That deafening sound you hear is gay men all over the world wishing a spirited HAPPY BIRTHDAY! to the one and only Liza Minnelli. The Oscar, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy winning legend turns 62 today.

Aside from her many artistic accomplishments, Liza is, of course, one of the Grande Dames of the peculiar condition that affects gay men known as diva worship. Considering her mother was Judy Garland, one of the first and greatest gay divas, it was probably inevitable that Liza would be the torch-bearer for the next generation.

From her battles with addiction to her weight fluctuations to her topsy-turvy career (remember Rent A Cop?), and her marriage to David Gest, we love Liza because she is first and foremost a survivor.

Hopefully, our birthday wish to Liza will come true, and she'll stay happy and healthy for decades to come. And maybe, just maybe, she'll treat her fans to another work of genius like Results, her album with Pet Shop Boys, the greatest collaboration in the history of pop music!

You can see the video for one of the classics from that 1989 album, "Don't Drop Bombs", after the jump.

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.

• Out actor Randy Harrison (Queer as Folk's Justin) is getting raves for his performance as Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Berkshire Theatre Festival ... opposite Linda Hamilton as Nurse Ratched!
• Silence of the Lambs to get the musical treatment, as Silence! The Musical opens off-Broadway later this season. This time, the lambs are crying in perfect 4-part harmony.
• Pics from the Broadway Barks charity event, including those of David Hyde Pierce and a stunned-looking (but still stunning) Cheyenne Jackson.
• Formerly-vampish James Marsters (Spike from Buffy) to be "naughty and a bit of a psychopath" on Torchwood. (teen-weeny little pic below)
• Speaking of Torchwood, looks like Bradford Meade himself (Alan Dale from Ugly Betty) is joining the cast as well.
  
• Liza showed up at the Hairspray premiere in see-through slacks. Gotta love that woman. And the word "slacks".
• Our friend Michael over at SyFyPortal is even more disappointed over NBC's hiring of Isaiah Washington than we are. (His goes to eleven.)
  
• Sir Elton reportedly is turning a part of his estate into an art museum to display some of his holdings, many of them from noted gay artists like Warhol, Mapplethorpe, and the like. And here I still proudly display my vintage Eyes of Laura Mars poster like I was something special!

A few weeks back we wrote about the new show The Winner, which features The Daily Show's Rob Corddry as Glen, the "richest man in Boston" -- although when we meet him back in the 90's, he's just a guy working at a video store who lives with his parents and can't get his life together.

Last night the show aired its "gay episode", where Glen becomes friends with a recently-single (and rather hunky) gay man whom Glen refuses to believe is gay, because the guy likes football and doesn't like cinnamon toast. Glen is so fixated on his new friend's season tickets that he lets the guy make advances at him -- but when the guy's ex reappears, things get complicated.

The episode was actually funnier than expected and had a handful of hilarious, stereotype-busting lines (Glen's reference to Liza Minnelli as "that hot piece of *ss from Arthur" was one of my favorites). The show's obviously still finding its footing, and it's interesting that it would throw a "gay episode" into the mix so early in its run.

Now, The Winner does have a recurring gay character -- Glen's boss Richard, played by Amir Talai. So the "gay episode" doesn't feel like a left-field ratings-grabber or "very special episode".

But the idea of having an entire episode dedicated to a self-contained gay storyline seems to be very in vogue lately. shows like The Wedding Bells (which featured Stephen Guarino, pictured at the right, as well as a Liza impersonator -- come on, guys, isn't there another gay reference you can come up with?), The New Adventures of Old Christine, Boston Legal, and more have dipped their toes into gay waters recently for material. And if other shows continue to handle the themes as well as these shows have, it's a trend that's fine by me.

What do you folks think? Is the "gay episode" a passing trend, or are we seeing real progress here?