I'm not gay, but I play one on TV. So it is with some trepidation that I pass along Rockstar's announcement of The Ballad of Gay Tony. This is the title for the next episode of downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV. It will be available this fall exclusively for Xbox Live as a $20 download. It'll also be bundled as part of a new retail release that includes the core game and the Lost and Damned add-on, which is about vulgar smelly bikers.

Here's the skinny on The Ballad of Gay Tony:

Grand Theft Auto IV's second downloadable episode, The Ballad of Gay Tony injects Liberty City with an overdose of guns, glitz, and grime. As Luis Lopez, part-time hoodlum and full-time assistant to legendary nightclub impresario Tony Prince (aka "Gay Tony"), players will struggle with the competing loyalties of family and friends, and with the uncertainty about who is real and who is fake in a world in which everyone has a price.

That's all the info available. You might wonder if they mean "gay" in the sense of "merry". If I was a legendary nightclub impresario, I'd be pretty merry, too. But the idea seems to be a Liberace riff. Here's the wiki info on Gay Tony, where you can follow the links to find out he's the owner of a gay nightclub called The Hercules. He appears in GTA4 as a passing reference during a mission in which Niko poses online as a gay man to meet and then murder another gay man. Haw haw. That's right up there with the mission where you run down a gay man driving a scooter called a Faggio. Oh, Rockstar, you never fail to disappoint! I can only imagine what we have to look forward to in The Ballad of Gay Tony.