I must admit, the whole High School Musical phenomenon is lost on me. This is, I suspect, due in no small part to my allergic reaction to all things pertaining to movie musicals. The song, the dance, the carrying-on — it’s just too much for me to handle.

However, my ears to perk up when the matter of latent homosexuality is brought up. As such, this article caught my eye. After Elton reports that while the character of Ryan is sexually ambiguous in a hat-wearing, non-significant-other-having way in the movie, he’s pretty much all the way out of the closet in the theatrical production.

Have a look-see at the article:

In the movie, Ryan dresses stylishly, is musically inclined, wears a different hat with every outfit, and, unlike all the other main characters, has no apparent love interest. As a result, many observers, including some here at AfterElton.com, have interpreted him as a “coded gay” character — a character that the creative team conceived of as gay, even if the movies never come out and say so directly.

This ambiguity regarding the character’s sexuality was particularly ironic in light of the fact that the theme of the first movie, which has songs like “Breaking Free” and “We’re All in This Together,” is that everyone should be allowed to be exactly who they are.

However, for the stage adaptation, out playwright David Simpatico chose to make Ryan’s gayness much more explicit.

“I wanted to present Ryan as something from my own past, a version of me, I guess — though he’s a lot better dancer than I ever was!” David says. “In the movie, the character has a gay tint. But in the stage version, I wanted to more fully articulate that tint and say, hey, this kid is who he is. Yes, I consider him a young gay guy without ever having to say it. I’d rather say it with behavior and action. And we do.”

This could be really bad.

• Vanessa Hudgens will appear, presumably clothed, in High School Musical 3.
• A&E has pulled Dog the Bounty Hunter.
• E-Kristin says that The Office’s spin-off is still very much theoretical.
• Ha!  Star Jones is stealing from plus-sized women?
• The writers strike will start today.
• The woman from I Love New York will be on Nip/Tuck.
• You know what The Office lacks?  Nudity.  Playboy TV wants to solve that problem.
• How much of The Hills is real?
• Sabrina Bryan is doin’ it with her Dancing With the Stars partner.
• Joss Whedon talks Dollhouse.
• Molly Shannon will be on Pushing Daisies for three episodes.
• Barack Obama showed up on SNL.
• We may not be done with one-hour episodes of The Office, unfortunately.

I haven’t done this feature in a while. Remember when I said it was going to be on Thursdays? Hell, remember when I said I’d be recapping Top Chef?

Ha!

Anyways, I’ll resurrect this little feature by proposing a three-way (I know what you’re thinking — “Dan, that’s your solution to everything.”). But here we go, are you ready?

Who would win in a fight between Food Network’s Molto Mario, High School Musical’s Zac “Troy” Efron and Arrested Development’s G.O.B. Bluth?

Here’s a round-up of the contenders:

Mario Batali: Don’t let his teddy bear face fool you — Molto Mario would tear you in half if he ever got the chance. Like most chefs, he is skilled with a knife and knows anatomy. He’ll exploit his competitors’ weak parts in order to go for the kill. In addition, he’s got 150 and 100 pounds on Efron and Bluth, respectively. I’m conjuring a very specific image of Mario walking around, butcher knives in both hands, with Efron clinging to one leg and Bluth to the other. Batali’s weaknesses, however, lie in his strengths — his size means less agility and heavy, lumbering steps. He’s more likely to get winded mid-battle.

Zac Efron: Sure, he’s skinny. Sure, he’s young. But Zac Efron is a dancer. He’s got the best six pack of all the competitors (seriously, Google image him). I can imagine him darting between Bluth and Batali, quickly shooting between their legs and leaping on their backs, putting them in sleeper holds. That said, if Batali lands a punch, then it’s all over. Also, Efron’s orangish hue will make it hard to blend in if there is a Predator-like game of cat and mouse in the jungle.

G.O.B. Bluth: He may not be the strongest or the quickest, but as far as pure fearlessness, neither Efron or Batalie can match Bluth. Think of the possessed look in his eye when performing his magic. Think of him riding on his Segway, unsheathing his sword. Would you want to go up against that? Because I wouldn’t. Of course, as far as technical fighting skills go, I can’t imagine Bluth has that much to offer. But he’d probably play dirtier than either Batali or Efron, which is worth something.

