And Now We Know The Color of CRAZY, Too...!

This has made the rounds of almost every blog that I've read lately, but this truly needs to be seen to be believed. Honestly.

To begin with, a disclaimer: I've never been a Tom Cruise fan. Never. Can't stand the little midget, never could. That used to put me solidly in the minority of the population who slobbered over his picture, and flocked to theatres in their millions to see his two stock facial expressions ("determined" and "glazed"--he could never quite pull off "sincere"--that was too much like "glazed") in every movie from "Risky Business" to "Jerry Maguire" to "Vanilla Sky" (which was at least ambitious enough to fuck his face up, albeit with make-up, to create a third stock expression: "scarred").

I used to think that it was my imagination when I accidentally caught parts of his movies on TBS or AMC and saw the eyes of a cult member staring out of the screen; my imagination that he was, in fact, insane. Then he publicly joined the Church of Scientology, an outfit that makes the Catholic Church seem positively humble by comparison.

Then a few other things happened: first, he went through the process of auditioning wives--several declined, which made me think there's less to Hollywood's Most Popular Dwarf than meets the eye (if, in fact, he COULD meet our eye). I mean, if he was such a catch, why wouldn't ANY woman jump at the chance to bind themselves to him in holey moley holy matrimony? Or at least kneel for the privilege? But no, many chose not to. When he finally DID find someone, she was so much his junior that he clearly was looking for a brood-mare as much as a wife and even her family was horrified. Then came that Oprah/couch thing, which I still can't quite figure out.

Then the baby was born with its father's same glazed expression. Then Isaac Hayes (Chef from "South Park") had a convenient stroke when he was pressed for answers as to why he was so offended by "South Park's" swipe at Scientology (when he'd never minded their lampooning of other religions).

And now this video, which is apparently some sort of recruiting video for Scientology. I thought it was a joke at first--most of us did. But apparently not.

This guy's crackers. And arrogant to boot. And now we belongs to a whole rich cult full of arrogant crackers. If there are spaceships coming, I hope we get a separate one--I don't want to ride with him and John Travolta, especially if the bathroom doors don't lock.

UPDATE: Well, it appears that the video has been removed from the blogosphere due to a copyright claim by the Church of Scientology International.

Sure. A copyright claim. That's the reason.

Oh, well, we'll have to make do with this report from Keith Olbermann, which refers to Cruise as the "Goebbels of Scientology:"