Well hello, stranger! Bet you didn't expect to run into me in this part of town, did you?

Yes, I usually spend my days haunting the alleyways of the AfterElton Blog with my trusty metal detector looking for gold teeth and stray Civil War coins amidst the dumpsters and gutters of our pop culture byways. But for some reason AfterElton.com editor Michael Jensen thought it would be a good idea to clean me up (Blogging = No showers, usually no pants) and set me loose over here in the far tonier neighborhood of the main page.

I haven't held the reins of the Best.Gay.Week.Ever. since back in the summer of '07 (when I had a certain melodramatic desert rodent to help me out), but let's see if I can't get back into the saddle without pulling something.

One ... two ... Oop! Well, there goes that idea. Well, I guess we can always adopt.

Moving on....

ANATOMY OF THE HOT 100

So the big news around these parts (add appropriate hand gesture) this past week was the unveiling of the second annual AfterElton.com Hot 100 List. Sure, it may be easy for some to dismiss the buffet of beefcake as a shallow vehicle for man-gazing and objectification, and nothing more. And really, we're fine with that. I mean, major publications for both men and women seem pretty unembarrassed by running similar lists every year (People, Maxim, EW, Sports Illustrated, Cat Fancy, etc.).

But it really is more than that to us, and we do take it seriously. We think that the poll is a great tool for gauging the tastes and interests of gay and bi men ... and not just the ones who work in publishing, fashion, or advertising. The images that we're presented with on hundreds of bar rags and in commercials and in fashion magazines aren't necessarily the ones that we respond to, which is what makes our list different: you guys determine it.

Which isn't to say that we just sit around playing bridge while the whole feature writes itself. Nosiree! This year, Dennis Ayers took on the bulk of the work, designing the polling system (thank heaven, as last year I had to dig through countless comments and emails by hand to tally them up), setting up the layout of the article (including the addition of the up/down arrows that tell you where the lucky fella landed on last year's list) and, most importantly, digging up all those great pics. So if you came across a pic that you'd never seen before or that made you need a Bromide, thank Dennis!

The AfterElton.com staffers hard at work on the Hot 100

I took on the task of processing the data, which meant going through ballot by ballot to check for "stuffs" (ballots with ten of the same name), duplicate ballots from the same voter, spelling errors, and that kind of thing. Once the data was cleaned up, I sorted it, tallied the individual votes, and — ta da — there was our list. I can say with all confidence that the list as you see it is what we got ... and further, that the margin between #1 and #2 was insanely slim. As this rate, John Barrowman won't be behind Jake Gyllenhaal for long! Er ...

Then Michael, Dennis and myself wrote up the bios for the top twenty hotties, Michael and Brent wrote up the intro, and the list was born. It was a lot of work, but we think it's beautiful, and more than that, something to be proud of.

After all, a shared love of men is our common bond, and that's something we should celebrate and not be afraid to acknowledge. And from the responses we got from many of the celebs on the list (straight and gay alike), having a vocal gay fanbase isn't as scary for a celebrity as it once was. Will we ever see the day when "gay panic" is a thing of the past? We hope so, and we hope to be a part of that trajectory.

Up Next: Guys who were thisclose to making the list!