AfterElton Hot 100 vet David Beckham plays peek-a-boo at a Seoul press conference

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.

• Why did no one tell me that there was a new episode of Planet Unicorn?! In fine PU form, it's a Christmas episode ... in February. This is your brain on drugs, kids.

• This fella is liveblogging (kinda) the Pink Flight to Sydney Mardi Gras. The updates stopped when he got on the plane, so either he couldn't get online or he had one too many pink martinis and blacked out in the lavatory.

• Anderson Cooper covered the murder of gay teen Lawrence King on his show, but unfortunately the CNN podcast elected to cut that segment in favor of a singing kid in underwear.

• A big happy birthday to Elizabeth Taylor. The legendary actress and tireless AIDS research supporter turns 76 today. 
  

• I know this is awful, but this guy freaking out on Scare Tactics at the "genetically altered rat-boy" is still one of the funniest things ever to air on television.

• Vanessa Williams was given the HRC Equality Award over the weekend, and gave a lovely acceptance speech. Even better, it was presented to her by Becki Newton (Ugly Betty's wonderfully evil Amanda) and Nessie dropped some great UB references and told some great stories about her own growing up with gay colleagues and friends along the way.

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

Montgomery Clift would have turned 87 today. He got his start on Broadway as a young teen and after ten years of turning down film roles, he finally accepted a part in 1948's Red River opposite John Wayne. That film, along with The Search (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), made him a Hollywood star.

One of the first "method actors" to hit Hollywood (his film career predated those of James Dean and Marlon Brando), he was billed as a "new kind of leading man." Sensitive, with brooding good looks, he was the type of guy that "women would want to take care of." In fact, in his personal life he was bisexual if not predominantly gay, though he had a number of close platonic relationships with women. Among them Nancy Walker, Libby Holman, and most famously Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1956, while filming Raintree County, Clift was involved in a motorcycle accident while leaving a party at costar Elizabeth Taylor's house. His face was horribly disfigured and, while waiting for an ambulance, he almost choked. (Taylor saved his life by removing two teeth from the back of his throat.)

After weeks of recovery, Clift return to film his final scenes in Raintree County, and it's easy to spot before and after evidence of his disfigurement in that film.

Clift continued to work after the accident but became increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol. His post-accident career has been called "one of the longest suicides in Hollywood." He died in 1966 of a heart attack brought on by severe drug and alcohol abuse. He was 45.

As a special birthday treat, after the break we have some Montgomery Clift trivia, as well as a home video clip of the star in his youth, kidding around at home with Marlon Brando. It's a hoot to see these two together camping it up.