The 35th Precinct

I went to see Mission Impossible 3 today with the Roomie. Philip Seymour Hoffman and the yummy, yummy, oh-so-nummy Ving Rhames counteracted the utter, batshit crazy of Tom Cruise, and I enjoyed the eyecandy. However, the movie brings nothing new to the table in terms of either plot or visual effects. In fact, it is a pictorial pastiche of every Secret Agent Man flick ever made. If you're looking for deep thoughts and cogent, socially relevant symbolism, give it a miss.

After the movies, we bought the Roomie some new shorts. He's lost so much weight by walking everywhere that his old ones have become dangerously loose. Yesterday, he nearly mooned an elderly Asian neighbor on his way to the dumpster, and more than once, I've caught him wandering around the apartment, clutching his pants to his waist. So we bought several pairs in a smaller size, as well as a few shirts. Indecent exposure charge averted.

The next fic on the docket is tkirk's Cold Case prompt, but I'm still three-way-tangoing with Ecklie and Grissom. Ew, not like that. Please, God, not like that.

When did Tom Cruise go bugfuck crazy? When I was a pubescent lust monkey with nubs on my chest and the faintest wisps of hair between my legs, Tom was Teh Crush, the single sexiest man alive. Had I been able to do so, I would have lain siege to Maverick's cockpit and given a whole new meaning to the term. Never mind that sex was a nebulous and tantalizing idea to my thirteen-year-old mind-I was willing to learn on the fly.

Nor was I the only one. My older cousins, Kimmy and Theresa, also lusted over him, and we bonded by ogling the butt and the pearly whites. He was wholesome, the boy next door, and between the three of us, we built a thousand picket fences and spawned a million squalling feces farms. Shut up; we were young and stupid, and back then, having babies was the ultimate sign of true love. You live, you learn.

Eventually, I moved on to other crushes, and my cousins moved from imagining babies to making them in the beds of pickup trucks parked on desolate country roads, but I always had a soft spot for Cruise. He wasn't a great actor, but he was a nice guy. I always read stories about him saving children from burning vehicles or paying mortgages or medical bills for those who couldn't afford it. He was never an obnoxious asshat in public, and he was charming in interviews.

So I just don't understand his behavior of the past few years. First, he fired his agents and personal assistants, some of whom have known him for twenty years. Then, he dumps Nicole Kidman out of nowhere, and now he's shtupping Katie Holmes and bagging on Brooke Shields and modern psychiatry. Recently, he squabbled with a journalist on national TV.

Most attribute his odd behavior to Scientology, but I have my doubts. After all, John Travolta is a longtime Scientologist, and he is a perfect gentleman, though now that I've said that, he'll run screaming through the streets, dressed in nothing but his bearskin rug and the good dinner doilies, and proclaim himself the True Prophet. I honestly wonder if Cruise doesn't have a brain tumor or a chemical imbalance.

Oh, the irony in that thought.

SLS 52 will be finished tonight or tomorrow, for those who are interested.