In today's Philebrity -- your only source for M. Night Shyamalan baby mama rumors -- a reader writes in with this nugget:

Any idea why I just saw Patton Oswalt in full mime white face and an Iggles jersery at the corner of 8th and Passyunk with a camera crew?

Actually, yes. And I'm forbidden to give details. But word has come down from our corporate overlords at Viacom that we are all expected to swear allegiance (you have not experienced exasperation until you have had to fill out all 59 pages of a corporate blood oath) to a highly secret operation called: King of Queens: The Orion Project. Let's just say that you will be seeing Patton Oswalt everywhere before too long.

How's that for furtive denial!

Neil Hamburger has never been one of America's most loved comedians. In fact, he may very well be its worst. With a stable of jokes staler than five-week old rye that can only be described by metaphors staler than a six-week old Portuguese roll, Hamburger has cornered the market on pissing off his audience. And pissed off they will be when they discover that his latest album, "Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners," is not comedy at all, but a collection of country music duds written by Hamburger and others. We sat down with Neil today to talk about his music career, self-medicating during the bad times and signing the worst contract ever drawn up.

Comedy Central Insider: What made you decide to throw yourself into country music?

Neil Hamburger: Well, you know, I've done so many albums -- so, so many albums -- that why not do something a little bit different? A lot of the great personalities have made albums. Telly Savalus made a series of albums, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner -- a lot of the singing celebrity albums are very popular. Even Jack Webb made an album of songs. So it wasn't so much that we were going with country per say, it was that we were going with one of these personality type of albums where a bunch of songs are written to cater to the particular fans that I might have.

CCI: As a comedian, was music a big step for you, or was it easy to make the transition?

NH: You know, I'm not Pavarotti here.  Definitely, it's a problem. I would not recommend that most comedians make singing albums. But we had had a couple of songs on other albums just as filler, so we decided just to stretch that out just a little bit further with an entire album when these great musicians became available and were interested in taking part in this project.

More after the jump...

 

In anticipation of the release of Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay, The National Post presents a brief history of how the first movie was pitched to the White Castle brass, followed an even briefer history of the scrappy burger chain itself:

"I first got the script, read it and blushed," says Jamie Richardson, White Castle's director of marketing. Richardson had the unenviable job of selling the movie to his boss, the current CEO and grandson of the man who started the business in Wichita, Kan., in 1921.

"I had to check the calendar to see if it was April Fool's," says Richardson, who saw in the movie an uplifting tale of two likable, minority characters who go on a life-changing journey to reach the nirvana of hamburger meals.

"It was in the tradition of Jason and the Argonauts," says Richardson. "I saw it as an epic tale."

Here's the part where I make a pot joke punning off the word "epic," and you giggle, but not very much. So instead, why don't you save us both some trouble just go read the whole article.

Dressed up in his stage blacks, Drew Hastings isn't the type of guy any man would mistake for a farmer. But just replace that microphone with a shovel or a rake and he could be a regular, implacable-looking Eddie Albert. Drew sat down over the phone with CC Insider today, a baker's week before the world premiere of his new special, "Irked and Miffed," to talk about why he moved to the Midwest, how East and West Coasters are unfair to "flyover country," and looking for his neighbor Dave Chappelle.

Comedy Central Insider: I really enjoyed your special.
Drew Hastings: Thank you. You didn't watch any of the farming material?

CCI: Actually, I just heard you live on a farm. So I prepared mostly farming-related questions.
DH: That's fine, because if somebody would've said to me four years ago, "You're gonna have a huge fan base of farmers and rural types," I'd have said, "You're out of your f-ing mind."

CCI: So do farmers and rural types make up most of your fan base these days?
DH: I have a really weird fan base. I used to think, "This is no good. They're all over the board." Pediatricians, lawyers, punks with staples through their nose, grandmothers. And they would all say, "I really get you." Really? The punks and the grandmothers -- they both get me? But then I started thinking, that's what you want. That's mainstream success. Ultimately I think you want the pediatrician and the pierced-nose punk to both like you.

There's more interview, plus clips from Drew's special (premiering April 26th at 11pm EST on Comedy Central) after the jump.

We hate to shatter your entire comedy universescape, but it turns out Tracy Morgan comes off incredibly insightful and rational in interviews. We've clipped some of his most recent below, but make sure you're prepared for the shocking sanity of it. In fact, it might be easier for you to picture him lying half-nude on a table giving the interview to a pigeon.

TOC: When your sons watch 30 Rock, is your character just like Dad to them?
Tracy Morgan: No, my oldest son is 22, my youngest son is 16, they know me. I’m around my kids everyday. I’m regular. We’re a regular family. My wife cooks, she washes clothes, I read books, I pump my own gas, I get my own hair cut.

TOC: You’re not getting divorced then?
Tracy Morgan: Me and my wife are separated but we are friends. She’s my best friend. We were married for 21 years. You don’t stop loving each other after that long a time. We’re cool. We get along.

TOC: So you were a dad when you were your sons’ age.
Tracy Morgan: In the ghetto we always have kids young. In the ghetto we use sex as a sedative. It eases the pain of poverty: You’re broke and I’m broke, let’s make a family. That’s just how it is.

Read the full interview here.

Some Jews, that is. Despite my Jewish background, due to a rare genetic transmutation, I was born without a tradition of comedy. Though I suppose it's better than what happened to my brother Jeffrey, whose jokes about Borscht and summer camp got so bad he had to have his tradition removed from his right lung when he was 12.

Anyhow, I'm glad Andy finally brought this often terrible affliction to the world's attention in an interview with Northwestern University's North by Northwestern in which he also explains the origins of The Lonely Island and answers the inevitable how-did-you-get-famous-and-how-can-I-get-famous-in-the same-way question:

You’re here through Hillel. How has your Jewish background affected your comedy?
It’s hard for me to really gauge. I don’t do a lot of comedy about Judaism, but obviously a lot of my heroes were Jewish. You have Mel Brooks and your Marx Brothers and your Larry David. So it’s affected it enormously and really not at all. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything comedically where the joke of it had to do with Judaism and Jewishness, but there’s definitely a proud tradition of comedy in the Jews.

How did your sketch group, The Lonely Island, begin?
Akiva [Schaffer] and Jorba [Taccone], I’ve known them since the seventh grade. And they were better friends with each other in junior high, and then we all started hanging out together in high school, at Berkeley High. We were all kin