["Gossip Girl" actor Chace Crawford on set on Friday; image via INF]

Gossip Girl, the show that the media can't stop gushing over despite the fact that nobody actually watches it or anything, has of course been renewed for a second season. And in an apparent attempt to lure the large audience of celeb voyeurs that's currently interested in the cast members' bi-curious antics off-screen than on, the sultry young things-obsessed marketing crew at the CW has released some "inappropriate" images from the second season’s ad campaign. Thanks to Miley Cyrus and her “scandalous” series of endless flesh-baring spreads, any photos featuring tweenyboppers practically banging each other or doing their best O-face are fine by us. But releasing racy promos like these is a practice long used by GG’s predecessors, and the sleazy plan relying on that old promise that Sex Sells has a history of backfiring in many a series’ pretty little sweat-drenched faces:First, a closer look at the "sexy" ads in question, which include pull-quotes suggesting just how much closer potential viewers will get to the cool kids' table. Watching this show is so dangerous! Your parents will have nightmares just thinking about the (sort of) short skirts Blair wears! Do the nasty!

Look! Those Gossip Girl ads the whole world is talking about (or at least the part of the world that lives in New York and probably "curates" a "linklog" or something) made the front page of am New York, a free tabloid daily owned by Tribune Co. You know what's funny? Gossip Girl airs on the CW, the network most people still mistake for the one that failed after canceling Homeboys in Outer Space. Also the CW has something called a "ten-year affiliation agreement" with—wait for it!—Tribune Co! Which also owns the CW affiliate WPIX, right here in (am) New York. SYNERGY. [Maura] (Related: watch Mad Men! It's a show about men in suits who smoke or something.)

Of all the cameos on Gossip Girl (Lydia Hearst! A kid I knew in college!), this one has to be my favorite. Jay McInerney is doing a guest spot next season. One of our saddest writers, McInerney wrote a definitive novel about youngs in New York called Bright Lights, Big City about sixty-three years ago and has been sorta mooching and blogging and bopping around since. (Oh fine, I suppose he's written some other novels too.) Matthew Settle, who plays Pa Humphrey on the New York City-set teen soap about the sadness and mystery of money, says that ol' Jay will be playing a mentor to Dan, a strapping DUMBO teen who aspires to be a writer (he's already been published in The New Yorker! Fist bump!) So that's just pretty much hilarious. Hopefully he'll enjoy the crafts services.

How could the CW ever top their infamous "OMFG" Gossip Girl ad campaign that set uppity tongues a wagging earlier this year? By embracing the finger-pointing criticisms and couple them with more sexy pictures of the sun-browned, nubile cast. Like the one here! And the two below. Oh, you know. After the:

• Jeff Zucker and Harvey Weinstein faced off in a legal hearing over the rights to Project Runway. [AdWeek]

[Those two kids from that show about kids doing kids stuff at Kid Park on Kid Island today; image of the "Gossip Girl" stars via Splash]

So, um, you know what starts in 48 days? The month of September of course, when kids go back to school, geese start poking their heads southward, and the nights begin to get crisp again. And, as luck would have it, that's the exact date-to the delight of some and the misery of most-of the oh my f'ing g'ing second season premiere of Manhattan-set teen soap Gossip Girl. The action kicks off in the Hamptons, as we've all known for some time, but what and who is going down on that leafy little wisp of land? Judging from the promo clips that have been running on The CW, Chuck sleeps with a foreign girl, Serena may bone a lifeguard, and Nate has some sort of sex that leaves him running into the middle of the street in just his underpants. Also, there's a new boy in town. Oh, Josh. Watch the compiled promos after the jump.

• The real reason Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban didn't sell baby pics to the tabs? It may have had less to do with morals and more to do with the fact no one was willing to shell out $3 million. [Page Six]

[Whosie Who from "Whatsit Girls" on location today (The history of the Lemoncake Stupid Society); image via Splash]

[Blake Lively, the star of the most searing and intimate portrayal of youth today, "Gossip Girl," at the New York premiere of "The Dark Knight"; image via Splash]

[Gossip Girlers Blake Lively (holding dog) and Penn Badgley (holding unidentified parcel) leaving the midtown set of the show last night; image via Splash]

The New York Times writes today about the big impact that New York teen soap Gossip Girl has had on the fashion industry. Sure no one really watches the damn thing, but somehow legions of girls, having gawped at the show's fashions, have run shrieking to the internet to purchase fancy handbags online or trundle, ripped-out pages from magazines clutched in hand, up to their favorite boutique to wrap a super chic kilt around their processed-food-fed hips. It's truly a sensation! But just as Chuck would say to some lovelorn young lady: baby, you're not the first. Yes indeed movies and television have long dictated new fashion trends, whether on the design or the commerce end, for years and years now. After the jump take a look at a few other bits and pieces of the sartorial world that were influenced by those flickering images.

