So Michael is off galavanting in the hills of Austria or shark-diving off the Great Barrier Reef or hiding under his bed for a week, so I'm here to take you through the Best. Gay. Week. Ever.

For what would otherwise be a quiet week in August (when the entire city of New York empties out by 4PM on Friday and leaves the restaurants and bars blissfully elbow-roomy), we actually had quite a bit of interesting stuff happen. But before we get into all that, I have a short story to share with y'all.

"TONIGHT ... WE DINE ... AT FOOD BAR!"

Last night as I was walking through Manhattan's gay Chelsea neighborhood to the subway back to Brooklyn's gay Williamsburg neighborhood (I need to get out more ... or less?), I had a very strange thing happen. I had just come out of a showing of Stardust (more on that later) and was thinking about the movie and the novel on which it was based and not really paying much attention to what was going on around me (which, being late on a Wednesday night, wasn't much).

Then something odd and unexpected happened: A young guy, maybe in his teens, came out of a doorman building on 6th Avenue about 20 feet ahead of me. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me, did an odd double-take, and then threw his fists in the air and screamed:

"THIS! IS! SPARTA!"

Then he ran off into the night.

Now, I certainly don't look a smack like any of the guys in 300 (oh, were that I did!), but I was the only person on the block and he was clearly yelling directly at me. Maybe it was the laziness-induced beard I'm sporting as of late. Maybe it was just that the homoerotophobic pickle-party came out on DVD last week and it was on his mind or something. Or maybe this man suffers from a very specific condition in which he thinks he's Gerard Butler, and on the next corner he assaulted some passerby with a song from The Phantom of the Opera. If that's the case, then I got off easy.

But great to see that Greek love is alive and well in Chelsea.