Don’t be a bastard. Be our MySpace friend. We love you.

• Wouldn’t you just love to hold George Clooney like this?
• Listen to The Shins’ version of the Weeds theme song.
• Jane Krakowski talks to TV Guide about the next season of 30 Rock!
• Jayma Mays (Hiro’s dead waitress on Heroes) has joined Pushing Daisies.
• Rebecca Romijn will be on Jerry O’Connell’s new show.
• Eep! NBC and iTunes are in a fight, so no more NBC shows on iTunes. Well, at least until they both realize they want to make money off it and come to an agreement.
• Dominic Purcell of Prison Break talks to TV Guide.
• Kate Walsh got married.
• Busy Philipps is done with ER.
• Fox almost had Hugh Laurie host the Emmys. But they decided instead, if you recall, to select anthropomorphized hair gel Ryan Seacrest.
• Jessica Sierra is bouncing back with VH1’s Celebrity Rehab.
• Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg won’t perform a cleaned-up “Dick in a Box.”
• EW explains how the new Losties got cast.
• Flight of the Concords comes to DVD Nov. 6.
• Stephen Colbert’s cast sold for more than $17,000.
• An interview with the creator of The Bionic Woman.
• All of a sudden, Zac Efron is picky about scripts.
• Here are oodles of pictures of the Heroes cast.
• Here’s the trailer for Rashida Jones’ mid-season replacement show.

In the grand TiFaux tradition of watching crap so you don’t have to, I suffered through about half an hour of the Teen Choice Awards last night. After this careful viewing, I was left with one disturbing question: where are all the teenage boys?

The event, judging purely from the awards, the level of banter, and the neverending squealing, seemed so girly it was practically ovulating. I laughed heartily the two times Zac Efron took the stage; the audience literally would not let him speak, overwhelming him with squeals.

If this is what the teen girls are in to, what are the teen boys watching? Seriously, I want to know. Also, why is it that teen girls have absolutely no sense of humor? The boys from Superbad and Justin Timberlake all tried to crack jokes, but the audience was dead to their antics.

Which brings me to another oddity: Superbad is rated R, and not in a mild, there’s one sex scene way. It’s an R movie. Technically teens aren’t even allowed to see it. Similarly, Ryan Seacrest won “Best Hissy Fit” for Knocked Up (which, as an aside, was an awesome hissy fit), but did these squealing girls actually go see Knocked Up? Or are they just voting for Ryan Seacrest, who’s so dreamy? Or has the voting been infiltrated by non-teens?

I think teens should see as many R rated movies as they can. That’s just a personal belief of mine. But I’m curious about the blatant hypocrisy.

So clearly I was left with a lot more than just one disturbing question. Perhaps that’s why I had to give up and turn it off: So many contradictions!

Those 80s Jane Fonda workout tapes were bad for you. The news said so.

• The U.S. version of Creature Comforts is coming to DVD in October!
• Plans to make High School Musical 3 about a haunted house have been scrapped in favor of more of the same.
• MTV will have a reality show called Celebrity Rap Superstar (it’s just what it sounds like), and it will feature one of the Playboy Girls Next Door.
• Hulk Hogan’s son got hurt in a car accident.
• John from Cincinnati got arrested for a DUI.
• The guy who wrote Dexter lurves Michael C. Hall.
• Chelsea Lately has been renewed by E!
• LC’s fashion label is getting support from MTV.

Yellow is really the only acceptable highlighter color.

• Ed Helms talks about being on The Office.
• High School Musical 2 arrives on DVD in time for Hannukah (well, the sixth night).
• The new skinny girls on America’s Next Top Model have been announced.
• Mare Winningham guest stars on Boston Legal.
• TV Guide’s Matt Roush talks about Ryan Seacrest at the Emmys, Pushing Daisies and more.
• That show Anchorwoman has been canceled after one episode.
• An interview with the woman behind Big Brother. If you care. Which you probably don’t.
• Sweet! They’re bringing back American Gladiators.
• They had to find 30 babies to play Aaron on Lost.
• The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle talks about going to Iraq.
• Finally, here are some trailers for season two of Heroes. The first one plays like the concluding moments of the Left Behind series. It gets better.

