Thanks to the $42 million dollar opening weekend box office take for Disney's High School Musical 3, it's finally safe for that last oppressed minority group to express themselves without fear of humiliation and social opprobrium. Yes, that's right — it's now okay for super popular jocks to sing and dance. Did you ever think this day would actually come?

Yes, I'm a little bitter and you can find out why, after the jump. 

Give me liberty or give me Nuke (photo: George de Sota/JPI Studios)

In a continued effort to bring you all that is important in the world of gay entertainment and ensure that you are being spoon-fed images of gorgeous, commoditized manflesh, we present the newly-minted AfterElton Briefs. Following the usual assortment of carefully-selected news items, interested readers can find a refreshing pic of a hot man in underwear after the jump. Yes, we're serious.

• Feast your eyes on that gorgeous, exclusive pic of Luke (Van Hansis) and Noah (Jake Silbermann) from As the World Turns, which is from the shoot that will appear on next week's show. (Luke did pop up on today's show to give Lady Drumstick a pep talk, but no Noah. If ever there were a person to cheer up with ice cream, it would have been her!)

• Reader nightfish91 tipped us off to this great video of highlights from the Broadway Backwards show (which we covered in a delightfully humpy photo essay earlier this week). Okay, I'm officially hot for Malcolm Gets. Curse you, rhythm!

• Today would have been James Dean's birthday, and he would have turned 76.

• These folks posted what they say is a pic of High School Musical's Lucas Grabeel on the set of Milk, where he plays an employee at Harvey Milk's camera shop. Yes, he's wearing a dress. And yes, this is looking even gayer than his character from HSM.

• Greg Hernandez ran into gay actor Leslie Jordan who assured him that his Sordid Lives co-star Delta Burke is doing very well with her depression treatment.

• Don't forget to catch up on all the queer stuff that matters in Michael's oven-fresh Best.Week.Ever. column, and have a great weekend!

And today's Briefs are brought to you by...

There's a veritable smorgasboard of campy DVD titles out today that might be of interest
to you, or the perfect stocking stuffer for a friend or pet.

The FX series Dirt returns for its sophomore season in January and just in time for new viewers to catch up is this boxed set release of Season 1. The show itself was a bit uneven last year, but it did offer a few delights. Among them is Grant Show as a closeted movie star getting down and dirty with Leo Spiller (Will McCormack). The boy certainly has come a long way from Melrose Place.

Also out, you can finally get R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet R&B opera — all 22 chapters of it — on one DVD. Collectively the chapters tell the story of a one-night stand that sets off a chain of events "revealing a web of lies and deceit." Some of those lies involve certain characters "on the down low."

The front of the box says, "it's the big package," but that may not in fact be true. Kelly claims to have another 20 chapters written and yet to be released. Oh for goodness sake, come out of the closet already!

Are you a Zac Efron fan? Oh come on admit it. You know you are. Well you can see him gamely returning to the franchise that made him a teen heartthrob and breakout star in High School Musical 2: Extended Edition. And no doubt in a few months Disney will be releasing the "director's cut" of this cash cow franchise.

Of keener interest to me is the DVD release of a 1996 Lifetime original movie, Seduced by Madness...

• The gay-rific Xanadu stage musical (for which we were pretty gaga) is reportedly launching a national tour, set to start next summer in San Francisco. Break your leg warmers out of cold storage and start practicing your figure-eights!
  
• Neil Patrick Harris joined fellow thesps Tim Robbins, Martin Sheen, Sandra Oh, Frances Conroy, Camryn Manheim and others in a staged reading of The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, and received this sparkling review.
• Even though High School Musical and its sequel are suspiciously lacking in any gay characters (considering they're about musicals and all), the newly-launched stage version apparently amps up the gay-seemingness of Ryan, Sharpay's brother. (t/y Wayman for the tip!)
• Canadian MP Scott Brison becomes the country's first federal politician to marry a same-sex partner. Two former prime ministers attend the ceremony.
• A "Whatever Happened To..." piece on Mathew St. Patrick, who wonderfully played Keith (David's on-again, off-again boyfriend) on Six Feet Under.
• The host of a British children's show jokes in her stand-up act that all the people behind the scenes are "gay, childless, or don't like kids." The BBC defends her comments as being obviously ironic. The news comes hot on the heels of a recent contest-fixing scandal at children's show Blue Peter. Also scandalous: the fact that there is actually a children's show called "Blue Peter".