Though the Gossip Girl pretty boy has already doused gossip pages with gay rumors, Willis was allegedly gung-ho about grabbing the goldilock-ed birthday boy's attention. But instead of smartly following in his co-star Blake Lively's footsteps and donning a trustworthy bikini inspired by her own mother, Rumer thought a pair of her "shortest jean shorts" and impressive dance floor shenanigans would do the trick. Sadly, sources say Crawford was less interested in both her and Z-lister Brittny Gastineau's forays in conversion tactics: "He wouldn't give her the time of day." A sad moment indeed, but we do suggest Willis try her method out on Crawford's partner in fruitini-drinking crime JC Chasez, who, judging from our tipster's report months back, is much more interested in hiding his sexual preferences behind cabana doors.

[Photo credits: Getty, Wireimage]

• WOMEN COMPETING FOR CHACE CRAWFORD AT HIS BIRTHDAY [NYP]

"Since I have a dog and blond hair, that must mean we're alike. It's a dumb thing to say. I don't think that makes us similar," Lively tells the new issue of Seventeen. "I don't know her, but I don't like being compared to anyone by somebody who doesn't know me. I'm my own person. I don't go to clubs, I don't party, I don't dance on tables and I don't like sex tapes."

She doesn't like sex tapes? Has journalism really sunk so far that the reporter for Seventeen (which I can now read and get all the references) couldn't bother interjecting to get some clarification on that question? I mean, does she mean that she doesn't like "making" them (which would be a bummer) or "watching" them? Because there's one little fella out there with a sex tape that sure could use the extra cashflow if Lively were to pick up a copy of his work. But sex tape inquiries aside, we feel for Lively, we really do. We have no idea why anyone would confuse an actress who rose to prominence by playing a tall, blonde, sexually promiscuous and often times inebriated socialite would get confused for a tall, blonde, sexually promiscuous and often times inebriated socialite. Here's hoping that movie about a magical pair of elastic-waisted denim pantaloons helps Lively break out of the typecasting rut that Hollywood has pegged her into. It's hard out there for a starlet, it really is.

• I'M NO PARIS [NY Post]

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Penny, the dog of Gossip Girl star Blake Lively exacted her revenge for what the dog perceived to be a rather lackluster finale for the freshmen CW series. Lively exclaimed, "Look at what you did to mommy's outfit? Why would you do that to mommy's outfit?" Penny just jumped around and barked insistently as Lively tried to find out why her dog acted out. Lively asked her dog if she was upset about having to be on the set of Gossip Girl, which received no barks. Then Lively asked if her dog felt uncomfortable about being crated in the bathroom whenever Lively left the house. The dog barked in a way to indicate that was sort of the problem, but not the biggest problem. Lively then asked if Penny objected to the direction that show was going in for the next season, which got the biggest bark from Penny. Picking Penny up from the ground, Lively explained to the dog that she doesn't have any control over that and she will not "pull a 'Heigl" any time soon.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

Facts of Life, 1979-88: The Eastland School
With character names like Tootie, Blair and Sue Ann, a token Poor But Smart Black Student from the Bronx, and plot lines involving housemothers dishing out advice to sex-crazed pre-teens and spoiled kids from New York, NBC’s spin-off of Diff’rent Strokes actually portrayed life at boarding school as close to reality as we’ve seen on television. Especially considering the long-running show’s depiction of various characters’ adult lives in the final season: one ends up in New York banging a guy named Snake, and another is banging a “musician” named Rick. If boarding school teaches girls one thing, it’s that pansy pop-collared preppy boys do not a proper sex life make.

Zoey 101, 2005-present: Pacific Coast Academy
Possibly the most off-the-mark vision of boarding school ever portrayed on TV, the Juno Lynn Spears-starring, California-set Nickelodeon “comedy” gets it wrong in oh so many ways, and allow us to count just a few samples: boarding school girls do not have trashy highlights, boarding school boys do not wear muscle tees, boarding school kids pop Adderall and fly cocaine in using their dad’s private jet rather than sipping “energy drinks” for adrenaline, and most importantly, boarding school is not “funny.”

Breaker High, 1998-99: Breaker High
Oh dear. Falling somewhere in between Facts and Zoey, this UPN bomb took place on, yes, a cruise ship. What sounds like one idiotic producer's idea to use this format in order to implement exotic locales and the darndest things foreigners say is simply, just...no. But! In one episode, all the classmates get Hepatitis-A. This sounds right — STDs and illnesses both expertly faked or intentionally caused in order to skip class and sleep off hangovers at the infirmary is pretty rampant at the real deals. Plus, Ryan Gosling was in it! As a “missing member of the brat pack” who conned bitchy girls! Far too many of these exist from Andover to Exeter and every country club campus in between.

