To go along with its tres racy ad campaign — complete with Parents Television Council warnings — The CW has releases a handful of 12-second clips to get you ready for Gossip Girl's Sept. 1 return. They're loaded with one-liner soundbites, so you'll have something to impress your friends with instead of ending every sentence with "xoxo, Gossip Girl." [The CW]

Remember Gossip Girl's tres provocative "OMFG" campaign from April, which kicked off the second part of the show's first season amidst a round of buzz, especially when the Parents Television Council got in a huff over The CW's marketing department insinutiating the word "fuck?"

Good news! More rebellious marketing materials for a show about teen sex, teen drinking, teen drug use, and teen wealth. And conservative groups are really going to hate the ones below.

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Ann Shoket is not on the good side of Gossip Girl Blake Lively. The blonde starlet — tragically seen in the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants — pops up on Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan this month, but her cover role on Shoket's Seventeen has her pissed. Even her rep says she's not happy about it!

Except, well, this isn't the worst cover we've ever seen Lively on. In fact, we have three candidates that are at least equally terrible.

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Though Gossip Girl is in re-runs and will not return to The CW until Sept. 1, the show's cast is spending the summer shooting the episodes you're going to concern yourselves with when season two appears this fall. In a brilliant twist of newspegs, this allows the show to be fair game on the culture beat year-round, which explains how articles like this one — about how the show influences the fashions that tween, teen, and twentysomething girls are buyings — get printed. That what S, B, or little Jenny wear impacts what young girls are wearing, and what the stores they shop at will be stocking, it of little surprise; designer Stefani Greenspan, who creates the Priorities line sold at Macy’s, Dillard’s and Bloomingdale’s, says GG "definitely" influenced her collection of "trim blazers lined in men’s tie fabric, oversized cardigans and ruffled plaid shirts with gold buttons."

The real Gossip Girl twist is that while designers are paying tidy sums to The CW to get their duds on the show's characters for some heavy hitting product placement, it's the incessant paparazzi coverage of the show — with cameras following them all over Manhattan and the Hamptons — that's impacting its "trend-ability."

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For some silly reason, both Rumer Willis and Brittny Gastineau have not heard that Gossip boy Chace Crawford may not swing for their team. Learning this information will help them understand why he showed exactly zero interest in them at a birthday party they all attended, despite Rumer's wearing "the shortest jean shorts." Or maybe it's because he has seen both Rumer and Brittny in daylight. You would've thought Rumer learned her lesson when a previous outfit consisting of a "see-through her white dress [and ...] a black bra underneath" failed to earn his gaze.

Gossip boy Chace Crawford's recent mouthing off about the television show that made him isn't exactly on par with the lashing Katherine Heigl gave Grey's Anatomy's writers and producers, but he's made clear he's sees himself as a big enough star not to follow strict orders. He tells OK!: "There was an episode where we were crashed out on the sofa after a big night out and they wanted me to wake up in my boxers, so I argued with them about it. I mean, first of all, who gets wasted with their buddy, and smokes weed and then strips down to their boxers before they pass out on the couch?! No one does that. Why am I naked on my buddy's couch? It was weird so I fought it." Um, asked and answered?

James Wolcott, the media and culture "expert" who, rather than be hired away by a university looking for somebody to produce immutable soundbites about things like media and culture, scribbles a column for Vanity Fair, takes on the "next wave" of Hollywood (see: Gossip Girl) in this way:

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Somehow we're completely ready to trust the gaydar of New York online editor Chris Rovzar's gaydar regarding Gossip Girl "roommates" Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick, who calls B.S. on rumors they're dating. Also, we're completely despaired. And not actually ready to trust anything. [NYM]

Just a day after the Internet was abuzz with rumors — equally plausible and impossible — that Gossip Girl co-stars and roommates Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick are lovers, weren't afraid to hide it, and were spotted open-mouth kissing in Crawford's trailer, Westick's rep calls the report "absolutely untrue."

… except for New York magazine. [NYM]

Lazing around the Hamptons this summer and happen to be a card-carrying member of SAG? Then perhaps you're the perfect fit to play an extra on Josh Schwartz's Gossip Girl, which will be filming on the East End (in Southampton on the 18th and 19th, and Upper Brookville the 22nd and 23rd). Also, you must "own 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." Making perfect sense, the casting call is this Saturday at Pink Elephant, where people like you will have a chance to hang out with other people like you, whether you get on the show or not.

So much for that: Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz says that, despite the rumors, there are no plans to spin-off the series. "Not sure how this got out there, but no plans for spinoff at this moment. The books do have a spinoff, but we have nothing in the works right now other than making sure season two gets off to a great start."

We would love nothing more in life, besides an air conditioning system that worked outdoors and followed us where we walked, than a Gossip Girl spin-off. And it appears producers at Alloy Entertainment, which owns more of tweenage culture than you could ever imagine, are following the wise path of shows like The Office, which understand how hard it is to get a new program, with unfamiliar characters, off the ground with so many competing series premiering. So it's the brand extension route they're taking, and for Gossip Girl, it'll likely hinge on little Jenny Humphrey, sister of Dan, who heads off to boarding school to reinvent herself as the popular girl. "In the books, a series of public embarrassments (such as appearing in a teen magazine wearing next to nothing) results in Humphrey having to either repeat ninth grade or find a new school." [THR]

Only problem: Gossip Girl isn't exactly drawing stellar ratings, and it's home, The CW network, already has a slew of shows targeting similar audiences: The new 90210, as well as the brooding One Tree Hill. So while The CW, which is co-owned by Gossip co-producers Warner Bros., has a right of first refusal for the spin-off, it could very well turn down the new show. Which means Alloy would have to shop it elsewhere. Which is fine, our TiVo will know where to find it. Just don't put a dagger through our heart and let it end up on Lifetime.

Update: This might all be false.

Just because Connor Paolo plays a gay on Gossip Girl does not mean he is a gay in real life! The actor made a very calculated move to cut short any speculation he might lead an alternative, unemployable lifestyle by smooching his girlfriend April all the way down the red carpet of the Step Up Women's Network's 10th Annual Inspiration Awards.

This supposedly will put to rest rumors that the boys of Gossip Girl are all a bunch of 'mos.

But, uh, Paolo was at the Step Up Women's Network ceremony, for chrissake.

With near certainty, these photos of Gossip Girl actor Chace Crawford – routinely spotted getting close with ladies and/or talking about dating them – will once and for all silence any rumors he is of the homosexual variety. [Photos: OU]