Everything you thought you knew about “Gossip Girl”’s Penn Badgley being a hugely Hollywood, affected d-baggington is
apparently not true, according to this late-breaking expose with the New York Times. In a recent installment of their “A Night Out With” section, investigative reporter Dave Itzkoff learns that Badgley is not only a somewhat average fellow like any other 22-year-old East Villager—shopping at Other Music, drinking Bud at Mars Bar—he likes decent music! He bought records by RZA and Toumani Diabete! Has he been reading The FADER? At first this news was shocking, but then we thought, perhaps Penn is simply typecast as Dan, because… remember his last emotive coolguy television character, Owen Gregory? No? That was on the Bedford Diaries, the shortlived WB drama about NYC college students, and Penn was sporting some seriously amazing grunge hair during that time. (YouTube evidence after the jump.) And while 21st century grungers don’t generally get along with punks as a matter of principle, as Penn states in the piece, you just have to not be a jerk. We’ll be watching Gossip Girl with a whole new open mind, wondering what other musical gems Badge-O’s got in the crates.

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Hey Upper East Siders… Tripwire here. Your source for the juiciest indie rock gossip on the internet. Earlier today sources confirmed that Sonic Youth would debut a brand new acoustic version of EVOL’s 1986 track “Starpower”—a track bubble-gummy as the Ciccone Youth get—on our favorite Monday night party jam, Gossip Girl. COINCIDENTALLY this item leaked mere days after the news that Gossip Girl is writing a big ass naked menage a trois into the script, which will hopefully be scored by Kim’s lethargic singing—because for bourgeois New York teens, menage a trois are about as fascinating as breathing, and just as common. Then again, since Sonic Youth are well into their 40s and the only people who might be pumped at having something so sexually adventurous and vanilla-y as a threesome are the parents, we think we figured out the plot: Dan’s dad Rufus knew Sonic Youth in the ’90s when he was in that grunge band. Maybe they were on Lolla together, but Sonic Youth DEFINITELY hated his band as they were gross corpo inventions of the Candlebox variety instead of organic basement scuzzbuckets like Mudhoney. But here he redeems himself by doing it with Lily and… Vanessa? Blair’s mom? The maid? A mailorder bride? AT THE SAME TIME! STARPOWER! ZOOM!

Because we are certain your lives mirror the everyday travails of such unfairly put-upon elite New York teenagers Serena, Chuck, Blair, Nate and to a lesser extent commoners Dan, Jenny and (tsk) Vanessa, we knew we had to alert you to this contest celebrating the DVD release of “Gossip Girl” season two. New York Cool beseeches you to TELL YOUR STORY… write them a paragraph about “how the spirit of Blair, Serena, Jenny, Vanessa, Nate, Chuck and Dan have helped you overcome life’s little tragedies. Be specific. When you are treated with disrespect like dear Serena, do you buy a new purse or get a wax? When threatened with the loss of prestige like our glam heroine Blair, do you flee to Bora Bora or just get a spray tan at Bliss Spa?” The person with the MOST EPIC TRAGEDY overcome by the craziest display of total Upper East Side conspicuous consumption, retail therapy and/or bourgeois escapism will win a free t-shirt! But just so you know, we are going to win when we tell the story about the time we broke a nail and got through it by listening to Leighton Meester’s demos on YouTube for sixty-two days straight before we gathered up all our cousins and racked a Bergdorf’s. Sorry dudes! Enter the contest here.

Last night, Taylor Momsen (aka Gossip Girl’s “Little Jenny”) celebrated her 16th birthday at the Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan by playing a show with her band, Pretty Reckless. We admit we were skeptical at first, both because we are fearful of actor/musician crossovers in general, and because our favorite Gossip Girl side project is already Leighton Meester’s. But, truth be told, Lil Jenny blew us away with her powerful singing voice! At first we thought we might simply be impressed because we were kind of jazzed at seeing Chuck Bass and Dan’s Dad in real life (they were up front by the stage and rocking their faces off), but when we closed our eyes and pretended like she was just some schlub from Jerz, it still sounded awesome: a boozy worldwise rasp with a wicked patina of Jett, Cobain and Hynde. All her songs are about her ex-boyfriends, apparently, so don’t be a douche if you date her. We flipcammed the whole thing.