Even I’m getting a little sick of me taking High School Musical too seriously. I promise after this I’ll direct my brain-beams at something a little more worthy. For example, The Pick-Up Artist is now officially my second-favorite reality show after Project Runway. What? Not brainy enough? [Side note: Four years ago, I never would've thought I could utter the phrase "second-favorite reality show." The thought of even watching one would make me break out in hives. Ah, how times change.]

So. Ryan Evans. Ryan, as I assume you know if you’ve made it this far in the post, is Sharpay’s super-sparkly, super-awesome, super-gay (coded) brother. This is the Disney Channel, after all, so none of the characters could actually be gay, but of all the likely candidates (cough-CRÈME BRÛLÉE-cough [another side note: Where's Crème Brûlée in movie #2? Is he at culinary school? What, is the actor too good for the Disney channel now? And jeebus, crème brûlée has a lot of accent marks]), Ryan is the most likeliest. And I think Disney is kind of okay with that.

So how does Disney tell us they’re okay with it, in their subtle way? It’s not the fact that he performs in the musical; Troy performs in the musical, and he is the epitome of Disney’s manly men. I mean, Troy totally wants to kiss Gabriella. Like, seriously. The fact that he keeps letting circumstances come between himself and the kiss doesn’t mean he’s not way into it.

It’s not the fact that Ryan loves jazz squares, either. That’s just his way of annoying his sister. And besides, jazz squares are awesome. As he so aptly put it, “Everyone loves a jazz square.” You can’t argue with that.

No, it’s not the musical or the jazz squares. It is, simply, and quite literally, that he wears a lot of hats.

I caught about the last half hour or so of High School Musical Two on Friday. This was entirely by accident.

However, I did watch it in a semi-darkened room with four other gay men (just as God intended) and we enjoyed it approximately 85% ironically.

Eventually, the entertainment turned to other (decidedly less wholesome) entertainment.

Anyway, throughout the ordeal, I was distracted by Zac Efron’s ever-changing skin tone. In the indoor scenes, he was a normal-ish shade of porcelain, but during the outdoor scenes he tended to glow orange. Therefore, a quick poll:

Get ready for another post in my continuing quest to make this blog all about High School Musical (part 2 of, potentially, hundreds). This is more of a scholarly look, because honestly, I’m seeing a huge gap in the academic community when it comes to made-for-TV Disney movies, and I’m just here to fill the need.

Sharpay Evans (blue dress) is the “villain” of the High School Musical series (technically, though, the villains really keeping our heroes down are better described as “the status quo” and “classicism”). In the first movie, Sharpay tries to keep Troy and Gabriella from auditioning for her precious musical. It was vaguely suggested, as so much was in movie #1, that she also had designs on Troy romantically, but that angle was not nearly as important as the audition plot. In the stage version (which, yes, I have seen, thank you for asking), which features an expanded book, her motivations are much more obviously confused — she spends a lot more time trying to make them into the perfect couple.

Which leads naturally to the second movie, where her motivations are more hopelessly muddled than ever. She wants Troy; she arranges the whole summer so she can spend time with him. But “getting Troy,” to her, means getting Troy to sing with her in the talent show. For Sharpay, it seems at first that romantic relationships are all about winning. She needs that trophy more than she needs Troy. Or is it all the same, really? Does she consider performing with Troy the same as being with him romantically? In a way, it doesn’t matter, because her obsession with Troy means she forces him to sing with her. Forcing him to sing with her also guarantees that she’ll win the trophy, since he won’t be upstaging her by singing with Gabriella.

So far her romantic goals and her trophy-winning goals line up fairly smoothly, if not exactly emotionally consistently. But then the rest of the staff decides to compete in the talent show together, with the help of Sharpay’s scorned brother, Ryan. A single glance at their rehearsal convinces Sharpay that they pose a legitimate threat to her trophy. This is despite the fact she OWNS THE RESORT and could just insist on winning no matter what (it’s obvious she has that power; the grumpy resort manager almost gives her the trophy, despite the fact that she didn’t end up singing in the competition at all). She can’t do it, though, because it’s actually important to her to be the best.

And that’s the key to her personality.