If you thought Elton John's party looked fun, you should check out some pictures from this weekend's Independent Spirit Awards. Melissa Etheridge may not have won, but Little Miss Sunshine took home a bunch of honors, including best feature and best supporting actor for Alan Arkin.

We've included some pictures after the jump. They're all Polaroidy and shit. It is, after all, a celebration of independent spirits. When you're done looking them over, you can see more here. They won't be as big, though. Sorry.

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Once in a great while a truly big news story comes along that makes the world stop rotating for a second, gasp and then carry on with its eternal spin. This isn't one of them. It does, however, concern perennial favorite, Anderson Cooper, so we thought we'd pass it on.

It comes to us via New York Daily News:

"I'd like to have kids," [Cooper] tells the March Men's Journal. "I think I'll have a family someday." Cooper was contemplating some other big changes in early December, when he pondered a move from his CNN post to a traditional anchor position at another network. But, he says, "Doing 22 minutes of news from a desk in New York is just not for me."

No way, Jose (the name, we're sure, of at least one of Cooper's Latin flavored boyfriends - we hear he has a fetish of some sort) - Cooper's not about to pull some Katie Couric bullshit. A desk's for pussies! Cooper needs to be in the field, getting down and dirty with the news. Then, once the camera's stop rolling, he can go back to his apartment, strip down and roll around in all that money...

After two years of homo-lovin', Alan Cumming and his American boyfriend Grant Shaffer are making honest men of one another. Mark Malkin from E!'s Planet Gossip reports that the two did the dedicatory deed this weekend in London.

The British city, however, can't claim status as Cumming's first choice: in a November interview with attitude magazine, Cumming discussed possible wedding plans, saying:

I think if we could get married in America we totally would have by now. I'd have my friends Andrew and Sue as bridesmaids and also Cyndi Lauper and maybe Liza. But then maybe she's had enough of gay weddings by now... especially after her own!

Aww, what a considerate friend.

It's worth noting that we offered to give Cumming away, but he declined, citing the fact that we're not homies and that, in fact, he wouldn't invite us to the wedding, anyway. (And he didn't. He did, however, invite Rufus Wainwright and actress Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio.)

Don't think married life's going to slow Cumming down: his latest directorial offering, Suffering Man's Charity starring (surprise!) Cumming, Anne Heche and David Boreanaz, debuts at March's Austin-based South by Southwest Film Festival. He's also starring in the forthcoming fag-coaches-rugby team tale, Coming Out with Catherine Zeta-Jones. For his part, illustrator Shaffer's been hard at work on the storyboard for Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War, starring Amy Adams. If you want to take a closer look at his work, check out his website. His other work includes Madonna's Bedtime Story and the comic book, Thirty Types of Passion (we love those nerdy types).

Mazel to the tov, gents. May you be together forever. Or, until the end of time. Whichever comes first.

Nominations for the Tony Awards were announced today, celebrating the best of NYC's musical theater and giving the gays across America yet another awards program to discuss snottily as if they've seen any of the nominated shows.

Highlights of the nominations: The Color Purple, co-produced by Oprah Winfrey and based on the book and movie of the same name, was nominated for several awards including Best Musical. Sweeney Todd, the bizarre but brilliantly-written musical about a cannibalistic barber, was nominated for Best Revival Of A Musical, as was Threepenny Opera, starring Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper. If you're wondering why Phantom Of The Opera hasn't been nominated, well...don't bother watching the awards ceremony on June 11. You won't have any idea of what's going on.

Harry Connick, Jr. took a break from Will & Grace to play the lead in The Pajama Game, for which he was nominated for Best Performance By A Leading Actor; Patti Lupone, who once played Corky's mom in Life Goes On, was nominated for her lead role in Sweeney Todd. Besides appearing on feel-good family dramas, Lupone has played some of the biggest roles on Broadway, including the pre-Madonna Evita. We're holding out, however, for all the big wins to go to the musical adaptation of The Wedding Singer, as it sounds too ridiculous to be a legit show and we don't know anyone who went to see it. Or maybe it's good, who knows?

The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards [site]

• Ashlee Simpson wins Best Female Artist at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards. Proof that absolutely no one in Australia cares about MTV. [Courier-Mail]

• We've discussed the inherent perplexities in Alan Cumming's fragrance line, "Cumming," wondering if people are buying the stuff. Apparently they are--specifically, the people who smell bad. [WOW Report]

When Alan Cumming began the marketing campaign last year for his new self-titled fragrance, "Cumming," many people thought it was a joke--a play on the double entendre based on the, shall we say, naughty explicitness of what his name suggests.

