With last week's passing of beloved Fresh Prince of Bel-Air patriarch James Avery, all media eyes were on the social networking accounts of the Fresh Prince himself, Will Smith.

That very day, a Twitter user claiming to be Smith, tweeted out the words "R.I.P. Uncle Phil" along with an appeal for retweets from fans of the show.

The reason for the odd request, according to @FreshPrinceWill, was to ensure that NBC approves a proposal for the taping of "one more Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode in honor of Uncle Phil."

If the tweet received over 300,000 retweets, the reunion would be greenlighted.

Of course, this all turned out to be a big fat hoax, but not before the obviously fake tweet was retweeted well over 100,000 times.

The real Will Smith waited until yesterday to post his tribute to Avery on the one and only social networking platform where he's truly verified: Facebook.

"Some of my greatest lessons in Acting, Living and being a respectable human being came through James Avery," Smith wrote in a Facebook post published last night. "Every young man needs an Uncle Phil. Rest in Peace."

Smith also posted a photo of "the last time we were together."

Taken in 2011 at a luncheon for a charity run by Karyn Parsons (Hilary), the photo appears to have been slightly augmented to exclude all non-cast members from the group shot.

[screengrabs via Will Smith, Twitter]

Do you pay someone money to help you with "fitness" in some way? Let me ask you a personal question: Does he or she suck? Oh it is quite likely, yes.

How is it possible that you—a smart guy or gal, sure—would pay someone $30 or $50 or $75 or even (I am vomiting at the thought of a higher figure) per hour to help "get you in shape," when, all the while, that person in fact sucked at the task of "getting you in shape"? It is because many of the world's shittiest trainers are also the most beloved by their poor misguided "clients," a word that means "a profitable cut of meat." There are two primary ways in which coaches and personal trainers suck.

1. Your coach is too easy. "Hi, I'm Coach Trent. Welcome. We'll be starting you off today with a full-body BMI test, as well as a water test to determine your body fat percentage. Then we'll sit down and fill out a worksheet about your fitness goals. Then I'll have you perform a series of rudimentary movements just to ensure that your spine is unlikely to spontaneously crumble into dust here in the workout area. After that, I will have you lie face down on a stability ball and perform negative curls with an absurdly light dumbbell in order to work the smallest amount of muscle possible on the human body. Then our hour will be up. By the way, I love your leotard! So awesome!"

Does this sound familiar, you bastards? Coach Trent is your friend. Coach Trent is a sympathetic ear. Coach Trent is your quasi-therapist, your support group, your cheerleader in chief, and your greatest fan. What Coach Trent is not is a good fucking trainer. Mine eyes have personally witnessed unfortunate souls who pay outrageous fees to work with a trainer multiple times per week for a period of months or even years, and at the end of that time, guess what? They are exactly the same as they started, but much poorer. Perhaps they have lost five pounds, or increased their 10-rep max on the lat pulldown machine. A WASTE OF TIME, A WASTE OF LIFE. An easy coach is little more than a paid friend. Friends have no place in the gym.

Let me break it to you: Your workout sucks. You work out on Cybex machines and ellipti-glides and by doing little bodyweight workouts like planks at insufficient intensities. Why, pray tell, do you pay a trainer to stand over you and tell you to do the various aspects of this shitty workout? Write it on a piece of paper and do it yourself! It's not even hard! I don't want to reveal too much, but this all ties in to the topic of a future valuable internet fitness column of knowledge, which will be called, "Train Yourself." What are you—a dancing monkey? Dance on your own time and save some cash! Coach Trent is not your friend.

Any trainer you look forward to spending time with because it feels good should probably be fired.

2. Your coach is too hard. "Ugga bugga. Wazza Woo. Watch out there, twinks, it's time for pain. I'm Coach Frank, and I'm here to scientifically push you to the very breaking point of your weak body, using a potent mix of things I learned in my Crossfit Level One Cert class and my own artistic interpretation of a Mountain Dew commercial. Let's start with 100 burpees."

Whoa, Coach Frank sounds intense, right? Coach Frank is telling you to do things you would never do on your own. Coach Frank sounds hardcore. Shouldn't I like that? Aren't I the idiot always saying things should be "hardcore?" Do I even do Tough Mudders, bro?

Excuse me, can I speak? Gee, thanks. (Your bad attitude is showing.) There's hardcore, and then there's stupid. You know what's hardcore? Shooting yourself in the leg just to show that you can take it. Now that is hardcore. That is also stupid. Likewise, designing and following a workout program that promotes progress in all aspects of athleticism using principles of progression and sufficient intensity and proper rest, recovery, and nutrition is hardcore. Just doing the hardest shit you can think of for every workout is stupid.

Motherfuckers love these "hard" coaches because, dang, they sure do give you a workout! God dang bro, Coach Frank made me throw up twice last week! He's worth every penny! Look here, people, you want a workout that makes you tired? Do 50 burpees then run 50 sprints BUT REAL FAST. GO. NO, FASTER. There. Now you are tired. That will be $75, please.

You know who can design a tough workout for you. A monkey. A monkey can wave its arms up and down, and however many times it waves its arms, you do that number of power cleans, and then do handstand pushups until the blood rushing to your head renders you unconscious. GO! What's that? You have a bum shoulder and a tender ankle and high blood pressure? No matter—this monkey trainer is hardcore. Just Do It! That will be $75, please.

What I am getting at here in a colloquial manner designed to appeal to the impressionable youth of America is that any motherfucking idiot can put together a workout so hard that it will drive you past the point of exhaustion and into the realm of pure pain. Hell, just do your normal workout, but twice as fast. That'll do it. This manner of training will also get you injured, demoralized, and, in all likelihood, will drive you back to the couch after your second nasty bout of rhabdomyolysis.

Throwing up is not conducive to muscular growth.

The mere fact that a trainer makes you do things that are hard does not make them a good trainer. A good trainer will take the time to analyze your personal needs and goals and limitations and dreams and, perhaps, sexual fantasies, and then design a workout program for you that is as hardcore as reasonably possible without slipping into the realm of "Stupid Shit That Idiots Who Are About to Get Injured Do to Prove Their Manhood." A real man takes care of his family, folks. And does Super Squats only in the context of reasonable progression. He doesn't just wade in there and show off for the ladies, folks. A real man is a smart man. And a smart man doesn't worship Coach Frank. A real coach is a good coach. A good coach is a smart coach. And a good, smart coach is a good man. And that's hard to find, ladies.

Both of these types of coaches fall into the larger, overarching category of "Coaches Who Don't Know What the Fuck They're Doing." There is a Cult of the Coach in personal fitness just as surely as there is one in sports. Where there are disposable incomes and consumer insecurities and lots and lots of minute specialization ("I used to do Pilates, but now I do Aqua Pilates"), there will be coaches, and they will be wearing stupid T-shirts reading "STAFF," and somehow they will be persuading otherwise sensible people to stand on a turquoise rubber ball. My heart bleeds for the thousands of Americans every day who empty their wallets for the pleasure of failing miserably at the 300 workout, just because they casually mentioned once to their trainer that they thought those Spartan helmets were "cool." Do not fall prey the Cult of the Coach, America. You can work out all by yourself.

But if you want me to stand next to you and tell you to do burpees, I will, for $200 an hour. Email me.

This is an occasional column about fitness, and how you're doing it wrong. Image by Jim Cooke.

After dawdling through the holidays and a winter storm that's hitting America's poor especially badly, the Senate today passed a plan to fund three months of unemployment insurance for those who need it most. The GOP-led House will take up the bill after Hell freezes over later this week.

"Jelly" has been a closely guarded secret since it was first teased by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on April Fools Day. It's managed to pull in hugely prominent investors and awed press, based on literally nothing more than the word "Jelly." Now, it has revealed itself. It's a way to ask your friends questions.

