Today the 300 parody Meet the Spartans opens in theatres everywhere. Don't pretend you're not excited.

Of course, given the fact that Spartans is spoofing the homophoberotic nipple opera that took the world by storm last March, we figured that it would feature gay jokes of some kind: it could either blindly follow the implicit homophobia of the source film and pile on the gay jokes (while simultaneously being a film carried by a bunch of men hanging out together in thongs), or - if we were lucky - it could smartly lampoon the homophobic choices made in 300 and feature proudly gay and masculine characters or mock the origin's skewed take on masculinity and sexuality.

We can't say for sure which (if either) will happen, because the film didn't screen for critics (Really? Noooooo....). But from the looks of these gay-joke-packed ads - which feature everything from a rooster-headed Sanjaya lookalike screaming "I'm not gaaaaaaaaay!" as he's kicked into a pit to the Spartans laughing at Chris Crocker to a cross-dressing Rambo (?!!), we shouldn't really get our hopes up. Not that there was much chance of that happening in the first place.

Will actor Sean Maguire, who played a gay character in the short-lived sitcom The Class, undo any goodwill he had with gay audiences by starring in this mess? It's a shame to see a man in a leather Speedo go to waste, but "class" is something that this project could used a bit more of.

Check out two of the ads here and here.

World of Wonder, the production company behind shows like Tori and Dean: Inn Love and One Punk Under God, opened an art exhibit last Friday featuring art inspired by Britney Spears and her many recent tabloid scandals. Outrageous and out director Q. Allan Brocka (Eating Out, Boy Culture and Rick & Steve) was there and he shared the experience at his MySpace blog. (Some of the art you'll see there might be NSFW.)

The exhibit looked like a lot of fun with Britney impersonators, free head shavings as well as YouTube celebrity Chris Crocker, who gained national attention for his "Leave Britney Alone!" video. (Ah, irony.)

On his blog, Brocka mused about Crocker, "I love him to death! I told him I was a big fan but didn't tell him what I do. So I was just another crazy gay fan to him. I like it that way."

Looking around Brocka's MySpace profile, he's also got a handful of pictures of himself shirtless and, well ... funny, smart, cute and a killer bod? Does he have a bag of chips, too? I already knew he belonged on my next list of nominations for the AfterElton Hot 100, but I didn't realize how high he rated on the hotness meter.

• The International Gay and Lesbian Football Association's annual championship kicks off (get it? Kicks? Eh...) in Buenos Aires this Sunday. I would say that Brazil just got a little gayer, but I don't know if that's possible.

• Candis Cayne, the first transgender actress to play a transgender person in a recurring role on a network primetime drama, like, ever (in Dirty Sexy Money), continues to work the red carpet and get giddy good press from the gossips.

• Chris "Leave Britney Alone!" Crocker chats with Maury. Is it just me, or does he look a bit like Bam-Bam from The Flintstones in that outfit?
  

• GayWired lists their favorite Gay-for-Pay actors (no, not THAT kind of gay-for-pay...), including Paul Rudd, James Marsden, and Russell Crowe.
  

Thanks to a tip from GayTVluver we got to see that Jimmy Kimmel made fun of Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone" video. Kimmel parodied the video with one made by a man playing Crocker's father, "Where? Where did I go wrong? I bought him a BB gun! I took him camping! I played catch with him! And now my baby boy looks like crazy old woman!" After taking a bottlefull of pills he continues, "I can't take it anymore! He's not a human being! He's not a human being!"

At the very least, Kimmel has shown that he has issues with people who blur gender lines with his transphobic remarks to Rebecca Romijn and the time he put Sanjaya Malakar on the spot about his sexual orientation. This mockery takes a similar tone, positioning that an effeminate son is worth killing yourself over. (The parody comes off as a little more insensitive if you remember that Crocker wasn't raised by his father.)

Kimmel later gave Crocker a chance to discuss the video in an interview, a chance for Kimmel to add some depth to the parody. Wearing a strapless bikini top (that he kept adjusting) Crocker set the tone for the interview by trash talking Sarah Silverman and flirting with Kimmel:

Jimmy Kimmel: (Chuckling) Well, don't you look beautiful tonight!

Chris Crocker: Hi!

JK: How are you?

