Welcome to Tuesday! Tonight we've got little liars and big ones, people getting famous for no reason, and couple of beloved Comedy Central series returning for their second seasons.

At 8/7c., the America's Got Talent auditions continue on NBC. CW's got a new episode of horror docudrama Famous In 12, and there's an all-new episode in what's proving so far to be the best season yet of Pretty Little Liars, on ABC Family.

At 9/8c., there's new Abby's Studio Rescue ("Abby Meets Her Match") and DeGrassi, on TLC and Teen Nick respectively; the Janice Dickinson saga continues on E!'s weirdly enjoyable Botched, and of course Real Housewives Of New York City continues to astound and amaze on Bravo, before a new People's Couch.

At 10/9c. you've got the exciting premieres of the excellent Drunk History and Nathan For You on Comedy Central, and a very special Celebrity Wife Swap on ABC featuring the households of—get this—lesbian comedian Judy Gold and professional pervert/irritant Penn Gillette. I mean, I'm going to have to watch that.

What do you think? Do you like Judy Gold? She used to do this bit about having her own TV show where she would ride down a spit curl that I still wake up singing about sometimes. Mostly I'm looking forward to PLL, because it is magnificent, and RHONY, because they are back to being the Bravo flagship and it's very satisfying to sit and wonder why. And also simply to be full of wonder.

[Image via Comedy Central]

Contrary to previous reports, Shia LaBeouf is not in rehab, his publicist announced today. He is, as the Associated Press is reporting it, "receiving voluntary treatment for alcohol addiction."

According to TMZ, which first reported the news, LeBeouf has checked himself into a rehab facility, despite X17 Online's report yesterday wherein they followed him to "a celebrity-frequented treatment facility in Hollywood." From TMZ:

Shia's rep tells us ... reports that he entered a rehab facility are bogus. She says his bizarre conduct over the last few months is symptomatic of a larger health issue — alcohol addiction — and he understands it.

It sounds like Shia is in a 12-step program. The rep says "he has taken the first of many necessary steps toward recovery."

[Image via Getty]

Melissa McCarthy's titular Tammy character is dumb and fat. We watch her suffer various indignities related to these conditions for just about the entire running time of Tammy. The movie starts out brutally: We open on Tammy driving a car that's at least 20 years old, blasting the Outfield's "Your Love" from a boombox on the passenger seat. There is trash strewn about in the backseat. She hits a deer, which survives but leaves her car now shitty and smoking. She arrives to her job at a fast food restaurant filthy and gets fired for looking disgusting. On her way out, she pockets cheeseburgers for "overtime due." She arrives home early to find her husband Greg (Nat Faxon) cheating on her with a thinner woman (played by a mute Toni Collette). She decides to leave him, but her suitcase breaks on her way out of the house. So she carries her balled up clothes to her parents' house, where her mother (Allison Janney) mentions that this sort of crisis is something that happens a lot to Tammy. Also during this conversation, it is revealed that Tammy doesn't know the definitions of "pattern" (she thinks things in patterns only come in twos) and "galaxy" (which she thinks is a repeating series of events—a pattern).

This character is humiliated relentlessly, and she's aware of it less than half of the time. "Guys are drawn to me like flies to shit," she brags to her grandmother Pearl (Susan Sarandon with a shock of curly gray granny hair). It's the kind of line that would set off outrage alarms had McCarthy not had a hand in its creation—she co-wrote Tammy with her husband Ben Falcone, who also directed the film. A whole scene passes before it dawns on Tammy why Pearl suggests "bees to honey" as a replacement metaphor. "Because that would make me..." says Tammy, leaving the smell of shit in the air.

Tammy and Pearl flee their miserable lives on a road trip, despite their open contempt for each other. Tammy's stupidity ensures at least a modicum of continued misery at all times. Her lack of intelligence and her size do the bulk of her characterizing, but there are flashes of nuance there. Tammy has an interior life that generally isn't suggested by comedies this broad. At one point, Pearl asks Tammy why she drew a smile on the paper bag that she made into a mask to return the money she recently robbed from a fast food joint (not the one she worked at, although like her departure from that place, she makes sure she doesn't leave without some food). "I'm not smiling, I'm showing tiger teeth," she says. I'd never heard the phrase "showing tiger teeth," but I get it. What's funny is that it's clearly some go-to imagery in Tammy's life.

Similarly, she describes her irresistibility to her love interest Bobby (Mark Duplass) like this: "I'm kinda like a Cheeto. You can't eat just one." He corrects her: "That's Lays potato chips." "No," she counters. "It's Cheetos for me. I love Cheetos."

The line I laughed at the hardest was Tammy's retort to Pearl's revelation that she had an affair with Duane Allman: "Y'know, one time I got fingered by Boz Skaggs."

