2007: BEST GAY YEAR EVER!

JULY: THE TEMPERATURE ISN'T THE ONLY THING SMOKING HOT
This month brought us the results of our first ever AfterElton.com Hot 100 poll as voted on by our readers. Thousands of votes poured in for hundreds of different guys and we had the oh-so-onerous task of then plowing our way through hundreds of pics of the winners to choose the hottest ones to run. How. We. Suffer. Seriously, trying to pick the best photo of Jake Gyllenhaal is excruciating. And while Jensen Atwood (Noah's Arc, Dante's Cove) might only have landed at number 43, he's number one in my fantasies heart!

The month also took me to my first Television Critics Association Tour where I proceeded to bug every network suit, producer, and writer I could get my hands on to ask if their show was going to have a gay character and, if not, why the *#&!_@(% not. And I also got to talk with quite a few actors. (And maybe I ate lots of food and drank lots of liquor at the network parties, but it was strictly because I had to fit in!)

It was at the TCA Tour that Marc Cherry told me that Desperate Housewives would be adding a gay couple, that I met out actor Bryan Batt who plays the gay Salvatore on AMC's Mad Men, and chatted with John Barrowman, Michael Urie, Marc Indelicato, Tim Gunn and Matthew Rhys just name drop a few! And what's this? A picture of me chatting with Matthew Rhys? How on earth did that get in here?

Alas, January's TCA Tour has been canceled due to the ongoing writers' strike.

VH1 announced that someone named Perez Hilton was getting their own show, What Perez Sez, on the network. I'd never heard of him and predicted he would quickly fade away into obscurity. Although given the network's reputation for producing high quality programming such as I Love New York and America's Most Smartest Model I could be completely wrong here.

The Emmy nominations were announced and nods went to T.R. Knight, Neil Patrick Harris, Sir Ian McKellen, Kathy Griffin, Ellen DeGeneres, the casts of and Ugly Betty and Brothers & Sisters, and The Office for "The Gay Witch Hunt" episode.

Also this month we did a little investigative reporting on Paramount's upcoming flick Stardust with Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare, a gay pirate. Or was he gay? I contacted a spokesperson for the movie who — no matter how many times and in how many ways I asked — would only confirm he was a cross-dresser, but would say nothing about his sexuality. There are some lines that the movies just will not cross.

IMHO — The Year in TV

Give me an A! Give me a B! Give me a C! Give me an F-A-M-I-L-Y! What does that spell? One of the year's most surprising gay characters! That would bebe Calvin (Paul James) on ABC Family's Greek. He's an athlete. He's African-American. And we love him!

What does VH1 stand for anyway? Very Horrible? Vile Humanity? Vapid Homosexuals? Or is it really code for Viewer Beware? I'm just grateful they aren't more gay inclusive so I don't have to watch more of this dreck than necessary.

CBS' Big Brother 8 may have broken new ground when two out housemates were part of the cast. But these weren't just any gay men — these were former boyfriends who'd gone through a very bad break-up and proceeded to air their dirty laundry on national television thereby proving there is such a thing as too much gay visibility. As if Perez hadn't already proven that.