Since that fabulous series left the air in 2010 (far too early if you ask me), Vanessa Williams has joined the cast of ABC’s Desperate Housewives and Michael Urie has been busy on the Broadway stage first in play The Temperamentals and now in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

The two were together again this week with Miss Williams paid a visit to the Al Hirschfeld Theatre to catch a performance of How to Succeed in Business.

Williams is a Broadway veteran herself starring in Into the Woods, Sondheim on Sondheim and The Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Originally posted Nov 29, 2010

Have you seen the promos for ABC’s new series Off the Map?

At first I was intrigued because one of the cast members is Mamie Gummer, a terrific actress who has appeared as an attorney in several episodes of CBS’s The Good Wife and also happens to be Meryl Streep’s daughter.

But my attention was soon fixed on the hunky Martin Henderson, the 36-year-old New Zealand actor who had, somehow, not previously been on my radar.

Martin has been acting professionally since he was 13 when he landed a role in a local television production. Then from 1992-95, he starred in the TV drama Shortland Street then went on to star in various Australian films and television shows.

He moved to the US in 1997 to pursue acting and his first stop was a two-year training program at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City.

Once he got to Hollywood, he got his first break in a major film in 2001′s war film Windtalkers followed by the horror film The Ring starring Naomi Watts. His first major lead came in the 2004 film Torque followed by the films Bride and Prejudice, Little Fish, Flyboys, Battle in Seattle and Smokin’ Aces.

Martin then conquered the stage starring in an acclaimed production of Fool For Love on London’s West End. He was then cast in a television pilot based on the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith but it was not picked up as a series.

Thankfully, Off the Map has been picked up and premieres next month!

But I did get your attention!

These are awfully sexy pics.

Enjoy!

Ellen DeGeneres is finding out just how popular she is.

After the anti-gay group OneMillionMoms.com called for J.C. Penney to fire the television personality because she is a lesbian, public support for DeGeneres has soared.

DeGeneres pointed out on her daytime talk show this week that One Million Moms actually has a membership of about 40,000.

‘They’re rounding to the nearest million, and I get that,’ she joked.

The new Facebook page, ’1 Million People who support Ellen for J.C. Penney,’ has quickly doubled that as it surpassed 100,000 followers just before noon PST on Friday (10 February).

Membership had more than doubled in the previous 12 hours.

Read more about it over at Gay Star News.

Or is he?

The superstar now has a wax double!

Djokovic attended a ceremony revealing his wax sculpture in the Wax museum in the central Serbian town Jagodina. He returned to Serbia, where he is considered a national hero, after winning the Australian Open for the third time in the longest final in the history of the tournament.

I only started watching the show last year because it began to introduce some gay characters but now I am positively hooked on every storyline.

So I found myself kind of like a groupie as I walked around today and bumped into Deidre Hall, saw Patrick Muldoon coming up the stairs, was introduced to Lisa Rinna and chatted with Galen Gehring and James Scott.

I was also excited to walk around the set that is Salem’s town square.

I was there at the invitation of Chandler Massey and his publicist Jeff Ballard.

Chandler, who plays Will Horton on the show, gave me a tour of the set and I even snapped a photo of him in his dressing room for all of you.

Had lunch at the NBC commissary and did an interview with Chandler about Will’s storyline – where it’s at, what’s ahead and what he thinks about it all.

I will share that with you either tomorrow or early next week.

Until then, here are some of the photos taken today.

Enjoy!

I’ve been a fan of Howard Stern for decades and I have had friends and family members who could never understand why. There has just always been something so honest about him and there was a time in the 90s that I listened to him every single morning without fail.

Well, after listening to this recent segment of his Sirius radio show, it just validates everything that I’ve always felt about Stern.

He defends Ellen DeGeneres against the One Million Moms, Rosie O’Donnell against David Letterman’s ill-advised jokes, and speaks eloquently (laced with profanity, of course) about gay kids being bullied and about how damaging bigots are to kids and to our society.

During this conversation with longtime sidekick Robin Quivers, Stern calls Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann “the worst two people on the planet” and says that “they should be drummed out of the country” for their anti-gay views.

This is worth listening to all the way through.

Miley Cyrus says it ‘makes me sick to my stomach’ that same-sex couples who love each other cannot get married.

To show her support for LGBT equality, the Hannah Montana star got a tattoo last year which said: ‘All LOVE is equal.’

She shared a photo of herself on Twitter and the backlash was instant.

‘A lot of people mocked me,’ Cyrus writes in the new issue of Glamour. ‘They said, ‘What happened to you? You used to be a Christian girl!’ And I said, ‘Well, if you were a true Christian, you would have your facts straight. Christianity is about love.’

To read more about what Miley had to say, go to Gay Star News.

Daniel Radcliffe is not gay, but he certainly has excellent taste in men!

“This year I have a talent crush on Ryan Gosling,” Radcliffe confesses to the UK’s Attitude Magazine. “I think he’s fantastic and … you know he’d be nice afterwards. He seems smart. If I was gay, I would go for a smart man.”

Wouldn’t they be a dazzling couple?

Oh well.

Daniel is proving to be a box office draw outside of the Harry Potter franchise.

His new film, The Woman in Black, opened this weekend with a box office gross of $20.8 million, just behind the first place film Chronicle.

Anyway, in his Attitude interview, Daniel has some strong words for anti-gay GOP candidates. Go over to Gay Star News to find out what he has to say!

Madonna could turn water into wine during her halftime show at the Super Bowl today and I still wouldn’t think she could hold a candle to the great Diana Ross.

Diana performed the 1996 half-time show and I watched it with a buncha guys at Ripples in Long Beach. Remember everything about her performance but not who won or who even played!

Oh, good grief.