But we continue to be only more baffled by the legitimacy of the fragrance, which is now sold in Sephora beauty supply stores nationwide. The advertising campaigns feature Cumming himself, doused in eye-liner and playfully rolling around on a bed of white sheets, seductively touching himself. And while he is a brilliant actor, it's not the same effect as the standard fragrance campains of days gone by, with Marcus Shenkenberg and Christy Turlington glistening with moisture. Is he acting out some sort of fantasy? Good for him, if he is.

Friends of the Queerty staff say they have sampled the Cumming fragrance, and it actually smells rather nice...no word on whether or not anyone has actually purchased it.

To watch the commercial, click here: cummingthefragrance.com

Previously: Interview with Alan Cumming on Queerty

After the accolades and box office success of Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica, everyone is jumping on the gay movie bandwagon. Catherine Zeta-Jones is about to play famed British model/trannie, April Ashley on the big screen. Though we can’t wait to see Brad Pitt go all homo on screen (this time without the fangs and Mr. Katie Holmes-to-be by his side), we didn’t expect Zeta-Jones to go all tranny so soon after an Oscar win. What, no post-Oscar win flop a la Halle Berry’s Catwoman? That would seem to be the normal path for a recent winner.

A quick check over at IMBD shows that she already has a head start in the queer movie trend. She's starring alongside Alan Cumming, who plays a cabaret singer, in Coming Out. This is good. We’re sure Cumming has his share of tranny friends he can forward Catherine’s way for inspiration. Or maybe she should just call Felicity Huffman for some tips.

Catherine Zeta-Jones to Take On Transgender Movie Role [247 Gay]

Alan Cumming has decided to give five lucky Queerty readers a little piece of himself. The first five people to email info@cummingthefragrance.com with "Queerty" in the subject line will win a bottle of Cumming.

Good luck, girls!

Alan Cumming is an actor who seems to have done it all: won a Tony, played an X-Man, written and directed. The multitalented Cumming recently answered some of Bradford Shellhammer’s questions about The L Word, the Threepenny Opera, and his fragrance line.

We cannot wait to catch you, Cyndi Lauper, and Nellie McKay in the Threepenny Opera. What you can you say about the production?
Right now not very much because I haven't started rehearsals. But I'm nonetheless very excited. I did a workshop about a year ago so it has been really great to feel that I can actually get through it! Also it's meant that in the last year ideas, the songs and parts of the character have been floating around in my mind. The biggest revelation about the workshop was discovering that Macheath is a sex addict. Who knew?

Tell us about your fragrance. What made you launch it?
It was really one of these crazy things that tend to happen to me! My friends Jason Schell & Christopher Brosius and I sort of all came up with the idea over a period of time and eventually we had one of these Judy/Mickey moments and said "Let's make the fragrance right here!" Christopher is a genius and I had worn various fragrances of his for years and Jason had these really fantastic ideas about how to market the fragrance. For me it has been real fun to provoke and subvert the whole notion of celebrity endorsement and at the same time have products that I really enjoy and am proud to add my name to. We now have 5 things--the fragrance, the cleanser [Cumming Clean], the body scrub [Cumming Off Buff], the body lotion [Cumming All Over], and the soap [Cumming in a Bar], all available at Cumming The Fragrance.

It's such a hilarious thing for me when every time I wash my hands the soap has my name on it. I'm also using it to help charities that I believe in. We're starting a program whereby each month we'll give a hefty percentage of our online sales to charity.

You are on the new season of The L Word. What character do you play?
I play a character called Billie Blaikie who comes into the series to run The Planet and generally spice things up. I had never seen the show before I shot my episodes, but I talked to the producers about the character and thought it sounded fun. The one thing I was adamant about was that I would have sex with a lesbian on the show. I think it's really good to mix things up a bit and to challenge people's perceptions about the ways sexuality is pigeonholed. So the idea of a bisexual man having sex with a lesbian was right up my alley. However, the type of sex I ended up having was a little more than I bargained for. It was the most graphic sex scene I have ever done. But I had great fun with all the girls and I got to have a different hairstyle and colour in each episode.

After the jump Alan explains why he wants to be the queer Martha Stewart.

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• Nellie McKay has left Sony and sadly her eagerly anticipated sophomore album won’t see the light of day anytime soon. At least we’ll get to see her in the Three Penny Opera on Broadway with Cyndi Lauper and Alan Cumming. [Reuters]

• We’ve all done it. You know, gotten drunk and pulled out the drag. However, we all haven’t filmed it! [Manhattan Offender]

• Our favorite plastic surgery addicted pop star Pete Burns has signed up for the UK’s Big Brother. Times like these we wished we lived in England. Thanks Jerry. [The Sun]

• We present you the world’s best condom commercial ever. Thanks Tom. [Double Agent]

• Love to ski? Love anal sex? Great. Gay.com has some gay ski events you should be attending. [Gay.com]