Morning Meme: A Virus of Hugs. Plus, Coming Out Is No Illusion, but "Glee" On Broadway Was a Fantasy

Ryan Phillipe revisits Billy Douglas, Dr. Horrible to the big screen, and Rosie is back on television.

Nobody disputes James Randi is a smart man. A noted illusionist in his younger days, these days he spends time investigating the paranormal and the pseudoscientific. He’s also, as of yesterday, out at the age of 82. One at a time, in our own time.

I found out about James Randi coming out from Wil Wheaton’s blog. I’m obviously a fan of Evil Wil Wheaton on Big Bang Theory, but I even liked a young Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: TNG. Wil doesn’t do politics often, but this is the second time recently he’s spoken out on the subject of GLBT rights. I’d like to share:

I hope he's right. I hope that, one day, we will live in a more tolerant and enlightened world, where people won’t feel like they have to keep their identity hidden from all the ignorant bigots who reflexively hate them. Until then, I applaud people like James Randi who have the courage to speak up, and the greatest sympathy for those who feel like they can’t.

Robert Pattinson is not gay. He’s also getting a lot more media savvy and elegant about how he tells you that. I can appreciate the learning curve, and how much better he said it this time.

Billboard is a little confused: they can’t remember a cast recording for a student play ever making their charts. But University of Michigan’s student production of Me and My Dick has debuted at #11 on the Top Cast Albums Chart. They have some video. Frankly it’s adorable and reminds me a lot of Avenue Q in the approach.

Speaking of cast recordings, Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna is available for preorder at Amazon.com, but doesn’t ship until April 20^th. It looks like a couple tracks are mashups.

In other Glee news, it was reported in Playbill that they were negotiating for a Broadway version of the show. Sadly, two days later 20^th Century Fox said “Whaaaat?”

As we know, bacon is nature’s perfect food. Here are 101 Bacon Products, though sadly many are inedible t-shirts extolling the virtues of bacon.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which I understand is now going franchise, came in at a healthy #2 at the box office this weekend at $21.8 million. While this put it behind Alice In Wonderland, it was still ahead of expectations, and even ahead of the Gerard Butler/Jennifer Aniston vehicle The Bounty Hunter. Kids breaking Jennifer's heart, and it's not even a tabloid rumor.

We’re at the nine month point since Torchwood: Children of Earth broke our hearts. They said they’d continue the story, but all we’ve heard are vague murmurs of an American Torchwood. Shouldn’t they be filming something by now?

 Parks and Recreations star Aziz Ansari is negotiating with MTV to host the 2010 Movie Awards this June. Didn’t they used to use, you know, movie stars to host the Movie Awards.

A school in Oregon had an outbreak of hugs, and it was getting serious. So they banned hugging. All hugging, called it a “virus.” The world is now a sadder place because of this.

Lady GaGa went on record to remind the world that we are born gay, we don’t choose this, and people that try and lay that label of choice on us are extremely destructive to our society.

Rosie O’Donnell is coming back to daytime, but she’s going outside the normal studio system. Nobody is quite sure how she’s going to sell the program, or if it will be her previous Queen of Nice format or a more political program. Assuming it goes forward, by next year we could have a gay majority on daytime chat shows, what with Ellen, Rosie, and Nate Berkus’ new show.

Nigel Lythgoe talks about the changes in the upcoming season of So You Think You Can Dance, Paula Abdul, American Idol, and his own judging table.

I am so not ready for the work week. It's 65 degrees outside and I want to be out there. Pete here shares my feelings.

Wanna go play?

Cory Monteith lives in Los Angeles now, so the good weather can't be why he looks like he's against the weekend ending.

Then again, he's Canadian, so the sun may affect him differently.

Presented without comment.

I've completely fallen in love with this bookcase concept. I'd love the style even if it didn't have the trick of collapsing into a column.

I think it's for sale. I don't normally see prices that high where I shop.

Tide with a touch of Downey.

Okay forget testing yourself to see "Which Sex and the City girl you are." I thought we'd have some fun with this How Progressive Are You? quiz. Mostly I'm suggesting it because I have a feeling that AfterElton.com readers can skew leftward the results for the whole sample. I tested fairly high - certainly higher than average.

Yeah, I'm flaming in more ways than one.

On Friday we met the newly popular Meme animal Hover Cat. Over the weekend Hover Cat must have mated with Saturday Night Live's Laser Cats. This is the result.

Neil Patrick Harris ran into MTV somewhere, and they talked about Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. It seems the sequel might be straying from the original concept and is headed to the big screen. I'm unsure how I feel about this, because I worry a studio will screw it up.

Why are blue people so popular these days? Na'vi, Smurfs, Blue Man Group? Where are all these azure people coming from? And is the body paint safe for the actors?

Ryan Phillipe (so very hot) was interviewed at SXSW, and he mentioned his next film is a remake of the western The Big Valley. The interviewer then asked him if he'd ever consider going back to soaps, where he played Billy Douglas, One Life To Live's first gay character.