That's Ellen DeGeneres, joking about her new love, Alexandra Hedison. Ellen is still riding high as the voice of Dory, the fish in "Finding Nemo." She is about to launch a new chat show and rarely gets personal. But for TV Guide's Lisa Bernhard, the actress spoke not only about her current flame, whom she refers to as "my rock," but her famous former live-in, Anne Heche.

Ellen says she burned the never-to-be-broadcast documentary about her and Anne that cameraman Cooley Laffoon was shooting two years ago. It was during this filming that Cooley and Anne -- now married -- first grew close. "You talk about a bad experience. I mean everybody has horrible situations in their life. But to sit there and watch, basically, reality TV, real reality TV . . . I watched until I couldn't anymore."

Ellen says she did watch Barbara Walters' special on which Anne revealed she thought she came from another dimension -- "It was the only way I was getting information. You think y'all were shocked?" As for now, Ellen says she and Alex are not planning a wedding. "I'm not putting on a gown anytime soon. I was shopping for one, and the one I picked out Jennifer Lopez had already picked. I can't wear that now." This is an intimate Q & A you might find in The Advocate, so bravo to TV Guide for persuading the actress to let her guard down.

BACK WHEN SHE was just starting out, the singer Ashanti made an album that was shelved. At the time, her mother managed her, and everyone simply forgot about the "product." Two weeks ago, a young record producer, who prefers to remain nameless at the moment, was reminded by a pal, another record producer, that such an album did exist, and they had worked on it. "Remember? Remember her? She was a total unknown. But she had a powerful voice. I think that was Ashanti."

So the two nameless names looked around, dusted off the tracks, checked the fine print with lawyers and -- voila! They found that they own these tracks and the rights to the album. So Ashanti and her current handlers can sit back and wait for the phone to ring. It will.

SPEAKING OF MUSIC: Denise Rich is trying to get Latin superstars Thalia and Marc Anthony to perform together at her G&P Foundation event Oct. 27. She says she will hound Tommy Mottola until he says yes . . . Kelly Clarkson, the "American Idol" idol, appears in a new series of print ads for Candies shoes. In these, she is shown reading a tabloid. Looks like the ever-upward Star to me . . . Liza Minnelli in "Damn Yankees"? No, not as temptress Lola but as the female sports reporter who belts out the show-stopping "Shoeless Joe" number. That's something to consider, Harvey Weinstein . . . And I'm sure glad I recently referred to Madonna as "an almost staid wife and mother of two." Her MTV smooches with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera showed us that you can't keep a bad girl down.

VANITY FAIR and the Holt Renfrew retail store celebrate editor Graydon Carter during the Toronto Film Festival Sept. 9. An entire street will be closed for this exclusive, red-carpet, "Oscar-style" bash. The guest list already reads like VF's famous Mortons party -- Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Gina Gershon, Val Kilmer and Chloe Sevigny. More and more films are being made in Canada, so it's about time our northern friends partied like the movie mecca they are!

IN ENGLAND, there's a cross-dressing star, Lily Savage, aka Paul O'Grady. Rumor has it he's been offered the role of Lead Slave in a revival of Steven Sondheim's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." Paul says he keeps asking himself, "Am I actually in that kind of league? But it's an offer too good to refuse." Let's hope he actually gets the offer.

FASHION'S FLAMBOYANT arbiter of good taste, Steven Cojocaru, tells Emmy magazine: "I think there should be an Emmy for fashion. It's an idea whose time has come. The award would be called The Sarah Jessica Parker Fashion Achievement Award!" (Cojo describes Parker as a "full-fledged, glassy-eyed, rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth fashionista.")

Also in this issue devoted to style, you will find Mariska Hargitay of "Law & Order: SVU" all glammed up. Mariska tends to shy away from any showy display of her good looks, seeming never to want to capitalize on, or draw comparison to, her famous mom, '50s bombshell Jayne Mansfield. But Mariska is her own woman and a big talent.