Tony winners David Hyde Pierce are and Sara Ramirez are all smiles at this morning's announcement

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.

• The other day we mentioned that Neil Patrick Harris and Rosie O'Donnell would be among the celebrity guests on the upcoming primetime Million Dollar Password. Here's a rather hilarious interview with NPH behind-the-scenes, compete with another excellent Regis impression.

• Hiding in Hip Hop author Terrance Dean will be reading from the tell-most book this week in NYC, and taking Q&A. Check out AfterElton.com contributor Clay Cane's site for details.

• Hey Freak Show fans: Check out this kinda hilarious video of author James St. James reading from his brilliant young adult novel along with several other Lambda Literary Award nominees at A Different Light bookstore, hosted by Christopher Rice.

• In case you missed it, Neil Patrick Harris wound up in bed with Britney last night ... so that we don't have to. Thanks for taking one for the team, NPH!

• Apparently actor Mike Epps is famous enough to be stalked and harassed into a verbal and physical altercation by the bottom-feeders at TMZ. Epps regrettably stoops the their level by calling one of the paps "a fag, homosexual". 

• RADAR takes Joel Derfner, the author of Swish, to the Hello Kitty store and out for ice cream. Given that the rest of the book's title is "My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever", I'm guessing "Swish" isn't a basketball reference?

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

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.

• One of tonight's episodes of the PBS documentary Carrier is called "Super Secrets" and discusses life on board the USS Nimitz for gay and lesbian servicemembers. Towleroad has an interview with Brian Downey, one of those servicemembers.

• Britney Spears is coming back to How I Met Your Mother (yawn) and what's up with Barney's (Neil Patrick Harris) kiss with Robin?

• The American Family Association (aka The Winguts of America) are getting in Procter & Gamble's face because As the World Turns "has resumed using explicit, open-mouth homosexual kissing". Really? Gosh, we hadn't noticed! Naturally, this calls for another one of the AFA's "successful" boycotts and they are encouraging folks to write letters to P&G. I used the AFA's own form letter to tell P&G to ignore these loons, but you should probably drop them a note as well.

• The out Rhys Bobridge came in second in Australia's first edition of So You Think You Can Dance.

Rhys Bobridge, Jack Chambers

• Steve Rothaus is blogging the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival including an appearance by the always fabulous Jennifer Tilly.

• Greg Hernandez of Out in Hollywood ran into Marc Cherry at the GLAAD Awards in LA and Marc told him Brothers & Sisters' Kevin and Scotty aren't the only ABC gays exchanging vows.

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

How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris learned a very valuable lesson over the last few days: "LEAVE BRITN--" ... (I'm sorry, I just can't finish it).

No doubt you've seen the hysterical overreaction to some remarks he made to an Associated Press reporter. Late last week, the story exploded, with headlines like NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: SAY NO TO BRITNEY!, NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: KEEP BRITNEY OFF MY SHOW!, and NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: CASTING BRITNEY WAS A STUNT! Here are some of his remarks from the original story:

'We've done a good three and three-quarter seasons with guest stars that we feel like are exactly perfect for the characters that (were) written ... by the crack writing staff,'' Harris told a reporter visiting the set of the Monday night CBS sitcom. ''I worry that if they start 'Will and Gracing' us too much, that the show will suffer. And we're all really proud of the content of the show. I mean viewership is not our game. It's the network and the studio's game, you know. It's the promotion department's game. We wish we weren't opposite an awkward reality dancing competition. But we have no say about that. I just am a real fan of our content. I think we have a great show going and I hope it's not screwed up by the desire for 700,000 more viewers.'

Bloggers had a field day with the comments, and now Neil Patrick has issued a "clarification":

"It seems that yesterday a writer took some quotes of mine and speculated an opinion about their intent. I write to you to set the record straight. "As I have said all along, Britney did a great job on the show. She really did. In fact, we are all hoping that she returns rather soon to reprise her role as Abby. Look, that episode garnered our highest ratings of the season — I would never ignore or disrespect that fact. I am just very protective of our show, and its content. I have a high standard of quality, and hope to maintain it on every level. Television is big business, I understand that. I have great faith in our casting department, as well as [Twentieth Century Fox Television] and CBS, to find the appropriate person for every role on our show. I was remiss in speculating otherwise. My job description is to act, and I should really do just that. "Britney Spears fits into our make-believe world very well — if she chose to return I can only imagine that Carter [Bays], Craig [Thomas], and the rest of the writers would create a humdinger of a storyline for her. We should be so lucky.