Watch the video above and be not amazed. Watch as, for the first time ever, a dude takes a picture of a tree in the woods and sends it to someone else because he doesn't know what he's looking at—Yahoo! Answers for the bourgeoisie.

Have you ever posted on Facebook, asking if anyone knows a good barber? Or tweeted to your followers asking if "House of Cards" is any good? That's Jelly—a search engine that uses your friends—only more convoluted than ever before:

Say you're walking along and you spot something unusual. You want to know what it is so you launch Jelly, take a picture, circle it with your finger, and type, "What's this?" That query is submitted to some people in your network who also have Jelly. Jelly notifies you when you have answers.

Based on messages that boil down to Bwuhhh what is this thing?, Jelly says "it's not hard to imagine that the true promise of a connected society is people helping each other." This truly is a revolution in engorged, cloying, dumbstruck rhetoric, a true disruption of horse shit. With Jelly, "you can crop, reframe, zoom, and draw on your images to get more specific"—you can also do that with countless other apps. But that doesn't matter—this is a vanity project, remember. It's an opportunity for Biz Stone to Vimeopine on the nature of human knowledge, interconnectedness, and exotic flora. It's an app for the sake of apps—a software Fabergé egg.

It doesn't matter that there are countless other ways to ask your friends questions. Those apps aren't Jelly. Those other technologies, like "text messaging" or "sending an email" or "asking a police officer on the street" weren't kept in "stealth mode" for a year, while TechCrunch tried to cross its legs over throbbing anticipation. Anyone can have a good idea—but do most startups have the cachet of a Twitter founder, or Bono as an investor? Will "asking people shit" ever be the same, now that we've waited over a year to meet this new platform of smartphone shit-asking? Maybe there are some questions not even Jelly can answer.

There was more than just Armond White's heckling at last night's New York Critics Circle Awards. The 87-year-old Harry Belafonte, for example, delivered a great speech on his experience with race and cinema throughout his life.

["Letter to Memphis"]

1. "Andro Queen"

["No. 13 Baby"]

2. "Blue Eyed Hexe"

3. "Indie Cindy"

["The Sad Punk"]

4. "Magdalena"

["Ana"]

5. "What Goes Boom"

6. "Bagboy"

["Subbacultcha"]

7. "Greens and Blues"

["Hang Wire"]

8. "Another Toe"

9. "Snakes"

Samuel See, the young Yale professor found dead in his jail cell following a domestic dispute with his husband in November, died of "acute methamphetamine and amphetamine intoxication with recent myocardial infarct," according to the Connecticut medial examiner.

Union Square is one of the busiest places in Manhattan, but right now it is totally empty. It is either the weather, or the rapture has come and we are the only ones left behind.

Those "workplace wellness programs" that your job offers to help you stop smoking and lose weight and whatnot are fucking worthless, statistically speaking.

This will be a year of epics. Some of our most ambitious movie-makers are serving up stories of Biblical apocalypses, space voyages and the rise of artificial intelligences. Godzilla and the Planet of the Apes are both back. And the superhero genre gets pushed to its absolute limits. Here are 65 movies that could rock your universe this year.

Note: We're trying not to include as many "edge case" movies that don't fit into science fiction, fantasy, horror or comics adaptations this year. Also, if it doesn't have a release date, we haven't included it. See the comments for our partial list of movies with no release date.

January

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (Jan. 3)

The insanely long-running "found footage" horror series gets a spinoff featuring Latino characters in Oxnard, who struggle to figure out why one of their friends suddenly has superpowers.

Outlook: It's way better than Paranormal Activity 4, and gives a much-needed new lease on life to the series.

The Legend of Hercules (Jan. 10)

Kellan Lutz (Twilight) stars in this origin story of the legendary demigod, in which he's sold into slavery and has to become a gladiator and stuff.

Outlook:It's hard to see how this is even a movie about Hercules — it looks more like a Spartacus knock-off. Watch four clips here.

The Adventurer: Curse of the Midas Box (Jan. 10)

Based on the novel Mariah Mundi by G.P. Taylor, this low-budget fantasy is the story of a boy who has to team up with the mysterious Charly (Michael Sheen) to prevent Otto (Sam Neill) from getting his hands on the Midas Box, which turns anything to gold. It's already available on iTunes.

Outlook: Besides Sheen and Neill, the cast also includes Lena Headey and Ioan Gruffudd, and it looks like it could be ridiculous fun.

Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo (Jan. 10)

The third film (of four) in the big-screen adaptation of the classic anime series. Shinji reawakens 14 years after he nearly destroyed the world in the Third Impact, to find that everybody (somewhat understandably) thinks he's a harbinger of destruction. See here for a list of theaters.

Outlook: We really liked the first two films. So high hopes for this one!

The Banshee Chapter (Jan. 10)

The H.P. Lovecraft mad-science story "From Beyond" gets adapted into a low-budget horror movie. It turns out the CIA's famous MK Ultra experiments with psychedelic drugs led to contact with... something from beyond. And only a Hunter S. Thompson pastiche can help uncover the truth. This film, produced by Zachary Quinto, is already available on VOD.

Outlook: The combination of 21st century American paranoia and Lovecraftian insanity feels like a natural — but a lot depends on your tolerance for low-budget, high-concept weirdness.

Devil's Due (Jan. 17)

In this Rosemary's Baby-esque horror movie, a young newlywed couple can't remember what happened one night during their honeymoon... and then the wife turns out to be pregnant with something fiendish.

Outlook: It got an early rave from Eli Roth. The directors cut their teeth on the horror anthology V/H/S.

The Knights of Badassdom (January 21)

Yep, at long last this movie about LARPers fighting unholy evil — starring Peter Dinklage, Danny Pudi, Summer Glau and everyone else you love — is hitting select theaters. Click here to get it in your town.

Outlook: It's not the director's cut, but the much shorter producer's cut. Still, the trailer looked like so damn much fun.

I, Frankenstein (January 24)

The famous Frankenstein monster (Aaron Eckhart) is still kicking ass 200 years later, and he gets drawn into a war between gargoyles and demons, in an ancient city. Featuring Yvonne Strahovski as a sexy badass.

Outlook: This looks like this year's Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, which is the highest praise we can bestow.

February

The LEGO Movie (February 7)

We have to wait a while to see Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman together in live action... but here they are in LEGO, fighting to save the world from Lord Business. An ordinary LEGO minifigure is mistaken for the Master Builder, destined to save everybody.

Outlook: Could it be that the year's most fun movie is coming out in February? Might well be. From directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump St.)

RoboCop (February 12)

One of the greatest action-movie series of the 1980s gets rebooted, in a version that's less about corporate power and more about our fear of drone strikes.

Outlook: We're worried by the way RoboCop's helmet seems to "whoosh" on and off, instead of staying in place until the third act. But the supporting cast, including Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton, looks just perfect.

Winter's Tale (February 14)

Based on the novel by Mark Helprin, this is a fantasy tale set in an alternate New York, about a burglar who falls in love with a young girl who has a strange gift. This is a passion project for director Akiva Goldsman, who recruited Colin Farrell, Jennifer Connelly, Russell Crowe and Will Smith to appear in it.

Outlook: This movie's budget was reportedly slashed right before filming. Goldsman has a mixed track record. But he made this film right after working a lot on Fringe, so let's hope some of the Fringe magic is clinging to this.

Vampire Academy (February 14)

Two teenage girls, Rose and Lissa, go to a special school for blood-suckers, and have to contend with the horrible popular girls, as well as an ancient evil that wants to destroy everything.

Outlook: We've been saying for years that these intense, unique books by Richelle Mead deserve to be a movie series. And judging from the trailer, the director of Mean Girls and the writer of Heathers have created something really unique.

Welcome to Yesterday

(February 28)In this found-footage movie, group of teenagers find the plans to a time machine — so they build it, and of course everything goes wrong.

Outlook: Not sure why this has to be found footage, exactly. But the trailer looks ridiculously fun, and we love the notion of teenagers screwing with time.

