There’s a lot of mean things I’ll say about Tom Cruise. Most of them I won’t publish, but I’ll say a whole lot of defamatory things about him when no lawyers are around to hear it. Apparently In Touch magazine has a pretty similar rumor. They’ve gone all-out and hired an investigator to look into Tom Cruise’s sexuality. And you’ll be shocked by what they found. I’m talking scraping your jaw off the floor.

The magazine’s headline reads “FINALLY THE TRUTH.” And we all know how the Scientologist are fans of free speech and really encourage speaking the truth, especially when it comes to their golden boy. Or should I saw paid spokeswhore. Not shockingly, In Touch’s highly respected private detective (a former porn star, no less) has come to the irrefutable conclusion that Tom’s straight as an arrow. An arrow that’s pointing at another guy’s butt.

He’s been married three times and has also been romantically linked with some of Hollywood’s most desirable women. Yet for nearly his entire career, Tom Cruise has been subject to pervasive rumors that he’s gay. Though Tom’s camp has repeatedly denied the talk, it has persisted over the years, with two men even claiming to have had affairs with him — tales which Tom was willing to challenge in a court of law. Now, after conducting an extensive investigation of the gay rumors, porn star-turned-private investigator Paul Barresi is speaking to In Touch about his findings. “Everything I’ve found and everything I know points to Tom being heterosexual,” Paul tells In Touch.

[From In Touch]

Not surprisingly, In Touch is making us wait until the issue hits the stands to learn all the reasons Tom is straight. I’m guessing it’s going to be like “He’s been married 3 times. Only straight men marry women.” “He likes boobs.” “Scientology loves gay people – if Tom were gay, he’d be open about it.” Tom’s just too… something. It’s hard to put your finger on. It’s not like he actively shows any of the stereotypical traits we’ve come to associate with gay people. There’s just something artificial about the way he interacts with women he’s supposedly sexually interested in. While I love Nicole Kidman, I could maybe excuse that one – she seems a little cold. But Katie Holmes? I wouldn’t kick her out of bed, and I’m a straight woman. Or maybe not. Maybe they should send this former porn star detective after me, and see what my issues are. Something tells me Tom was able to bribe Paul Barresi with things only Tom can provide. Wait was Barresi a gay porn star? Let’s go with yes, that makes this funnier. So happy Thanksgiving, and Tom Cruise is not gay. That’s almost as good as extra mashed potatoes.

Important Note by Celebitchy: This story is a complete turnaround from earlier claims by Baressi. The guy wrote a book, segments of which were published online in September 2006, saying that he spoke with a male hooker who had a bizarre wrestling jerk-off session with Tom in the late 90s toward the end of his relationship with Kidman. We covered this extensively at the time.

Then a guy claiming to be the hooker who wrestled with Tom Cruise contacted me and we had an extended e-mail exchange. He was extremely wary of telling his story and never did in the end, just giving vague statements that Baressi’s account, which again at that time was that Cruise was indeed gay or at least had gay experiences, was not true.

So the hooker guy, who was reluctant and could not be convinced to tell his story, e-mailed me and made hints that it didn’t happen that way and that Cruise wasn’t gay. (Believe me, I wish it went the other way with this guy, but it didn’t. It’s possible he was a plant by someone, but he was so evasive with me, and so unprofessional about it, that I would say he just got scared in the end and didn’t tell the whole story, which he suggested was less incriminating toward Tom.)

I spent a week e-mailing with a guy who claims to be “Big Red,” the male hooker that supposedly had a rather tame gay wrestling romp with Tom in the late 90s. The guy didn’t tell me his story and I kept e-mailing with him back and forth, hoping that he would write something I could publish.

He claimed that the story told by another guy, Barresi that we published here was inaccurate, and that it didn’t go down like it was claimed, but the guy wasted my time and didn’t give any details. Here’s the relevant part of our e-mail exchange. Again, I cannot verify that this is the person he claims to be or that this is anything more than a person who strung me along via e-mail for a week, but here’s what he said:

———————————
Segment of one e-mail toward the end of our exchange: I just do not think the story I have to tell is what you are looking for but I will think about it.