Tammy makes us cringe a lot, and maybe simultaneously laugh if we're all lucky, whether she is fretting over the roll of donuts she ordered that's lodged in the snack machine, receiving backhanded compliments (Bobby tells her, "My life's boring and you're a very not boring person"), or describing further abuse that played out off screen ("I'm probably gonna need a tetanus shot because I got nipped by a raccoon last night!" she says of her night in sexile, sleeping on the doorstep of the motel room she shares with her grandmother). But she doesn't cringe herself until Pearl, a drunk pill-popper, says to her face in front of a crowd, "I don't need some fat loser telling me what to do." That statement ultimately knocks the wind out of Tammy, who finally understands what the movie has been saying about her all along.

Melissa McCarthy has talked candidly about her sensitivity to comments regarding her weight. She said critic Rex Reed's comments about her size in his Identity Theft review "might have crushed" her had she read them when she was younger. She took exception to being described as "America's plus-size sweetheart." And in a recent Rolling Stone cover story, she discusses how something as insignificant as an IMDb message board post that bummed her out:

What one post said was, "I hate that fat pig, and I hope she drops dead of a heart attack in front of her children." It was like from someplace in Ohio, at 3:43 a.m., and when I read it, all the air left my lungs. Like wait a minute. My kids? Like who—? What kind of a—? I kind of wanted to go to Ohio and just be like, "Hey, I have two girls, I do my best, and you hope I die in front of them? Like, what the fuck?"

She also told Rolling Stone that she'd "kill, absolutely kill" to look like she did in high school, when she was a size 6.

So it's tempting to psychologize this project that McCarthy helped create. Is she getting to the fat jokes before we do, or at least showing that she can write better ones than her detractors? Is it meta-commentary on how stupid those jokes really are? Is Tammy self-hatred? I don't know, and the more I think about it the less I care. Maybe the proper course of action is not to think too much, and just let a broad comedy be a broad comedy.

But I do know that Tammy challenges you with a ridiculous, laughable protagonist who's the type of person that pop culture generally tells us to avert our eyes from. That Tammy's companion is from the also ignored demographic of elderly women is no coincidence either. You're supposed to root for Tammy when you aren't laughing at her (and maybe even when you are, since her buffoonery does the service of of providing you with entertainment), otherwise she wouldn't get her happy Hollywood ending that feels inevitable only in retrospect. Maybe that's too mixed a message for some, but Tammy makes you regard Tammy for both who and what, and in doing so, it made her feel uncommonly real to me. Sometimes you laugh at people that you like, and sometimes you like people because they make you laugh, and sometimes those distinctions are even less clear while you enjoy a person all the same.

Welcome back to Midweek Madness, in which Callie Beusman assists as we quaff goblets of gossip. This week: There's beef between K. Middy and HRH Liz; George Clooney is one step closer to an "I'll Raise This Baby Alone" cover; and the dreaded "Best and Worst Beach Bodies" issue is fucking awful.

Us

RISKING IT ALL FOR LOVE

Just 26 days after getting engaged, Bachelorette Andi Dorfman quit her dream job as an assistant district attorney. Five pages here about how Andi chose "the one," and even though the internet already knows which dude she chose, the mag tries not to print any spoilers. However: You will find a couple of old pictures of Andi, before she had her nose job (Fig. 1). Also inside: John Mayer has been telling friends he wants to pitch a reality show called My Funny Friend, in which people nominate their friends who are funny? Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are selling their $11 million mansion that is not finished and in which they have never lived, because they are over it. There's also a two-page story about Kendra Wilkinson's marriage imploding, but in a word: Zzzz.

GRADE: D (drinking a glass of orange juice mixed with chocolate milk)

Star

BEST AND WORST BEACH BODIES

Like clockwork, a long summer weekend means flipping through pages and pages of cruel statements about famous people's bodies. While Lupita Nyong'o, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian, Maria Menounos, Charlize Theron and more are labeled "best bods," there's a section titled "Biggest Body Blunders." While it's no surprise that the mag picks on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo's Mama June, it is really weird that Britney Spears, Lea Michele and Katie Holmes are included — for daring to have rippled bellies when they bend over. Why call this out? That's how the human body works. Unnecessary. Mean. Pointless. The worst copy is reserved for a man: Chumlee, from Pawn Stars, who has lost more than 100 pounds — not an easy feat — yet is criticized as having "the physique of a deflated beach ball." (Fig. 2) Infuriating. Also inside: Jada Pinkett-Smith and banned Kendall Jenner from her home; even though Kendall is friends with Jaden Smith, sources say Kendall is rude to the housekeeper, and Jada doesn't tolerate that shit. Something weird is going on with Jason Segel; he hasn't been returning calls or texts and friends are worried he might be drinking again — he was in AA last year. Lindsay Lohan tried to get Rafferty Law — son of Jude Law and a model — to give her his digits, but he was all, no thanks, I'm good. Jennifer Lopez is looking for a new dude, since she "can't stay single for long" and "has jumped from one relationship to another since she was 15." Eliza Dushku and Rick Fox have broken up after five years of dating, which is news because you probably forgot they were together. Khloe Kardashian has been betrayed by French Montana (again? for the third time? hard to keep track) and the mag calls the woman he hit on "French's Folly." Snicker. Finally, the editors dug up arrest records for two of the dudes on The Bachelorette: sports medicine dude Marcus was busted for possession of controlled substances (a tranquilizer and hydrocodone) and farmer Chris has three citations of underage drinking and one OWI (operating a vehicle while under the influence). The vehicle was not a tractor.

