Aaron Rose on the Fake Aaron Rose

By MAUREEN CALLAHAN

For weeks, thousands of skeeved-out viewers have been ranting on “Gossip Girl” fan sites about its least popular character - the greasy, disaffected downtown artist wannabe Aaron Rose.

Now, someone else wants to register his complaints - the real Aaron Rose.

“I wish they would have made him cooler,” says the real Rose, a former down town artist who says he was contacted by a writer for the show six months ago, then heard nothing.

“It’s funny and it’s flattering, but there’s a part of me that’s like, ‘Oh, go after them - this is not cool. They’re messing with my reputation.’ ”

One reason: The fictional Aaron Rose - played by John Patrick Amedori - is of inde terminate age, yet is clearly way older than Queen Bee Serena, the Upper East Side high-school girl he’s dating.

He enjoys layered scarves that tend to drown his diminutive frame; attempts to grow out his patchy goatee and creepy moustache and says things like, “I don’t know how you do it in high school, but I enjoy dating more than one person at a time.”

And worse, he makes and displays bad art.

The real Aaron Rose is now 39. He, too, is an artist, and in 1992 opened the Alleged Gallery on Ludlow Street.

The tiny gallery helped pioneer the Lower East Side as a home for scenesters and misfits - and Rose showed early work by now-established artists such as Mike Mills, Shepard Fairey and Spike Jonze.

Real Rose - who now lives in LA - became a Lower East Side fixture, known to likeminded souls and readers of the downtown bible, Paper magazine.

When the fake Aaron Rose made his debut on “Gossip Girl” one month ago, the real Aaron Rose was in Europe.

He was unaware that his fictional doppelganger materialized on a TV show until he was deluged with “about 5,000 text messages.”

Now, he gets so many texts when an episode airs that he thinks the show’s producers should pay his cellphone bill.

“On the one hand, I think it’s super-hilarious, and I should be flattered that I’m considered mock-worthy. But - his hair! He has terrible hair!” he says.

The real Aaron Rose adds that the fake Aaron Rose does not, in any way, comport himself like an actual artist.

“He acts like a model,” says Rose. “Like a male model. Anyone who’s a visual artist would laugh at him.”

He was greatly distraught to hear that fake Aaron’s crappy, crappy artwork has been displayed on the air.

“Oh, no!” he exclaims. “Oh, no! Now you’re bumming me out.”

Most annoying: “He’s just not cool. Not like I’m Mr. Cool; I’m not trying to say that.”

“I think,” Rose says, “he wasn’t a very well-researched character.”

The show’s producers declined comment.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12092008/news/nationalnews/that_rose_stinks__143366.htm