AfterElton Briefs: Sir Ian Does Good For Kids, Heidi Wanted Mondo To Win, and Joe McElderry Covers Ne Yo

Sir Ian McKellen / Photo credit Linda Lenzi for BroadwayWorld.com

• Sir Ian McKellen hosted the 11th Annual Only Make Believe Gala, with the casts of Memphis, Billy Elliott: The Musical, and Josh Lucas' stunning blue eyes in attendance. Our friends at BroadwayWorld.com have full coverage.

• Cher is doing a huge interview with Vanity Fair for the December issue, which hits newsstands tomorrow. She talks about aging, Chaz, Sonny and politics. Since it's election day, here are her thoughts on Sarah Palin and Jan Brewer:

I got so obsessed with [C-SPAN] that it was kind of interfering with my life. Sarah Palin came on, and I thought, Oh, f*ck, this is the end. Because a dumb woman is a dumb woman.

She was worse than Sarah Palin, if that is possible. This woman was like a deer in headlights. She’s got a handle on the services of the state, and I would not let her handle the remote control.

• In the Los Angeles Times (which has an odd fascination with making children's entertainment into adult issues lately), Andrew Klavan makes the case that Toy Story 3 is a metaphor for the country's dissatisfaction with President Obama and big goverment, despite the fact that it was written years before Obama was elected. The movie's director, Lee Unkrich, responds.

• MTV has apologized for the transphobic Jersey Shore reunion special that aired last week. There's something to be said for the way they worded the apology. They aren't sorry if you were offended, they're sorry it was offensive.

We appreciate GLAAD voicing concern about the “Jersey Shore” reunion special. The segment in question was certainly not meant to be insensitive, but in retrospect we realize that it was offensive to some viewers.   We sincerely apologize.

• The Philadelphia Gay Flag Football League wants all the young gay athletes out there to know that it does, indeed get better.

• San Francisco Giants relief pitcher Brain "Fear the Beard" Wilson will be on Jay Leno Thursday. I have to wonder if The Machine will come up in conversation. Here's when Ross Matthews spent a few minutes with Wilson last week.

• Out director/producer Michael Patrick King is quietly shopping a new television show around town, hand delivering the scripts to network executives. But it supposedly revolves around the straight owner of an upscale salon that finds himself having a midlife crisis.

• In an unsurprising development, Pastor Eddie Long has filed court papers denying the allegations that he used his position at the church to induce young men to have sex with him. He did, however, encourage them to call him "daddy."

• Many folks may have been mad at GQ for the racy Glee photospread, but GQ is laughing all the way to the bank. Web traffic for the magazine jumped from their normal 2.5 million page views for a new article to 33 million.

• Because this is stale after today, watch "If Puppies Could Vote" from the Jimmy Fallon Show last night. And based on this, puppies may be even more evil than kittens.

• Mondo Guerra may have won the more prestigious Gay of the Week title, but Heidi Klum wanted him to win Project Runway, and enlisted Tim Gunn to gang up on Nina and Michael.

• The College of DuPage, on of the nation's largest community colleges with 31,000 students, published an editorial entitled "Homosexuality Isn't a Human Right."

• Miss Coco Peru is performing a new show in New York about her rise from the Bronx to becoming a "glamorous low-end drag queen." Tickets are available for the show November 5-14.

• There's a new documentary about Matt Daley and Bobby Canciello's attempt to break the world record for continuous kissing and thereby entering the Guinness Book of World Records. Here's the teaser.

• When Hot In Cleveland returns in January, Mary Tyler Moore will be guest starring in a role connected to Betty White's arrest in the season one finale. It's been 33 years since Betty and Mary appeared onscreen together.

• The Vermont Supreme Court has upheld the custody awarded to Janet Jenkins, the non-biological lesbian mother of an eight-year-old girl. Now the biological mother just needs to be found. It is believed that she fled to El Salvador.

• Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is resisting calls to resign over a scandal involving a 17-year-old girl who attended parties at his home. He says "better to like beautiful girls than to be gay."

• Listen to out X-Factor winner Joe McElderry do an acoustic cover of "Beautiful Monster."

• ABC has dropped conservative blowhard Andrew Breitbart from their election night coverage over claims he "misrepresented his role." Breitbart is most famous for his involvement in the now-discredited "pimp" tapes that brought down ACORN, a community action group for inner city neighborhoods.

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