GRADE: F (drinking a gallon of sewage-contaminated seawater)

Life & Style

TORMENTED BY THE QUEEN

Kate Middleton is apparently being tormented by Queen Elizabeth, a very formidable tormenter indeed. Here are the subjects of their beef, which has turned into "an all-out war": Kate moved to the countryside with Prince George; the Queen thinks Kate is overspending on her mansion but also "acts like a commoner"; Kate is made to bow to other royals who, like, didn't even give birth to the heir to the throne; Queen Elizabeth thinks Kate dresses in skimpy clothing. I think this article is a Downton Abbey fanfic with the names changed. In other news, Beyoncé and Jay Z's tour is doubling as a six-week relationship boot camp; it's pretty ambitious to multi-task a stadium tour, but if anyone can do it, Bey can. A source says she is "hoping to recapture the magic" by taking Jay to "the best restaurants and hotels" as well as "parks and zoos with Blue." No place is as magical as a zoo. Moving on, Justin Bieber proposed to Selena Gomez, which we know for sure because a source said they were "pretty affectionate" on a date at the movies and they held hands at the zoo. Zoos: where love comes to blossom, apparently. Next: Kim and Kanye spent $2 million on Baby Nori this year. She has $45,000 earrings, and her birthday party was a recreation of Coachella. Meanwhile, she probably just wants to play with the vacuum cleaner. Elsewhere in the mag, Life & Style has managed to write the most transphobic article we've seen so far, about Kendra Williams' husband cheating on her with a transgender escort. Some particularly horrifying snippets: "The former NFL star allegedly paid $500 for a tryst with Ava Sabrina London, a 27-year-old with centerfold-grade implants [and] male genitalia," and a source says, "She doesn't doubt that there are other women, trannies, even men." Yep. The magazine casually printed a transphobic slur. Gross gross gross.

GRADE: F- (sipping hemlock tea from a lovely old arsenic-laced cup)

OK!

WEDDING & A BABY!

George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin have been engaged for a bit now, so it's high time tabloids get around to making up that she's pregnant. And made up that she's pregnant they have: their evidence of her pregnancy is that her family and George's family met and that she allegedly blushed after a friend asked her about "a little bump around her stomach." Uh, you don't have to be pregnant to blush when your friend goes, "WHY IS YOUR STOMACH PROTRUDING LIKE THAT?" Anyway, the most newsworthy part of this little story is that Amal was referred to as "the ravishing Lebanon-born brunette who finally slayed the bachelor dragon." In other news, Taylor Swift is suffering from writer's block because she is too contented making cookies, knitting and playing with her cats. Her friends joke that she needs "some new boy drama to get her back on track." Her rep says, "There is no block." Hopefully this means she's writing songs about kittens? Elsewhere in the mag, J. Lo is ready for love following her breakup with Casper Smart. So far, she has been spotted "getting cozy" (to put it in tabloid parlance) with Maksim Chmerkovskiy from Dancing With the Stars and T.I. As evidence of her ready-for-love-ness, OK! has helpfully made a diagram showing us that this J. Lo is the "HOTTEST J. LO EVER" (Fig. 3). Ooooookay.

GRADE: D- (chugging a pint of toilet water)

In Touch

FORCED INTO REHAB

Portia de Rossi secretly checked into rehab in May, says a totally unverified report. The editors then go on to trot out their fav Ellen-Portia rumors — Ellen is domineering, Portia feels "like a prisoner in her own home," etc. etc. — as explanation for Portia "hitting rock bottom." There's happy ending to this probably fabricated story, though: insiders say that they've begun to find happiness again and that their marriage is on the mend. Hooray. Moving on: Tori Spelling changed her Twitter handle from @torianddean to @tori_spelling, which is more legally binding than divorcing someone several times over. In other news, Scott Disick cheated on Kourtney, who is pregnant, with 3 women in 3 weeks, say Hamptons-dwellers. In one case, he offered his waitress money to suck her toes and then sucked her toes but did not pay. In another, he made out with a "pretty 21-year-old" at da club. Bad news. A sidebar reveals that Khloe Kardashian's boyfriend French Montana made her "look like a fool" by trying to have sex with another woman in his tour bus. They glaze over the fact that the woman says, "He climbed on top of me and wouldn't get off. I had to say 'stop' a few times. He tried to force himself on me." (She says she exited the bus safely, fortunately.) UM. That sounds like an attempted sexual assault if it's true? Not just "FRENCH: CAUGHT ON HIS TOUR BUS" cheating. Wow. Elsewhere in the magazine, Justin Theroux and Jennifer Aniston had a "bizarre" reunion in New York City because they weren't beaming ecstatically for the entire duration of their time together. The best part of this article is that, in passing, it casually mentions Jennifer as "his pregnant fiancee." InTouch, you sly dogs.

