Last December, while promoting his movie I Am Legend, actor Will Smith made an appearance on Tavis Smiley.

So why does that matter all these months later? Well, since then Smith has been in the news for what appear to be strengthening ties to Scientology, the wacky sci-fi religion that Will's buddy Tom Cruise belongs to. In May, rumors that Smith was joining Xenu's minions seemed to gain credence when news hit that Smith was funding a private school in suburban LA that would employ a team of scientologists to make use of L. Ron Hubbard's crappy scholastic materials. (Hubbard considered himself a genius for the stunning insight that frequent consultation of a dictionary helps children learn big words. Or something. School boards often fall for Scientology's line that Hubbard's material is ground-breaking, then realize it's just a stealth attempt by scientologists to introduce children to the man they worship, a third-rate 1930's pulp fiction writer.)

Just this week, Smith denied to FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman that he was joining Scientology. But Mark Bunker, an LA critic of Scientology who is known as "Wise Beard Man" to the Anonymous movement, sent us over a link to that December Tavis Smiley appearance, which, Bunker says, suggests that Will's been getting more Scientology training than he wants to admit.

Besides talking pure nonsense to a bewildered Smiley for several minutes, Smith used a very strange phrase about halfway through the clip. He talked about "feeling like you're at effect," which means...well, frankly, this Hubbard jargon means anything you want it to mean, so what the hell.

"I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt," Bunker says about Smith. "But how do you absorb 'being at effect' without taking courses? I suppose it's possible he picked it up from his equally certain, equally high-strung pal Tom Cruise. But it's not an ordinary buzzword out here in the wog [non-Scientology] world." To Bunker, the clip is evidence that Smith has been taking Scientology courses for some time, and has absorbed the Hubbard way of thinking.

What we found even creepier comes later in the clip, when Smith starts talking about creating matter with his mind. Smiley's expression is priceless as Smith talks about the power of his brain: "I can create whatever I want to create if I can put my head on it right, study it, learn the patterns..."

Hey, that's just what Hubbard's other minions believe, that after a few more classes (each costing about the same as a luxury car), they'll get so powerful they can create things just by thinking about them!

Hey Will, we hope you keep studying all the way to OT VIII so you can start bending the universe to your will (so to speak). Then maybe you could think real hard about a film with you in it that doesn't suck, so that one magically appears!