The sandbox - Gossip Girl

My entertainment tastes are hard to describe. I own three movies: 13 Days, Finding Nemo and Barbershop 2: Back in Business. I am obsessed with Seinfeld and have several seasons on DVD, but the film right next to those on my shelf is the Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson. I watch Jeopardy religiously, but I also might be the only person to ever purchase the Flavor of Love 2 DVD ($28 on Amazon, and worth every penny).

But the show with the highest priority on my TiVo isn't Seinfeld or Jeopardy, SportsCenter or I Love Money. That honor belongs to the one, the only, Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl airs Mondays from 8 to 9 p.m., right in the middle of Monday Night Football. By any measure, I should be watching ESPN, not the CW: I'm a straight male who doesn't just love sports, but is actually a sportswriter for this newspaper. I'll be in New York City with the Duke basketball team as you read this.

Still, every Monday I take an hour to follow the deliciously naughty adventures of Blair Waldorf and company.

The show proudly bills itself as "every parent's nightmare," and those involved in GG do their best to live up to that lofty standard. The Season 2 cover is a photo of the beautiful Serena Van der Woodson in a clearly sexual position, and the season's first plotline involved the dashingly handsome and incredibly untalented Nate Archibald sleeping with a married woman for money. More recently, Jenny Humphrey tried to legally emancipate herself even though she's a sophomore in high school. Just like us, they are not.

(Sidenote: I mentioned I thought Jenny was hot, which she is, several weeks ago, and the females in the room reacted with dismay. Upon finding out the actress who plays her is 15, I shamefully remembered that my own sister is 13. This show is the devil's work.)

And yet, I can't stay away, and I think more and more guys agree with me. What's not to love? Everybody is good looking. All the girls are easy. Most of the characters drink to excess. They throw money around like Busch Light at Tailgate. Nobody drives, because everyone's got a driver. There're comical foreigners, goofy old Jews and incestuous British royalty. Throw in irresponsible parenting and promiscuous underage sex, which GG of course features in abundance, and the only topic that hasn't been touched is best friends hooking up with each other's boyfriends. Oh wait, they went there.

Gossip Girl might not have the legs to last-aside from Serena's in a cocktail dress-but as long as it's on, no guy should be ashamed to enjoy it. Watch it with your female friends, your fraternity brothers, your little sisters (which I've done), whatever. Just don't watch it with your parents, because they certainly won't leave the room saying, "You know you love me." XOXO.