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...

The next issue of The Advocate celebrates the publication's 40 year history with a cover story in which the mag ranks 40 gay and lesbian icons. Its called "40 Years, 40 Heroes," and we won't spoil the surprise here by telling you who ranks number one. But if you really want to know, after the break we'll offer you two clues.

At any rate, it's a great piece though and we're glad to see included in this list of icons the likes of Pedro Zamora, Mark Bingham, Sir Ian McKellen, and Armistead Maupin.

Interesting to compare the 40 heroes selected by The Advocate to the 31 GLBT icons selected for "National GLBT History Month." The Advocate seems to have picked individuals who may be less well known outside of the gay community (Tony Gill, Randy Shilts, Bayard Rustin) but who are incontrovertibly gay or lesbian.

The issue hits stands soon, or check out after the jump for a few hints about who took the top spot.

• Happy birthday to talented, articulate, courageous, and inhumanly hunky out actor Robert Gant, who turns 39 today. Hmm ... when you're a guy who most gay men (and straight women) would kill to have jump out of their birthday cake, who do you have jump out of yours? The bulldog?
• We'd like to think that this was due in part to our relentless coverage (although rave reviews by two dark horse publications called "The New York Times" and "Variety" may have helped): Xanadu on Broadway broke the Helen Hayes Theatre's box-office record.
• The evil-kiddie thriller Joshua, starring Sam Rockwell and the fabulous Vera Farmiga (from The Depaahted and Breaking and Entering), has a gay supporting character, played by Dallas Roberts. But critic Ed Gonzalez thinks the thriller is driven by a hatred of "women, queers, and religion," and feels that Joshua's dandied, pint-sized sociopath is one left best in the celluloid closet.
  
• Armistead Maupin trash-talks John Travolta and Scientology, calling it the "biggest ex-gay movement in America."
• Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under, Grindhouse) to join Ugly Betty as the new love interest I mentioned in my column. Yay! His character's name is Gio. Ileana Douglas also joins the cast as a new editor at Mode. You may remember the fabulous Douglas from her turns in Ghost World, Six Feet Under, and Cape Fear.
• In honor of Friday the 13th, here's a short film from my favorite attention-deficit, seemingly transgender, part-mannequin former model, Shaye St. John. WARNING: Shaye's mind-bending work is not for everyone and has been known to turn sane men into drooling, empty husks.
• Make sure to check my guest column for some other TV news and a bit about gay cross-country competitive racers (seriously) -- and have the BEST.GAY.WEEKEND.EVER!

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.