March

300: Rise of an Empire (March 7)

A prequel to Zack Snyder's famous Spartans-vs-Persians historical epic — and judging from the footage we've seen, this is way more supernatural, showing how Xerxes becomes a god by undergoing a strange transformation.

Outlook: If it focuses on Eva Green vs. Lena Headey, we're totally in. But it looks like a lot of the film is drowned in greenscreen cheese, with over the top performances that still get lost in the clutter.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman (March 7)

The beloved cartoon about a time-traveling dog and his boy sidekick gets a fancy cartoon, in which Child Protective Services wants to take the boy away.

Outlook: We watched the first half of the movie and totally fell in love. All of the time-traveling hijinks are there, but so are some heavy themes, handled well.

Journey to the West (March 7)

Co-directed by Stephen Chow (God of Cookery), this is a very loose adaptation of the famous Chinese novel about a monk bringing the Buddhist sutras to China, with the help of the Monkey King, Piggsy and Sha Wujing. It's a prequel, showing how the iconic foursome came together.

Outlook: Chow's track record speaks for itself. And the trailers for this movie look completely, madly wonderful.

Jodorowsky's Dune (March 7)

This documentary is the closest you'll ever come to seeing one of the most famous science fiction movies that never got made: Alejandro Jodorowsky's adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. Including concept art and tons of interviews.

Outlook: Early buzz suggests it's fascinating, not just for film buffs but for anybody who's fascinated by this off-balance spin on the Dune mythos.

Divergent (March 21)

The dystopian young-adult novel by Veronica Roth, in which teens have to choose which virtue to embody, gets a lavish big-screen adaptation. One girl, Tris, doesn't fit into any faction and has to pretend to be a member of the Dauntless faction... or else.

Outlook: We visited this movie's set and were impressed by the attention to detail. It really depends on your appetite for more dystopian teen angst.

Muppets Most Wanted (March 21)

The 2011 Muppet movie metafictionally commented on the fact that nobody remembers the Muppets any more. Now everybody does, so the new movie is all about how Kermit is mistaken for an international criminal frog.

Outlook: Co-starring Ricky Gervais and Tina Fey, who seem like they'll be able to keep the energy levels high. Also with a guest spot from Tom Hiddleston. Let's hope it matches the fun quotient of the last movie.

Noah (March 28)

Instead of directing The Wolverine, Darren Aronofsky went off to do this Biblical epic about Noah and the global flood. Aronofsky has, shall we say, done his own thing with this material, adding six-armed angels and mythical beasts in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-ish landscape.

Outlook: Test screenings reportedly led to outcries from religious groups that didn't like all the liberties Aronofsky is taking with the story, including a different ending than what happens in the Bible. This led to an editing-suite war. It's still not clear if we'll be seeing Aronofsky's cut, or the studio's cut, of this film.

A Haunted House 2 (March 28)

Surprise! Did you know that Marlon Wayans was making a sequel to this movie that you didn't see last year? Us neither. This time around, Wayans is moving on with a new lady after his possessed girlfriend died in a car crash... but then his ex comes back from the dead.

Outlook: Even if we were excited about the first one, it's kind of amazing they cranked out another one so fast.

April

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (April 4)

The sequel to two of Marvel's strongest movies: Captain America, and The Avengers. Captain America has been living in the 21st century for a couple years, and he's just now learning that his primary colors don't mesh with the numerous gray areas of postmodern America. Oh, and the mysterious "Winter Soldier" is someone from Cap's past.

Outlook: The "1970s thriller" motif looks great, and it looks as though Robert Redford's corrupt SHIELD honcho is going to make this into a story with weight as well as a fun romp.

Under the Skin (April 4)

The long-awaited "Scarlett Johansson is a beautiful alien who preys on men" movie finally has a release date. Based on Michael Faber's darkly satirical novel, this movie has a lot more to it than just ScarJo being sexy and preying on hapless men.

Outlook: Screenings at festivals led to almost unanimously positive reviews, and we can't wait.

Only Lovers Left Alive (April 11)

Another indie film we've been waiting a long time for, this is Jim Jarmusch's vampire movie, starring Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton and Mia Wasikowska. Hiddleston is a vampire rock star who can't adjust to 21st century technologies, and Swinton is his ex who tries to cheer him up.

Outlook: There's nothing about "Jim Jarmusch directs a movie about Tom Hiddleston as a vampire rock star" that doesn't make us pee our pants.

Heaven is For Real (April 16)

Religious audiences who protest Aronofsky's Noah might be happier with this film, based on the bestselling book about a child who dies and comes back claiming he's been to Heaven — and he knows stuff he couldn't possibly know, including the existence of a stillborn sister.

Outlook: Unlike some other films aimed purely at religious audiences, this one has an experienced director, Randall Wallace (Man in the Iron Mask, Secretariat) and a strong cast, including Greg Kinnear and Thomas Haden Church.

Transcendence (April 18)

Christopher Nolan's longtime cinematographer, Wally Pfister, makes his directorial debut with this story featuring Johnny Depp as a terminally ill scientist who downloads his brain into a computer.

Outlook: Hard to tell from the trailer. Could be cheesetastic in the vein of Lawnmower Man, or could be totally awesome.

Oculus (April 18)

Ten years after her brother was convicted of murdering his parents, a woman tries to exonerate him by proving that it was actually a haunted mirror, as he claimed all along. Starring Doctor Who's Karen Gillan, and featuring Katee Sackhoff as her mom who gets murdered.

Outlook: Director Mike Flanagan (Absentia) won raves for the 30-minute version of Oculus in 2006, and the full-length movie version has also gotten unanimous raves. Here's Variety's breathlessly enthusiastic write-up.

Earth to Echo (April 25)

Kids start getting weird messages on their cell phones and discover a being from another world that needs their help, in this found-footage movie with a heavy Spielberg influence.

Outlook: The first trailer looked lovely. Here's hoping.

The Quiet Ones (April 25)

A professor (Jared Harris) leads a team of students trying to use electricity to create a poltergeist, in a new film from the recently revived Hammer Films.

Outlook: It's kind of appropriate for a Hammer horror film to be set in the 1970s, and it looks like this movie has nailed the classic Hammer look. Plus we're suckers for scientists meddling with forces that they should have left alone.

May

Amazing Spider-Man 2 (May 2)

The sequel to the rebooted Spidey from a couple years ago —and this time, he's facing Green Goblin, the Rhino and Electro. Plus there are hints that Gwen Stacy could have kind of a rough ride this time out.

Outlook: The first real trailer has lots of fun action. It's an open question as to whether this film can juggle three villains, plus hints of others, as it tries to set up a Sinister Six movie. But it looks fun, sure enough.

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return (May 9)

Another long-delayed film — this is the CG-animated Wizard of Oz sequel starring Lea Michele as Dorothy, with narration from Patrick Stewart.

Outlook: We saw a trailer back in 2012 that looked like a kids' video game from 1995. Maybe they've had time to make it look better since then.

Godzilla (May 16)

The most famous kaiju of them all is back in a new movie that preserves the atomic-bomb imagery and pits Godzilla against lots of other monsters, from director Gareth Edwards (Monsters).

Outlook: The first trailer looks fantastic. We saw a bunch of footage at Comic-Con that made this look like an earth-shattering rampage, with plenty of Bryan Cranston freaking out.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (May 23)

Wolverine travels in time mentally, and thus unites the young X-Men from First Class with the older versions from the original trilogy — to prevent a dystopian future from happening. And it leads into another movie, called Apocalypse.

Outlook: Bryan Singer has had a rough ride since his last X-Men movie 10 years ago. But we're hopeful reuniting with these mutants will help him get his moves back.

Maleficent (May 30)

A movie about the Evil Queen, played by Angelina Jolie. That's really all you need to know, right?

