Goodbye strangers, it's been nice! (CW)

One time we tried to watch an episode of Gossip Girl. It was 2007, and Obama was gaining grass-roots support among young voters thanks to the hard work and dedication of Will.i.Am, Scarlett Johansson and two teenage newcomers, Blake Lively and Penn Badgley.

Yes, these two--dare we say--heroes had stood up together (in accordance with CW regulations) and announced in a commercial that they were voting for Barack Obama. The two co-stars, who, from the little we had seen of their program, were not especially interesting but found themselves endlessly fascinating, were given special celebrity passes because they were dating both on and off the show. And that's always fun.

But it's no longer the beginning of 2008. It's the end of 2012; the end of an era when Kristen Bell smugly narrated the lives of spoiled, jet-setting, New York prep school teens as they blossomed into spoiled, jet-setting, socialite monster nightmares. And in last night's finale, the one where the irrepressible rapscallion Chuck Bass--whose two defining character traits as we remember them were the ability to say his own name in a sexy voice and a desire to show up his dead father--finally stopped dicking around and married the dark-haired girl. Ugh, what was her name. Bonnie? Blaine?

She was the mean one, but actually they were all "the mean one": a hive of Queen Bees and their lovers, all of whom were as toxic as they were. (Except for the blond one that looked like a cardboard cutout, and had a similar acting range).

These were the kind of people of whom the nicest thing one could say was that it probably wasn't their fault they were so awful, since you only had to take a look at their manipulative, gold-digging moms and lazy, guitar-playing and/or deceased dads to see that the apple didn't fall far from the Park Avenue tree.

So last night's finale: Did we watch it? Sure. It's the end of a television era, and that needed to be celebrated. Even if that means accepting that Dan Humphrey is a woman on the Internet. He's been the one chronicling all his friends' lives with the bitchy lilt of Kristen Bell and calling himself "Lonely Boy."

The two more-awful people got married, making sure that there will be plenty of more little Basses in the sea one day. Serena and Dan may have also gotten married. Nate, who works at a newspaper, got to publish Dan's Gossip Girl memoirs, because this show took place in an age when even a spoof of The New York Observer would run a book-sized chronicle of every minutia of these kids lives.

"You'll never guess what Blaire told her maid today!" We would tease in what would have to be a 20-year column. "Tune in next week!"

That being said, what is more fun than watching a soap opera of the most self-referential kind (since Soap) about New York socialites?

Perhaps The Carrie Diaries.

Everyone from Jay McInerny to New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood to this paper's owner to—but of course—New York magazine's Approval Matrix (which, of course, made a recent Approval Matrix in the magazine).

But what is it like to be plucked, as though by the cloud-like hand of the Gossip Girl casting gods, and immortalized for fifteen seconds of television, mostly to an audience of teenagers who probably don't know who you are?

Isherwood himself once attempted an explanation of this in the pages of the Times. It began with a quote by Gore Vidal. Needless to say, it was not sufficient.

At least, not compared to essayist Sloane Crosley's entry in this month's issue of The Believer, in which no less than 4,625 words are dedicated to the experience, which—in toto—is apparently akin to living through the last thirty minutes of Adaptation, with disappointingly less drug use, and Susan Orlean having been replaced by the guy who plays Chuck Bass.

For example, this is what it's like to experience the pressure of having to dress one's self on Gossip Girl:

She pulled the last dress from my bag and called for her assistant.

"This will work," she said. "But tell you what—why don’t you borrow a pair of these?"

We were flanked by walls of overpriced designer fabrics and tailoring that glimmered at every turn. I peered over her shoulder, anticipating a tray of designer earrings or, say, some very expensive shoes.

She handed me a pair or Spanx.

And this is what it's like to share a scene with Chuck Bass:

Leighton wasn’t in my scene. Nor was Blake Lively (who plays Dan’s ex, Serena) or Jessica Szohr (Dan’s childhood friend, the bi-racial daughter of Vermont hippies, whose mom is a dead ringer for Maya Angelou) or Chace Crawford. But Ed Westwick, the stylish Brit who plays Chuck, was. During the long breaks between takes, in which the women lay on the master bed like mummies, lest they ruin their makeup, Ed chatted with concern about riots in London that had been dominating the news. Then he showed me a perversely hilarious video of a horse being hit by a truck on a country road.

Emphasis ours. Needless to say, not that we've watched in a few years, but this has ruined Gossip Girl forever for us, in that it will in no way be as hysterically funny or as remotely interesting as Ms. Crosley's on-scene exploits (especially of note: the piece of dialogue given to her, a surprise not at all worth spoiling).

Do enjoy:

A DOG NAMED HUMPHREY [The Believer]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Mr. Azzuolo, a Montreal native who now lives on the Lower East Side, did stints at Ralph Lauren and Hermes before “arriving” last February, when Jonathan S. Paul of T: The New York Times Style Magazine covered his debut Fashion Week presentation, blogging that it was “all about: Chuck Bass.”

Twelve months and one recession later, as money-panicked New Yorkers continue to scale back their extravagances, it seems fitting that Mr. Azzuolo has toned down the Upper-East-Side-iness of his new collection, if only just a smidge.

“Last season it was a little more private school,” Mr. Azzuolo told the Daily Transom after the show. He was wearing one of his own navy blue double-breasted wool suits and vintage Christian Dior glasses. “I wanted [the new collection] to be a little more rugged and masculine and to add a downtown aspect to it.” (So if you see Ed Westwick donning combat boots and fingerless gloves anytime soon, you'll know where he got the idea!)

T editor in chief Stefano Tonchi, Details fashion director Michael Macko and a few GQ editors were all in attendance. But by far the most notable guest of the evening was Zelda Kaplan, the 92-year-old New York nightlife fixture and eternal It girl who apparently can party harder than the Daily Transom and all of his late-20-something friends, and who charmed this reporter off the bat by complimenting the “very nice colors” of his checkered shirt. She was dressed in all black, including one of her signature African-style hats, to draw attention, she said, to her “very unique necklace”—an eccentric souvenir from her visit several years ago to the Konyak Tribe of northeast India.  

The Daily Transom wondered what events she would she be attending over the next week.

“Oh, don’t even ask me! I’ve already gone to some and I don’t even remember the names,” she said, laughing. “I just enjoy the look. Even at the shows I don’t like, there’s always something I love. We have so many talented designers, so it makes me happy for them, and it makes me happy for the population of the world. Everyone has the opportunity to look chic.”

Mr. Azzuolo, who is in his mid-30s, got her blessing as well.

“I think he’s a very talented young man!” she said.