Gossip Girl is My Drug of Choice

This year, the Gossip Girl schedule is like a very unstable relationship. After coming back from winter break, our favorite Upper East Siders left us high and dry during most of February and half of March. To the delight of thousands, the show returned four weeks ago, only to give us three new episodes. Now we have to wait again until April 20 to get our latest fix. OMFGG!

Why are you such a tease, Gossip Girl? You can either have me or not, but make your decision and stop going back and forth! It's exhausting and I can't take it any more.

It's not you, it's Gossip Girl.

And even though the show never calls when it says it will and has a serious fear of commitment, I still can't get enough of the high school drama.

High schoolers sipping martinis at Butter, wearing haute couture clothes and sleeping with their professors is the farthest thing away from reality - and that is exactly why I love it. It offers a perfect escape from my real world of no income and last season's handbag. If I want to watch a show about real life, all I have to do is turn on the news and there I have it: recession, depression, layoff, bailout, budget, blah blah blah. It's downright depressing.

Gossip Girl is the perfect guilty pleasure: it won't make you fat, broke or brain-dead. It's the one precious hour a week that I can forget about job searching and paying bills. It's the one hour a week that I have my "one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite."

I'd much rather dwell over the tumultuous love affair of Chuck and Blair than ponder my own relationships. First Blair tries to seduce Chuck, but when he finally wants her, she is chasing Nate, all the while Nate is happy with Vanessa, and now Vanessa is hooking up with Chuck. Oh I how adore the love triangle (as long as I'm not actually in it)!

While we're sitting in our cubicles (or not) on this down-pouring Monday, Poppy and Serena have jetted away to sunny Spain. Take me with you, Poppy! This week is holiday in Europe, which would be the perfect time to work on my tan at la Costa Brava with S & P. ¡Me encanta España!

The closest thing I will be getting to Spain is the boxed Sangria at the liquor store across the street.

The April 2 issue of Rolling Stone has a fantastic article, entitled "The Nasty Thrill of 'Gossip Girl,'" which juxtaposes the fictional high school students with the real New York City. Contributor Jason Gay writes,

"Still, it's good to be a Gossip Girl. Outside La Bottega, New York is imploding, gutted by a financial catastrophe of its own doing. Day traders are now delivering pizzas, and real-life Upper East Side socialites are brown-bagging it out of Hermès, too embarrassed to be seen luxury shopping. But like insects preserved in amber, Gossip Girls occupy a fantasy world where young people don't blanch at $18 cocktails and $700 Christian Louboutin pumps. It's the spring of 2007, running on repeat - New York remains a boundless, optimistic place, in which the Dow is topping 13,000, Bernie Madoff's collecting clients and the velvet-rope VIP party never stopped. Right now, you'd rather be Blake Lively or Leighton Meester than the head of Goldman Sachs."

Amen.

Oh those poor housewives, having to carry out their new Birkins in the brown cloth, instead of the bright orange bag. But seriously, I think even the wives of hedge fund managers would trade their lives in for a Constance school girl.

When season three starts this fall, will the gossip girls and guys feel the burden of the economy? I hope not. I don't want to watch Blair shopping at Forever 21, or Serena taking a night off of partying to save money. I can't imagine Chuck riding the subway instead of being chauffeured in a limo. Nobody wants to watch their heroes go down.

We all prefer New York at it's finest, when the job market was as overflowing as the $15 Cosmopolitans we drank every night. Until we have that city back, we have Gossip Girl to remind us of a bustling New York that offered endless opportunity and hope.

You know you love it.
XOXO,
Jobless Girl