Broadway Friday

-Steve Hayes (Tired Old Queen At The Movies) stars with playwright Bradford Scobie and drag legend Murray Hill in Moisty The Snowman Saves Christmas, now running Off Broadway at Dixon Place. Get tickets here.

- Michael Urie (Ugly Betty) will replace Christian Borle as Prior Walter in the critically raved Off Broadway revival of Tony Kushner's Angels In America. Urie steps in on February 2nd, the production has been extended until March 27th.

- Whoa. Jackie Hoffman (love her!) is talking serious trash about her role in The Addams Family. "We're the only musical that doesn't appeal to gay people." But it has Nathan Lane and (JMG reader/Tony nominee) Kevin Chamberlin in it!

- Henry Rollins brings his one-man show to Joe's Pub for a week beginning February 8th. It's his 50th birthday celebration and you know you're going.

- Beginning previews Off Broadway on December 22nd is Richard Skipper As "Carol Channing" In Concert. Get tickets here.

- Oscar winner Halle Berry makes her Broadway debut this fall in Katori Hall's The Mountaintop opposite Samuel L. Jackson. Last year the play won the Olivier Award for its West End run.

- ABC is developing a drama for Tony winner Idina Menzel (Wicked), who will play a single mom who sings at weddings and bar mitzvahs to pay the rent. Menzel makes her debut with the New York Philharmonic on February 5th.

TRAILER: Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Still in heavily-laden with tech glitches previews.

Broadway Friday

- Hugh Jackman will star in a new musical titled Houdini, scheduled to open sometime in 2012. Aaron Sorkin is doing the book, Danny Elfman (!) is writing the music, lyrics by Glenn Slater.

- The musical version of Women On The Verge just opened and the reviews are scathing.

- Kiefer Sutherland will make his Broadway debut this March in the revival of Jason Miller's Tony-winning That Championship Season. Chris Noth and Jason Patric to co-star.

- Soap opera stars will join Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS for their spring gala at Town Hall. Scheduled to appear: Cameron Mathison, Anthony Geary, the cast of The View, others. Get tickets here.

- Rosie O'Donnell plays Town Hall tonight as part of the New York Comedy Festival. Get tickets here.

- The delay-plagued Spider-Man has pushed back opening day yet again, this time to January 11th, missing the entire (and very lucrative) holiday box office.

- The Off Broadway revival of Tony Kushner's Tony and Pulitzer-winning Angels In America is earning rave reviews. Who here has seen it?

VIDEO: Here's the trailer for the Pee-Wee Herman Show, which is now in previews.

The Original Ken Mehlman

"Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through the City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry? No. I have clout. A lot. I can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers, and you know who will be on the other end in under five minutes, Henry?

The president?

"Even better, Henry. His wife. I don’t want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand. Because what I am defines entirely who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with boys." - Al Pacino as Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels In America.

Tony Kushner: Give Obama Time

Pulitzer Prize winning gay playwright Tony Kushner thinks we should give President Obama more time and that it's would be "a huge mistake for the left to turn on him now."

(Tipped by JMG reader Hector in Miami)

Broadway Friday

- Tony nominee and Glee star Matthew Morrison has signed a recording contract with Mercury Records for his first solo album to be released in fall.

- The first NYC revival of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels In America opens Off Broadway on September 14th at the Signature Theater. The two parts of the play will be performed on alternating nights. All seats will be $20.

- Tony nominees Keith Roberts and John Selya will star in the Broadway debut of Twyla Tharp's Frank Sinatra jukebox musical, Come Fly Away, which begins previews at the Marquis Theatre on March 1st.

- Golden Girls star and former Broadway performer Rue McClanahan, 75, is recovering from a stroke suffered following her November heart bypass surgery. Said to be slowly improving in a nursing facility, she is reported to have difficulty speaking. We wish her well!

- The Broadway production of Billy Elliot has recouped its $14M start-up cost in its 14th month at the Imperial Theatre.

- Tangled Web: The troubled Spider-Man: The Musical is offering refunds to ticketholders because the show will not open on February 25th as scheduled. No start date for the $50M production, the most expensive in Broadway history, has been announced.

- Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS will stage Broadway Bares: Solo Strips at Splash on January 31st. "Seven of the hottest men on Broadway" will dance at 8pm and 11pm. $10 donation at the door. The 20th edition of Broadway Bares takes place at the Roseland Ballroom on June 20th. The show gots its start at Splash.

Bloggers Honored By NYC's LGBT Anti-Violence Project

Last night Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend, Andy Towle of Towleroad, and Bil Browning of The Bilerico Project and I attended the NYC Anti-Violence Project's Courage Awards, where we were honored for our work as "citizen journalists" - a term Pam calls "the glamour word for bloggers, don'tcha know, since we didn't have PJs on." We had elected Pam as our spokesperson and here is the speech she made on our behalf after our introduction by SiriusXM host and activist Michelangelo Signorile.

Because crimes against LGBT people are seldom reported on a national basis, and covered mostly in local papers, if at all, we have a valuable opportunity to raise awareness about how severe and widespread these crimes are, and the frequency at which they occur. As one of the few forums, and perhaps the most effective, that exist right now to communicate these crimes to other gay people and our heterosexual allies, we can inspire them to take action.

We will never stop standing up for my fellow LGBT citizens when they are struck down by hate, and never ease the pressure on those who would choose to strike us down, whether by words or by fists. Whether it be a young trans woman in Colorado referred to as "it" by a lover she thought she trusted and struck down in a rage, or a bar goer who beats a gay man with his fist to the surface of a parking lot late at night after a night of drinking in South Carolina, or a man who decides he doesn't like the look of a lesbian couple in Provincetown so he decides to push them through a plate glass window, or two deadbeats in Laramie, Wyoming who decide to mete justice on a young gay man by beating him and leaving him to die on a frigid fence, we will continue to report each and every story.

We are humbled and challenged by the ability to communicate the amount of information we have regarding hate crimes to such a wide audience, and we will continue to be vigilant in my continuing coverage of violence against the LGBT community. It's a vigilance that would not be possible without my fellow bloggers Andy, Joe, and Bil. We cast a wide net and I am proud to be honored alongside them.

Pam has lots more photos and videos, including speeches made by co-honoree Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer-winning author of Angels In America, and Kushner's presenter, Law & Order's handsome BD Wong. It was a fantastic night. Please consider supporting the important work of the Anti-Violence Project - the people who, in the words of executive director Sharon Stapel, "come to the rescue of LGBT people at the absolute worst time of their lives."