Tom Cruise is on Oafra. And he loves Katie Holmes. No really, he DOES.

So, Tom Cruise is on Oprah today, and they began the interview (after most of the audience went down in a squealing mass of giddy heart attacks) talking about his new "relationship" with Katie Holmes. Which is TOTALLY normal, even though she's like, the square-root of his age, makes him look like a hobbit, and has hoof-and-mouth disease sometimes.

The first thing that Oprah (who, incidentally, my aunt calls "Oafra") wanted to know was how they met. And I was anticipating a hilarious story, because Tom couldn't stop doing that soundless, wrinkly-nosed laugh that he does long enough to tell it. Finally he managed, "We met." And then after he soundlessly laughed for a few more minutes, he said, "I've always admired her work." Well, Tom, that IS funny. And he proceeded to give a "I do TOO totally love her!" performance, consisting of some convincing laughter, crouching, and jumping on the couch. Okay.

And he keeps awkwardly saying that she's extraordinary, with an extraordinary life-force, or some such crap. I'm still not convinced. Wait, now he's switched to "amazing". She's amazing. She's amazingly amazing. He's amazed at how amazing she is. And then the audience squealed some more. Amazing!

I have an issue of Rolling Stone from the summer, with a Tom Cruise interview (I bought it to read about the "Vote for Change" concerts, which were SUCH a big success - HA) and since I can't ever throw anything away, I dug it out to share his argument for scientology, his pseudo-religion. Now, this argument is so well-thought out and convincing, you'll probably switch to the pseudo-religion scientology IMMEDIATELY. Don't say I didn't warn you:

He lists some of Scientology's selling points: its drug-abuse, prison-rehabilitation and education programs. "Some people, well, if they don't like Scientology, well, then, f*** you." He rises from the table. "Really." He points an angry finger at the imaginary enemy. "F*** you." His face reddens. "Period."

It is a beautiful exhibition, and I don't believe that he's acting.

Okay, I'm going to watch the rest of this Tom and Oafra interview. I'm sorry that I turned all of you into scientologists.

Edited to add - ack! How could I have not linked to Snarkywood's "Tom + Katie 4EVAH, A 'Point-And-Laugh' Pictorial"? I don't know how I could have not done that. So here you go.

UPDATE (6/21, 8:00PM) - I finally got around to uploading a mpeg from the episode of VH1's Best Week Ever that dealt with Tom's insane couch gymnastics. So if you haven't seen his craziness, here you go. Please right-click the link and choose "save as" instead of streaming the video from my server, because it saves my bandwidth. You can also check out the donation section in my sidebar if you want to help with bandwidth costs. Thanks!

Tom Cruise Goes Berserko, Act I (~47MB)

UPDATE (7/21/05) - I'm removing the link to the file, because my bandwidth is approaching the limit and I don't want to pay per MB if I exceed my allotted bandwidth. I'd gladly host more files, but y'all keep ignoring my donation links and my Shameless Begging in yonder sidebar! (Except for songstress, who iswesome.) I'll put the link back up somewhere around August 1st when my bandwidth rolls back to zero.

UPDATE (08/07/05) - File is back. :-) And now, Chris and Lydia are awesome too, in addition to songstress, who is still awesome. Y'all just don't realize how much even an amount like $2 or $5 helps. :-)