Outlook: The first teaser trailer looked neat. This film is co-written by Paul Dini. First-time director Robert Stromberg is a visual effects genius. (We interviewed him about his work on Avatar.)

June

Edge of Tomorrow (June 6)

The Japanese novel All You Need is Kill gets a movie adaptation in which Tom Cruise is a soldier who repeats the same day endlessly, Groundhog Day-style, as he gets massacred by aliens again and again.

Outlook: We're in it just to see Emily Blunt as the tough drill instructor who whips Cruise into shape by taking advantage of his endless reboots.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (June 13)

The first Train Your Dragon was one of the sweetest surprises in ages, and now the crew is older and dealing with new challenges. Having Vikings riding dragons raises the stakes, as you might expect.

Outlook: The first trailer looks just magnificent — but be warned: it contains a major spoiler that Dreamworks wanted to keep under wraps.

The Purge 2 (June 20)

The hit movie about a dystopian future America where crime is legal for 12 hours gets a sequel, with a whole new cast.

Outlook: They were only just announcing castmembers for this the other day, and it's out in June. Let's hope the racial allegory is less ham-fisted this time around — the concept is neat enough to stand on its own if the film doesn't feel the need to lecture us.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (June 27)

Michael Bay returns for a fourth Transformers movie, with a whole new cast anchored by Mark Wahlberg. This one features a lot of action set in China, where the fastest-growing movie audience is.

Outlook: Well, supposedly it features Dinobots. That's got to be worth something. And maybe a new cast will give this series a new paint job and a tune-up under the hood, and insert any other car-related metaphors that strike your fancy.

July

Deliver Us from Evil (July 2)

Eric Bana and Community's Joel McHale are cops dealing with a case that a priest insists is demonic in nature — but can the long arm of the law cope with the supernatural?

Outlook: We liked director Scott Derrickson's Sinister a lot, and we're kind of stoked to see Jeff Winger as a tough cop who's seen it all.

Atlas Shrugged Part III (July 4)

Forget Hunger Games, this is the most important future dystopia, since it's the one that's shaped so many of our policy-makers today. This time around, the geniuses of the world hide from a world overrun by a welfare state gone mad and an economic collapse. And John Galt gives a very long speech.

Outlook: The second movie was better than the first, so maybe the trend will continue? There were early rumors that this third movie will be a musical, and we desperately hope that is true.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (July 11)

The prequel saga that began with Rise of the Planet of the Apes continues, and this time the human race is on the ropes while the ape civilization is in full upswing.

Outlook: Rise was a really amazing surprise, and this outing is directed by Matt Reeves, who did the underrated Let Me In. So hopes are high for this one.

Jupiter Ascending (July 18)

The Wachowskis are back with a futuristic space opera in which Mila Kunis is a house-cleaner who's identical to the ruler of the universe, and Channing Tatum is the beast-man hybrid who protects her at all costs.

Outlook: Honestly, it looks kind of goofy, but also potentially amazing. Could this be the next Fifth Element?

Hercules (July 25)

The other big Hercules movie this year, this one stars Dwayne Johnson and is based on the graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars. Unlike this Friday's film, it contains actual mythology.

Outlook: Hard to get that excited about a new Brett Ratner film, but the early images look neat and The Rock is usually fun to watch.

August

Guardians of the Galaxy (August 1)

On the heels of its recent winning streak, Marvel rolls the dice again with a space opera about a group of misfits that include a raccoon with attitude and a tree named Groot that only says "I am Groot!".

Outlook: Director James Gunn did one of our favorite superhero movies with Super, and he's assembled a terrific cast here. We saw a ton of footage at Comic-Con that blew our heads off.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (August 8)

Another 1980s classic gets a brand new spin, from producer Michael Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles).

Outlook: The main reason for optimism about this one seems to be the prominent role for Will Arnett as one of the humans who tags along with the turtles. A lot depends on how neat the mo-cap turtles actually look.

Lucy (August 8)

Speaking of Fifth Element... Luc Besson directs his first science fiction film in ages, starring Scarlett Johansson as a drug mule who accidentally ingests a drug that gives her superhuman powers.

Outlook: Even in a year full of weird superhero projects, this still has what it takes to get us over-the-top excited.

The Giver (August 15)

Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep star in the adaptation of Lois Lowry's classic novel about a false utopia where everybody is the same and emotional depth is banned. One boy is chosen to be the new Receiver of Memory, storing the memories of the time before Sameness.

Outlook: Leaving aside that this is one of the most important books for teens and the cast is fantastic, it's directed by Philip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American.) So it ought to be just stunning.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (August 22)

A decade later, here's the sequel to the adaptation of Frank Miller's noir comic book, this time focusing on the titular "Dame," played by Eva Green.

Outlook: This time, Miller is co-directing with Robert Rodriguez, which brings up unfortunate memories of The Spirit. But at the very least, this should be a guilty pleasure.

Jessabelle (August 29)

Another low-budget horror movie. Jessie is paralyzed in a car accident that kills her boyfriend, then returnshome to find a ghost named Jessabelle trying to kill her.

Outlook: The notion of recovering from trauma in a haunted house has a certain appeal. We'll see.

September

The Maze Runner (September 19)

James Dashner's popular YA novel about boys who can't remember anything but their first names, trapped in a maze with a single mysterious girl, gets its big-screen adaptation.

Outlook: Dashner told us the early footage he saw looked amazing. A lot depends on whether you're maxed out for dystopian teen adventures.

The Boxtrolls (September 26)

Laika, the stop-motion animation studio behind Coraline and Paranorman, returns with a story of a young boy who befriends monsters, based on a novel by Alan Snow.

Outlook: The first trailer looks absolutely gorgeous, and this studio's track record is pretty stellar.

October

Poltergeist (October TBA)

Did you know they were remaking this film? They are. A noisy, disruptive ghost makes a family's life hell.

Outlook: It's written by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, and stars Sam Rockwell. So even though we've seen a lot of haunted house movies lately, this could be worth a look.

The Book of Life (October 17)

An animated Romeo and Juliet riff, featuring the voices of Channing Tatum and Zoe Saldana. During the Day of the Dead celebration, a boy chooses between obeying his family's expectations and following his heart, while visiting three fantastical worlds.

Outlook: Produced by Guillermo del Toro, who has a pretty decent track record as producer. Writer-director Jorge R. Gutierrez is actually Mexican, which seems like a good thing for a movie about Mexican culture.

Dracula Untold (October 17)

Previously known as Dracula: Year Zero, this is an origin story of the most famous vampire. So this takes place before Dracula invents wireless electricity and discovers lesbian mud-wrestling, just FYI.

Outlook: It's a low-budget supernatural romp. Probably not as much fun as I, Frankenstein, but you never know.

Paranormal Activity 5 (October 24)

Yes, we get two Paranormal Activity movies in the same year, after a year without. Presumably this returns to the core storyline about that suburban family with the terrible luck.

Outlook: They probably haven't even started filming it yet, so hard to say. PA4 was agonizingly dreadful, so we're not jazzed for a direct continuation.

November

Big Hero Six (November 7)

An obscure Marvel comics team of quasi-Japanese heroes saves the city of Sanfransokyo in this Disney animated film.

Outlook: The visuals look pretty neat, but the story sounds possibly too goofy to work — and changing the setting from actual Japan to Sanfransokyo means this can't be the regular Marvel Universe. This film just got a co-director, who helmed Bolt.

Interstellar (November 7)

After a successful Batman trilogy, Christopher Nolan returns to riskier fare, with this story of an ecologically devastated future Earth, and the wormhole project that seeks to find new resources.

Outlook: Nolan's brother Jonathan originally wrote it for Steven Spielberg to direct, based on the work of CalTech physicist Kip Thorne. So expect lots of wonder and hard science, alongside Chris Nolan's usual thrills.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (November 21)

The Hunger Games juggernaut continues, with the first half of the final book, in which Katniss becomes a revolutionary leader and pays a heavy price.