[Photo credits: TV.com, Nick.com, Fortune City]

• 'GOSSIP GIRL' PRODUCERS EYE SPIN-OFF [THR]

With less inventory to leverage and no ratings story to speak of, CW was in a "great position to get fleeced," as one rival network ad sales exec observed. But advertisers bucked convention wisdom of just a month ago by committing to TV in a big way, even as overall marketing budgets are being curtailed, in many cases, as a hedge against the economic slowdown. ...

[G]eneral enthusiasm among buyers for CW's 2008-09 sked and its planned "90210" update allowed the netlet to command 8% rate increases for its Monday-Friday primetime spots. CW also still has a hand in selling the time for the Sunday block that [Media Rights Capital] will take over in September, so the net's final tally of ad revenue will increase when that money is eventually factored in.

Among the chief buyers, according to Variety: "Theatrical pics, retail outlets, wireless service providers and health and beauty products," whose executives' kindness will be rewarded for the first time ever by handwritten notes from Blake Lively herself, thanking them for their unflagging confidence in B-grade soap operas and the sheer cultural influence of the teenagers-fucking marketplace. Said a CW spokesman: "We are pleased." Aren't. We. All.

• CW scores cash in changing market [Variety]

Seriously, spoiler phobes beware: Don't read any further if you crave the integrity of this latest thrilling installment in the EW canon!

· "Exterior shot" is among the scariest phrases currently making the rounds among hotly anticipated scripts.

· Harrison Ford's call-sheet code name on Indy 4 was "#"; Cate Blanchett's was "Mean Girl". Producer Kathleen Kennedy is fed up, but accepts that it's part of the territory. Not even Iron Man was safe from "pesky snappers"!

· "Can't anything be done by way of defense?" Daly asks. Unless you're shooting on private property, no. Kennedy is still frustrated.

· Daly again: "What happens if the script calls for a scene in an urban spot, like downtown L.A. or the steps of the New York Public Library? You might as well paint targets on the actors' backs, because that's when the general public shows up along with the professionals." (God, when will the hoi polloi just get over it? — Ed.)

· Gossip Girl's producer says even a closed set isn't really a closed set these days.

· Steven Spielberg foiled paparazzi in New Mexico by posting pictures to Indy's official Web site before anyone else could get a shot of Harrison Ford in costume.

· This is HUGE: Comic book movies are the hardest to defend, sometimes yielding bad buzz that's impossible to deflect: "'It directly affects PR, and drives when you release images to the public,' says Marvel's [Kevin] Feige. 'We want to be the first ones to unveil it. Not some scooper with a camera phone.' "

· After weeks of enduring cameras everywhere they turned in New York, Sarah Jessica Parker finally gave up for one scene in Sex and the City: "'It just wasn't worth the risk,' she says. 'We put it inside. We were a little bit worried about it feeling too small. But I think it ended up working really nicely. I hope so.'" [Cha-ching! — Ed.]

· Finally, the shocking twist ending: Daly didn't write alone! "Additional reporting by Missy Schwartz, Tim Stack, and Adam B. Vary." Fuck, what a letdown. The critics will kill it.

• Spoiler Nation [EW]

So what's the problem? What else, suggests CW boss Dawn Ostroff: Nielsen is miscalculating their ratings!

CW executives attribute the network's poor ratings performance not to a lack of viewers but to flaws in the system of measure. "Obviously, we would have liked to do better," Ms. Ostroff said this week. "Our young audience certainly knows how to get their content in different ways, and we have to figure out different ways to measure how they're getting it."

The CW has two strategies for this: work with Nielsen Media Research, the company that records ratings, to improve its methodology; and continue efforts to lure more and younger viewers to the network. Despite its stated demographic targets, the CW viewer's median age is 34, Ms. Ostroff says.

Nielsen says in a statement that although it believes its ratings "provide a fair picture of what younger viewers are watching," the audience is challenging to track. "We are working closely with the CW and all of our clients to continuously improve our measurement."

Sure, there may be a slight underreporting in Farmer Wants a Wife's .00000003 share, but it's a peccadillo in the scheme of things that mostly involves polishing its new 90210 turd and milking just one more DVD-ready season of Gossip Girl from increasingly skeptical advertisers. We foresee an all-black New York Magazine cover protesting the network's demise and its Best. (If Least Effectual.) Show. Ever. by this time next year — or at least we hope for one: It may be the only way anyone knows the CW died.

• It's No Gossip, Ratings Slip Threatens CW Network [WSJ]

While Lively may not have the sort of fearsome fembot rack as Aniston, her tongue twister partner reminds us of a far less annoying, far cuter version of John Mayer 1.0: when Mayer first got noticed and had yet to unleash his bitchy blog posts and gain a rep for Master Starlet Dumper.

And judging by Penn's willingness to protect his baby's back with SPF and, to use that godawful teenybopper term, "cuddle," we actually feel optimistic about this particular couple's chances. No gay rumors thus far, and really, what are the odds either of these tall, not-so-tan, thin and lovely bodies will spot someone hotter and split?

[Photo credits: National Photo Group via People]

• EXCLUSIVE: BLAKE & PENN'S ROMANTIC GETAWAY [People]

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Gossip Girl Leighton Meester propositioned her Entourage co-star Adrian Grenier as a means to fight off boredom. Meester told Grenier that it wouldn't mean anything, it'd just be a little harmless kissing. Grenier thought about it for a moment, but said that he's kind of involved with somebody at the moment. Jerry Ferrara, better known as Turtle, quickly offered up his services as a time killer to Meester, but she said that she'll get back to him on that one.

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

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Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester nearly fell asleep on set yesterday afternoon. Although Meester has been acting professionally for a while and understands the amount of time required for lighting and blocking and what not, the glacial pace of filming got the best of her yesterday afternoon. In addition to blaming the heat for sleepiness, Meester explained that there's something about weddings that makes her sad and well, sleepy.

[Photo Credit: X17]

It's simpler than any of that; this whole thing comes down to a picture of a 15-year-old looking like she just got the shit fucked out of her. And if there's anything America loves more than a war, it's teenagers fucking.

And a culture war about teenagers fucking? Sign us (and Bill O'Reilly and Hilary Duff and the women of The View and...) up! We should have seen it coming last week when 14-year-old Taylor Momsen was seductively featured in her underwear on the cover of New York Magazine's Gossip Girl issue. Not to be outdone, the gang at VF — expert flesh-spotters from waaayyy back — coaxed their own peek at the bare back of a billion-dollar Disney franchise, adding signature flourishes of bedhead and smudged lipstick. To hear Cyrus tell it in VF, it was an "artful" touch by her photographer, and "you can't tell Annie Leibovitz no."

Subtle rape inferences aside, Disney can tell Annie Leibovitz no, and a few hundred million dollars' worth of Hannah Montana franchise decline will only illustrate how quickly the company would have interceded had it had the chance. The kicker, of course, is that the plunge is inversely proportionate to our interest in seeing Miley Cyrus (and Taylor Momsen, Hayden Panettiere, Lindsay Lohan and, years ago, Brooke Shields and God knows who else before her) appearing rode hard and put away wet. Is it right? Is it wrong? It doesn't matter, because teenagers fuck.

In fact, we were once teenagers fucking — underage, illegal, the whole thing — and we recall this being an issue then as well. The social critics who decried us fucking were helpless against our hormones and the mass-culture monolith that endorsed it all the way; the Miley Cyrus case reaffirms that dynamic more than a decade later. Except now, faced with the most mainstream "perversion" yet, a little more intellectually honest approach is required.

For starters, nobody was exploiting anybody — at least not any more than VF would have otherwise. A publicist probably blew it somewhere along the line, but Miley Cyrus is 15 — at least a year older than her target demo — and she knew what she was doing. She made a choice, and her apology was not for offending her fans but rather for acknowledging that, again, teenagers fuck. She is a teenager, and if she's not fucking yet, then she will be. This is not debatable. Naturally it would be criminal, but like millions of other law-breaking, fucking teens, she and her partner(s) will gleefully do it anyway. Hopefully they use protection.

Also, teenagers fucking is a billion-dollar industry. Juno, for example, would not have been a lucrative, laureled darling of both the Christian right and the hipster left had she and Paulie Bleeker not A) fucked and B) kept the baby they conceived. Superbad was a more pointed argument for the appeal of teenagers not only fucking, but fucking well. Then there's Gossip Girl and the cult of Britney, the latter of whose teen sexuality only spiked as a cultural commodity after she became a mother in her 20s. Crazy! But as the previous generation's iconic teenager fucking — with a partner like Justin Timberlake, natch (yes, guys are also teenagers fucking) — that's part of her brand.

Finally, while we respect the values and basic laws protecting minors from sexual abuse and exploitation, we do not think one photo or the tone of those around it compromises social order the way, say, a polygamist sect or a basement full of kids made with one's own daughter might. This is Miley Cyrus growing up in public like hundreds of teens before her and countless more to follow. She's a sexual creature at 15, just like the rest of us were, are or will be. Hannah Montana has its own universe, and if teenagers don't fuck there, great. Here, however, teenagers fuck, and love it or hate it, that's the world we crave. It hardly seems like news.

