The gayest of the gay turned out last night for the NewNowNext awards.

Host Candis Cayne and Cindi Lauper made quite a duo, while Noah's Arc's Jensen Atwood cut an attractive rug, as usual. Christian Siriano and Jack Mackenroth of Project Runway were both in attendance, as was singer Leona Lewis, who won the Next International Crossover award. The rest of last night's winners, meanwhlie, can be viewed here.

The show airs on June 7th on Logo, which means that you (yes, you) can still vote online. Which you should, because democracy rules!

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• This is why we love New York. The Broadway strike comes to an end and the cast of A Chorus Line dances through the streets. And that lead liner looks pretty cute. Maybe we should become theater queens…

• NYU's Stern Business School just got its first gay group. How did they not buy into gay rights sooner?

• Lesbian love quarrel flames: "A lovers' quarrel between two women got out of hand, police said, and one found herself nearly set on fire." Ow!

• John Travolta at notoriously gay spa?

• Anti-Gay marriage radio ad plagues New Jersey.

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We're not sure if you've heard, read or sensed it, but it's gay pride month. To celebrate all the homo happenings, the ever-informative website, about.com, has launched a 30-day virtual celebration, the - um - straight forwardly entitled "30 Days of Pride". The site's kicking things off with an interview with everyone's favorite pop star activist, Cyndi Lauper, seen above at New York's AIDS Walk.

In addition to discussing her role in HRC's True Colors tour, Lauper delves into her broader activist roots:

I have been an activist for many different causes. I grew up during the African-American civil rights struggle. Then women had to fight for their equality and its very sad but it's no different now. You would think in the year 2007, we would be past all this. But now the LGBT community has to fight for equality. Your civil liberties are my civil liberties… Gay people are my people and some of the stuff that has gone down in the last 5 years is just unacceptable to me.

Well said, Cyndi. And some people would rather create gay only spaces than accept such allies? Indeed!

Music and style have always gone hand-in-hand. David Bowie helped bring glam to the mainstream. Kurt Cobain's greasy hair and seemingly unstylish self gave us grunge. And now rockers The Cliks and their well-suited image may change the way people look at female fashion - and gender.

For this installment of The Style Issue, we sat down with The Cliks lead singer and founder, Lucas Silveira, a trans man who knows a thing or two about looking good.

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We just love special messages from our fans, readers and assorted enemies, but we especially love notes from celebrities.

In the past we've received word from such greats as Owen Hawk and Cady Huffman, but never has such an iconic supernova of a star such as Cyndi Lauper ever thought of lobbing even the most mundane grunt in our direction. We almost pissed ourselves when we heard our favorite fun-loving girl say, "What's up everyone at Queerty…" She even remembered your name! "Everyone!" That's a top notch girl…

Ms. Lauper's made a moving image to give you the "heads up" about her forthcoming, HRC-endorsed True Colors Tour. If you want more information, just head on over the the True Colors Tour website, she says. Then she says, "Thank you" and nods humbly.

Oh, "Cyn" - we're all on a first syllable basis! - we should be thanking you! Thank you for all your pro-gay work, you're super radical music and, most of all, for knowing our name!!! (OMG!) We'd shed a tear if we weren't wearing so much eyeliner - oh, yeah, thank you for that, too.

(PS: "Cyn" forgot, but we're sure she'd like to say, "Sorry I didn't send you the embedding code. I was too busy she bopping." Then we'd say, "Whoa, Cyndi, we're totally friends and all, but we don't need to know your masturbation cycle.")

It's a Human Rights Campaign explosion up in here. Sorry to overload your morning, but we couldn't resist posting this picture of the Heatherette Boys, the venerable Amanda Lepore and HRC president Joe Solmonese. A photog snapped it at the non-profit's NYC gala dinner - a cousin of the Philly gala dinner at which John Amaechi will be appearing.

Question: how many fucking gala dinner's can one organization have? Oh, right, they're "the largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality". We forgot.

Heatherette designers Richie Rich and Traver Rains were there celebrating their "Heatherette Hearts HRC" t-shirt collabo of which Rich says:

Traver and I obviously would not be where we are today without the inspiration and support of our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender friends and customers. Heatherette has always been about equality — we’ve never geared our collection to one demographic.

Well, no, we suppose not, but one must admit that chaps may not be the biggest hit in Kansas. Oh, wait…

Back to the picture: it's not quite as iconic as the Perez Hilton, Joan Rivers, Michael Musto trifecta, but there must be a word for it. It's on the tip of our tongues, but we can't quite figure it out. So, reader, why don't you give us a hand. Or, rather, word. (We'll also accept a phrase - we can't stop thinking about Sesame Street, if you know what we mean.)

