, Tiven wrote, the FDNY came up with a suggestion — stop all public tours.

FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta told The Post, “Until certain things happen [by way of safety measures] . . . we suggested that there not be visitors allowed into the United Nations.

“And so far the UN has not abided by that recommendation,” he said. “And we have no authority over them to order that, but we do have authority to keep our children from the public schools going on tours.”

Location Scout: United Nations.

You Remember Your First Grade Teacher’s Name . . . Who Will Remember Yours?

How about millions in the nation’s largest media market! Another NYC Teaching Fellow success story:

A Harlem teaching fellow who vanished nearly two weeks ago may have gone into hiding because she was afraid to return to the troubled school where she was assigned, sources told The Post.

“Apparently, she was petrified of going back to school. She just wigged out and went AWOL,” a law-enforcement source said of Hannah Upp, who failed to return for her second year at the Thurgood Marshall Academy.

The worst had been feared for Upp, 23, until she was caught on surveillance video using a computer at the Fifth Avenue Apple store on Friday. Witnesses told cops she returned to the store on Monday.

Upp, 23, a Bryn Mawr College graduate, hadn’t been seen since Aug. 29. Her wallet and ID were left in her Hamilton Terrace apartment.

Factoid Of The Day

Believe it:

Even while Governor Paterson is expressing doubt that the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center expansion project will go forward at any time soon, the state is collecting large amounts of revenue — more than $100 million so far — from a hotel tax passed for the sole purpose of funding the expansion.

. . .

As of the first quarter, the $1.50-a-night Convention Center Hotel Unit Fee had brought in $103.3 million in revenues since its inception in 2005, according to the State Tax Commissioner’s office.