Another e-mail: I am actually looking to build Tom Cruise up not break him down

Last one I received: I’m not getting a good vibe from this at the moment - - I think I will wait and I may neveer publish the real story - - afterall, I believe in Karma and Barresi will have to deal with his.
———————————
It sounds like whatever happened, it was even less sensational than was claimed, at least according to this person who contacted me and got my hopes up about running this big exclusive. (I even contacted a lawyer and a cult expert about how to proceed, which may be why he got a bad vibe. You can’t be too careful with the c0s.) This guy claims to live in Europe now. The book by Barresi says that he left the states after the news of his supposed romp with Cruise got out, but I can’t be certain what’s true at this point. Tom Cruise is weird and is involved in a harmful freaky cult, but whether he actually had a gay wrestling session is up to question.

[I wrote this, it was originally published on Celebitchy in November, 2006]

So now this same guy Baressi is all “Oh, Tom Cruise isn’t gay.” What happened?

Meanwhile Cruise biographer Andrew Morton, who has a supposedly explosive unauthorized biography of Cruise coming out this January, has sold his house and is now in an undisclosed location after extensive harassment by Scientology thugs defending Tom’s character. Perhaps Baressi was engaged in a little character-saving PR of his own, if he’s so quick to switch his story. Maybe the hooker guy was right and it was never true in the first place. Either way, I’ll be reading Mr. Morton’s book with wide-eyed interest.

Update 2: Baressi has commented specifically on this post, and clarifies that he never claimed in his book to have checked out Big Red’s claims, and that it was now-jailed celebrity lawyer Anthony Pellicano who told him the story checked out. Pellicano was a notorious double-dealer, and routinely dug up dirt on celebrities in order to secure deals representing them. I re-read the chapter online of Baressi’s book that I referred to, and he’s right - he never claimed to have checked out Big Red personally, he was just quoting Pellicano, who told The Enquirer that the story wasn’t true, while telling Baressi that it checked out. Our apologies to Mr. Baressi for misunderstanding and misrepresenting his earlier position. One thing Mr. Baressi did say was that “He [Big Red] spoke with such conviction, I truly believed his story,” but once he investigated, it didn’t pan out. We will issue a full story with correction after Mr. Baressi answers some questions we have for him in the comments.

Here are his comments on this story:

To clarify: In first draft of my book, Pellicano’s Enforcer/the “Seeing Red” chapter, I write, “Red survived (Anthony) Pellicano’s brutal questioning. Anthony later pulled me aside and said, “I think this kid’s telling the truth. I find him to be credible.” Just to clarify, it was Pellicano who said this; not I.

As written in chapter, subsequently, (Anthony Pellicano) phoned me at home to let me know, “So far, all the information Red gave him seemed to be checking out.” Again, this is Pellicano talking; not I.

Also, it is clear in chapter that it is Pellicano; not I, who claimed, “Tom Cruise had, indeed, been in London shooting Eyes Wide Shut on the days Red alleged to have been there and that he did have a body guard named Mickey.” And, it is clear in chapter that it is Pellicano; not I who made the claim that (Cruise’s alleged body guard, Mickey) “happened to be currently doing time for murder. (and he told me that) He expected to receive a mug shot shortly.”

If you go back and read the chapter, you’ll read I said, “It all sounded so convoluted and bizarre to me.”

So happens, I was right, it was all convoluted. Pellicano was not telling me the truth.

I conducted my own investigation and discovered Cruise was not in London at time Red alleged to have met him as Pellicano claimed. I also found out that the line Pellicano gave me about the body guard Mickey being in prison for murder was all a sham as well.

My investigation of the Cruise gay rumors continued long after Pellicano was arrested, right up until very recently.

I concluded my findings only a short while ago– after which I decided to give the interview to IN TOUCH.

This will all be explained in great detail in the FINAL DRAFT of book.

[Comment by Paul Baressi on this post]

Today in impossibly ridiculous news that you’re supposed to believe: Tom Cruise is going to play Hugh Hefner in an upcoming biopic. Umm… trying not to make poorly veiled closeted homosexual jokes here… restraint is not my strongest suit…. crap. Okay how about this: many gay actors have shown us that it’s possible to play straight, and vice-versa. See how I didn’t say anything about your client probably being gay there, Tom Cruise’s lawyers? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I think that even if there had never been a single gay rumor about Tom Cruise, I still couldn’t buy him as Hugh Hefner. They’re just so… opposite. I mean both odd, but in very different ways. And something about Tom makes me think he’d be judgy and preachy about Playboy. If he’d ever opened one to know.

Tom Cruise is set to play Hugh Hefner in a new biopic of the Playboy founder’s life. The 45-year-old actor, who has an 18-month-old daughter Suri with his actress wife Katie Holmes, is hot favorite to portray the 81-year-old lothario in upcoming movie ‘Playboy’ and is reportedly excited about the prospect of bringing Hefner’s “colorful life” to the big screen.

A source close to the actor said: “Tom knows of Hugh’s colorful past and thinks he would be the perfect person to bring it to the big screen. He also thinks the role would be a challenge for him, and would remind people of his versatility as an actor. At the moment people are concentrating on his personal life, and his marriage to Katie - but he wants to remind them that he can act too.”

[From AZcentral]

I think people are well-aware that Tom Cruise can act. He’s been acting like he’s in a marriage for a little over a year now. Kidding, of course. Tom’s an okay actor, and I people remember that about him. It’s just that he shines in a very specific kind of role… and Hugh Hefner just isn’t that type of character. Tom needs to jump on top of moving trains and fall out windows and things like that. Occasionally romance Renee Zellweger in a way the audience only sorta buys. He is not the kind of guy you want to see chasing fake bunny tail. Fake alien tail, fine. But rabbits are out of the question.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Tom and Katie at the 23rd Annual Museum Of The Moving Image Black Tie Salute Honoring Tom Cruise on November 6th in New York City. Images thanks to PR Photos.

the last time Connor, Isabella, Tom and Katie were photographed together, 12/10/06.
Doesn’t it seem like Tom Cruise stopped pimping out his two older kids once Suri was old enough to start generating “aww, shucks” photo ops every few days? I was looking through the photo agencies trying to find pictures of Isabella, and the last time she was photographed out was when she died her hair blue while visiting her mom in Australia way back in May. Then we heard that 14 year-old Isabella and her 12 year-old brother, Connor, were busy being indoctrinated into the illogical and soul-sucking Scientology cult this summer, which may have explained why we haven’t seen them in a while.

But what about their sports games? Didn’t Tom and Katie show up at a soccer or football game constantly last fall? The Cruise kids are home-schooled and spoonfed cult nonsense, but at least they had the semblance of a normal life through involvement in sports. Isabella and Connor might still be playing sports this year, but if they are Tom and Katie aren’t showing up to cheer them on and embarrass them with well-documented PDA on the sidelines. They haven’t been photographed at a match since December, 2006.

So what’s up with Isabella and Connor? Are they even still around? Star Magazine says Isabella is at least home enough to swipe her stepmom Katie Holmes’ clothes, and that sounds like refreshingly normal behavior for a ninth grade girl. Of course her marathon-running stepmom is a bit too small to provide an endless supply of couture, but a lot of her shirts fit Isabella, and since Katie never wears anything twice she doesn’t seem to mind:

When Katie Holmes got back to L.A. from a recent visit to see hubby Tom Cruise in Germany, she discovered something amiss with her wardrobe. Her designer duds had been plundered - and the culprit was her stepdaughter Isabella!