Outlook: We were surprised by how great the second movie was, and the only question mark here is whether they can churn out the movies at such a fast rate and keep the quality up.

Home (November 26)

Until recently, this animated movie was called Happy Smekday!, to reflect the fact that it's based on the book The True Meaning of Smekday. It's the story of aliens who invade and try to relocate the human race, and the one girl who escapes their clutches.

Outlook: The book is delightful, and this movie version has Steve Martin as the head alien. Let's just hope the move to a more bland title doesn't reflect a general commitment to blandness.

December

Ridley Scott's Exodus (December 12)

If Darren Aronofsky didn't scratch your Old Testament itch, the director of Blade Runner has you covered, with a story of Moses (Christian Bale) versus the Pharoah (Joel Edgerton). Also starring Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley and Jon Turturro.

Outlook: It honestly sounds like such a guilty pleasure that you'll wish it was Yom Kippur so you can atone for watching it. But you never know, the desert visuals will probably be lovely.

Paddington (December 12)

Yes it's that talking bear from Peru who's found at a train station that bears (so to speak) his name.

Outlook: Paddington is played by Colin Firth, and it's directed by The Mighty Boosh's Paul King.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again (December 17)

The third and final Hobbit movie, in which the Battle of the Five Armies takes place.

Outlook: At this point, probably depends on how you felt about the first two movies. If you were down with the massive epic scale of a trilogy based on a relatively slender book, then you'll love this.

Night at the Museum 3 (December 25)

Ben Stiller returns for a third movie about the magical museum where all the exhibits come to life at night.

Outlook: At this point, we may be down to exploring the gift shop or digging through the recycling bins at the museum café. But there might be life in this series yet.

Into the Woods (December 25)

Last but definitely not least, here's a film based on the Sondheim musical about a couple who try to break a curse placed on them by an evil witch, causing them to journey through magical realms out of Grimm's fairy tales.

Outlook: The cast includes Meryl Streep as the wicked witch, Johnny Depp as the Big Bad Wolf, plus Emily Blunt, James Corden and Tracy Ullman. Directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago). So yeah, excited.

Sources: Studio releases, plus Box Office Mojo, Film Releases, Movie Insider.

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan and her producer Max McClellan are scheduled to return to 60 Minutes quite soon, after the pair took a public beating last year for airing the Benghazi lies of British military contractor Dylan Davies. But they’re not the only ones to blame.

Scant attention has been paid to their counterparts at Threshold Editions, the conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster, which published Davies’ now-pulped Benghazi tell-all, The Embassy House. CBS, which owns the prestigious publishing house, may want to take a closer look.

There are several previously unreported discrepancies in the personal biography Dylan Davies presents in The Embassy House, which he wrote under the pseudonym “Sergeant Morgan Jones.” For one, there is zero evidence Davies obtained the rank of sergeant in the British Army. Two, Davies and his editors seem to disagree about the length of his military service. Finally, a three-year period of his private military career remains mysteriously unaccounted for, while his mid-career foray into a failed lawn-service business doesn't rate a mention.

Who is Dylan Davies?

The basic sketch of Davies’ biography checks out well enough. According to birth records, a Dylan Alun Davies was born in 1973 in Carmarthen, Wales. (In The Embassy House, the author mentions his place of birth and that his 39th birthday fell on April 5, 2012, approximately the same day jihadists detonated several bombs at the American consulate.) Furthermore, a spokeswoman for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence confirmed to Gawker that a man with the same name and birthday served in the British Army, but was unable to confirm, without Davies’ written consent, the details of his military service.

Those details are murky. “Sergeant Morgan Jones,” the books explains, enlisted at the age of 16 in the Royal Corps of Signals, a combat support arm of the British Army, and left in 2003. With tours in Kosovo, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and the Falkland Islands, the jacket copy says, “Jones” embarked on an illustrious career in the private military circuit, where he protected, among others, former Marine Corps Commandant James T. Conway.

Davies’ claim of a “sergeant” rank is not a flourish; on page 150, after sizing up a fellow contractor, he writes, “I figured Dave was maybe an ex-Army officer, but it turned out that he was, like me, a sergeant.”

Yet promotion and retirement records maintained by the Royal Corps of Signals’ official magazine, The Wire, do not indicate that a Sergeant Davies left the service in 2003.

The same records, however, do show that a “Corporal Dylan Davies” retired in or slightly after April 2003.

Dylan Davies speaks to Lara Logan on 60 Minutes

Now, there is a small chance that the “Corporal Dylan Davies” whose retirement was announced by The Wire in April 2003 is not the same Dylan Davies that wrote The Embassy House. Perhaps the actual author’s name was omitted by mistake and there happened to be another, unrelated Dylan Davies retiring at the same time at a lower rank. Or perhaps Sgt. Dylan Davies’ rank was mistranscribed by The Wire. It’s impossible to know for sure because The Wire’s retirement notices, while they appear to be comprehensive, are based on voluntary submissions from individual soldiers and units. And since the British Ministry of Defence does not officially publish the promotions of enlisted soldiers like Davies (as it does with officers), any attainment by Davies of the rank of sergeant would have gone officially unheralded.

(Every individual involved with the The Embassy House—including its editor, Mitchell Ivers; and Davies’ co-author, Damien Lewis—declined multiple requests for comment, as did the editorial staff of The Wire.)

That chance seems very small, though. The squadron from which Corporal Davies retired, a signals unit attached to the 101 Logistic Brigade, visited, like Dylan Davies, the Balkans and Kosovo on combat tours. Plus, there are just 48 other Dylan Davies in all of England and Wales who would have been old enough to retire from the British Army in 2003 as a Corporal, according to birth records. The possibility that another Dylan Davies retired from the same 100-soldier squadron in the same year is not impossible, but seems exceedingly remote.

For what it’s worth, 60 Minutes seems to have avoided the issue of Davies’ rank entirely. Whereas Simon & Schuster highlighted the rank of “Sergeant Morgan Jones” at every opportunity—it’s the topmost word on the cover, and adorns the top of every other page—60 Minutes referred to him only as “a former British soldier.”

It gets weirder from there. If Davies was born on 5 April 1973, and enlisted at age 16, then his service spans between 1989 and 2003 — which is 14 years. And on page 65 of his book, he tells a colleague in Benghazi, “I spent fourteen years in the British Army.” But promotional materials contradict this claim. “Sergeant Morgan Jones, writing under a pseudonym for security reasons, is a twelve-year veteran of British military operations,” states the author biography printed on the book’s jacket. “Morgan Jones is a British soldier who has served for twelve years,” says Simon & Schuster’s website. So either Davies is lying about his enlistment date, or Threshold Editions is lying about their own author.

(Update: An hour after this article was published, Simon & Schuster deleted Davies’ bio from its website. Here is an archived copy.)

Oddly, Davies’s post-Army career with private militaries is much more fleshed out in The Embassy House. But records show he didn’t tell the entire story there, either.

General James T. Conway

At several points in the book, Davies recounts leading a security detail as a private contractor in Afghanistan for the (now retired) commandant of the United States Marine Corps, General James T. Conway. “I looked after him in Afghan and took him around the place. We were his close protection squad in Helmand Province,” Davies says on page 65, adding that Conway was “a really nice guy.”

But when contacted by Gawker, Conway couldn’t verify Davies’ story. “[His] name is vaguely familiar but [I] cannot put a face with it,” he wrote in an email. “That is not to say his claim is not true.” Conway’s head security office at the time, Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent Ken Minnick, explained in a subsequent email that British forces supported Conway’s security team only when they visited Lashkar Gah (where Davies says he was stationed), not the entire Helmand Province. He didn’t recall Davies by name, either.

