Tom, Oprah and Katie

Tom, Oprah and Katie

I’m so glad that I discovered late-night Oprah reruns, I feel somehow reunited with her world since I always manage to forget to set the VCR. I was even more pleased to find that I had tuned in to the Tom Cruise interview. I’d read some commentary about his alleged head-over-heels demonstration of love for Katie Holmes, and I would get a chance to see first hand this much-discussed display of admiration with my own two eyes.

Allow me to clear something up right away. I’ve never been a huge fan of Tom Cruise. I’m sure he’s a wonderful guy; he’s good looking and a powerful box office magnet. My rebellious streak has kept me from embracing Hollywood’s golden boy, mainly because he’s Hollywood’s golden boy. With that said, he almost won me over at one point as Lestat in Interview With The Vampire but the movie ended up making me sick to my stomach. His performance in Vanilla Sky encapsulated everything I despise about Hollywood and their chosen ones. Doing little more than showing off a million dollar smile for two hours and sixteen minutes does not a good movie make. Cruise’s role in Collateral with Jamie Foxx, however, really made him more accessible to me and I’ve been growing increasingly comfortable with giving him credit for his talent.

So around 1:05 am, as I stood in my living room working my biceps with an impressive six pounds of iron, I watched Tom Cruise join Oprah onstage as her studio audience almost hyperventilated, fainted and went into shock in one fantastically nauseating display of admiration for this man. Now I will admit he does have a nice smile and once could acknowledge a certain charm he might possess. He’s definitely getting better with age.

Next thing I know Oprah is all over him about Katie Holmes and for the next few minutes (more like, the rest of the show) he talks about how fantastic she is. Most remarkably, he proceeded to jump around like he had just won a soccer game to emphasize his woman’s virtues. Oprah egged him on, commented that he’s normally so private, and asked him what had changed. Tom went on to explain that Katie is just so astronomically incredible, how she just really cares about people in the world and blah, blah, blah. He broke into another round of unbridled enthusiasm and jumped up on Oprah’s yellow leather couch with his shoes on.

Now I don’t know about anybody else, but I would have had to tell him to get his behind off my pretty leather couch, jumping up and down like he’d lost his mind. Maybe when you’re a multi-millionaire and you can replace it with no problem, it’s just not a big deal. But where I come from, that’s just a no-no. My grandmother kept her couch covered with plastic, so you know you had to be straight out of your mind to even think about standing up on it. My mother had a kind of quiet “try-it-and-die” way about her, so I didn’t think about stomping on the family furniture either. So for Tom Cruise to do this on Oprah’s couch, on her television show, in her studio for God’s sake, tells me a few things about Tom, Oprah and Katie.

Tom is whipped. Or, he’s facing a mid-life crisis (he’s 42, she’s 26) and really needs the attention of this young woman.

Oprah is truly a genius. She is very smooth in her dealings with all types of people. Oprah can take an absolutely mundane topic and make it mean something. For instance, who cares if Tom is in love with Katie? At first I thought she must be having a difficult time finding material for her show. Then, as I watched Tom drag Katie from backstage to kiss and hug her on national television, I thought to myself now that’s how a woman ought to be treated. When you think of how many women would love to receive even a fraction of the admiration and affection Tom Cruise showed Katie Holmes in those few minutes, I really started to see that the show may have touched somebody out there and could inspire someone to want more from a relationship.

Now as for Katie, she must be puttin’ it on Tom somethin’ fierce. I was waiting for him to start speaking in tongues the way he was carrying on. To get an Oprah show devoted to how good your loving is, I have to give that woman some respect. So whether they are poised to take Brad’s and Jen’s place as the new Hollywood beautiful couple or the display was all one big, absurd stunt to prop up their upcoming movies, it was a definitely a noteworthy spectacle.