Jay-Z chatting on his phone while getting into a car outside his Tribeca building ... Ethan Hawke and Ryan Shawnhughes pushing their newborn, Clementine, through the Village ... Sheryl Crow playing with son Wyatt on a downtown sidewalk ... Mario Lopez hailing a cab in Chelsea ... Rachel Weisz and Darren Aronofsky on the set of a Vogue photo shoot in the East Village ... Jessica Simpson shopping at Bergdorf Goodman ... Blake Lively and Leighton Meester shooting scenes for Gossip Girl in Brooklyn ... Keri Russell taking a stroll through SoHo ... Kirsten Dunst and Agyness Deyn at a concert at McCarren Park Pool ... Sam and Charlotte Ronson leaving the Bowery Hotel with Lindsay, Dina and Ali Lohan.

• Ashley Dupre's reps, who have been negotiating deals on her behalf, say she's interested in "journalism and lounge singing," and that she "sees herself as a kind of Dr. Phil." Appropriately, the $2 million TV offer she's considering would team her up with the producer to reunited Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher. [NYP]

Gossip Girl, the show that the media can't stop gushing over despite the fact that nobody actually watches it or anything, has of course been renewed for a second season. And in an apparent attempt to lure the large audience of celeb voyeurs that's currently interested in the cast members' bi-curious antics off-screen than on, the sultry young things-obsessed marketing crew at the CW has released some "inappropriate" images from the second season’s ad campaign. Thanks to Miley Cyrus and her “scandalous” series of endless flesh-baring spreads, any photos featuring tweenyboppers practically banging each other or doing their best O-face are fine by us. But releasing racy promos like these is a practice long used by GG’s predecessors, and the sleazy plan relying on that old promise that Sex Sells has a history of backfiring in many a series’ pretty little sweat-drenched faces:First, a closer look at the "sexy" ads in question, which include pull-quotes suggesting just how much closer potential viewers will get to the cool kids' table. Watching this show is so dangerous! Your parents will have nightmares just thinking about the (sort of) short skirts Blair wears! Do the nasty!

(1) The 9th annual Art For Life Benefit took place on Saturday at Russell Simmons' East Hampton house. Despite tickets not selling out as fast as usual, the event played host to Aretha Franklin, Christy Turlington, Lorraine Bracco, Soledad O'Brien, David Paterson, Diddy, Padma Lakshmi, Brett Ratner, LA Reid, the cast of Real Housewives of New York, Al Roker, Kelly Bensimon, Alina Cho, Simon de Pury, and Porschla Coleman—whose break up with Simmons, judging by their behavior, is either incredibly amicable or no longer in effect. [PMc]

Alex Rodriguez leaving his apartment building en route to All-Star Game festivities at the Hyatt in Midtown ... Heidi Klum leaving NBC and posing with fans after a Today appearance ... Cassie eating lunch outside at Bar Pitti with a friend ... Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber packing up the SUV with luggage outside their Noho apartment ... Blake Lively and Penn Badgley filming a Gossip Girl makeout scene on the Upper East Side ... Christian Bale signing autographs on Park Avenue during an afternoon walk with his wife Sibi.

[Blake Lively, the star of the most searing and intimate portrayal of youth today, "Gossip Girl," at the New York premiere of "The Dark Knight"; image via Splash]

· Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno exploits took him from Israel to Arkansas; his Sherlock Holmes adventures to come may or may not include the missus.
· AFTRA ratified its new contract, but SAG didn't let that spoil its appetite for destruction.
· Harvey Weinstein is now officially going door-to-door to finance his films. Psst! Buddy! Wanna buy a Tarantino?
· The TV Critics Association Press Tour is dead. Long live the TCA Press Tour!
· Lest major Dark Knight spoilers aren't up your alley, there's always Michael Bay's unproduced Awesome Knight screenplay to hold you over another week.
· After a long string of compatibility issues, Drew Barrymore is on the market for a Mac huckster upgrade.
· This Week In Magazine Cover Hell: Blake Lively gets the blown-out Skeletor treatment, while the pasty youths of Twilight make EW safe for chest hair.
· Here's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely RRRAAALLLLPPPHHHHH
· Defamer's readers joined Matthew McConaughey in welcoming a bouncing Bongo Romcom to the world.
· Meanwhile in France, stinky, salmon-devouring, "high-maintenance beetch" Angelina Jolie prepared her post-twinbirth conditioning regimen. Two words: Hula hoop.
· Pick your reality TV poison for 2009: America's Greatest Dog or The Ashley Dupre Governor Boink Variety Hour.
· We wished a healthy recovery (literally) to the rat-friendly Newsroom Cafe, and bid a fond farewell to J-Lo's slice of Pasadena paradise, Madre's.
· Have you yet greeted Tricia Romano, Defamer newcomer and social observer extraordinaire? Well? That's more like it.
· Molls ate spinach. That is all.