GRADE: F (guzzling a tubful of post-pedicure water)

Addendum

Fig. 1, from Us

Fig. 2, from Star

Fig. 3, from Ok!

As we've been reporting on all these GM recalls, we realized that how difficult it is to really picture the sheer volume of what's going on. So far, there hasn't really been one good comprehensive place to see all the recalls at once, to get a feel of just how massive this whole thing is and explain what is recalled and why. Here it is.

So, here's the result: the largest infographic we've ever made here at Jalopnik, a nice 12,000+ pixels tall. If each pixel was a cheeseburger, and you stacked all those cheeseburgers on top of one another, well, you'd have one hell of a stack of cheeseburgers.

The chart shows the recall reason, the make/model/years of the cars affected, and the total number of cars, both US and the total GM North American totals. There's also a circle that roughly corresponds to the volume of cars, so you can see at a glance what affected the most vehicles.

The recalls are dated and in chronological order, so most recent is at the bottom. There's also two little visual easter eggs hidden in there!

So, here you go. Give it a look over, maybe find if your car is on there, and see if you can find the Isuzu and Saabs caught up in this mess!

If you think your car has been recalled, you can search for your VIN number to confirm it by clicking this link. You should also get a recall notice in the mail, even if you are not the original owner of the car. Those are done by vehicle registration numbers. If your car was recalled, contact a dealer to get it serviced.

Click here for a really, really big version or click "expand" in the corner to see it all.

Update: Since you asked for it, here is a searchable spreadsheet of all the recalls so far. We worked off of this when we did the chart.

(Damon and Patrick helped with a crapload of research!)

Yesterday, prominent Yahoo! employee David Karp told his team at Tumblr that Derek Gottfrid, an exalted VP, was just fired. Soon after, an early Tumblr backer and noted New York tech-loon shared his very, very frank thoughts.

Karp, with typical David-Karp-whole-grain-bread style, said only that "I've made the decision that it's time for Derek to move on from Tumblr." That's boring! What's not boring is Jakob "Jake" Lodwick, who angel invested in Tumblr far before dreams of a billion dollar buyout and is known for bouts of intense personal honesty that closely resemble breakdowns. Although he deleted the tweet shortly after posting it, we can only assume it's another such moment—I've heard nothing but people corroborating Lodwick's strong feelings on Gottfrid. Plus, it offers some insider color on why Gottfrid—who for a time was so central to Tumblr's functioning that he was known as its "shadow CEO"—got the boot.

Anonymous gossips on Secret are echoing the sentiment, with one (presumable) Tumblr employee saying "Pretty much everyone at HQ wanted to favorite that tweet, but felt it possibly in poor taste to do so." A source familiar with Tumblr's insides described Lodwick's tweet as "a misguided mix of the urge to defend his friends who had odds with Derek, and the comfortable, disdainful view of money of someone who got very rich, very young." This source added, "if Tumblr magically improves, Derek is the problem. If it doesn't, it will be obvious he wasn't. If you want my opinion, Tumblr is not going to magically improve."

A fun game when you're watching last night's season two premiere of Funny or Die's Drunk History is to pretend the reenacted accounts of racial struggle and civil rights are clips of prestige biopics from an alternate universe where everyone is perpetually hammered. Also in this universe Lee Daniels directs everything. It's hands-down the better universe.

This segment, where Allan McLeod describes Percy Julian's overcoming prejudice to accidentally discover a way efficient way of making steroids (while generally being a bomb-ass chemist who gets real laid on his semester abroad), is a choice (re-) introduction to the show. That's thanks in large part to the ever more evident acting chops of Jordan Peele, who flings himself around like a muppet operating a human being.

McLeod's got this great twangy sandy voice, and Peele always seems both shocked and delighted to find it coming out of his half-cocked mouth as he shoots off hydrodrons, oxydrons, and carbatrons left and right. It's a beautiful synthesis, and it does right by Julian's story's, which is equal parts badass and quintessentially American, with a chaser of horse piss.

Funny as it is, there's this awesome warmth infused through Drunk History that I think ultimately sells it. Undergirding the whole show is a reminder of the intimate, exuberant pleasure of getting together one-on-one with an old friend and a bottle of liquor just to get smashed and giggly in the comfort of their home; it's the closest we get in our waking lives to how good bed feels (though I've always assumed that's maybe what heroin feels like?).

If anything, Drunk History's a great reminder of drinking at its best, how it taps us into the absurdity of ourselves and everything else as we stumble and embellish our way through great stories, shocked and delighted at what's spilling out of our mouths. Until, you know, gut gunk comes spilling out too. But hey, you can't get soybean steroids without handling a bunch of horse dicks.

