WHO’S YOUR EMMY?
Emmy nominations arrived Thursday. To no one’s surprise, Queer as Folk was shut out completely, and The L Word only received one nod. To my horror, however, Will and Grace received fifteen nominations. That’s right—fifteen. This for a show that stopped being even marginally funny about the same time we stopped having a marginally competent president. Unless there exists a category for Most Blatant Use of Guest Stars to Prop Up a Dying Sitcom, W & G should only have received nominations for Megan Mullaly and Sean Hayes. If only I ruled the world...

Other pink-tinged nominations included Six Feet Under, Desperate Housewives, and the 58th Annual Tony Awards. Most egregious omissions? Sharon Gless in QAF, as well as Michael C. Hall and Matthew St. Patrick in Six Feet Under. Speaking of Mr. St. Patrick, he recently did an interview with PlanetOut. How refreshing that (A) he does interviews with gay media and (B) doesn’t feel that every other question need be answered with an assertion of his heterosexuality.

MY EYES! MY EYES!
Tuesday night brought an entirely fresh challenge for the Fab Five on Bravo’s Queer Eye: making over a nudist. Hmmm, after the hair what comes next? Remember John, the uber-cute urban cowboy from season one? Well, tonight’s nudist looked nothing like him. Even worse, Carson ran naked pell-mell all over the place. To their credit, the rest of the guys had the good taste to be as horrified as was I. Message to the producers—if I have to look at Carson’s scary ass, then you owe me equal viewing time of Kyan’s.

Queer Eye followed Blow Out, the product placement, er, reality show about an annoying fellow trying to scale the heights of Beverly Hills salon-dom. After viewing the show, I came away with the impression there are bitchy gay men styling hair. Who knew? And who cares? As if watching Blow Out wasn’t cruel enough, every commercial break included relentless promotion of Being Bobby Brown, Bravo’s new reality show chronicling the train wreck that is his life with Whitney Houston. Everybody limbo! How low can you go?

NOT YOUR HOMOPHOBES' HIP HOP
Much in the same way that gay men and lesbians reclaimed the words "queer" and "faggot," a group of musicians (including Dutchboy and Soce) have set about reclaiming hip hop from being the sole dominion of fag-bashers. Check them out at the Homo Hop Festival Weekend this weekend in NYC. Good on ya, guys and gals!

SURELY THERE WAS AN AUDIENCE FOR BOTH FILMS
The highly anticipated battle of competing Dorian Gray flicks is over and the winner is—zzzzz. Oh, you actually care? In that case, 18-year-old David Gallagher of the WB’s 7th Heaven KO’d 31-year-old Ryan Phillipe. “Who was going to believe he was eighteen years old?” demanded Gallagher. True, but who is going to believe you can act anywhere but on the WB?

In movie news I actually care about, filming is underway of Little Miss Sunshine starring Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, and Steve Carrell, who plays Kinnear’s gay brother-in-law. Hopefully, Carrell will bring us a more believable portrayal of a gay man than did Kinnear in As Good As It Gets, where he gave a terrific performance as a straight actor trying desperately to establish credibility and daring by playing an earnest, yet sad, gay man who gets bashed. But with Toni starring, who really cares about that? She’s so good, I’d follow her into Carson's bedroom. Well, if the lights were off.

HOW DID I MISS THIS ONE?
Mainstream cartoons have long been sorely lacking in gay characters. Doonesbury has Mark Slackmeyer and Chase, his Log Cabin Republican partner, while Lynn Johnston brought us the controversial coming out of Lawrence, a friend of her son, Michael. Lawrence still pops up occasionally as do Mark and Chase, but no strip has had a gay character appear weekly until now. Well, more like since last November actually.

The strip is the witty and urbane 9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney and the character is Seth, the dancing partner and roommate of Edda, Chickweed’s resident heroine. Seth first appeared last November and I can only chalk up having missed his debut due to some horrible event occurring that same month. Thanks to heavy doses of medication and an iron will to forget, I still can't quite recall what it was that happened. Mr. McEldowney explains that when he was shaking up the strip the character of Seth occurred to him as a good fit with Edda. As for Seth’s being gay, “It seemed just right for him,” said Mr. McEldowney.

And Seth isn’t neutered gay either. He has a significant other named Mark, and Seth’s sexuality—recently addressed in a Sunday strip when a group of young men called him faggot—will continue to come up in future strips. Two papers in—gasp!—Utah and Indiana, have cancelled Chickweed since Seth’s debut, but as Seth’s creator says of those so easily offended, “If they can't figure out how to avert their eyes from something they don't like, a neurotics' hotline, 24/7, would seem to be the answer.” Truer words were never spoken. If you’re not already a Chickweed fan check it out in your paper or at comics.com. And if your paper doesn't have it, why not request it?

OSCAR THE GROUCH HAS MORE HEART THAN THESE BOZOS
Finally, the Broward County school board this week banned the showing of the music video We Are Family, a DVD starring Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, and the nefarious Sponge Bob Squarepants. The DVD makes no mention of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or 9 Chickweed Lane. So what then is the problem? The DVD—are you sitting down?—promotes the message that all people are part of one, big, happy family. The ironically named Diversity Committee decided that such a radical notion might encourage some people to mistakenly believe gays could be included in said happy family. Hmmm, maybe there is a reason those hurricanes keep hitting Florida.

Now I’ll shut up so you can have the BEST. GAY. WEEK. EVER.

That's it for this week! Check back next Friday for a new installment of Best. Gay. Week. Ever., or read previous installments here.