Over the last few months, as Tom Cruise has transformed himself from boyfriend of Katie Holmes, to Beyoncé-styled crazy-in-love furniture molester, to pod person for Scientology, to kicking Brooke Shields while she's down, to father of Rosemary's, um, Katie's baby, I've been reminded of the following moment from an episode of Saturday Night Live. A couple of years ago, during the "Weekend Update" segment, Tina Fey gave the following report:
"Today Star Jones did something no other woman in the world has ever done before. She got married."
Ergo, Tom and Katie and baby makes three--three press releases a minute, that is, emanating from the time that a gleam in their parents'--nay, their publicists'!--eyes first appeared to the present nanosecond. The baby's parents felt the baby kick! The baby's parents heard the baby coo! The baby's parents--at least, one of the baby's parents--seems unable to stop himself from interviews everytime he has a new thought about the Baby, Fatherhood, Life, or his Pyramid-scheme-like faith!
And Tom and Katie, everyone's concept of model parents ('cause don't they look plastic and don't they look like they've been sniffing glue), well, they've been absolute troupers throughout it all. All the baby had to do was find the right egg-sperm combination, gestate, be born, and live. The parents, on the other hand, have had to provide a constant stream of sound bites and a neverending video feed to the press. Far more exacting. Stupid lazy baby.
I swore to myself I would avoid writing about the "TomKat" phenomenon (who was I kidding?), but the last week, with the arrival of little Suri (and the lack of action by child welfare offices everywhere) has pushed me over the edge. No, I haven't jumped on any chairs, grinning maniacally, and speed-freakishly Rainman-ing stream-of-semi-conscious drivel to Oprah (America's greatest enabler, self-help TV talk show category) like a stalker-schoolboy about "how MUCH I love this COUPLE." But I just cannot let sleeping crackpots lie any longer. I have to go there, folks. I have to talk about and dissect TomKat.
But, oh, they are so unworthy and so . . . boring. Thus, this should take no time at all.
There are only so many vacuous, "are the drugs wearing-off?" looks from Katie and "thank God, I'm a coke-adled country boy!" grins from Tom that any of us should have to witness. What are these people about? What are these people on? And what have we as a nation done to deserve being assaulted with their daily inanities, insanities, and insecurities?
Watching Tom and Katie in their goofy, desperate, stuporous kind of amour is like watching any of your friends in the first throes of love--rather nauseating and quickly tiresome. No matter how well you may wish the happy couple, you can't help but get the discomforting feeling that they've joined some sort of millennial cult. It's all very Jim Jones in Guyana with special Kool-Aid Acid Test cocktails, if you ask me. Thus, it won't be long before you're hearing about your friends' Sid and Nancy-styled exploits in a segment entitled "Why good couples skip counseling and go straight to hell" or "When love gets behind the wheel drunk and angry and kills someone" on the next episode of Dr. Phil.
Maybe that's what love is, always has been, and always will be. (It's been a while for me.) There was even that Valentine's Day report about your brain in love, how it lights up in brain scanners similar to the way it does for those who you crave chocolate or drugs. It's all a bit creepy--not to mention annoying, especially if you have to sit around and watch other people act it out. Kind of like very tedious charades that are all based on the titles of soft-core porn films.
Of course, your friends aren't really quite like TomKat. T & K, Inc., are perhaps more photogenic, have tons more money, and indulge in an excessive, obsessive jones for global satellite communication access, snorting pixels and shooting up bandwidth like an off-the-wagon, failed Narcissists Anonymous, "Hi, my name is . . ." Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the effect is more or less the same--tedious, tummy-turning, torturous--except on an even grander, cosmic scale.
If truth be told, though, in my mind, the only thing that has made Tom Cruise remotely interesting ever is his recent, repeated visits to Outer Whackgolia. A year ago, I was ready to dismiss him as merely an aging closet case with a need for hero worship and frequent media attention. Now I'm half-ready to salute him as an aging closet case and an amazing self-promoting wunderkind. The weirder he gets, the more we want to watch him under the glare of great lighting with smudge-proof make-up, just to see if he'll actually eat his baby's placenta and umbilical cord, instead of merely just joking about doing so. Ha ha. You slay us, Tom.
Still, for the most part, without the cash, the access, and the bottomless hunger to be paid attention to, most stars, even the agreed-upon attractive ones, seem fairly low-wattage--ordinary, everyday, kind of average. Julia Roberts? Just another mean-girl, Southern prom queen with a grotesquely oversized mouth. Mel Gibson? Your basic Aussie-American yobbo with a Christ complex. Britney Spears? Just another Daisy Duke shotgun bride hankerin' to get preggers agin. Michael Jackson? Your average mask-wearing, chimp-cavorting, Elephant Man-loving, high-pitched child molester. No big deal. Really.
Now if only we could convince the glitterati and their attendant camera crews and pop documentarians of the lack of celebrity significance, we might all spend a peaceful, enjoyable year or two before we run low on fossil fuels, bring about irrevocable destruction of the ozone layer, foment hourly tit-for-tat terrorist attacks, and have to resort to a Lord of the Flies-themed system of social order.
We've got to fill our time somehow. It's your call--more Hello! OK! In Style! Us! People! or News of (the End of) the World.
Which is scarier? My money in the Powerball Lottery of Fear and Loathing is on TomKat. Their first interview on 20/20 about the joys of parenthood; their first medical emergency with Baby Suri in which Tom saves her life with a penknife, a stick of Juicy Fruit, and some dental floss; and their first, subsequent visit by social services on charges of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy--it's all infinitely more frightening than a little thing like global warming or holy warfare.
Thus, in future posts, I'll concentrate on the weightier issues of our times and forego the detritus of celebritydom.
Oh please. As if.
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