[Images and videos via Comedy Central]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow us at @GawkerMA and read more here.

Well, hiring a Japanese T&A anime guru didn't fix Rick Santorum's movie studio, but maybe this film will give it a shot in the arm. One Generation Away: The Erosion Of Religious Liberty. Coming to a concerned grandmother's VHS near you on September 1!

[h/t Daily Intel]

Intense thunderstorms are bubbling up along much of the East Coast this afternoon, some of which are turning severe. The worst of the storms are occurring eastern New York right now, and they may threaten New York City by rush hour.

The biggest threats with today's storms include damaging winds up to 70 MPH, hail up to the size of ping pong balls, and possibly a tornado or two, especially around the Hudson Valley (though that threat is diminishing).

Numerous severe thunderstorms are already ongoing from northeastern Pennsylvania to western Massachusetts, with multiple reports of wind damage, large hail, and even some flash flooding coming in.

The storms are forming into a line and moving towards the I-95 corridor, prompting the issuance of a severe thunderstorm watch from western Maine down through Delaware, including the New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia metro areas.

More storms are firing up in the Washington D.C. area, with storms firing up along an outflow boundary (gust front) heading east through Montgomery, Fairfax, and Prince William Counties.

Severe thunderstorms are expected again tomorrow over roughly the same areas, forming along the cold front responsible for sending Arthur away from the coast after hitting North Carolina.

[Images via SimuAWIPS and Gibson Ridge]

Facebook employees love their boyish boss. Glassdoor ranked Mark Zuckerberg the most liked CEO last spring, with 99% of Facebookers approving of his leadership. But with relatively low consumer approval ratings, a diversity of opinions on campus might make business better.

One person wondered aloud on Quora why Zuckerberg's rating was so high, suggesting lower marks could "be a good thing." An employee took off, oozing levels of affection for their boss that is typically reserved for the likes of Jim Jones.

"Because he is just that awesome," began the love letter disguised as a response.

When we hear him speak, he gives us brain wrinkles. He has this uncanny ability to make all the right strategic moves, and when he explains the reasons for making those moves, it simply makes sense. Sure, mistakes have been made, and hindsight is 20/20, but at decision time, it was for all the right reasons.

Brain wrinkles? Do employees also stare longingly out the window, waiting for him to drive into the office parking lot in the morning? Do they gasp as his mouth opens? Do tears stream down employees' cheeks when they hear one of his many apologies?

What other CEO has the... guts... to purchase a chat company for $19B??? It's a very smart purchase for various reasons, but still, $19B! Even other Silicon Valley CEOs acknowledge Zuck's fearlessness.

"Guts" could be one way to describe Facebook's $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp. Insanity could be another.

He was the biggest donor of 2013, and is generally a minimalist. He is clearly committed to Internet.org, even though that's not necessarily where the short term revenue increases are. We really feel he wants to change the world for the better.

This adoration is becoming unmistakable from the dystopian hero worship of the fictional Eamon Bailey described in Dave Egger's The Circle. The brain wrinkles when he speaks. The unwavering faith that it's For The Greater Good. And there's the constant use of "we"—an implication that the author believes all staffers adore Zuckerberg as one giant throbbing heart.

He wears T-Shirts and jeans, talks with humility, and he just seems generally very approachable. We like that.

Is there anything this dude doesn't love about Zuckerberg? Are employees seriously gathering around the cafeteria to discuss their bosses' wardrobe in hushed tones? Approachability is good, and I guess jeans can help make Zuckerberg affable. But approachability only makes the difference between a boss and a dick boss.

The free food and perks: Yes, this makes us like him and the company too. He has the ability to put an end to it at any time, but he keeps it coming :-). If somebody gives me free cookies, I like them, this part is not rocket science.

But really, when it comes to Zuck harnessing cult-like loyality, all it took were cookies. Who knew Facebook employees were so cheap?

Read the entire response below:

Because he is just that awesome.

There are several reasons why we "approve" of him:

• The story: He built this billion user and billion dollar company from his dorm room, overcame one obstacle after another, and assembled a company with the most talented employees in the world.
• The principles: He is dead-focused on "making the world more open and connected." The guy doesn't waver; all the investments in R&D and acquisitions have been along these lines.
• The heart: He was the biggest donor of 2013, and is generally a minimalist. He is clearly committed to Internet.org, even though that's not necessarily where the short term revenue increases are. We really feel he wants to change the world for the better.
• The guts: What other CEO has the... guts... to purchase a chat company for $19B??? It's a very smart purchase for various reasons, but still, $19B! Even other Silicon Valley CEOs acknowledge Zuck's fearlessness: http://read.bi/1n24ctW
• The wisdom: When we hear him speak, he gives us brain wrinkles. He has this uncanny ability to make all the right strategic moves, and when he explains the reasons for making those moves, it simply makes sense. Sure, mistakes have been made, and hindsight is 20/20, but at decision time, it was for all the right reasons.
• The trust: He doesn't make all the decisions, in fact far from it. We feel entrusted and empowered to drive our features the way we feel is best for the people that use Facebook. This is drastically different from many top-down corporations. We're happy with the balance between management-mandated and grass-roots-inspired decision making.
• The character: He wears T-Shirts and jeans, talks with humility, and he just seems generally very approachable. We like that.
• The business: Facebook is a rock solid business that is rapidly increasing in revenue as we speak. It makes more than 70% more in revenue than it was making just one year ago.
• The free food and perks: Yes, this makes us like him and the company too. He has the ability to put an end to it at any time, but he keeps it coming :-). If somebody gives me free cookies, I like them, this part is not rocket science.

And, no, having a lower approval rating is not a good thing. People don't "approve" because they agree with everything, rather they know that they have a say, and that their opinion matters. It's a good thing to like your boss.

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

[Photo: Getty]

Remember Gary Johnson? From 1995 to 2003, he served as the governor of New Mexico, but you may best recall him as the Pagan-courting Libertarian who ran for president in 2012. As of this week, he's also the CEO of a Nevada-based company called Cannabis Sativa, Inc.

Johnson, whose foray into Big Weed was announced yesterday, said the company plans to produce cannabis oils for epileptic children and "cough drop-like products for recreational use," according to the Associated Press. He also said Cannabis Sativa's products will be "very, very pleasant — I mean, very pleasant," which sounds very pleasant indeed.

The ex-governor has long been a proponent for weed. He ran on a legalization platform in 2012, claiming he would pardon every person incarcerated for pot possession if elected, and openly spoke about his own use during the campaign. At some point, he got all "Take Me to Your Dealer" with the grey aliens above.

Cannabis Sativa, Inc. recently acquired Kush, a pot company founded by California Libertarian Steve Kubby, and named Kubby as its chairman. We wish you guys the best of luck, but a word about your companies' names: Let's get creative! Anheuser-Busch didn't call itself "Malt, Hops, Yeast, and Water, LLC," did it? What if the Coors Brewing Company had just settled on "Beer"? You can do better.

[Image via AP]

P.O.V. stands for point of view. P.O.V. stands for penis (I have one) or vagina (Hillary Crosley of Jezebel, to pick a not at all random example, has one of those). P.O.V. stands for pork or veal, but this column is not about food or getting mad about animals confined to living short lives in boxes. It's about music.

For each entry of this recurring column, Hillary and I will pick a current pop-music topic and debate it in the comments below. First up is Robin Thicke and his album-long scheme to get his wife Paula Patton back, Paula.

[Image via Getty]

A new trailer was released today for Channing Tatum's upcoming film Channing Tatum in a Singlet, which also stars Steve Carrell, Mark Ruffalo and Sienna Miller as people who don't wear singlets. The trailer features only a few scenes of Channing Tatum wearing a singlet so as to not spoil the rest of the film.

The movie, considered a contender for numerous Academy Awards, is out November 14, and continues a big year for Tatum. His recent film Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill—a sequel to 2012's 21 Jump Street—has already made over $100 million at the box office.

It doesn't figure to slow down next year, either, as the follow-up to Tatum's 2012 hit Channing Tatum in a Thong is scheduled for a 2015 release.

Listen, it's fine. Life is full of little errors, poor judgement calls, and mistakes. When you're older you're going to look back on stealing the Fault in Our Stars bench—if you did it!—and think, "What was I so worried about?" Right? "I was so young!" Hmm? "Why didn't I come forward and tell the city of Amsterdam where I hid that bench from that movie right away?"

According to the AP, the bench was stolen at least a month ago, and I will say that you did an exceptional job covering up your theft:

The green bench that used to sit on the Leidsdegracht resembles hundreds of others around the city, and its absence went unnoticed for at least a month - probably because someone placed a large flower pot on the spot.

And the fact that there were so many other suspects? Not bad!

Suspects in the disappearance include the city itself, which may have simply taken the old bench away for repairs, as well as neighbors unhappy with extra tourist traffic, vandals or even fans wanting to own a small piece of film history.

But the fact is that you took it, and the city is embarrassed:

"It's a bit embarrassing, because we do keep good track of them, but it's gone all right," said city spokesman Stephan van der Hoek.

So, please. Do us all a favor and return the Fault in Our Stars bench. OK? We're covering our eyes. We won't even know who took it! Just place the Fault in Our Stars bench back where it belongs—so children can sit on it and pretend they are dying—and everything will be fine.

OK?

[Image via 20th Century Fox]

It's a prank as old as time (or at least as old as 2012): Some chucklehead calls up a pizza chain, places an order, and then conferences in another location of the same chain. When the first one repeats the order back to the second, confusion ensues. Who ordered what? When does this shift end? How much weed can I buy with whatever's in the tip jar? Wait, am I stoned right now? It's all a mystery.

