When I saw this sign offering $20 for the current issue of The Advocate, the very serious older brother of the gay publishing world, with Adam Lambert on the cover, I thought it was a joke. After all, this is the current issue. But no. It seems the gay singer and mascara addict is creating a worldwide magazine shortage.

I decided to call the number and see what kind of insane person I'd find. On the other end was a guy named Rich, who told me that his cousin is in the Adam Lambert fan club and asked him to put up the signs so that they could buy up the issues and mail them out to "Glamberts." (That's what Adam's fans call themselves and also what Ernie's boyfriend calls himself when he wears a boa.) After a few questions, he hung up on me because he was going to meet someone about buying a stack of copies of the magazine.

I thought this had to be some sort of mistake or misunderstanding. I mean, how big can the fan club of a certified loser (yes, he did lose American Idol) really be? So I emailed my boy Jeremy Kinser, one of the editors at the magazine who told me that since the magazine is subscription-only these days, the Glamberts are having a hard time getting their sweaty little mitts on a copy. "We actually ran a contest through our Twitter and Facebook for Adam Lambert fans to win a copy of the issue. We received so many phone calls of people looking for the issue and sold out of all of our overrun copies," Kinser says.

Who knew that putting Adam Lambert on the cover would be such a boon? That means either his fan base is bigger than we expected or the run of The Advocate is even smaller than we expected or maybe both. Anyway, call up your gay uncle and ask to borrow his copy of the mag. You can make an easy $20!

[Photo of Lambert via Getty Images]