AfterElton Briefs: Joel Schumacher Talks Chace Crawford, Portia DeGeneres, and Zac Efron's Agony Is Our Ecstasy

Plus NPH calls out Pink Satan, the Beekman Boys will be fabulous again, Bryan Safi's nearly naked cowboy.

Happy birthday to Aiden James

• Today is a lot of things - Sequential Date Day (08.09.10), and also the birthday to out hottie singer Aiden James, who spent the weekend on Fire Island, and when he stumbled down stairs, he found three shirtless bearded boys cooking breakfast. Oh, the life of a rockstar!

• Planet Green has renewed The Fabulous Beekman Boys for a second season. I'll admit it, after watching three episodes, I didn't think their relationship would survive the first season. But at least we get more Farmer John.

• The folks over at Consumerist break down the true meaning of the Target and Best Buy donations to Minnesota Forward and anti-gay politicians.They ponder what it means in a larger context, and how this is just the tip of the iceberg with corporate donations. Their conclusion? Time to leave the country, because we can't boycott all the companies, and all the companies will be doing this.

• TheOnion.com brings us this news report about a Christian charity raising money to feed non-gay famine victims.

• Details has Zac Efron as a coverboy, and he comes across as a normal guy, not a teen idol. And while he's not squeaky clean like his old High School Musical reputation, he seems quite real. And as for the rumors Vanessa Hudgens is a beard (hilariously phrased as a shotgun wedding with Mickey Mouse presiding over the union)?

I've never even heard of that happening. I don't even know who I would have been around who would have thought that was even a good idea. It would have been so much easier to call it off a long time ago. They want you to believe it, and they hope they'll influence you to break up by making you seem insane for being in it. And then you'll play the field, and then they can write about you a sh**load, make sh** up, and speculate about everything. Right now they know exactly what's going on and it's not very interesting and there's no money to be made on it. It's exactly how it should be. It's real.

• Just for fun, Details has a behind-the-scenes video of the coverboy photoshoot with Zac. He's really inhumanly good looking.

• Despite conservative pundits claims that the "mainstream media" (MSM) is universally liberal and pro-gay, a new study shows that while the New York Times tends to frame marriage equality in terms of "human rights," the Chicago Tribune is more likely to take the "family values" approach to coverage.

• Director Joel Schumacher has a gritty new film coming out called Twelve, starring Chace Crawford. While doing press for the movie he was asked some ridiculous questions including why he always idealizes male beauty in his movies such as a shirtless Rob Lowe playing the sax in St. Elmo's Fire or Jason Patric and Corey Haim hanging all over each other in The Lost Boys. He handled this, and the followup beautifully.

I get this question because I'm gay. How about Demi Moore and Ally Sheedy? How about Julia Roberts in Flatliners? The women are ignored in my films.

• I'm not a lawyer, but I think hanging our hat on a technicality that the intervenor-defendents in Perry vs. Schwarznegger don't have grounds to appeal in federal court sounds premature, no matter how many sites I read it on.

• Bryan Safi took to the street of WeHo for the rally celebrating Prop 8. He came up with a shirtless cowboy and a devoted fan, but he didn't seem to have a ring on him when he encountered his real boyfriend. Awkward!

• There's a rather fun rumor circulating that Lady Gaga is going to team up with out director/producer Bryan Singer to create a movie that's a cross between Michael Jackson's Moonwalker and Dreamgirls. I've been trying to imagine what that would look like, but I'm sober.

• Neil Patrick Harris' production of Rent at the Hollywood Bowl went off without a hitch this weekend, and most reviewers liked Vanessa Hudgens as HIV+ stripper Mimi.

Jai Rodriguez attended opening night of Rent with his friend Mark.

• One person who wasn't impressed with Vanessa was Pink Satan, and the always unflappable NPH engaged with him over Twitter asking why he had to "be such a hater about Vanessa."

• Brent Bowers was the manager of the Edmonton Capitals baseball team until he went off on a homophobic rant with an openly gay umpire over a call. The league suspended him, and he resigned before the team could fire him.

• Vanity Fair's resident gay car expert test drives two Mercedes, one for the country gay, the other for the city gay, and neither for the gay with an average sized wallet. Previously unnoticed: his piece stating which male Glee cast member looked like which car. Dude may have issues.

• TMZ must have a dozen people camped out at court houses to just snoop on celebrity filings. At least this one is a good thing - Porti de Rossi has filed to take Ellen DeGeneres' last name, becoming Portia Lee James DeGeneres.

• Veritas is the story of a group of young men at Harvard who had their futures ruined in 1920 as the result of a program to purge the university of homosexuals. It will be presenting limited performances later this month at the New York International Fringe Festival.

Veritas cast  L to R   top row: Matt Steiner, Paul Downs Colaizzo, Sam Underwood, Doug Kreeger, Jesse Swenson, Morgan Karr, Justin Blanchard; 3 "bottom" row seated:  Joseph Yeargain, Mitch Dean, Eric Nelsen

• HBO is bringing in Oscar winning director Jonathan Demme to direct an episode of the Mike White written, Laura Dern starring, comedy series Enlightened. That's a lot of starpower.

• It appears that skater Evan Lysacek responded via Twitter to someone asking if Johnny Weir was actually male with "verdict is still out." At this point he's denied it, claimed hacking, claimed a fake account, and apologized it happened without saying he did it.

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