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Bucking all the Hollywood dieting trends and fads, Gossip Girl guest star Michelle Trachtenberg enjoyed an ice cream sundae while on set yesterday. Trachtenberg explained that it was a hot day and, quite frankly, frozen yogurt doesn't quite hit the spot on a hot day. However, Trachtenberg did say that she called her personal trainer and notified him that she was going to have some ice cream and that her workout the following day would reflect her decision to have ice cream.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

Ever after our seventh viewing, however, we're still not exactly sure of what it is was we were looking at. It appears to involve the aggressive manipulation of a brunette's head, accompanied by a run-on stream of Latina yelps of passion—David Lynchian elements of danger and the surreal that engaged us far more than anything involving the van der Woodsens.

• KTLA Entertainment News

"'She was pushed off the show,' says a snitch. 'Leighton didn't like her, and she went.'"

As Gossip Girl fans know, Leighton's character Blair Waldorf rules the private school, and Meester portrays the girl we all hated during high school flawlessly. But Zhang's alleged decision to pursue homework instead of Hollywood just sounds fishy, especially considering the age-old conspiracy theory that minorities always get kicked to the curb first in horror movies. Though Meester's rep is obviously claiming there's absolutely no truth to what sources told the New York Daily News, we have to wonder if playing a serious bitch on-screen has finally gone to Leighton's head. After all, she's been pounding the Hollywood pavement for years before finally getting her big break, only to be usurped by the show's breakaway star, Blake Lively. Could a Serena Van Woodsen Goes Back To Rehab, Never Heard From Again storyline be far away?

[Photo Credit: Getty]

• A 'GOSSIP GIRL' DROPOUT - OR DID LEIGHTON MEESTER PUSH HER OUT? [NYDN]

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An unnamed production assistant on the show Gossip Girl attempted to take it to the next level with one of the show's stars, Leighton Meester. After weeks of thinking he was picking up a vibe from Meester (and fueled by the drunken logic of friends over the weekend), the P.A. asked Meester if she'd like to share a Coke with him. Meester smiled and politely said that she'd like to, but she had to go over her lines for the next scene. As the dejected P.A. walked away, a near by teamster scoffed, "If you're gonna try to pull anybody, pull an extra, you big dummy. When you're Mister Big Time Movie Producer, then you go for the star."

[Photo Credit: Splash News]

Spotted at the Roosevelt pool, Friday PM:

Pretty boy Chace Crawford darting to the bar from a private cabana. No one seemed to notice but upon further inspection, there was quite the little boys party going in the cabana—JC Chasez hiding out and Chace running around getting drinks. The two were in very different bathing suits—JC in his DG mankini and Chace in his best hetero pair of boardshorts—and later changed into a casual jeans & t-shirt look.

Before jumping to conclusions about what it means for two handsome young men to share a poolside cabana with some of their best bros, and all the mutual lotion-application that implies, we'd caution instead that nothing in this scenario should necessarily arouse any further suspicions. We're reminded of those timeless words uttered by Judah Friedlander's 30 Rock character Frank Rossitano, who, possessed by a peculiar hetero-crush on the office coffee boy, justified his increasingly desperate come-ons by explaining, "We're just two straight guys who want to enjoy each other's bodies!"

Bonus Gossip Gay Link: A male cast member will be revealed to be gay in the new season, premiering April 21. This could be the most ambitious viral marketing campaign in network history!

• Gossip Girl [The CW]

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That headband might be just a tad too tight, dear old Mischa. After all, how else to explain your decision to publicly pass on Gossip Girl than to blame it on a reduced flow of blood and oxygen to your pre-frontal cortex?

[Photo Credit: INF]

More than 25 staffers have been let go — including Kim Fleary, the CW's exec VP of comedy development, and her No. 2, senior VP of comedy Steve Veisel.

While the comedy department was eliminated, the CW has merged its remaining drama and current programming units into one scripted series department.

In deference to the fallen department, surviving staffers have mounted a silent protest, closing all official e-mail correspondences today with a single, frowning emoticon. The sad-face symbol is a simple yet potent reminder of all the single-camera, half-hour projects that will forever go undeveloped, the script notes never given, and all due to the avarice of corporate higher-ups who'd sooner let the laughter die if it meant guaranteeing 155 more cycles of weave-tugging, appointment Top Model TV.

• Strike, ratings slip lead to CW layoffs [Variety]