This stunt has been pulled by Howard Stern (that's how you know it's a cool and mature thing to do) and by a Deadspin reader named John (ditto), but Australian YouTuber Tyson Williams brought it back to the public consciousness this week.

Soon, every Domino's Pizza employee will either have some levity added to the workday by teenage prank imitators or wish that Australian YouTuber Tyson Williams had never been born, carefully molding an effigy of his face in pepperoni and then setting fire to it and watching it burn until only a pile of carbon soot remains.

[H/T Daily Dot]

No one. There is no one you can trust. The adorable dogs you once thought were "man's best friend" have all along been knights in the secretive lodge of the Masonic Elect.

How can this be true?

Well: The first nine paintings to ever depict various breeds of domesticated canines fraternizing around the card table in ribald and raucous games of chance were painted by a self-taught former druggist named Cassius Marcellus Coolidge in the mid-1900s. Coolidge had originally devised the images for a cigar company's marketing giveaway, but pretty soon afterward he inked a deal with Minnesota-based advertising publisher Brown & Bigelow to mass produce the paintings on calendars promoting consumer goods for men. The 16 pieces in Coolidge's now famous cycle depicted the crew in various states of human bro down—fixing a car by the side of the road, watching a baseball game, drinking, camping, so forth.

But, only once did Coolidge's work reveal the dogs' True Nature: in his haunting tableau "Riding the Goat" (above) which depicts an otherwise good doggie's masonic initiation.

We may never fully grasp the import of Cassius Coolidge's arcane masterwork, but we can surely learn from the efforts of those who have tried. William D. Moore is an associate professor of American Material Culture at Boston University and the author of Masonic Temples: Freemasonry, Ritual Architecture, and Masculine Archetypes (University of Tennessee Press, 2006). Writing for Winterthur Portfolio—the thrice-yearly journal of the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library—Moore explains:

In Coolidge's image entitled "Riding the Goat," a variety of dogs have gathered within a fraternal lodge room to initiate what appears to be a St. Bernard by having him ride a goat while blindfolded. Three officers, denoted as such by their ceremonial collars and their location in monumental chairs behind a desk, look on while a spaniel holds a rope, which in Masonic argot is called a "cabletow," secured around the candidate's neck. Behind the main figures, the lodge secretary, another St. Bernard, is recording the fact that the candidate has joined the organization. Some of the canines sport circular hats, which are employed by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry to denote elevated institutional status. Many of the dogs are smoking, consuming tobacco both through pipes and as cigars.

So, at the very least, we can say that this is one of the most baller cigar advertisements of all time, from unquestionably the single most iconic series of cigar advertisements in our nation's history.

Moore continues:

The humor in this composition is derived, as it is in many of Coolidge's work, from the canine actors pursuing human activities. The dogs provide the punch line in this visual anecdote. The goat is simply a commonplace of the lodge room, comparable to the ceremonial paraphernalia or the monumental chairs. Significantly, the goat is fully under the control of the lodge members. Although the St. Bernard is blindfolded, he retains his composure.

Very curious indeed. The St. Bernard—or, pace Professor Moore, what appears to be a St. Bernard—does look remarkably calm atop that wooly, sabbatic goat. Lots of dogs will freak out even just if you try to pick them up. What do this dog, and his occult friends, know that we don't?

Why can't we hear a dog whistle? What sort of person would greenlight a PG family comedy in which Charles Grodin is tortured by (what, at least, appears to be) a St. Bernard?

We've been teaching dogs how to do tricks for so long; isn't it inevitable that the dogs would someday learn to play tricks on us?

[image via Brown & Bigelow, "Riding the Goat," (lithograph) ca. 1900., by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge]

The footprint of Manhattan's been expanding since the 17th century, when early New Yorkers began their first project to infill its shoreline. A huge part of the island we know today is built on artificial pilings. Now, it might get its biggest expansion in years.

Next City reports on a new feasibility study released by the city, which looked at the possibility of building a huge levee along the east side of the city. This would be in addition to the 16-foot berm that the city just received over $300 million to build on the Lower East Side. This levee would create a huge watch of land along the city's eastern edge, raising in 19 feet above the city to protect it from storm surges.

According to the report, the levee is "technically, legally and financially feasible," and it would protect lower Manhattan should another Sandy come knocking at our door. It would do so with a stretch of infilled soil, upon which other buildings, parks, and public space could be built. Though the report looks at several different schemes, the widest levee would add a full two new city blocks to Manhattan's landmass, along with plenty of open space.

Of course, it won't be two perfect blocks—rather, a 1.3-mile-long stretch of land that's 500 feet wide:

If it feels like you've heard this idea before, that's because back in Mayor Bloomberg's day, the levee idea was called Seaport City. But the name has been dropped—now it's just a levee, probably because the Seaport City name and glossy renderings sparked controversy after making it appear as though it would build a new, vulnerable patch of city on the shoreline rather than protect it.