Blake Lively's people are throwing a hissy fit over the Gossip Girl star's cover shot on this month's Seventeen. And before assuming this is just another case of some publicist overreacting and getting their La Perlas in a twist over nothing, one quick look at the cover in question actually makes us side with the flack this time. Lively's gone out of her way recently to make sure no one confuses her with Paris Hilton, but her puffy eyes, hollow cheekbones and vampire chompers on the Seventeen cover aren't helping her case. Which begs the question: why is it so hard for a magazine to shoot a decent celebrity cover? Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Sarah Jessica Parker are all recent victims of the same unflattering cover treatments, and all kinds of oddly unglamorous shots have hit newsstands for years.

Can everyone, just for one quick moment, tear their minds away from picturing Chuck and Nate doing it, and remember the actual point of Gossip Girl? Yes, thank you, the clothes. The New York Times goes out into the field and gathers hard evidence of what was pretty obvious: Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf are, as far as fashion retailers are concerned, Carrie Bradshaw to the power of 100. Bloomingdales fashion director Stephanie Solomon says that the show "has had a profound influence on retail," while Teen Vogue editor Amy Astley admits that the characters' carefully styled wardrobes prompted "a pretty huge resurgence of ritzy, preppy and collegiate looks" on the runway. Even socialite designer Tory Burch has "girls coming in with magazine tear sheets of Blake Lively or Leighton Meester, from location shootings or from everyday life."

"Nobody understands Blair quite like Chuck, and vice versa. She still has feelings for him. Maybe he made a mistake — who knows?'' — Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester on her character's chances for love with the wicked Chuck Bass. The new season premieres in like 56 days. [EW]

Oh look. A new show about rich people. It's certainly not a new TV meme, but there's just so much of it these days. What with the Real Housewives and the Gossip Girls and the Super Sweet sixteen-year-olds. One might begin to think there was some sort of canyon-sized poverty gap growing in this country of ours. This newest entry in the genre is about a young writer who takes a job tutoring two spoiled rich heiresses and blah blah blah, people swim in money. The show is slated to be on the CW, where Gossip Girl is housed, this fall. So tune in on your non-flat television set, pour a glass of Fish Eye from a box, and feel terribly, terribly impoverished. It's a good thing poor people just aren't that interesting. A promo clip for the show awaits you after the jump.

When a girl's starting to doubt her sex appeal, after a foray into acting that has thus far earned her parts as a back brace-wearing nerd and the part of "Smoking Girl" in something called Whore, there is no better way to regain confidence and prove just how fine you are than nailing a gay actor (allegedly). And that's just the challenge Rumer Willis set up for herself during a recent night out. According to the NY Post, the rising starlet and failed auditonee of Lindsay Lohan's lesbian love lottery spotted boy band groupie Chace Crawford at a birthday party and tried every boy toy magnet trick she could think of in an extensively planned and bitterly fought campaign to pull off the rarely accomplished task of getting him to switch teams.

Poor Chace Crawford can't get a break. The gay rumors keep on coming even though the Gossip Girl actor, who plays Nate on the show, has asked the show runners to cut it out with the gay shirtless stuff and my esteemed (read: smarter and better-connected) colleagues at the Daily Intel got no blips on their gaydar when they met him. It doesn't matter! Everyone still calls him geigh. And now even Wikipedia is conspiring against him. To see what I mean, consult the picture at left. Click through for larger.

Any way you slice it, Gossip Girl star Blake Lively is having one helluva year. Not only is her show a big hit (online, that is), but she's starring in the anticipated sequel to Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants, she got to spend a few minutes flirting with David Letterman and she landed herself on the cover of the new issue of Vanity Fair (and didn't even have to pose with McLovin to do it!). One would think all would be well in Blake Lively's world. However, one would be wrong. You see, there's this pesky problem issue of people getting her confused with Paris Hilton that is, like, so frustrating and stuff to her! As she explains in the new issue of Seventeen: