Thursday, January 24, 2008

Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other



Of course by now you’ve most likely downloaded The Cruiser and witnessed the weirdness that is himself as he mainlines the crazy and spreads his Scientology delirium with every fiber of his movie star being, ejaculating his faith into the camera in the sincerest desire to impregnate his cinematic flock with his superior wisdom and mythological beliefs, peddling his deranged superstitions with a maniacal fervor I’ve rarely witnessed outside of infomercials or faith healing revivalists.
It reminded me of the scene from “Fight Club” where Edward Norton repeatedly and passionately punches himself in the face. Much too stupid to laugh at but, somehow, not quite idiotic enough to turn away from, intended to be perhaps revelatory or, at least, shocking, but instead just sort of silly and, at most, pathetically inept.

Although I’m no huge fan of Tom’s thespian career I can truthfully say that I’ve enjoyed more than a few of his films and performances but, Brother, this one was easily the most riveting as it wickedly peeled back the All-American Boy Scout, nakedly revealing his inner ravenous creep to the YouTube Nation

Out Ethics, KSW, Org’s, SP’s, PTSSP???
WTFFF’s?

Try decaf Tommy but more power to Ya’!

Of course, subsequent to this virtual unmasking, I’ve tracked about 17 thousand opinions concerning this absolutely inconsequential farce and, of course, now will add my own to this most minor molehill of matters because it appears to me as if everyone is piling on Little Tommy without regard to any context or consequence.

As for the context I’ll say this.

I was raised and indoctrinated in the Roman Catholic faith (through no choice or fault of my own or anyone else’s as far as I can determine) and for 12 years I dutifully attended religion class along with the rest of the bullshit but the religious instruction, how can I say it, somehow stood out.

In math class there were hard answers and perfected formulas and 2 + 2 always equaled 4.
In history there was a scrupulous, and sometimes not so, record written down on the page for anyone to discover.
In Biology there was Science. That being the empirical proof of any theory.
In P.E. there was a stopwatch.

In Religion I can clearly recall sitting down as a little shaver around about 7 years young and having a grown man tell me that the entire Earth was populated by 1 man and 1 woman. He went on to explain that at some point there was a catastrophic flood in which the whole world was wiped out but 1 Old Guy, thank God, was able to ride it out by building a giant boat and filling it with every animal on the face of the planet thus allowing our little Eden to be restocked. Much later, it was explained, another guy came along, conveniently given birth by a virgin, and after an unrecorded childhood, started a small revolution at age 30 or so. He had the ability to walk on water, magically heal the sick (albeit in a sort of a frustratingly pick and choose manner), feed multitudes with nothing (only when he was in the mood I guess), read minds, see the future (except of course his own) and seemed to get the Roman Empire’s panties in a real bunch.
Oh….yeah.
Then he was crucified (how’s that for drama), rose from the dead and flew up into Heaven before coming back to life again. Of course he didn’t stay very long but absolutely promised that he would return. With a vengeance!

And my deadly serious instructor made it very clear to me that this guy did all this to pay for my 7 year old sins about 2 or 3 thousand years before I was born.

So I glanced around my classroom and thought, “Anybody buying this?”

Plenty were.

So if some nutty actor who gets paid to wear makeup on his face while standing in front of a camera and reading words that someone else wrote for him wants to trust in, testify for or hand over his money to some oddballs who believe in Aliens or volcanoes or bizarre theories espoused by a kooky self-help guru from the 50’s who succeeded in duping gullible multitudes………………then have at it my friend! The Kool-aid is all yours.

I’ve heard much weirder stories than his and from men who were at least as strange (so…..you’re a grown man and you’ve voluntarily decided to give up sex because that’s gonna help you do your job?...........Okey Dokey….well….you let me know how that’s working out and…..uh……..No…..as a matter of fact I don’t wanna be an Altar Boy) but it ain’t no skin off my nose.

And in the more Earthly scheme of things, Forbes magazine reminds me that, despite what is almost universally considered the very worst year of his long career, Little Tommy managed to rake in 31 million dollars in ’07 which would place him about 31 million ahead of me in this here real deal.

So I’m just going to go ahead and guess that TC isn’t exactly all that concerned with the consequences.

He’s got a hotline to Xemu, Baby!

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