CC: I'm really sexually aroused right now.

JK: Why are you sexually aroused right now?

CC: Okay, more than this is about Britney or me. This is about us and Sarah. Us and Sarah.

JK: It's about you, me and Sarah -- you mean my ladyfriend Sarah Silverman.

CC: Oh, I'm getting rid of her.

JK: You're getting rid of her?

CC: Definitely.

JK: Then what will you and I do?

CC: The same thing you and her do.

Overall, I thought Crocker played up the "freak" angle that got his video so much attention. When I first saw Crocker's videos, I thought he offered a mix of substance and silliness. Even though people were laughing at his melodramatics, those videos showed him railing against homophobia as well. Unfortunately, it looks like he's playing to the stereotypes a lot of people saw in the video. That's too bad. In one of the articles I read, Crocker comments about empathizing with the scrutiny Spears receives from the media. Unfortunately he seems to be playing into the joke the media sees in him.

Another parody of Crocker's video was made last week for The Soup with Seth Green crying "Leave Chris Crocker alone!" Instead of suggesting that Crocker's effeminacy is Crocker's problem, Green's parody largely focuses on the misplaced priorities displayed in the video. While Green stops to mock Crocker's appearance, he avoids making the joke demeaning like Kimmel's "He's not a human being!"

After the cut check out videos of Kimmel's monologue leading into his parody of Crocker, Kimmel's interview with Crocker and Green's parody video.

Chris Crocker found a national audience this week when he extended the story about Britney Spears' disastrous performance at the MTV Video Music Awards with his "Leave Britney Alone" video. (Am I the only one hearing Sabrina Matthews voice in my head saying "See, Alanis, it's not that hard to find irony"? Yeah, I figured it'd be just me.) Crocker's video spent time as the most-watched video on YouTube and saw him interviewed by ABC News.

I've found the coverage of the video and watching the news media's reaction to Crocker fascinating -- more interesting than the video itself. A lot of the coverage I saw had a freak show tone, treating Crocker like a punchline. While frustrating, I could rationalize that by noting that the story had a freak show tone before Crocker became a part of it.

However, QueerSighted's Kevin Hill noted another ABC News story (they're all over this one) that showed some really bad judgment. At one point, the article looks at the mockery Crocker has received:

Crocker said he has received a lot of flack for this and previous videos and could therefore relate to Britney being maligned. Comments from YouTube users posting on his video ranged from "Seek therapy NOW. This is NOT normal behavior" to "someone please shoot this fa**ot."

Comments like "Seek therapy NOW." certainly have their place in a story about the much-viewed video. But was it appropriate to quote the "someone please shoot this fa**ot" comment? If the point was to bring up another example of the flack Crocker received, couldn't they have found one that didn't threaten violence and use a gay slur? In his telephone interview, Crocker mentioned not wanting to reveal his home town because he received death threats in the past. Considering that, repeating a comment that calls for violence against Crocker is a really bad judgment.

Note: Just in case you haven't already seen it, Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone!" video appears after the break...

I'm usually too busy yelling at kids to get off my lawn to follow MySpace and YouTube celebrities, so Chris Crocker has flown under my radar until now. Reading a profile of Crocker in Seattle's The Stranger makes it clear that I should start paying attention to Crocker's video blogging.

Crocker lives in a small, conservative town (he refers to it simply as Bitch Island, for anonymity's sake) where intolerance and homophobia are completely acceptable, a place where Crocker had to turn to homeschooling to avoid a constant threat of violence in school. Turning to the internet, Crocker has found a voice and a community that accepts him.

There's a lot of anger and a confrontational nature to Crocker's videos. In "Gay People" (language NSFW) the effeminate Crocker rails against the internalized homophobia found in the idealization of passing for straight and "normal" (as one video response tellingly puts it). Crocker displays a similar anger in "This & That" (another video with NSFW language), a response to the homophobic comments he's received.

Crocker also entertains his fans with his flair for drama in videos like "Healthy Foods" or his review of the many iterations of the phrase "Bitch, Please." If these videos didn't exist with his frank talk about dealing with discrimination, Crocker might come off as a stereotype. A good part of the power of Crocker's work is that he makes it clear that he's not on MySpace and YouTube existing just to entertain but a fully rounded person.