“Bella has a wild streak in her that she expresses in the ay she dresses,” a friend of Katie tells Star. “She loves an eclectic look and gets that by mixing and matching her own clothes with designer pieces of Katie’s.”

The 14-year-old… is tired of the “conservative and old-fashioned” clothes her parents buy her, says the friend.

They get her things like Theory basics, “but she’d much rather go through Katie’s closet and find a Chloé shirt,” another insider reveals.

[From Star Magazine, print edition, November 19, 2007]

There are too many insiders for this story to be plausible, but it sounds likely. Maybe a writer at Star has a teenage daughter and is getting her stuff swiped too. I know I had a huge issue with my mom when I was that age because I was constantly wearing her shoes and rifling through her jewelry. Once you hit the age when you realize that there’s all this great stuff in your house you could be wearing there’s no stopping you. It doesn’t matter which family member it belongs too.

As it is, Isabella would have to be home to get Katie’s stuff, and she hasn’t been seen out with Tom, Katie, or Nicole in six months. Are Isabella and Conner children of convenience for Tom or are they so sucked up in the cult that they never see their parents anymore?

Header image is of Connor, Isabella, Tom and Katie on December 10, 2006, the last time they were all photographed together from what I can tell. That was when Tom got fat for like a month. If you have seen photos of them together or heard that they attended an event with any of their parents in the last six months let me know. Katie did go out shopping with Isabella way back in December of last year. And Connor and Isabella went to the Kids Choice Awards with Nicole in March of this year.

Isabella is also shown below with those blue streaks in her hair on 5/5/07 in Australia. You know that had to piss off the COS. Thanks to Splash News.

The National Enquirer has a cover story this week yelling all about Tom and Katie’s $600 million marriage contract in those bright yellow all-caps fonts the tabloids are favoring lately. I’m not sure if this is a new story or one of those recycled and embellished tales that we’ve already partially heard, but Katie doesn’t get the over 1/2 billion unless she’s shackled to diminutive Tom for life. She supposedly signed a contract granting her a per-year bonus to encourage her to stick around. This sounds familiar, but since I want to push off any potential Britney coverage on JayBird and am not interested in covering Ellen Pompeo’s quickie wedding, you’ll bear with me:

The contract, which reportedly runs about 100 pages long, was hammered out by Tom’s attorneys and Katie’s representative, sources say.

In it, Tom is said to have pledged a sliding scale of bonus-like payments to Katie based on the number of years they’re wed. But the… star sweetened the pot considerably to keep Katie out of divorce court. Just by reaching the one-year milestone, Katie is guaranteed up to $70 million, said the source. “If the marriage lasts five years, she could get an estimated $10 million extra, which would bump her divorce payoff up to $80 million,” added the source.

“If Tom and Katie are still happily married after a decade, she would collect a possible $100 million should the relationship later collapse.

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, November 19, 2007]

The article goes on to say that if Tom and Katie are married for life, Katie will get half. Tom’s fortune is currently estimated at $600 million, but it could double over the next decade due to his job as a studio head at United Artists.

And Katie has “reportedly already received $3 million, plus a $35 million Beverly Hills mansion, as a present for giving birth to Suri,” they add. Plus she’ll get a bonus for each child.

Predictably there is also a non-disclosure clause stating that she can’t provide any personal information about Tom or talk about the weird shit she witnessed once they split up.

I think The Enquirer is just rehashing an old story, but it’s interesting enough. It seems like they’re trying to get Katie to stick around since she gets $70 million for the first year but has to wait four more years to meet the next payoff benchmark of an additional $10 million. It hardly seems worth it if she’s already pocketing $70 million for her trouble.