[Gossip Girlers Blake Lively (holding dog) and Penn Badgley (holding unidentified parcel) leaving the midtown set of the show last night; image via Splash]

Blake Lively's people are throwing a hissy fit over the Gossip Girl star's cover shot on this month's Seventeen. And before assuming this is just another case of some publicist overreacting and getting their La Perlas in a twist over nothing, one quick look at the cover in question actually makes us side with the flack this time. Lively's gone out of her way recently to make sure no one confuses her with Paris Hilton, but her puffy eyes, hollow cheekbones and vampire chompers on the Seventeen cover aren't helping her case. Which begs the question: why is it so hard for a magazine to shoot a decent celebrity cover? Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Sarah Jessica Parker are all recent victims of the same unflattering cover treatments, and all kinds of oddly unglamorous shots have hit newsstands for years.

Anna Wintour and Bee Shaffer leaving Marni on Mercer Street ... Molly Shannon on a morning jog through the West Village ... Alex Rodriguez slipping out the side entrance at Trump Park Avenue ... Adrian Grenier and new girlfriend Isabel Lucas waiting for baggage at LAX ... Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony shopping at Pucci in Italy ... Seal, sans Heidi Klum, leaving the Four Seasons in Prague ... Meryl Streep, completely covered up in a jacket, scarf, and hat, walking near the water in Sydney ... Gwyneth Paltrow getting out of an SUV in front of Gemma where she met up with Madonna for lunch ... Blake Lively and Penn Badgley stopping to take photos with fans during a stroll through SoHo ... Nas talking on a cell phone as he left Da Silvano.

Can everyone, just for one quick moment, tear their minds away from picturing Chuck and Nate doing it, and remember the actual point of Gossip Girl? Yes, thank you, the clothes. The New York Times goes out into the field and gathers hard evidence of what was pretty obvious: Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf are, as far as fashion retailers are concerned, Carrie Bradshaw to the power of 100. Bloomingdales fashion director Stephanie Solomon says that the show "has had a profound influence on retail," while Teen Vogue editor Amy Astley admits that the characters' carefully styled wardrobes prompted "a pretty huge resurgence of ritzy, preppy and collegiate looks" on the runway. Even socialite designer Tory Burch has "girls coming in with magazine tear sheets of Blake Lively or Leighton Meester, from location shootings or from everyday life."

• Gossip Girl's Blake Lively — woops, sorry, her people, since she refuses to even look at it or something — is/are supposedly pissed at Seventeen over how she looks on the cover, because it looks nothing like her (too distinctive/memorable? Not bland enough??). They love her Vanity Fair and Cosmo covers, though. [Post]

When a girl's starting to doubt her sex appeal, after a foray into acting that has thus far earned her parts as a back brace-wearing nerd and the part of "Smoking Girl" in something called Whore, there is no better way to regain confidence and prove just how fine you are than nailing a gay actor (allegedly). And that's just the challenge Rumer Willis set up for herself during a recent night out. According to the NY Post, the rising starlet and failed auditonee of Lindsay Lohan's lesbian love lottery spotted boy band groupie Chace Crawford at a birthday party and tried every boy toy magnet trick she could think of in an extensively planned and bitterly fought campaign to pull off the rarely accomplished task of getting him to switch teams.

Any way you slice it, Gossip Girl star Blake Lively is having one helluva year. Not only is her show a big hit (online, that is), but she's starring in the anticipated sequel to Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants, she got to spend a few minutes flirting with David Letterman and she landed herself on the cover of the new issue of Vanity Fair (and didn't even have to pose with McLovin to do it!). One would think all would be well in Blake Lively's world. However, one would be wrong. You see, there's this pesky problem issue of people getting her confused with Paris Hilton that is, like, so frustrating and stuff to her! As she explains in the new issue of Seventeen:

During the warm, lazy days of summer, Vanity Fair likes to turn its attention to Hollywood, declaring some actor or clutch of actors the future of entertainment. It rarely ends well. This time they've taken something of a shotgun approach, naming 27 young actors, aged 15 to 26, to be the brightest stars in Hollywood. I'm sure if they expanded things a little more, to say, everyone in California under the age of 30, they'd be certain to catch a winner in the bunch. Actual names, and the dreaded fates of those previously tapped by V.F. after the jump.

["Gossip Girl" Hamptons Watch, day one million. Blake Lively and Penn Badgley are seen here, on a beach somewhere in Long Island, eating watermelon. This was taken today; image via Splash]

[Blake Lively filming "Gossip Girl" (because, really, why stop now) on Tilden Beach in the Hamptons today; image via INF]

I know, I miss it too. I've been trying to give you some information on beloved (by a select few) New York teen soap Gossip Girl, but the summer is a quiet time for TV news. Luckily for us, on this lovely summer Wednesday, while our Upper East Side friends are busy filming in the Hamptons, a few GG-related items have floated onto my desk, like glorious Burberry-winged butterflies.

["Gossip Girl" star Blake Lively in the Hamptons, where filming has begun on the show's second season; image via INF]

• More dirt today about Anne Hathaway's breakup with Raffaello Follieri: She's living at the Gramercy Park Hotel while he's staying in a rental in Trump Tower. Evidence that this might be a PR stunt for her new movie: the exes may have met up for dinner at Cipriani last night. [Page Six]