Birthday shoutouts! Antonio Sabato Jr. (above) is 44, Mark Foster is 32, and Burlesque icon Tempest Storm is 88. Hypnotic!

ICYMI

Lady Gaga's performance was the most powerful moment of the Oscars.

Sam Smith dedicates Best Song Oscar to LGBT community. But gets a tad ... confused.

Leading to ... Dustin Lance Black to Sam Smith: "Stop texting my fiance." Oh dear.

Conservative gay commentator: Gays and the trans community "need a divorce."

Kate McKinnon plays Cate Blanchett in hilarious Carol parody.

IN OTHER NEWS

Oscar ratings hit an 8 year low.

Alan Cumming on his career as a "naughty pixie."

"I still think it’s not truly accepted that people can have desire for all sexes, regardless of their current situation. I feel we are all too ready to wear a uniform and close ourselves off to the possibility of other experiences. I think sexuality is ever changing and is gray, not black-and-white — for me and many others, at least. I wish people could just accept that."

This just in.

@samsmithworld Congratulations. Drink water. Rest. But do check out some of the other Gay Oscar work out there. Some truly wonderful stuff.

— Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) February 29, 2016

Conchita Wurst says Australia looks like gay heaven but the reality is different.

Lita Ford reveals she quit The Runaways for a few weeks because she realized her bandmates "were all gay."

"In her new memoir, Living Like A Runaway, she writes that she found it "strange" her bandmates -- Joan Jett, Jackie Fox, Cherie Currie and Sandy West -- never spoke about boys and were "always giggling about other girls." She noticed Jett and Currie were always together "in a romantic way," and it dawned on her that "they were all into girls. All of them except for Jackie."

Cheyenne Jackson and Jason Landau attend the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar viewing party.

And here are Cheyenne and Lea Michele.

And here's The Weekly ShoutOUT™. Each week we're going to focus on one out athlete/performer and feature a daily pic and career timeline. We'll be showcasing the big names, but also the lesser-known gay and bisexual celebs who deserve more recognition.

This week our 155th ShoutOUT™ is to ... Howard Ashman

The late lyricist Howard Ashman (1950-1991) was just 40-years-old when he died, but he left behind a legacy of classic moments. We'll take a look at a few of them this week.

Howard received his first Tony nomination in 1986 for Best Book of a Musical for Smile (which featured music by Marvin Hamlisch), but it was an earlier production that put him on the map. In 1982 Howard and Alan Menken brought Little Shop Of Horrors to Off-Off-Broadway, and it eventually moved to Off-Broadway, where it enjoyed a five-year run and became the highest-grossing production in Off-Broadway history.

When Frank Oz brought the play to the big screen, Alan and Howard wrote two new songs for the production, including "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space," for which the duo received their first Academy Award nomination.

On Friday I asked what list we should attempt next, and you have spoken! Sit back, and over the next few weeks we'll have a lot of fun looking at 20 Songs Everyone Knows That Didn't Hit The Top 40! These are all songs that have become a part of pop culture history, but failed on the chart when they were originally released. Songs that, through inclusion in films, TV, or other medium have managed to withstand the test of time.

Note - We'll also include a couple of songs that were never actually released a singles, but have also become classics.

Let's get things started with a remake that actually fared much worse on the chart than the original, but has become the definitive version. At #20 is "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow.

In 1965 three New York songwriters formed a band named The Strangeloves, pretending to be three brothers named Giles, Miles, and Niles Strange who were raised on an Australian sheep farm (it was the 60's.)

They had a few minor releases, but scored a #11 hit on the pop chart with "I Want Candy." In 1982 British group Bow Wow Wow (led by teenager Annabella Lwin) remade the bubblegum hit, and took it to #62 in July, but it's this version that has endured, becoming a New Wave classic, and used in dozens of films and TV shows over the last 30 years.

Here's the original.

Congrats to jmart4400 , who guessed that Friday's Pixuzzle™ © ® was Pokemon.

Here's today's Pixuzzle™ © ®. Here is a character from a FAMOUS TV SHOW. Can you name it?

And today's Briefs are brought to you by ... Antonio again!

And now something special in the Briefs. I'm happy to present a new undertaking by reader Lion King. Because our comments system is notoriously unreliable, his new list will appear at the end of the Briefs. Take it away LK!

Elton Motello was a British Punk Rock band founded by Alan Ward in the mid 70s.

Alan had connections in Belgium and there he recorded the backing track for "Jet Boy, Jet Girl," using session musicians. The band then recorded the vocals over the backing track and released the single, which was revolutionary then, in 1977. It's about a 15-year-old boy's sexual relationship with an older man, who then rejects him for a girl. The song uses the boy's pov: he is a wild thing, think Mickey in the first couple of seasons of Shameless. Their meeting: "We made it on a ballroom blitz, I took his arm and kissed his lips. He looked at me with such a smile my face turned red, we booked a room into the Ritz." and then he triumphantly proclaims: "He gives me head".

He then elaborates: "And though I'm only just fifteen, I like to kick, I like to scream and even if I have a kick or two in bed, when I'm with him it's just a dream." However: "The other day, what a surprise, I saw him with some other guys. God he was dressed up with a girl around his neck, I could have cried with both my eyes."

He then projects himself in the future: "And if or when I make it through, or if my brain is stuck on glue and when the world tries to forget all that I've said, I'll still remember you."

The single was a minor hit in Australia, because a "harmless" part of the chorus was used on a TV ad. It didn't do much anywhere else.

It seems that it's shock value hasn't lessened with time. In 1989, the American FCC fined a radio station $10,000 for playing the song. You, however, get to hear it.

The same backing track was used, with different lyrics, for the song Ça Plane Pour Moi. It is credited to Belgian Plastic Bertrand, although the record's producer claims that he himself performed the vocals. This version became a big hit all over the world, hitting #1 in France and Switzerland, #2 in Australia and the Netherlands, #4 in Ireland, #6 in Germany, #7 in Belgium and #8 in the UK. It even made #47 in the US Hot 100.