Birthday wishes go out today to two men who have used their talent to provide a generation of gay men with with wit, insight, and intelligent discourse.

First up is Armistead Maupin, who turns 64 today. It was on August 8th, 1974 that he first brought us the hilarious, shocking, and Madrigal magical world of Tales Of The City when it began running as a newspaper serial. Four years later, the first novel was released, and throughout the 70's and 80's, we were treated to the continuing adventures of the gang from Barbary Lane. When asked why his writing seemed to resonate in such a meaningful way with readers, he said:

"One of the things that I saw different about what I was doing was that I was allowing a little air into the situation by actually placing gay people in the context of the world at large. Most gay fiction that I was reading when I was coming out in the early 70s made me claustrophobic because it only dealt with the life of the gay bar and everybody in it was gay. Often gay and male and there weren't even any lesbians in the picture. That didn't make me feel the way I wanted to feel about life and it didn't correspond with the life that I was living in San Francisco which was wonderfully mixed up in terms of the people that came and went in my life and that was part of the enormous exhilaration of it. It felt revolutionary."

Last year, after almost twenty years, Armistead revisited some of the characters with Michael Tolliver Lives!, and though at first hesitant to call it a "sequel", he now says he's looking forward to even further tales in the future. In the meantime, we can look forward to a musical stage adaption of Tales Of The City, to be written by Avenue Q co-writer Jeff Whitty and featuring music by Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears.

And happy 51st birthday to Alan Ball, who has given us the ultimate dysfunctional family and hot undertakers, and who somehow survived Cybill.

He started out writing for Cybill Shepherd's sitcom, and allegedly based the Annette Bening character in his Oscar-winning American Beauty on the volatile star. But to us he's best known for creating the HBO series Six Feet Under and introducing us to one of the great gay characters in TV history, David Fisher, played by Michael C. Hall.

Currently, Alan is working on another HBO series, the adaption of Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Tales. The series will be called True Blood, and will premiere this fall. Given his track record, we can probably expect something gothic, twisted, and almost certainly of queer interest.

Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears is telling Tales

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.

• It looks like that rumored Tales of the City musical we mentioned a few months back has become a beautiful reality. The "large-scale" show, based on the first of Armistead Maupin's classic books, will hit the Great White Way in the 2009 season courtesy of Avenue Q bookwriter Jeff Whitty and Scissor Sisters' Jason Sellards (better known as Jake Shears) and John Garden.

• GLAAD has teamed with the gayest non-gay net out there, Bravo, to air the 19th Annual GLAAD Media Awards later this year. This marks the first time the awards will be broadcast on a fully distributed national cable channel.

• The gays like John Krasisnski, and he likes them right back.

• The Lambda Literary Foundation announced the nominees for its awards recognizing excellence in gay books, and our own Brent Hartinger is among the nominees for his young adult double-novella, Split Screen (in the Bisexual category). Congrats, Brent!

• Hey, Pushing Daisies fans! Our own Dan is out at the Paley Fest and has lots of fun updates on the show (including pics of out creator Bryan Fuller and the delightful cast) over on his site, The Pie Maker.

• The Advertising Standards Authority rejected the 54 complaints filed against the UK "Some people are gay. Get over it!" anti-bullying campaign. Good for them. Because they really do need to get over it.

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.

• I don't know which news is more exciting: that Scissor Sisters are heading back to the studio to record their next album (which may feature a collaboration with Kylie Minogue) or that Jake Shears has been working for a year on the numbers for a musical version of Tales of the City. Seriously, how perfect is that?!

• Instinct mag's cover touts the first openly gay Chippendales dancer. Uh ... from the looks of it, he's also the troupe's first demon. What's with the eyebrows, dude?!

• The documentary A Jihad for Love, which explores the lives of gay Muslims, has been picked up for U.S. theatrical and DVD distribution by First Run Features, who last year released the similarly themed For the Bible Tells Me So.

• Counterfeit Skin, a new play about modern gay love by Jason Charles, opens next week in London. Not to be confused with Mysterious Skin, The Skin of Our Teeth, or No Skin Off My *ss.

• David Hyde Pierce fans take note: the Tony-winning out actor will be appearing on Good Morning America tomorrow at 8AM EST with his Curtains castmates to promote the Warm Coats and Warm Hearts drive.
  

• Michael Petrelis has a piece up looking at some of the gay media response to the UCSF's sensationally-headlined staph infection report ("Sexually active gay men vulnerable to new, highly infectious bacteria" ... as are schoolchildren, people who go to the gym, your mom, etc.), which was picked up across the country, including in the NY Times.

Just a quick check-in on a few items around the site.

First, we're sorry if you've been having issues getting onto the site over the past day or two. We've actually had a one-two punch of a new, more robust search engine being installed in the back-end (no, that's not a euphemism) and our sister site AfterEllen.com's getting mad traffic on one of their recent articles, which has slowed things down a bit. Dammit, sis! We're so having a Jan Brady moment right now...

Second, we've got a great interview up on the main page with celebrated author Armistead Maupin, whose new book Michael Tolliver Lives tells the continuing story of Michael Tolliver from Tales of the City, one of the keystones of gay literature (and television). Do check it out, won't you?

Also, those of you in NYC who have more than a passing interest in gay media are welcome to swing by NewFest (New York City LGBT Film Festival) and see me mumble my way through a panel on gay blogging with some fellow journos from Queerty and Reverse Shot this Saturday. Now you can be bored and offended not just by my writing, but by my very person!

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled gay media extravaganza. Thank you.