Not to be outdone, the AP released their own revision, saying that "We're issuing a clarification to our story," "Harris did not say that he opposed a return engagement for Spears, and our lead said that he did."

So what can we learn from all this? Obviously, that Britney Spears, more than ever, is the Black Hole of pop culture, trapping things like reason and sense in her imploding vortex.

Neil Patrick Harris popped up on Entertainment Tonight talking about the upcoming Britney Spears guest-spot on his sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Watch closely for a crash course in how to diplomatically answer questions about someone whose reputation is clearly in the toilet without sounding mean. Aside from his referring to Brit as "... Madam? Spears?" this has to be my favorite line: "It'll be very unlike any Britney we've seen before ... and we've seen a lot of Britneys recently!"

He also muses on whether the whole batsh*t-crazy-Cheeto-fueled-head-shaving thing might just be an act. Oh, the kids these days with their optimism!

(I couldn't figure out how to stop the clip from playing on its own, so I moved it to after the jump. Check it out!)

Kathy Griffin and me a porn star at the gay porn awards

On Saturday night Andy took me to see Kathy Griffin at the Madison Square Garden WaMu Theater (the WaMu part was new to me ... but then the manhole covers in this city will probably have corporate sponsors before Bloomberg's done with it). As we approached the theater, the transient Midtown crowd started more and more to resemble what Noah's Ark might have looked like had he opted not to repopulate the world with animals but instead to preserve paired examples of the many species of gay men who live in New York City.

"Look, it's a pair of Prada-footed Guppies!" "Hey, a Muscle Mary ... and his matched mate! They do tend to travel together ..."

And of course whatever Andy and I would qualify as, other than old, boring, and probably not nearly fabulous enough for a classy event like this. Would they make us sit in the back? What if I went to the gift stand to buy a "MAIN GAY" t-shirt and they told me I wasn't fun or pretty enough?

The night was only beginning and already I was shame-spiraling into disaster. You can take the boy out of the Catholic Church, step-ball-chain, step-ball-chain, repeat...

Fortunately, the minute that Kathy's show started, I forgot about all that (and almost forgot about the private atmosphere of suffocating perfume that hovered over our section, courtesy of the 300 or so women drinking red wine out of plastic cups all around us). Clips of Anderson Cooper calling Kathy "Bitch!" from The Celebrity Mole?! Clips of Kathy on Seinfeld? Clips of Kathy having her face beaten in with a hammer by her pregnant lesbian lover from the white-hot B horror movie The Unborn?!?! 

Okay, this is where I belong after all.

Kathy's act was what you'd expect: polished, wonderfully serpentine, and selectively ruthless. In the show that we saw (which she presaged with the promise that it was ALL NEW), Kathy's main targets were Oprah, Britney, Barbara Walters, the Christians ...

... and Marie Osmond.

Every Friday we check in with our friends at newnownext.com for the week's gay music picks. Guess who's at the top of the record stack this week?

• It's the Blackout album stream, bitch! You may be done asking the tabloids to "Give You More" Britney coverage, but her heavily-produced, danceable album is pretty fierce! You can hear the entire album via streaming here.

• Cool Music Video Alert: Speculation abounds on the meaning behind this sparse, haunting track from PJ Harvey. As for the video, the recording studio footage is an unexpected pairing for the track, from PJ's eighth album, White Chalk.

• If you haven't heard the Swedish duo The Raveonettes yet, now's your chance to sample a few tracks before their newest album, Lust, Lust, Lust, comes out.

• African-native Kenna is on album number 2, and the music biz is still wondering why you haven't heard of him. Watch his funky new video, as well as a clip of Kenna talking to U Penn students with author Malcolm Gladwell about Kenna's mention in Gladwell's novel, Blink.
  

• Say what you will about country music or American Idol, but it's hard not to love Carrie Underwood's new album, Carnival Ride. Our buds over at newnownext.com have the album stream, the NNN review and Faith Hill's infamous WTF face!