More pics after the jump…

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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]

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]

• While Elton and David honeymoon in Venice, World of Wonder has some great photos of the wedding guests. Yes, dear, everyday is Halloween. And who is that drag queen? And, no, we’re not talking about Kelly. [WOW Report]

• Cyndi Lauper is headed for Broadway and set to star in The Threepenny Opera, the play about thieves and prostitutes. It’s our kind of show. [Yahoo News]

• Josh Rubin has hand selected Cool Hunting’s top posts of the year, which we imagine was a very hard thing to do. [Cool Hunting]

• Proof that Leandro Becker is our favorite DJ. Who cares that we’ve never heard him spin. [Made In Brazil]

• Michael Musto’s Felix Awards are the only 2005 round up you need to read. Forget the others and go now. [Village Voice]

Like we promised you last week, every day between now and Christmas we are listing the reasons why 2005 was gay. So Gay! Need proof? Take a look at the musicians who made 2005 gay, gay, gay!

5. Green Day. The punk trio released the brilliant American Idiot technically in late 2004, however its staying power lasted all through 2005. Front man Billie Joe Armstrong gave kids everywhere one positive message: you can wear make-up and be tough at the same time. And we love him for that.

4. Gwen Stefani. Like Green Day, she too released her Love. Angel. Music. Baby. album in late 2004, but the first single “What You Waiting For?” tanked at radio. Fear not, she rebounded big with hit single after hit single, a clothing line co-designed by Zaldy at Fashion Week, and an album that stayed near the top all year. While Britney becomes a mother, it’s this Southern California girl who has, dare we say, become the new Madonna.

3. Melissa Etheridge. Melissa Etheridge does not get the credit she deserves. It took a battle against cancer and a soaring Janis Joplin cover to prove that this woman, who appeared to be past her prime, still has a lot of rocking left to do. Green Day and Kanye West look like sissies next to her.

2. The 1980s. The 80s have been back in fashion for a while and the decade’s influence on music has been apparent in many hip-hop and pop records of late. But 2005 could have been 1985 all over again. New records were released by Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, the Eurythmics, Depeche Mode, and Erasure. This revival gave us a reason to break out our parachute pants and leg warmers.

After the jump, the #1 gayest thing in music in 2005.

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We were only queenie little tykes when Cyndi Lauper and Madonna burst onto the music scene, but even at that young age we knew we would have a life-long love affair with both of them. Confessions on a Dance Floor isn’t out until next week, but Lauper’s new disc is available right now.

The Body Acoustic takes her best-known songs and re-interprets them. Our all-time fav Lauper tracks, “She-Bop,” is here, but slowed down and all bluesy. Not as good as the original, but still a very cool version that hangs on to all of the jacking off subtext.

We love the new “Time After Time,” a duet between Lauper and Sarah McLachlan. Sure to make the dykes happy, McLachlan and her angelic yet downer of a voice make one more appearance on the album.

Shaggy and Ani di Franco show up on The Body Acoustic, too. But it's Lauper's voice that you want to hear more of. She still sounds amazing and, as we've noted before, she can out-sing Madge any day.

What happens when three different bloggers and one of their boyfriends sit right next to one of the girls still in the running to become America’s Next Top Model at a Cyndi Lauper show?

Well you get a grainy, but cute, camera phone picture and a new friend. We’re even taking her to the Out 100 party with us this Friday.

• Though he dissed us in his diss of Madonna we are still loving Rich’s site. His Madonna commentary is not our feelings exactly, but we think he makes many valid points. But coming from a Janet Jackson fan, you gotta take it all with a grain of salt. Check out the comments section in the Madonna thread for more on the subject of Madge and The Gays.

• Two women with better vocal chops and songwriting abilities than Madonna are releasing albums today. Run and get the new stellar albums by Kate Bush and Cyndi Lauper. Rolling Stone agrees with us. Then again, they like the new Madonna a lot too.

• The B Squad is back. Their movie is titled Valtrex, and obviously it’s not safe for work.

• Club Fly is just what the homo traveler needs. It’s Google Maps for gay bars and will be a valuable travel companion when you’re in a foreign city and want to get friendly with the locals.

• Last week we told you about Jackie Beat’s garage sale. Tickets for her Christmas show are now on sale. It is the funniest show of the year.

• “When he told me he was gay I wanted to take a lamp and bash him in the face with it," is what author Terry McMillan says about her husband’s outing himself. Oprah will hear the whole story on Wednesday.