Of course, this is just a feasibility study—plenty of more studying remains to be done on the idea. Still, it's exciting to think that Manhattan's landmass might get its biggest expansion in decades before long. We'll have to add another frame to the GIF below. [Next City, NYC.Gov]

"I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo," Bill Watterson is rumored to have told his publisher. Indeed. But what of the mythical history of this meme? Finally, someone has a few answers.

Phil Edwards isn't the first guy to plumb America's golden stream of folklore for insights into the peeing-Calvin meme, but he's certainly the most intrepid. His new online account of the decal trend offers us some tantalizing background. Here are the vital details:

1. The image is widely believed to come from a "Calvin and Hobbes" comic that Watterson published June 5, 1988.

Needless to say, Calvin was not taking a leak.

[Update: Edwards originally typo'd the date of the strip as 1998, which led me to write the following paragraph in the original post. He's since corrected the record in the comments below, but we'll keep the graf for transparency's sake.]

Of course, there are problems with the timeline here: The earliest printed reports of a pissing Calvin come to us in 1995, so perhaps this strip was a reprint of an earlier comic, or a similar likeness appeared in papers much earlier. (Also, as Edwards points out in his post and I added in the comments below, Watterson retired from making original strips at the end of 1995, so the comic cited here is almost certainly a rerun.)

2. The meme started in Florida, probably. Blame college football.

As evidence, Edwards cites the earliest printed report he could find: A November 1995 story by longtime Tampa Bay Times writer Tom Zucco describing "a 25-foot motor home with a sign showing Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes urinating on the letters FSU." Speaking as a Florida high schooler at the time, whose classmates wore garish pro-Seminoles shirts screaming "You're Ugly... And Your Momma Dresses You in Orange and Blue," I can attest to the likelihood that denizens of the Florida-Florida State rivalry were early Calvin-pee adopters.

3. Without NASCAR, who knows?

There is, of course, something undeniably and exaggeratedly masculine about an impish prepubescent boy peeing on things. It seems natural, then, that self-conscious advertisers of machismo—say, Dale Jr. fans and Chevy men—might see Calvin as a perfect cultural code through which to communicate their superior musk to beta males and Ford drivers. Edwards says newspaper references to Calvin grew rapidly across the South, often in connection with NASCAR and vehicle brand preferences.

4. In a sense, Bill Watterson could have stopped all this, and made a lot of money to boot.

One of Watterson's admirable—and frustrating—qualities was his steadfast resistance to licensing Calvin and Hobbes' likenesses for merchandise. "Hobbes is a stuffed tiger. ," one Watterson profiler wrote for the Cleveland Scene in 2003. "What fan — kid or adult — wouldn't want one of his or her very own?" But the creator wouldn't hear of it, muttering about integrity-free sellouts in the ranks of professional cartoonists.

The flip side of that equation is that licensed merchandisers, who have a clear financial interest in protecting their licensed images, are the best candidates to pursue and punish copyright violators. Watterson and United Press Syndicate owned the images he drew, it's true; but absent a lot of legal firepower, money, and free time, corralling the Calvin-pee propagators was just too tall an order. As the Scene relates:

"We've contemplated legal action," says Lee Salem, vice president and editor at Universal Press Syndicate, which distributed Calvin and Hobbes. But the cost involved in finding those who make and sell the decals would far exceed what Universal could win in damages. "Bill's as frustrated as we are."...

Just as Watterson was, Mallett is against rampant licensing of characters so that they appear on everything from calendars to underwear. Unlike Watterson, he believes some selective marketing may actually be helpful. "Because now look what we're left with: Calvin pissing on a Ford logo."

5. What about those "praying Calvin" stickers, though?

They exist. Nobody cares.

[Images: Boing Boing; AlabamaRacingScene.net; JesseReviewsTheWorld.com]

Two tour buses belonging to the bands Foreigner and Styx caught fire Wednesday in a Philadelphia parking lot in an urgent, urgent emergency that threatened to engulf the entirety of the years 1977 to 1984.

Philadelphia's 6ABC reported that the blaze began on the Styx bus around 12:20 p.m., and spread to the Foreigner bus that was parked alongside it. Both bands are scheduled to play Thursday night in Camden, N.J. (but, understandably, didn't want to leave their buses there).

The buses were empty at the time of the fire, and no one was hurt. A representative for Styx told 6ABC the bus where the fire started belonged to the crew. The band also credited Mr. Roboto for helping them escape when they needed to (albeit several years before the fire.)

The cause of the fire hasn't yet been determined.

[Photos via 6ABC/Twitter]

Do you like Hooters but find it too disarming? Try Shooters, the Rifle, Colorado, bar and grill where every waitress is strapped with a six-gun. "People can come in carrying their gun, and they can pray over their food," the owner says, adding that the joint has "guns and Jesus all over the place."