So here is the spectacular Miss Ross treating the crowd to so many of her hits during a 12 minute show.

Enjoy it all over again!

And while she has undergone many incarnations since first arriving on the scene in the early 80s with hits like Borderline and Material Girl, her early connection with gay fans has endured.

‘I saw how people treated them differently,’ she tells The Advocate. ‘I saw the prejudices, and I think probably I got that confused with, intertwined with, you know, maybe things that…ways that people treated me differently.’

Her rise coincided with a harrowing time for the gay community with people dying from AIDS at a horrifying rate.

‘I was extremely affected by it,’ Madonna says. ‘I remember lying on a bed with a friend of mine who was a musician, and he had been diagnosed with this kind of cancer, but nobody knew what it was. He was this beautiful man, and I watched him kind of waste away, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend. They were all artists and all truly special and dear to me.’

To read more of this story, go over to Gay Star News!

Originally posted May 29, 2009

I Don’t watch much pro football anymore but I do try and watch whenever Tom Brady and the New England Patriots are playing. After missing last year with injury, he is back training with the team in preparation for the upcoming season.

Tom is one of those rare superstars who is not only the best at what he does, but has those movie star looks and the confidence to do modeling-type shots that make us drool. And now that he’s a daddy, it makes him even sexier (He has a son with the beautiful Bridget Moynahan, his former girlfriend).

In his first news conference since an injury in the 2008 opener knocked him out for the rest of the season, Tom said Thursday that the injury allowed him to spend more time with 21-month-old Jack.

“I cherish those moments,” he said.

Elton John was on Good Morning America Monday to chat about his commercial for Pepsi which will be premiering during the Super Bowl.

He was asked if he had any advice for his Golden Globes foe Madonna who will be performing the Super Bowl halftime show: ‘Make sure you lip-synch good,’

Elton is clearly not a Madonna fan these days and he’s also not a fan of the Super Bowl half-time spectacles: “I’ve never seen a decent one.”

But then he added that he enjoyed when Prince and the Rolling Stones performed them.

To read more, I direct you over to Gay Star News!

Sadly, Marcus lost that battle on Jan. 24.

Lance pays tribute to his brother in a blog post:
We survived so much together growing up. Our biological father abandoned us when I was 6 years old. So when Marcus was only 10, he became the man of the house, and did a damned good job of it. And when our first stepfather turned out to be abusive, it was my big brother who saved my life by chasing him off with a baseball bat on more than one occasion. If it wasn’t for my big brother I’m not sure I would have made it to adulthood. But it wasn’t all bad. Not by a long shot. My big brother taught me how to catch tadpoles out at Farmers Lake, he memorized all the lyrics to Michael Jackson’s Thriller with me, then introduced me to The Dead Milkmen and punk rock. When I came out to him at a bar in New Jersey well over a decade ago, he told me he loved me just the same and I knew he meant it. And when he finally found the courage to come out to me a few years ago, he moved out to California and into my home. I did my best to give him a crash course in gay culture. He was a quick learner. Maybe he knew deep down he didn’t have much time.

Over the past 11 months now I’ve watched him wither away from a cancer that started in his bladder and quickly spread to his bones and spine. I spent all of Christmas moving him from Michigan to my mom’s house in Virginia. I flew back to LA thinking we had plenty of time, but my mom called two days ago and said I needed to come back home immediately.

Last night, surrounded by family, my big brother drifted in and out of consciousness. It was tough to tell if he was even there anymore. But late in the night when it was just he and I and our little brother, we asked him if he wanted a shot of Crown Royal (his favorite), and he broke out into a big grin. I’m sure it goes against any doctor’s advice, but we pulled out that bottle of whiskey and he sucked down two sponge lollipops of it… no problem. His eyes lit up for the first time in a long while and my little brother put on some old Dead Milkmen tunes. For the next few minutes Marcus mouthed along to the lyrics of “Bitchin’ Camaro”– just like when we were little boys.

Me and my little brother slept on the couches beside him all night. Then, at 12:10PM, my big brother’s breathing became very shallow, and he passed away.

I can’t put into words how much I will miss my big brother. My protector.

I love you Marcus.

Funeral services for Marcus will take place on Tuesday at 11am at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

The address is: 6000 Santa Monica Blvd.
Hollywood, California 90038
www.hollywoodforever.com
323.469.1181

Writes Lance:

Marcus will be buried near some of his favorite folks: Two Ramones, the one and only Vampira and Mel Blanc.

We encourage those who knew Marcus and/or our family to please attend these services.

For those of you who would like to send flowers or remembrances, please send them to the address above. There is also a floral shop on the grounds that can be reached at the number above.

My brother loved people – all kinds of different people. We are working hard to reach all of these friends so they can pay their respects and help celebrate his life. Any help you can lend in passing this information on to folks who knew Marcus would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for all of your love and support during this time.

Her main competition appears to be Viola Davis from The Help. While Meryl won the Golden Globe two weeks ago, Viola won the Critics Choice Award a few night’s earlier.

I happened to be stationed backstage at the SAG Awards three years ago when Meryl won for Doubt and I have never seen her so happy after a win. She probably thought Kate Winslet would win for Revolutionary Road as she did at the Globes.

Winslet had won earlier that evening in the supporting category for The Reader, a role that she was nominated in the best actress category for at the Oscars and won.

Anyway, if Viola does win tonight, Meryl has only herself to blame as you will see in this 2009 SAG speech. She had appeared in Doubt with Davis and said to the industry during the speech: “Someone give her a movie!”

Someone did and now Meryl has yet another rival.

Until then, Adam is pushing its lead single Better Than I Know Myself.

In this video, he talks about the song saying it’s “about the relationship you have with yourself, between your dark and light side. It’s about duality; it’s about that balance and finding it and struggling to maintain it and what it means.”