I've made no secret that I'm a big fan of Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, the wickedly funny satire from Eating Out and Boy Culture director Q. Allan Brocka. Today, Logo (our parent company) announced that we can look forward to seeing more Rick & Steve, as the show will be returning for a second season in the summer of 2008. The second season will consist of eight episodes, two more than the first season.

Logo also announced two more gay-themed animation projects. One is Tinseltown, the Hollywood satire from the Jim Henson Company we told you about earlier. If you need more reason to get excited about Tinseltown, I just learned that it's co-written by Sordid Lives creator Del Shores.

We can also expect more of Small Talk, which was part of last week's Alien Boot Camp. The Small Talk short films all focus on two gay male friends who comment on the goings-on at the gym, steamroom or other locations.

You can already check out Small Talk at AlienBootCamp.com. A 12-minute pilot of Tinseltown will air on tomorrow night's Alien Boot Camp and will available to watch online the following Monday, November 5.

See that picture at the top? I'm up there dancing with Evan and Condi over the news of all this animated goodness.

We've been following the trail of Tinseltown, a comedy from The Jim Henson Company featuring a gay male couple. A clip of the project made a splash at the Comic Con in San Diego this year and, at that point, was poised to make its debut on the web.

However, The Muppet Newsflash is reporting that Tinseltown will be airing on Logo, and we've confirmed with our parent company that the pilot (for starters, at least) is on the schedule.

The series focuses on a pig named Bobby Vegan and his partner, Samson Knight, a bull. Bobby is a popular entertainer past his peak with anxieties that have him "self-medicating". Samson is not just Bobby's partner but also his manager, and keeping Bobby calm through the various crises is key to his personal and financial well-being. Bobby and Samson have a 13-year-old foster child named ... Foster. (So. We can expect some wordplay jokes on Tinseltown.) Foster is played by a human, as is the rest of Tinseltown's cast, which includes an ex-wife, a limo driver and a masseuse.

The anxiety, insecurity and drug use in Tinseltown makes me think of Absolutely Fabulous and The Comeback, which makes it a show worth anticipating. (Is this the first time a show like that has focused on gay male characters?) Anybody catch the preview at San Diego? What did you think?

The pilot episode will premiere on Logo November 2, though there's no word on when more episodes will air. After November 5, you'll also be able to watch Tinseltown on AlienBootCamp.com. (Alien Boot Camp is an animated anthology series debuting this Friday on Logo ... as a former Liquid Television fan, I can't wait!)

Thanks to our own Suddenly Seymour for the tip!

Late last year we reported on an in-development project from the Jim Henson Co., Tinseltown, that apparently featured two gay puppets who adopt a human child. Needless to say, our gay-puppet-adoptive-parents interest meters spiked off the charts for the first time ever.

News that took a while to trickle out of last weekend's Comic Con in San Diego reveals that while the networks may have passed on the project, Tinseltown isn't dead. Instead, proud papas Samson Knight (a bull) and Bobby Vegan (a pig) will be making their way directly to the Net, where Tinseltown is set to premiere as a webshow sometime next year.

Better Web than nothing, although it is a darn shame that the networks didn't pick up the show. The episode that the Henson folks screened at Comic Con was apparently a huge hit, so hopefully the show will find its audience when it launches.

Oh, I just got it: "Samsonite." Please tell me the bull's a leather daddy.

(Note: I do not mean to imply in any way that Statler and Waldorf, pictured above, were gay. They were simply well-heeled gentlemen who enjoyed the theater and preferred each other's company to that of ladies.)