mimblr.com

Gossip’s gaggles of fans are thinking the same thing. On Monday (8 p.m. ET/PT), Serena, Blake, Chuck and the rest of the preternaturally groomed gang of private high schoolers are back on the Upper East Side to continue the cavorting begun before the writers’ strike. Shenanigans then included breaking into the school pool for a martinis-and-bikinis party; sleeping with a boyfriend — and his best friend — as Blair did; and taking the inevitable pregnancy test. All of which, of course, “everyone does,” jokes Meester, especially within the same week. At the end of the last episode, Blair’s reputation is in ruins, and Nate, her ex, is adrift, having lost both his girlfriend and his best friend, Chuck.
Expect ratcheted-up raciness in the final five episodes of Season 1, cast members say. “These scripts have been really, really juicy and exciting,” Lively, 20, says. For one, Serena’s most formidable frenemy, Georgina Sparks (ex-Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Michelle Trachtenberg), returns to reveal why the blond heroine was mysteriously whisked away to boarding school, only to come back in time for the start of the series. Georgina’s claws-out presence promises to shake the stability of Serena’s uptown girl-Brooklyn boy romance with Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley). Another jolt: One character is coming out as gay, though no one will reveal whom.
And it will all be chronicled via the must-read blog of the anonymous Gossip Girl (voiced by Kristen Bell).
Every episode will elicit an “OMG!,” Lively says, “at least three times.” They’re brimming with “a lot of ‘Oh-my-goodness-gracious!’ moments. … That’s one part of the advertising that’s accurate.”
“Our show has come in with a bang, and now they wish it will come back with a bang,” says Lively, immediately aware of the unintended prurient pun.
In fact, Gossip isn’t quite the broadcast bang: The first 13 episodes averaged only 2.5 million viewers per episode. But sales on iTunes have been robust, regularly spiking to the top-selling slot. And among network shows, the show ranks No. 9 among that coveted demographic — female teens. Among total teens, it reaches No. 30, tied with Dancing With the Stars. Gossip’s impact on the broader culture, from music to fashion, is fierce, drawing comparisons to the marks that Sex and the City and The OC made. Because it’s set and filmed in New York, it’s introducing a new generation to the city Sex glamorized a decade ago. And it’s key to the struggling CW network’s future.

usatoday.com

With Okkervil River, 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, at the Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Road, 216-383-1124. Sold out.
For a man who supposedly hates hearing his band referred to as a “supergroup,” Carl Newman certainly has a super-caliber flair for the dramatic. Last fall, the New Pornographers’ frontman made an aesthetic decision worthy of Audioslave, equipping the backdrop of his band’s live sets with a giant, flashing sign bearing the group’s not-so-PC moniker. It wasn’t exactly the sort of eye-popping prop one typically expects to see at an indie-rock concert.
“There’s definitely no way that a somewhat with-it band, in this day and age, can have a huge, flashing neon-light sign behind them and not have a bit of a gag going,” laughs bassist John Collins. “But I think it might have actually helped us play with a bit more energy. It’s like pyro, you know? Nickelback has its fancy explosions, and we have our big sign.”
As the Pornographers again head out on the road in support of their fourth album, Challengers, Collins isn’t sure whether the neon will be making the trip this time around. Then again, nothing with this Canadian group is a given.
Like the Wu-Tang Clan — but with less pot smoke and more pop hooks — the New Pornographers are a conglomerate of artists who aren’t always easy to gather in one place at one time. Newman, a former member of the pop band Zumpano, started the group in the late ’90s as a collaborative experiment of sorts. He eventually roped in Collins from the Evaporators, Dan Bejar from Destroyer, Todd Fancey and Kurt Dahle from Limblifter, keyboardist-filmmaker Blaine Thurier, and a relatively unknown country crooner, Neko Case, an American transplant attending art school in Vancouver.
Dubbed the New Pornographers, the band went to work on a bunch of up-tempo, high-energy power-pop songs that would eventually become its acclaimed 2000 debut, Mass Romantic. It was around this time that fans began referring to them as a supergroup.

clevescene.com

Finally, someone is doing something about JuicyCampus.
After months of racy, insulting content on the college gossip Web site, someone is finally holding the site accountable for its reckless abandon in policing its posts.
The New Jersey attorney general’s office is investigating whether JuicyCampus violated state law through unconscionable commercial practices and misrepresentation to users, and has subpoenaed JuicyCampus’ leaders and the site’s former ad servers, AdBrite and Google’s AdSense.
The AdSense application was pulled by Google in February after it violated Google’s policy. And three weeks ago, after the Web site’s founder, Matt Ivester, said he didn’t foresee any issues with AdBrite, it pulled its ads from the site as well. See a pattern here?
If no company will endorse the site, it must have a problem.
Ivester said in a previous Skiff interview that it is the responsibility of users to create the discussion forums that they want.
"It’s a gossip Web site," Ivester said. "Don’t make it into a bigger deal than it is."
Maybe Ivester’s right. Maybe it isn’t a big deal that half the campus is "TCU’s biggest slut" and (insert random name here) is (insert dirty insult here).
However, the state of New Jersey thinks this is a big deal, and it plays for keeps.
Although Ivester claims that blocking offensive comments would not be a realistic goal, the site can pinpoint what university every post comes from. That is something the New Jersey attorney general’s office will want to investigate.
The Internet was created as a shared-communication tool, not an outlet for people to sit at their computers and make unwarranted comments which, in many other forums, would be considered libelous.
Go ahead, New Jersey, take this site to the cleaners. That’s juicy news.

tcudailyskiff.com