The only time I can remember in all our trips out that way where we were not supported by U.S. Forces was when we visited Lashkar Gah. I do specifically remember that we were supported by Brits at this location. I seem to remember that the guys that supported us were contractors and former UK SF types. I do not have a specific recollection of this particular individual.

Nobody at Threshold Editions—or 60 Minutes—contacted Conway to determine whether Davies’ claims checked out.

“You are the first person to contact me about any of this,” Conway told Gawker.

This is doubly notable because his book’s marketing apparatus—including, most of all, 60 Minutes—depended on Davies’ image as a dedicated, experienced, well-regarded security professional. “He’s been helping to keep U.S. diplomats and military leaders safe for the last decade,” is how Logan introduced him. His proximity to Conway earned a special mention in Davies’ jacket biography.

And the only independent records of Davies’ activities or whereabouts between Iraq and Benghazi show that Davies’ career was somewhat less valorous than he lets on.

291 Albany Road Cardiff Limited

After he got out of the Army in 2003, Davies says early in the book, he went to work for Blue Mountain Group, a military contractor, for an unspecified period of time. Later, on page 46, he writes that “back in 2007 and 2008 I’d run a twenty-man security team in Iraq” for the security contractor Erinys and that “in Afghanistan later I'd been security team leader for G4S Secure Solutions.” Throughout the book Davies describes these years as an unbroken decade of working for private militaries. (Both Erinys and G4S declined to comment.)

How much later is “later,” though? The periods between his Army retirement and 2007, and between 2007 and 2012, when Davies first began work in Benghazi, are both unaccounted for. And it doesn’t seem like Davies’ editor at Threshold Editions cared one way or the either.

On October 6, 2008, Davies—or a man sharing his exact name and birthday—filed a certificate of incorporation for a private property management company called 291 Albany Road Cardiff Limited, of which he named himself the director and sole shareholder. The company, domiciled in South Wales, would, among other things, “clean any paths, ways, sewers, drains, [and] service systems” of its clients, and “remove and replace any trees planted ... in the event of the same dying or being removed.”

The endeavor was not a success, though. A credit report indicates that it conducted no recordable bank transactions, and on May 18 of 2010 Davies dissolved the company, according to a notice filed with Britain’s Companies House.

Davies’ tour of duty as a gutter-cleaner seems to puncture the carefully-tended image image he and his handlers at Simon & Schuster put forth: That of a diligent, upright citizen-soldier committed to defending Western interests. Omitted is the reality that he appears to have tried to leave the private military circuit in favor of a quiet business close to home. Only after it fell though did he hit up Blue Mountain Group for some contract work, which is how he ended up in Benghazi, and how he secured a lucrative contract with Simon & Schuster. Given this context, prior reports that he asked Fox News for money make a bit more sense.

So does Davies’ explanation, in the book’s second chapter, of why he gravitates to Americans:

Having soldiered alongside most nationalities in the security business, I preferred the Americans even over my fellow Brits. I tend to get on with Americans fantastically. Generally, they are openhearted, genuine, warm, and trusting—especially where the British are concerned—and loyal to a fault.

Lara Logan, Max McClellan, and 60 Minutes executive producer Kevin Tedesco declined to comment. Sonya McNair, the executive director of communications at CBS News, declined to comment. Jennifer Robinson, the director of publicity at Threshold Editions at Simon & Schuster, declined to comment. Mitchell Ivers, Louise Burke, and Damian Lewis, respectively the editor, publisher, and co-author of The Embassy House, also declined to comment. Davies, who has gone into hiding, was not able to be reached.

To contact the author of this post, email trotter@gawker.com

Underemployed? Meet your archnemesis: Stand-up comic, dramatic actor, cartoon voice, author, internet scold and professional geek, Patton Oswalt.

Q1
PLAYBOY: "Princess of the United Kingdom" is how Kate Middleton listed her occupation on her son Prince George's birth certificate. What would you write down as your occupation, considering your numerous jobs, including playing a constable on Justified, delivering an epic Star Wars rant on Parks and Recreation, getting dramatic in Young Adult, writing books and voicing animated characters in Ratatouille and two Grand Theft Auto video games? Plus, there's your longtime career in stand-up comedy.

OSWALT: Kate Middleton should write down "princess," and I would write "princess" too, except what I do can't compare with all that boring stuff the royals are obligated to do. Honestly, I always say I'm a stand-up comedian who, through sheer luck, has been allowed to write books and be in some pretty great movies and some pretty amazing TV. Stand-up comedy is what brought me to the dance, and I will leave with the one who brung me.

Q2
PLAYBOY: In the new movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, you play an online-dating counselor to Ben Stiller's sad, meek title character, a guy who finds reality so unfulfilling that he fantasizes alternate identities and big adventures. When have you been at your Mitty-est?

OSWALT: When I was a little kid movies bled into my life, a lot like with Walter Mitty. I would create fake drama. I always had to be the wronged hero, the aggrieved party. I had affection for monsters and still do. Indulging my fantasies now, I would probably become a mystery man and get myself a weird non sequitur nickname like Patton "Busted Flush" Oswalt.

Q3
PLAYBOY: Busted Flush is the name of the houseboat owned by Travis McGee, John D. MacDonald's beach bum and righter-of-wrongs character. What fantasy world would Patton "Busted Flush" Oswalt inhabit?

OSWALT: It would be something from a book, and I'll stick with John D. MacDonald. I wouldn't want to be Travis McGee, but I'd want to be friends and hang around with him, living in the Fort Lauderdale of the early 1960s as described in those books, like The Deep Blue Good-by, Nightmare in Pink, Darker Than Amber. They're elegiac. They're tragic. They're about paradise, but a paradise blown.

Q4
PLAYBOY: You grew up with a father who was a colonel in the Marines, and your parents also named you after one of the most famous and controversial U.S. Army generals in history.

OSWALT: My dad was in the service for 20 years and did three pretty awful tours in Vietnam, where he got shot in the leg and watched a lot of people die. But when he was a little tipsy, he'd tell me and my brother, who's more of a jock, "You will never join the military or go to war. Over my dead body."

Q5
PLAYBOY: Did you deal with military-type strictness at home?

OSWALT: The only thing that annoyed my parents was when I got into my early OCD completist nerd shit and got upset and demanding about it. For example, I had to have every freaking Dungeons & Dragons thing, and I had to have all the books in the series. But they weren't like, "Don't be into this stuff." They said, "Be fascinated by it, but don't be into it like a schmuck. You don't have to own the complete set of everything." I was crazy.

Q6
PLAYBOY: Was that the worst of it? You were just an OCD type who collected too much stuff?

OSWALT: There was more. I got into the kind of trouble gotten into by kids who wanted to be rebels but were pussies. Freshman year of high school, I had the most days absent and the most days of detention that you could have before getting expelled. I'd skip school to watch a movie on TV or go see Rashomon or Wings of Desire.

Q7
PLAYBOY: That sounds like a nerd gone mildly wild. No drugs? No fights?

OSWALT: Sure.I would instigate fights, then get beat down. Once, I saw a bunch of big kids beat the shit out of my friend Steve. So I walked up to one of the biggest guys and slugged him in the stomach, and all the other boys just fell on me. I mean, how did I think that was going to end—that I would be like Steve Austin and floor him with a superpunch? It was a good thing I was really good at making people laugh.

Q8
PLAYBOY: What jobs did you have before you broke into stand-up comedy?

OSWALT: I was a sportswriter, and when I was that, I thought, Hey, do I really want to be a sportswriter? When I was a paralegal, I thought, Maybe I should be a lawyer. Then, in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, when I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, I started doing stand-up—just walked right in. Right away, it fit me. I thought, I want to be onstage; I want to be in this world where stuff is happening, not in an office somewhere getting jokes secondhand. I want to hang out with comedians.

Q9
PLAYBOY: You maintain a high, often hilarious, social-media profile. You posted a moving Facebook comment about the Boston Marathon bombing that went viral, but you were slammed when you defended Daniel Tosh for making a rape joke during a comedy-club set.

