"We were told to come 'dressed upscale and camera ready,' which had us a little nervous as to whether we'd be up to the competition — but then … there wasn't any." [New York]

Speaking of Gossip Girl (I now begin every sentence or conversation that way), our dear Tumblr friend who created the extremely funny Found magazine/GG mash-up all the sad young gossip girls has been ripped-off! This Lily/Bart wedding announcement on the CW's official blog for the bitchy Upper East Side teen soap was stolen completely from this atsygg post. Outrage! Lawsuits! Bring The CW to its knees! Though, that could halt production on Gossip Girl. So, um. Actually don't do anything.

Gossip Girl wants you! No, not you. Move over. I'm talking to that rich Hamptonite kid behind you who "own[s] a wide variety of upscale wardrobe including, but not limited to, polished trendy, designer labels, elegant formalwear, single and double breasted suits in addition to tasteful shoes and accessories." Yes indeed, the buzzed-about teen soap that no one actually watches will be filming in the Hamptons this summer and an open casting call (well, open for SAG members) for extras will be held this Saturday from 1-4 at some place called the Pink Elephant, in West Hamptonsberrycourt. Or some such silly town. Someone please go! Calling all well-dressed out of work actors who read Gawker! You could play "polished Upper East Side types, young, sexy Manhattan socialites, conservative prep-school teenagers, and bourgeois, high society types". And that's not the only casting going on! A tipster tells us of a far more depressing and poorly attended cattle call, for a Howard Stern project naturally, that was witnessed today, after the jump.

Rumors that a boarding school-set Gossip Girl spin-off was in the works have been shot down by GG creator Josh Schwartz. DAMMIT.

Despite less-than-stellar ratings and only one season in the bank, the creators of the hormonally charged, red lipstick-laced Gossip Girl are already hard at work on putting together a spin-off. As THR reports, producers will use the original books’ It Girl series as a blueprint, in which the social-climbing, scandalous and date rape-prone Jenny Humphrey character (Taylor Momsen) is shipped off to boarding school to clean up her act — just as the show’s main character, Serena Van Woodsen, had been punished for bad girl behavior like sex with BFFs’ boyfriends and being an über-lush by spending a year in the supposedly rigid countryside enclaves north of Manhattan. As the producers spin their wheels hoping that GG network CW bites, we took a look back on the Boarding School For Bad Boys And Girls phenomenon on television to get a sense of how ridiculously and erroneously Hollywood writers have been depicting these New England pastures in the past:

As if the heat finally breaking was not good news enough, now comes word (or rumor, at least) that a Gossip Girl spin-off is in the works. The potential series would roughly follow the It Girl series of books, which were spun-off of the Gossip Girl novels when the littlest Humphrey, Jenny, decided to reinvent herself and head off to a tony boarding school in "New York horse country". A boarding school setting is great because it promises class warfare, upstairs-downstairs townie romances, and snobby boys who show up to dances and spike the punch. (The show will be set in 1958, right?)

Gossip Girl is everywhere. Well, at least Taylor Momsen. The waifish blonde lass who plays lying-in-the-gutter-looking-at-the-stars climber Jenny Humphrey on the teen soap was spotted this morning, outside a Starbucks, making it the fifth time this month. Momsen has been seen in Herald Square, in the West Village, on an Upper West Side bus, even at the Meadowlands (though, that one is sort of publicist-y). She's one of the most popular Stalker characters. Is this girl really so recognizable and ubiquitous, or is there merely a new breed of copycat lookalikes, on release from their tony prep schools, roaming our city, desperate for tiny dresses and coffee drinks? Judge for yourself, after the jump.

While the rumors of the CW's demise haven't quite been greatly exaggerated, they're looking a little premature this morning as news of the network's upfront success trickles out. Amid panic over plunging ratings and the looming ouster of boss Dawn Ostroff, the House of Gossip Girl apparently wrapped up its advance sales with as much as $370 million — about half of last year's numbers but not half-bad under the circumstances. 90210 apparently speaks for itself, after all:

Last week I wearily conceded that yes, in fact, the boys from Gossip Girl might actually be straight. Though the teen soap itself is gay as Christmas, the actors on the show are constantly "spotted" romancing ladies and stealing kisses in public places. (And, um, fellating beer bottles.) Though! Maybe they're just "overcompensating"? The Daily News and Daily Intel seem to think so, specifically about young Conner Paolo, who plays newly gay Upper East Sider Erik van der Woodsen on the show.

Browsing the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, we came across Steve Daly's survey of the modern spoiler, never more epidemic in the Internet age than on exterior shoots. And while some studios conceal their films' secrets by burning the entire set and even the movies themselves to smoldering rubble, we tip our cap to the more creatively minded subterfuge happening on sets from Indiana Jones 4 to Gossip Girl to Sex and the City. That's not going to stop us, though, from giving away everything that happens in Daly's piece after the jump.

