Brit-actress and dater of married actor Balthazar Getty Sienna Miller's house was spray-painted with "SLUT" last night. Oh yeah? Is she? Really a slut? Don't worry: strident feminism is not part of today's lesson. But the Bible is!

Blonde actress megastar Scarlett Johannson has been accused of drug use by a random graffiti tagger! But there's even more to the imaginary rendezvous; what did you and the busty Tom Waits fan do after the party, random graffiti tagger?:

GOD, we've heard so much about Banksy this week. Yes, you know he's the supersecret anonymous world-famous street artist whose identity may have been revealed at last. But some people do not understand why this is the biggest art story of our generation. At least if you love democracy, freedom, and hilarity! Come along then, as we take a brief whirl through the world of Banksy: An artist that does not suck. With two dozen pictures, yo!

There's a street artist in NYC by the name of D. Billy, and I sincerely hope he is being subsidized by the NYPD, because he has come up with a way to rid our streets of "unsightly" graffiti. By doing it with balloons! Just imagine how much time the sanitation department could save—just send out one guy with a needle, and he could take down an entire city's worth of balloon tags in a day. Truly a win-win solution. Plus, it's a good way to communicate Batman-like sound effects. Two more pictures of D. Billy's environmental revolution:

Anti-American socialists like the watchdogs at the Anti-Advertising Agency often point out that the advertising industry is—without exaggeration—one of the biggest vandals in New York City. Illegal advertising includes everything from entire sides of buildings and scaffoldings covered in banner ads without permits, to virtually the entire "guerilla marketing" and "street team" industries. All those things are, technically speaking, vandalism. So the NYPD's vandal squad should be breaking down ad agency doors daily, right? This handy pie chart puts the law enforcement situation into perspective. Click to enlarge. [via AAA]

A tagger in LA named Buket got arrested and charged with inflicting $150,000 worth of property damage with spraypaint. The same could be said for a lot of graf writers, so why is this kid on the front page of the LA Times' website? Because he got famous by posting videos of his most daring bombing expeditions on YouTube! Two of them (including one with almost 170,000 hits) are after the jump. I have to give him props for being brave enough to edge out on that freeway overpass. But then I take away those props because, you know, he got himself arrested by putting his crimes on YouTube.

Banksy: millionaire street artist, fierce cultural critic, celebrity darling of the art world. The man's prestige has been immeasurably enhanced by his anonymity. He insists on it, and it gives him an air of mystery that only increases his allure to the media, fans, and collectors alike. An alleged photo of him was widely circulated last year, but it certainly didn't result in his real name being printed in his omnipresent media coverage. Those in his inner circle insist on strict concealment of his identity. Theories, of course, abound. But today, Bucky Turco at Animal NY believes he's stumbled upon Banksy's true identity. Combined with some corroborating evidence we got ourselves, the case is plausible—though far from proven. Now this would be big news:

Animal NY street chronicler Bucky Turco took the bait of our sighting this morning of the elusive British stencil artist Banksy. Bucky traipsed over to Thunder Jacksons in the West Village and captured THE FIRST PICTURES of this new Banksy piece, which have just increased the value of the building 25-fold [UPDATE: Or have they? Gothamist says this work is by Nick Walker, not Banksy. We're investigating. More to come.]. Click through for some larger pics of the three-part work, and then go over to Animal NY to read some more clues that Bucky gleaned about the artist . Journalism in action:

No matter how you feel about the British stencil artist Banksy, you have to admit one thing: his stuff sells for a lot of money. His works have been going for over half a million dollars lately. A homeowner in the UK with a Banksy mural on the side of her house decided to simply sell the mural through an art gallery, and throw in the home for free. But one NYC store owner lucky enough to have a Banksy piece on his building (pictured) was either too ignorant, or too stubborn to take advantage of it. Yes: he painted over it. I hope he loved his momentarily whitewashed wall, because it cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. The kind of funny, and kind of painful pictures [via SuperTouch] of the man in the revenue-destroying act, after the jump. Ouch.

Last week we showed you the supremely artistic "Darth Vader Meets Murakami" work of the anonymous vandal whose canvas is poster advertisements in the New York subways. But as impressed as we were by that, new photos—purportedly by the same vandal—have surfaced that, conceptually, make the earlier work look like a quickie plaything. This anonymous person has messages. All with only the ad posters themselves to work with. We're told these are all genuine, and not Photoshopped. Well, anonymous vandal: You are really fucking good. The six new photos [via And I Am Not Lying], after the jump.