OSWALT: Daniel Tosh was trying to see if he could make rape funny. He was failing. You're allowed to do that at an open mike. This woman got angry and interrupted him before he could get to the point he was making. She was wrong for doing that. But he was wrong because he had been trying to kick upward at this terrible thing—rape—but then he kicked downward by saying about this drunk woman, "Wouldn't it be funny if she got raped by five guys?" You always have to consider who is the victim and what is the context. Sarah Silverman joked, "I was raped by a doctor, which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl," and she's come onstage to music saying, "Oh, I was raped to that song." Is she a misogynist? If you listened to only part of a Lenny Bruce bit, you'd say, "He's a racist." But if you had waited three more minutes, you would have seen he was horrified by racism and was finding new ways to make a run at the subject.

Q10
PLAYBOY: You tweeted your support of Tosh but then followed up with a lengthy essay on heckling, joke stealing and rape. Were you walking back your position?

OSWALT: I've always tried to maintain that when you see a comedian making a run at a subject, if they're failing, at least let him get to the end. During the lead-up to the Iraq war, I got booed off the stage when I was talking about George Bush and his motivations. People came at me, wanting to fight me. I'm like, "I'll talk with you about it, but you can't just yell things away that you don't like." That's what Fox News does.

Q11
PLAYBOY: Who is your most surprising Facebook or Twitter follower?

OSWALT: I talk on Twitter now with Uzo Aduba, who plays Crazy Eyes on Orange Is the New Black. I have, like, a terror crush on her. I'm such a champion of the show, it's like I'm a junkie and they put a bag of heroin in front of me and said, "This will have to do until next season." And I'm like, "Fuck it, I'm probably gonna do all of it tonight."

Q12
PLAYBOY: You and writer Michelle Eileen McNamara have been married since 2005 and you have a four-year-old daughter. How do you deal with female groupies online and in person?

OSWALT: That doesn't happen all that much. My rule is, if someone makes themselves sexually available, especially over the internet, there's something kind of wrong, damaged or sad about that person. It would almost be like taking advantage of somebody who needs help. But I have to admit, I have a weird sense of awe for people like John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods, who have kids and still have the energy to go fuck other people. I have one daughter, and if a woman comes up to me after a show and says, "Hey, we should go back to your hotel room," I'm like, "Yeah, we should. And you're gonna sit outside and make sure no one wakes me up for 12 hours!" When I'm on the road, the only thing I lie to my wife about is what time I get up. I know she's getting up early with our daughter, so I'll go, "Yeah, I snapped awake at 6:30 a.m.," but really I slept till 10. Basically, I'm having an affair with sleeping late.

Q13
PLAYBOY: That's really the only thing you'd lie to your wife about while you're on the road? What about, say, masturbation?

OSWALT: Masturbation is a preventive measure against mass murder. If suddenly tomorrow we couldn't masturbate, the whole planet would be stabbing each other to death. Part of the new wedding vows should be "And you have free rein to think about whatever you want when you jerk off. There's your playground. Go."

Q14
PLAYBOY: As professional as you are, what's your method for dealing with bodily functions on the job? What would you have done if you'd gotten hot and bothered while filming intimate scenes with Charlize Theron in Young Adult?Or if you burped or farted while doing stand-up in front of a live audience?

OSWALT: Charlize Theron is a great-looking woman and a very cool person, but in my mind, even thinking about anything other than the job we had to do just seemed rude. Also, when I was doing that movie, I was a new dad. I didn't think I'd be into fatherhood as much as I was, and I was becoming a different person. But if you burp or fart or something during stand-up, you just go with it and make it part of what you're talking about.

Q15
PLAYBOY: You make everyone's short list of the top contemporary comedians. Would you put yourself on such a list?

OSWALT: The best stand-ups working right now, in no particular order, are Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle still, Bill Burr and, just to fuck people up, I'll mention some guys not enough people know about yet, and that would be a tie between Kyle Kinane and Hannibal Buress. They'll be huge.

Q16
PLAYBOY: You once said, "I get jealous when certain people get really big." Were you talking about the talented ones, the untalented ones or both?

OSWALT: That part of the quote was a setup to the other part of that quote, which mentioned Louis C.K.—the kind of talent who ups the bar for everybody else. That actually benefits comedians. There's competition, absolutely, but I try to concentrate on the aspect of, "Oh good, that person's success is going to be great for comedy in general."

Q17
PLAYBOY: Do you ever secretly hope your biggest acting competitors will get tied up on a long-running TV series or go off and do a Broadway play?

OSWALT: I'd like to think I'm competing as a third or fourth choice with Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti. Philip Seymour Hoffman is like the Muhammad Ali of actors, and yeah, he goes off and does Broadway, but TV is as good as, if not better than, movies right now. That's where the real plum roles are. I'd love for him or Paul Giamatti to walk away from TV, because if they committed to a show, it would be some amazing thing with an amazing director, a show that I'd want to be on, not It's Philip!Fridays on CBS. Give me TV at least, you guys.

Q18
PLAYBOY: With all the stuff you've done, there's a whole cohort of people who best know you as the voice of the lead character Remy in the animated movie Ratatouille. What reactions do you get from fans of that hit?

OSWALT: They'll want me to do something in character, but Remy doesn't sound like Shrek, where it's like, "Oh, I'll just do my Scottish accent for them." They ask, "Can you say, 'Don't just hork it down!' in that voice?" I'm like, "Well, I'm talking to you like Remy right now. I didn't do a voice in the movie." And they're like, "Oh." I always feel I'm disappointing them.

Q19
PLAYBOY: You're a major sci-fi and fantasy geek. What's your favorite experience at Comic-Con, the massive yearly convention for fantasy and sci-fi fans?

OSWALT: Years before Comic-Con became crazy, I saw this guy walking around in an amazing Klingon costume he'd made—costume, makeup, everything. I told him, "Wow, I'm stunned. What do you do for a living?" He told me he was an actuarial accountant and was explaining his life to me, and I said, "You should do costumes in films and TV." He looked at me and said, "But then I wouldn't have time to watch the shows I watch." It was almost as if he didn't want to watch the magic being made; he wanted it to impact him. It was his fantasy world that he didn't want messed with. That's another Walter Mitty.

Q20
PLAYBOY: Salon.com has a history of going after you on any number of topics. In response, you've tweeted, among other zingers, "Salon.com: The Fox News of Beta Male Humorlessness."

OSWALT: With all my battles with Salon and my hate for Fox News, I'm just realizing now that whether it's heads at Fox News exploding, Al Sharpton's head exploding or heads at Salon exploding, they're exploding for a tiny sliver of the population. They actually don't count. That's the show they put on. That's their job. At this point, they have different ideologies but are in the same business: "We don't care. Anything to get eyes on us." The rational discussions are going on in other places, by people who are really looking at the issues.

This article originally appeared in the January/February issue of Playboy. Read more from our complete archives on iPlayboy.com.

Photo by Gavin Bond

Last night on UK television aired a documentary called Secrets of the Living Dolls, about men who dress up in rubber suits and masks, giving them the appearance of walking sex dolls. "Maskers" mask for a variety of reasons that were mentioned but not exactly explored on this freak-show doc: to be the women that they can't get, to get attention, perhaps sexual reasons. None in the documentary owned up to this last reason, but one of the members of the family that makes of FemSkin body suits, which seems to be the sole supplier of rubber body suits to these guys, told a group of maskers at a convention, "I don't know what you guys shove up those vaginas, but they can't take it, I'm tellin' ya."

Whatever they do, I'm sure it's interesting. Highlight reel is above.

Email. We love it, until it burns us. Like when you think you're sending instructions to a coworker on how to whittle down a pesky reporter's request for federal records related to the Washington Navy Yard shooting, and you realize too late that you emailed them to the reporter himself.

