(Part 2 of 5)

For me, 2005 will always be the year when we all learned that Tom Cruise is crazy. It was nearly halfway through the year when it all started, but I remember it as if it were yesterday...

It all began when he leaped onto Oprah's couch in May. He was on her show to promote War of the Worlds, but all he did was talk jibberish about some B-list celebrity girl we all know for her starring role in a teen-angst drama on WB. He jumped around for 40 minutes of the program and at one point, he appeared to actually murder Oprah Winfrey. How did he and Katie Holmes meet? He couldn't really answer it. What is it about Katie Holmes that makes him love her so? He couldn't really answer that either, except to say she's "remarkable" and "amazing". Later, he also told Billy Bush that "Kate" was a wonderful talent, and that he had seen her on "Dawson Creek". Dude, it's possessive. Dawson's Creek. Obviously he knows her very well. They had been dating since, like, April.
A lot of people (myself included) found it all very hard to believe. We're grumpy skeptics who only believe in love at first sight if it's in the movies. Plus, Tom and Katie both had movies coming out at about the same time. It sure seemed like a publicity stunt, didn't it? The two showed up everywhere, giving big, open-mouthed smiles and making out at everything from movie premieres to electronics store openings. It was real, they insisted. And, just to prove it, Tom took Katie up to the top of the Eiffel Tower and asked her to marry him. If you didn't doubt them before that you probably did afterward. How L-A-M-E.

That mayhem alone didn't solidify my belief that Tom Cruise must be stopped. At that point, I just thought he was really intense and, quite frankly, I enjoyed watching him make an ass of himself.

But it was this little appearance on the Today show, where Tom told Matt Lauer that vitamins and exercise cure depression, that made me realize he is out of his damn mind. Without even knowing Brooke Shields, Tom accused her of being misled into taking prescription anti-depressants to overcome severe post partum depression. Shields, Tom said, was mistaken. He also told Matt that he studied what Ritalin did to people and "do you know Ritalin, Matt?" Doctors all over the country were freaking out about the lasting effects of Tom's proclamation that post partum depression doesn't exist.

And then I read all these other conspiracy theory articles with no basis in fact, about Katie Holmes disappearing for 16 days in April, and all of a sudden emerging in Rome as Tom Cruise's true love. And remember all the rumors about Katie's new, little Scientologist shadow, "Jessica", who started appearing everywhere with Katie? There were also stories everywhere about Scientology, and let's just say that most of them weren't good.

Finally, near the end of the summer, the TomKat mayhem died down.

Then, in October, we learned that Katie is pregnant. And now we see these two everywhere again... at radio station events, soccer games, ice skating, and shopping at FAO Schwartz after hours for Katie's 7th, I mean 27th, birthday.

Those of us who are sick of Tom Cruise, but for some reason continue to monitor his every move, found solace in one little episode of South Park, which outted the action star over and over again.

I really don't want to see any more Tom Cruise in 2006, but, alas, we will see him, because yet another movie is coming out next summer. He'll probably parade around photos of his new baby during press junkets. And he'll tell people about how Katie was silent during the birth, as is required by the Scientology religion. And he'll claim that she's perfectly healthy because she took vitamins and exercised after the birth, and we'll all furrow our brows and shake our heads and plop down our $9.50 to see Mission Impossible 3.