Lauren Weisberger is back with the long-awaited sequel to The Devil Wears Prada. This time, it's Revenge Wears Prada.

Get your hot little hands on a signed pre-publication copy of Mark Roeder's The New Bad Ass in Town and help The Trevor Project at the same time—here.

According to this new book, the celebrated Greta Garbo-John Gilbert love affair was one-sided and lasted all of a few months:

"He bowled her over. She was a 20-year-old girl who didn't speak very much English. I don't think she was ever in love with him. I think she was just swept away by him. When she got back on her feet again, she distanced herself from him, which only took a couple of months. The big romance of the century lasted only a few months."

The inimitable Brenda Dickson is spilling her guts. I hope she starts her book with a clean face.

It's Monsoon season!

The Drag Race queens do their best RuPaul impersonations.

Jodi Arias = guilty. Duh.

Zachary Quinto gets dirty.

College football star Kevin Grayson comes out.

Wallflowers: Episode 4. (With a new "Bryce!")

Straight People: A Spotter's Guide to the Fascinating World of Heterosexuals. Looky!

Nick Lachey doesn't miss Papa Joe Simpson.

Psychic Sylvia Browne told Amanda Berry's mom she'd died.

Two more states on the verge of marriage equality.

Boy Scouts of America officials to "vote their conscience" on gays.

Nintendo game allows same-sex marriage.

Macklemore: The str8 white rapper who wrote hip-hop's 1st gay anthem.

A  50-year gay love story.

Love in bloom.

Talk about a graphic novel!

Blisteringly erotic gay comic released.

Walk Off the Earth cover Madonna's "Material Girl."

Most at the Met Ball ignored the "punk" theme. Who looked best?*

Jesus Luz goes shirtless for Junior.

Hot 97 DJ Mister Cee: "I am not gay."

Chris Pine would play gay.

In Minnesota, marriage equality advances.

Getting picked up by Ryan Gosling.

Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention & Response Office head assaults woman.

NYC couple attacked in broad daylight near MSG.

Gay vs. lesbian with AARP as the weapon.

Use these self-publishing moms for inspiration to make bank.

Pat Robertson: Gays like murderers,  rapists, thieves.

ABBA museum. Suggested donation? "Money, Money, Money."

You know I'll be attending this:

Str8 ally Chris Kluwe dropped by the Minnesota Vikings.

Jimmy Wright's drawings of NYC's gay meat market.

Helen Mirren vs. drummers.

Fuck, yeah, Ryan Phillippe.

Pet Shop Boys compare new album to Madonna.

Christina Crawford on her mom's rumored affair with Marilyn.

A Portrait of James Dean: Joshua Tree, 1951 avail for digital download today.

Come back to the five and dime, Jimmy Peen, Jimmy Peen (#bulge).

*Dakota Fanning, Anne Hathaway, Madonna, Rooney Mara, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Aubrey Plaza, Amanda Seyfried & Kerry Washington can all get it.

When I was a kid, attending Elms Elementary in Flushing, Michigan, my best buddy at school was named Craig Combs. To my recollection we were the Laurel & Hardy of the first grade—I was the fattest kid in the class, he was the smallest. I vividly recall being weighed in front of everyone on the day we received a scale to work with, then being branded the "sixty-five-pounder" by Craig. But that was okay, because I felt a kinship with Craig—he could say anything.

I remember him at my birthday parties (in one of his missives to me, he complimented my mom on the "delicious" cake), and other classmates recall his rapier wit, such as the time in third grade when the kids were asked what they knew about Hamlet, to which Craig replied, "It's a an omelet made with ham!" A natural ham joking about a ham. He was destined to be an entertainer or artist of some sort.

I always felt Craig was like me, even if I didn't know what that meant. And outside. So when I moved away—I received a  handful of letters from him, in which he very helpfully informed me that a first-grade teacher from our old school had died of a heart-attack—I always wondered about him. Over 30 years and several Google searches later, Craig popped up on the grid. He had gone through a health crisis, testing positive for HIV in his thirties, and had entered the poetry scene, publishing his first book, Taking Tea in the Black Rose: Singing Through the Shadows Until We're Dancing in the Light.

When I reached out to him, he didn't remember me. (I don't blame him! It was forever ago, and I'm sure I've forgotten better people than myself.) He asked his mom to jog his memory about "Matt R" (we also had a "Lisa J" in our clique; she does not fare well in one of Craig's kid-era letters to me).

We've had a friendly correspondence since then, even though I suspect our personalities couldn't be more opposite—which is a cool thing. Readers of my blog will know me as a non-spiritual person (this is not exactly a selling point), a lover of words and yet the opposite of a poet, and the last person to embrace almost any conspiracy theory (the ultimate of which says that everything in the world is connected, the penultimate of which says everything happens for a reason—maybe we are and maybe they do).

Still, it's a kick to be able to connect with a person who represents a fragment of my past, and to see how he grew and changed after we moved apart.

I e-interviewed my old pal, whom I finally found but who's still about as far away from me as it felt like he was when I moved after the third grade...

Music to his ears, candy to your eyes

Jason Vickery strips for Thomas Synnamon.

Ross Mathews was in a prayer circle with Madonna & Britney.

SHOCK: Sarah Palin has no sense of humor, thinks she works hard.

Are gay women more accepted than gay men?

Financial-planning essentials for gay couples.

France's first gay-marriage wedding fair.

Ohio students stand behind fired lesbian teach.

CH-CHECK IT OUTTA THE LIBRARY: Beastie Boys memoir.

AfterElton is now "The Backlot." Yes or no?

Gay billboard...funny, or homophobic?

What is this selling? Humor, or homophobia?

A recent passing that has gone unnoted by many is that of Shakuntala Devi, termed a "math-evangelist" as well as a major LGBT ally.

She was an international math phenom from childhood, going on to extract the twenty-third root of a 201-digit number with no paper or computational tools.

On the gay tip, Devi's 1977 book The World of Homosexuals contained interviews with gay Indian men (and one Canadian couple). Sample quote:

"Immorality does not consist in being different. It consists in not allowing others to be so. It is not the individual whose sexual relations depart from the social custom who is immoral—but those are immoral who would penalize him for being different. A law-abiding citizen who respects the rights and dignities of others, if he is made to suffer merely for deviating from the conventional norm, is not the offender—he is the victim."

She wrote that around the time Jimmy Carter was confessing to Playboy that he lusted in his heart. For women.

RIP, progressive lady.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the 1993 March on Washington in D.C. I took the bus down alone, reading an uncorrected galley of the Randy Shilts book Conduct Unbecoming, which I'd gotten from my co-worker Michael Denneny. Denneny is in the news lately for confessing that "Patient Zero" was a made up ploy for publicity for Shilts's And the Band Played On.

Once there, I recall meeting up with friends and being awed by the sheer numbers. I made sure to get a numbered wristband: Mine was #669! I guess I was early.

I remember this image was everywhere:

I've never felt so blown away by being a part of the gay community, not before, not since. 

QUESTION: Who'da thunk it that just 20 years later, gays in the military would be a moot point and we'd be pushing rapidly toward full marriage equality? ANSWER: We thunk it. We did. That day, everything seemed possible. And you know what? It was.