Ali Forney Center Announces Shred Of Hope Celebrity Online T-Shirt Auction

A galaxy of stars have come together to support the Ali Forney Center's Shred Of Hope, an online auction in which you can bid on original t-shirts created by gay celebrities and straight allies. Each of the participants worked with designers at the Manhattan-based fetish wear company Nasty Pig to create one-of-a-kind "shredders," which are sort of not-tank-tops.

Among the participants are activist and author Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller, Tony winner Alan Cumming, Tony winner Jeff Whitty, Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black, talk show host Andy Cohen, rock star Bob Mould, MSNBC commentator Keith Boykin, Animal Planet host Scott Lope, rocker JD Samson, actress Ally Sheedy, pop superstars Michael Stipe, Adam Lambert and Jake Shears, and many more.

Via press release:

This June 20th trailblazing menswear label Nasty Pig will launch Shred of Hope, a fundraiser for the Ali Forney Center (AFC), the nation’s largest services and advocacy organization working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) runaway and homeless youth.

Shred of Hope is an auction of one-of-a-kind “Shredder” t-shirts created by celebrities. The auction will take place entirely online from June 20th through June 27th at ShredofHope.com. 100% of the proceeds of Shred of Hope will support AFC’s work to protect and empower homeless LGBT youth, and to help them in becoming safe and independent as they move from adolescence to adulthood.

On June 20th Nasty Pig and the Ali Forney Center will host a launch party for Shred of Hope at the iconic Rootstein Gallery in New York City. Nasty Pig models will walk the floor selling opportunities to win one-of-a-kind Shred of Hope items and experiences to benefit the AFC.

VIDEO: Watch this clip featuring Ali Forney Center founder Carl Siciliano to learn more about Shred Of Hope.

NOTE: Somehow yours truly was also invited to participate. While I'm not a rock star or an Oscar winner, I'm going to depend on my faithful flying monkeys to make sure that MY shirt auctions well. The JMG logo is on the back and everybody signed their shirts. The auction starts online on June 20th.

HomoQuotable - Jeff Whitty

"I spent most of the day with no idea what was happening anywhere beyond a few blocks of my East Village apartment. I had no cellular service or old-fashioned battery-powered radio available. Only late in the day did I find scant wireless Internet access outside a hospital where people were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder. The wireless finally shut down, too, and my phone battery was running low. Rumors abounded on the street -- power would be on in a few hours, in three days, in a week. No clue on water, hot or cold. I peeked into underground parking garages in my complex: the cars appeared to be floating. Alongside many others I scoured shadowy delis with my flashlight, looking for water and food that could keep for unknown amounts of days. All of the battery-powered AM/FM radios had been bought up.

"I had no idea if the power outage was widespread to millions or just in the East Village. Nobody seemed to have a clear idea what was happening anywhere else. But throughout the day I felt a connection that reminded me of 9/11 and the summer night in 2003 when New York City went dark for 24 hours. New Yorkers are awesome. Nobody was an asshole. Nobody was sketchy. People helped each other and shared the misery together. I talked and joked with people in my building I'd only passed before with maybe a 'hello.' In the attached article you'll see a photo of a deli with its awning yanked down by the winds. I passed by it this morning and saw a lot of merchandise available within easy reach through a broken window. I passed by that deli again hours later and nobody had taken anything. New Yorkers." - Avenue Q playwright and Tony winner Jeff Whitty, writing on his Facebook page.

RELATED: Whitty's latest show, Bring It On: The Musical, is now playing at the St. James Theater.

Tickets Now On Sale...

Get tickets here.

Avenue Q's Gary Coleman To Live On

The Gary Coleman character in the long-running hit musical Avenue Q will stay in the show, despite the death of the real life Coleman.

Sitting alone at the rear of the house at New World Stages on Friday night, Jeff Whitty wept after the performance of “Avenue Q.” Mr. Whitty, the book writer for that Tony-winning puppet musical, was not crying at his own handiwork. He shed his tears in mourning for the actor Gary Coleman, who had died earlier in the day, and in relief that “Avenue Q,” which includes a satirical character based on Mr. Coleman, the star of the television series “Diff’rent Strokes,” had been well received by the audience after some surgical changes to the show. Despite some very serious consideration that “Avenue Q” would require significant revision or have to drop the role altogether, Mr. Whitty said that Gary Coleman, the character, would live on in the musical. “After watching it tonight, I would miss him too much,” Mr. Whitty said. “Personally, I would miss him terribly.”

Tales Of The City Musical To Get San Francisco World Premiere

The musical version of Armistead Maupin's Tales Of The City will see its world premiere in San Francisco next summer.

"Tales of the City," a new musical adaptation of Armistead Maupin's famed stories - created with veterans of "Avenue Q" and members of the rock band Scissor Sisters - will receive its world premiere in the American Conservatory Theater's 2010-11 season. Bill Irwin, Harold Pinter, and a new take on Sartre's "No Exit" are also featured in the ambitious lineup to be announced today by Artistic Director Carey Perloff, along with the previously announced, three-theater staging of Tarell Alvin McCraney's "The Brother/Sister Plays" trilogy.

"It's a wonderful valentine to the community in which we live," Perloff says of "Tales," noting that Maupin began his opus as a series of columns in The Chronicle. It's the kind of San Francisco story, like her own "The Tosca Project" this season, "that's a big part of the kind of work we want to make at ACT." Perloff acknowledges that "Tales" has Broadway aspirations, with the participation of "Avenue Q" librettist Jeff Whitty and director Jason Moore, and Scissors songwriters Jake Shears and John Garden. But the premiere "is an ACT production for ACT's audience," she says. "Clearly it's an extraordinary team, and it would be surprising if it didn't have a longer life. But that isn't the first imperative, which is to do a fantastic production for a fantastic city."

Like uncountable thousands of gay men, I decided I needed to live in San Francisco once I read the first volume of Tales In The City. And in 1994 I practically tackled Armistead Maupin for an autograph in the middle of Fifth Avenue as he lead the television cast of Tales Of The City to their place in the Stonewall 25 Pride parade. He kindly introduced me around and to this day I can't even remember meeting anyone else. Laura Linney? Olympia Dukakis? Who knows? Today's bonus cool points: Both Maupin and Avenue Q's Jeff Whitty are JMG readers.

Maggie Gallagher Speaks Her Mind

Tony-winning Avenue Q creator Jeff Whitty, FTW.

Gays Pile On To Flip Leno the Bird

The Gays are rushing to follow the example of Avenue Q creator Jeff Whitty, who this week flipped Jay Leno a photographic bird for Leno's continual habit of making gays the butts of his jokes. Go to MyGayestLook.com and see famous and not-so-famous homos and homo-friendlies wagging their middle digits in Leno's direction. The site was was co-created by Whitty and blogger Melissa McEwan of Shakesville and they invite you to participate.

A SAMPLING BELOW: Armistead Maupin, Dan Savage, Eric Leven.

Jeff Whitty To Jay Leno

Avenue Q creator Jeff Whitty's long-running battle with Jay Leno over the Tonight Show host's habit of making homophobic jokes has gone into overdrive. Read the piece, it's awesome.