["Gossip Girl" kids Penn Badgley and Blake Lively in Manhattan today; image via Splash]

Gossip Girl author Cecily von Ziegesar has sold a novel to Hyperion in a deal said to be in the seven figures. Cum Laude, repped by Suzanne Gluck, is for adults, although judging from the description—"a murder story involving a preppy girl from Greenwich, CT, a hippie from the city, a jock-turned-artist from the suburbs, and a brother-sister duo"—it probably won't be too challenging for fans of Blair, Serena and co. [Observer]

Found magazine and Gossip Girl mash-up Tumblr site All the Sad Young Gossip Girls continues to be hilarious and disturbingly detailed.

I may have implied earlier today, in our fun photo gallery, (and on many other occasions) that some of the male stars of TV's bitchy uptown soap Gossip Girl like to touch other boys' privates. Yeah, I like to joke/desperately hope that they're gay. But mounting photo evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Ed Westwick likes to smooch women in bed, Connor Paolo (who plays resident gay Erik van der Woodsen on the show) is a red-blooded seventeen-year-old (yikes!) breeder who likes to grind up ons young ladies (thanks for the photo, tipster), and Chace Crawford (the gayyyyyest one) likes to rub his face all over girls at bars. So, sigh, there you have it. Or! Maybe these guys just have very talented publicists! Click thru for larger image, plus another uncomfortable image from our previously mentioned tipster.

Ohhh dear. Some nefarious genius has stumbled upon the Photobucket page of Ed Westwick, also known as Charles "Chuckles" Bass from the Ken Burns documentary series Gossip Girl (kidding, it's just a silly soap about rich Manhattan teens). Or is it the work of Chace "Nate" Crawford, another actor on the show? Or of some anonymous, obsessive third party? There are lots of personal photos of Ed, Chace, and various friends posing drunkenly and cockily, as the young ones are wont to do. Look, there are Chace and Ed looking sexy and intimate, as they should always look! And there's Ed in bed with an anonymous lady friend! And there, of course, they all are, clearly drunk as monks. Though they may play Upper East Side rich brats on TV, they are in fact just like us. Drunken idiots who pose for silly photos. We've selected the best and put them in a handy photo album for you. Won't you help us caption them?

[Blake Lively, an actress who appears on "Gossip Girl" and in a movie about magic pants, in downtown Manhattan yesterday, where she took a stroll with costar and lover Penn Badgley; image via Splash]

Oh I can hardly believe it! Such language! No, not from the mewling hormone vessels (ack, remember those days?) on Gossip Girl, but rather the people who recap the episodes. The Calendar section of the LA Times recently made a funny (and possibly optimistic about teen sex) blunder while quoting the show in a next-day postmortem. Jenny, our littlest sexbot, was talking about her secretly homo boyfriend Asher and said "Is that why we went to third?" To which one of her silly friends replied "You went to third?" (Now, tell me because I'm curious, what is third to you? To me that means taking a ferry to fellatio farms or a caravan to cunnilingus corners, but I could be off.) Anyway, the LAT recapper, Jon Caramanica, thought they said "dessert" instead of "third." So his write up read: "Is that why we went dessert?" "You went dessert?!?!?!" As if they'd just been scarfing down fried macaroni and cheese and the Navajo chicken sandwich at Cheesecake Factory and then they'd gone for the cake. I guess it still works, actually. [From Regret the Error]

The Youngs of the Upper East Side are all abuzz. No, not about the season finale Gossip Girl. They're aTwitter about their very own real life anonymous mudslinging blogger, called MissITK (In The Know). The site, which was just shut down, was created and run by an anonymous eighth grader who, with diligent cattiness and some garbled Gossip Girl-esque verbal jumping jacks, chronicled the class of 2012's (hovercars!) "elite A-List." Students at private schools all over the moneyed, ivy-covered neighborhood have been implicated in MissITK's posts, which hiss about pathetic attempts at beauty (colored contact lenses!) and desirability (sexy dancing at a bat mitzvah! hahahahah!) Students were sorted into "A" and "B" lists, determined Kings or Queens. Television (and books, sort of), what hath you wrought??

Whoever created the tumblr "all the sad young gossip girls" deserves some sort of award. It. Is. Hilarious. I mean, if you're a fan of Gossip Girl or of things that show a hysterical amount of time spent on something frivolous. The "excerpt" from Dan's New Yorker story (pictured above). Chuck's lovelorn scrawlings. The IM conversation between Eric van der Woodsen and the geigh lax player. Oh the IM. Pure genius. I have nothing snippy to say about this. Carry on brave soul. And tell me who you are. [all the sad young gossip girls] (Click through for larger image)

[Gossip Girl actress Taylor Momsen at the Fifi Awards in New York last night; image via Splash]