Rudy Giuliani's legacy is being tagged away. Graffiti is back and more popular than ever &mdash complaints of taggings have risen 81.5% from 2006 to 2007. "It's not art - it's just scribble," said a random dude complaining to the New York Post. But even though graffiti has become more prevalent under Bloomberg's tenure, let's not forget that he has protected the rich from other eyesores like fatties and smokers. [NYP]

This attractive and artistic "POPE" print (a takeoff on Shepard Fairey's "HOPE" print for Obama) can be yours for only $99. What better way to show that you're a Catholic hipster, or, conversely, that you're a rebellious denizen of the art underworld unafraid to scoff at the pontiff, treating his image as merely one more ironic decoration for the cluttered, graffiti-scrawled walls of your tenement pad? Either way, act now, because they're only making 666 of these. Click to enlarge. [Animal NY]

The logo of a street artist in LA named Skullphone started popping up on digital billboards around the city owned by Clear Channel. Awesome! said the collective street art world. The kid has hacked into the big media monster Clear Channel's network! It's digital graffiti! It's culture jamming! It's the new media revolution! But then it came out that Skullphone had just bought time on the billboards, like every other schmoe. Is that even cool? I'm sure Michel Foucault would have something deep to say about this, but I'm not sure what it would be. Money ad street art! [Wired]

The great thing about the idea of "guerilla marketing" is that everything qualifies! Did you tell your friend a movie is good? Guerilla marketing. Put a sticker up? Guerilla marketing. Wear a certain kind of shoe? Total guerilla marketing. Now, it appears that the simple act of scrawling on posters on the street with a black marker qualifies as a sophisticated guerilla marketing campaign. The Black Lips probably paid thousands to an underground marketing firm so secret that you have to find its phone number written on the wall of the Alife bathroom to get this kind of street-level PR for their upcoming show. Or they just did it themselves when they were drunk one night. After the jump, photo evidence [via Copyranter] of this three-is-a-trend strategic marker-based promo campaign currently invading the streets of the East Village. (Ha, the "lips" thing is kinda clever though).

For a while we thought the Splasher, that anti-graffiti artist who's been splashing the work of other street artists, might actually be an evil genius. But the manifesto the collective—yup, the Splasher is a collective—sent to Gothamist dashes those hopes. "He's" just another pseudo-intellectual anarchist flea motel who read Žižek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real and now thinks "he" knows something about late post-modernism and public space theory. Sheesh!

Even as we post this, "seven of the world's most highly-regarded graffiti artists" are painting a replica subway car in Manhattan. Is it a celebration of art? A validation of the importance of tagging? A nod to New York's storied history of graffiti? Sure! Most importantly, it's also a promotion for some new line of Adidas shoes. We sent our Richard Blakeley to the scene, where he spoke with graffiti artist Kiante.

At least, that's what we thought after reading this exchange between the Razor Apple people and the purported masterminds behind that tagging of 10 subway cars we linked to the other day. Seems as though the whole thing may have been an elaborate stunt—with some nefarious (for the graffiti artists, at least) ends.

If you ride the N, your trip will eventually be more aesthetically pleasing (or less, depending on your tastes). The Sun reports that:

Last Friday, when meeting with NBC News anchor Brian Williams to help launch his latest messianic charity endeavor, U2 frontling Bono was waiting for an elevator with Williams next to a lightboard ad of the anchorman's face. Bono asked the crowd of handlers for a Sharpie, and one was instantly produced from the rectum of an NBC page (each page contains a complete desk set at all times). Bono then scribbled on the face of the Williams ad, fashioning a bandit mask or a pair of his signature bubble shades, or something. As a last straw, he "signed" the lightboard with his initial, thereby turning it from a piece of crap corporate furniture into a $50,000 collectible piece of crap corporate furniture. Williams was politely amused for the crowd, but this can only increase his well-known distaste for the Irish.

Villainous vigilante Bucky Turco of AnimalNY uncovers a sinister new front in the cultural war — T-bombing. The aNYthing blog spotted graffitist Espo (a.k.a. Steve Powers) at Bowery and Delancey Street, apparently mugging with a delivery truck he'd just tagged with the big-T logo of the New York Times' T style mag. We're guessing this is a stunt for the next T, which is all street now, yo. Espo confirmed his NYT involvement with a concise "Yes." Regardless of what you think of the magazine, that's a mighty nice gothic consonant.