Robin Patterson, the Navy's public liaison, oversees the sea service's responses to Freedom of Information Act requests from reporters and private citizens seeking Navy records and data. But part of an email leaked today on social media suggests Patterson took one reporter's request and tried mightily to avoid gathering and releasing much of the info that journalist sought. And Patterson accidentally sent those notes to Scott MacFarlane, the investigative reporter for NBC 4-TV in Washington who made the request.

The subject line of Patterson's email suggests it's "non-9_16_13 specific," and part of the request seeks imagery from "Building 197." September 6, 2013, is the date of the Washington Navy Yard shooting that left 13 of the service's employees and contractors dead; Building 197 is the Navy Yard structure where the massacre took place.

"This request is too broad to tie to the specific event," Patterson wrote in one section, apparently about a request for photographic records of the interior of Building 197. "Josh can help with crafting the language for 'fishing expedition,' or request to [sic] broad." Federal public affairs officers often decline to fulfill broad requests or nonspecific "fishing expeditions" for information, which reporters often need in order to sharpen their requests and investigative areas of focus—a classic reporting Catch-22.

Elsewhere, Patterson appears cool toward the reporter's request for memos:

Recommend that you provide the requester with an estimate, as I can see the search and review, possible redactions, will be very costly. This may encourage the requester to 'narrow the scope.' Again another 'fishing expedition'—just because they are media doesn't mean that the memos would shed light on specific government activities.

Releasers often quote FOIA requesters high costs for the collection and distribution of information in a way that seems designed less to defray taxpayer expenses and more to dissuade requesters from obtaining the records they want in the first place.

On a final request, apparently for emails, Patterson wrote, "this one is specific enough that we may be able to deny." That's another dilemma for reporters, whose requests for records can be denied for being too narrow as well as too broad.

MacFarlane first reported the email on Twitter earlier today. Understandably, he declined to share additional details with Gawker about the email until he files his own story.

The Navy's Public Affairs Office told Gawker in an email that it "is not authorized to make any statement on the veracity of alleged [Navy] products which have not been disclosed through official channels." Patterson (who is a woman, contrary to Reason magazine's report on the email) did not respond to an emailed request for comment in time for publication.

Gawker tried several times to call her office line, but it was busy. Awfully busy.

Television's most delightful occult/weird-crime/Tibetan Book of the Dead soap opera was Twin Peaks, first broadcast on ABC in 1990 and 1991. It was a magical era before all the characters stared at smart phones and websites all the time, because such things didn't exist. And now David Lynch is looking for a "HOT caucasian girl," among other Los Angeles actors, for a semi-mysterious Twin Peaks project.

And we must add an UPDATE, because this story is now being called a rumor—not by Lynch, but by Twin Peaks' co-creator Mark Frost. But here's the casting call, regarding a shoot that is supposedly happening today:

TWIN PEAKS PROMO. Directed by David Lynch. Shoots in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 7, 2014. Prob a 6 hour or less day. Rate is 150/8. You must live in LA to submit. I don't think SAG has jurisdiction on this, so SAG and NON can submit. I have called SAG to double check this and I am awaiting a call back to confirm this though. HOT Caucasian girl – BRUNETTE OR REDHEADS ONLY to play waitress. Age 18-27. MUST have an amazing body. Busty, very period looking face. Please submit two current color photos (one body shot, one face shot), your sizes, union status and contact info to: SandeAlessiCasting@gmail.com. Subject line should read: TP Promo

"Busty." "Amazing body." "Age 18-27." "Very period-looking face." This does sound like a David Lynch female character, even if it's weird to see his 1950s pinup fixation now described as being of the Early Grunge era.

It's just a six-hour shoot, so it is probably just a promo or DVD extra thing, although it would be a good time to bring back the strange misty world of Twin Peaks in 2014, exactly 25 years since the time of the original story, which took place in 1989. (There were rumors of a new ABC version of Twin Peaks, three years ago.)

The project is supposedly a promotional film for (yet another) Twin Peaks DVD set. The "gold box" set from a couple of years ago is just fine and fairly comprehensive, so what would make anyone buy another set? New footage by David Lynch, that's what!

Here is that theme song, which you will appreciate listening to once again, right now, because it will make the rest of your day beautiful and strange:

Here you will see a video showing several Seabrook, NH police officers slamming a prisoner in their custody into a wall and pepper spraying him for no apparent reason.

The video is surveillance camera footage from 2009, but it as just uploaded to Youtube this week. Now, three officers have been placed on leave pending an investigation. I guess the lesson here is, "If a cop fucks you up for no good reason in view of a surveillance camera, always, always, always make an effort to get the video of the incident."

Also, another lesson would be "It sure is easy to stand around looking like a smug prick when the guy you're beating up is half your size and outnumbered 3-1."

The Metropolitan Opera, founded in 1883, opened its Lincoln Center theater in 1966 and since then has become known as one of the most beautiful places to find old people in.

The theater seats 3,800 (old) patrons on six levels, a family of crystal chandeliers gifted to the Met by the Austrian government hang from the ceilings, two walls are covered in huge Chagall murals (that were signed over to JP Morgan as a collateral for a long term loan), and there are more elevators in the place than the AARP's headquarters.

Regular tickets are expensive, but two hours before each show, the theater releases rush tickets that run $20-$25. Whether you are an opera aficionado or not, if you get a chance to visit The Met, go, at the very least you will spend the night feeling young.

Americans love myths. We love ghost stories and the "American Dream" and "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps," and we especially love the idea of Bigfoot. This is the only reason why the same backwoods drifter can claim he found two different Bigfoot monsters and make the news for each of them.

This guy, Rick Dyer, claimed back in 2008 that he found a dead Bigfoot in Georgia. After a press conference, the frozen Sasquatch corpse turned out to be a rubber ape costume. Six years later, the same Rick Dyer claims he somehow killed another of the mythical beasts, this time in Texas. Of course he's got a "documentary" to market, and plans to tour North America with his latest scam.

Some people take this stuff for what it is, just some good ol' boy hucksters using folk tales to separate the gullible from their money.

But too many people actually believe in Bigfoot, and they're the same idiots who couldn't identify a bobcat crossing the road or a possum in their backyard, because these people are completely divorced from the natural world around them. They're the same kind of morons who think a cold winter storm magically cancels decades of record-breaking high temperatures and endless fire seasons and brutal mega-droughts. Every airplane is a UFO to these cretins educated by cable TV, every smudge on a window is Jesus, every rat in the rafters is a scary ghost.

Mass idiocy is never harmless, and when you add the other main American ingredient of "lots of guns," the Bigfoot stories tend to become regular human crime scenes, with one jackass shooting another jackass in the back, because they both heard a "barking sound," in Oklahoma, and naturally assumed it was Bigfoot, an elusive forest creature who obviously needed to be shot dead.

Meanwhile, the kind of American wilderness required by big animals continues to vanish, eaten up by distant suburbs and fracking rigs, dried up by drought and dams, paved over for outlet malls, or logged by the Koch Brothers' land-rape operations to make Brawny paper towels and Dixie paper plates.

Wise people like Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and John Muir and the Buffalo Soldiers protected important chunks of America's mountains and forests and rivers, and hard-working park rangers and biologists and those college kids collecting signatures for the environmental groups continue fighting for wildlife and wilderness.

Thanks to all of them, there are still places where it's still possible to see something far more magnificent than a redneck in a Walmart wookiee costume. There are wolves and elk and bald eagles and even 10-foot-tall grizzly bears who still stomp through a few forests of the Western United States.

Ken Layne writes Gawker's American Almanac and American Journal. Top art by Jim Cooke. Grizzly photo via Shutterstock.

The Boston Globe has poached America's preeminent Vatican correspondent, John Allen, from the National Catholic Reporter, because of the "resurgence of global interest in the Catholic Church." Everyone loves to read about Pope Francis!

(Image by Chris West)