In Touch Weekly claims to have an exclusive this week with “Tom’s Secrets Revealed,” but the story is little more than the already-known news that Andrew Morton’s much-anticipated biography of Tom is coming out January 15. In Touch does have a quote from a representative from the publishing company saying “It’s going to be explosive,” and “No one has dared to write a book like this. So it’s going to really be dealing with stuff no one has written about before.” [From In Touch, print edition, November 19, 2007]

We reported yesterday that author Morton has sold his home and gone into hiding due to threats from Scientology goons, who play dirty with everyone who dares question their scary cult’s practices. As for how Katie is handling the potential crisis, In Touch speculates that she “likely worries that the author will readdress rumors about the paternity of their daughter, Suri,” and they quote a supposed source as saying that “the rumors are really, really breaking her heart.”

I think she should take the $70 million and run, but maybe she’s holding out for the bonus. She has expensive taste now and surely that plays right into Tom’s hands.

Tom and Katie are shown on 11/6/07 at Museum Of The Moving Image Black Tie Salute Honoring Tom Cruise. Thanks to PRPhotos.

I have such a primal dislike for Tom Cruise as a person that I’ve generally refused to see most of his movies, and it turns out I’ve been missing out on a pretty decent actor. I’m not really good at separating the things I hear about someone famous from the work they do. So when I sat through Jerry Maguire, part of me was always thinking “You’re a midget control freak!” And most of Vanilla Sky was actually comprised of my inner monologue on loop, saying, “You believe in an alien god and think half your cast mates are Thetans.” But then I saw Minority Report and Magnolia and realized I should learn to ignore all the crazy that is Tom Cruise for the sake of two hours of entertainment. So with the caveat that I’m no Tom Cruise expert, I have to say that the trailer for his newest movie, Valkyrie, looks pretty good. Some of his clips come off as a bit over-acted, but I’m under the impression that that’s his thing.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the film:

During World War II, the German Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) is severely wounded in Africa and returns home to Nazi Germany. Stauffenberg helps conceive Operation Valkyrie, a plan to implement a shadow government in the event of the death of Germany’s Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler. The Colonel eventually joins the German Resistance and becomes part of the July 20 Plot, a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and execute Valkyrie in order to take control of the country and make peace with the Allies. Stauffenberg finds himself taking on not only the responsibility of leading the coup, but also the task to assassinate Hitler himself.

[From Wikipedia]

Here’s the trailer – I think it looks pretty interesting, but I’ll see just about any historical movie and love it.

Nicole Kidman tends to come off as pretty classy (if at times a bit bland) in most of her interviews. Post-divorce, Tom Cruise has come across as an elfin control freak who randomly accuses people of being glib (which is a pretty good way to describe Cruise in general) and promoting pseudo-sciences (again, a pretty good way to describe some Cruise does in general). Nicole hasn’t trashed Tom, but when questions of her marriage to him arise, she manages to make it clear that he squashed her personality. I can’t really explain how, but Nicole seems to still do this in a way that isn’t unseemly. She gave an interview to USA Today in which she talks about how she lost her identity, and how she’s worked on getting it back.

Head’s up, Katie Holmes. In a new interview with USA Today, Nicole Kidman said she lost her self-identity during her nearly 10-year marriage to Tom Cruise because of the couple’s constant traveling. “Tom and I, we moved and moved and moved. Your sense of where do I come from becomes less and less relevant,” said Kidman, 40, who split from Cruise, 45, in 2001 and shares custody of their adopted children Isabella, 14, and Connor, 12.

“A lot of my life, particularly when I was working so much, it was about trying to fill in the gaps,” she added. “Now there’s much more reason to exist in the world without my identity needing to be through work.” She said her life is finally making sense again. “I have a new niece, I have a new marriage, we just bought an acreage in Tennessee, which we’re really happy to build a house on and spend some time doing that,” she said. “I’m just not willing to give up my life with my man anymore.”

Kidman says she and Urban, 40, are “inseparable” (she even plans to hit the road with him on his world tour). “I also like seeing him do what he does,” she said. “He can really play, and he can really sing. I’ll vouch for it.” Kidman said she isn’t as adamant about working so prolifically, either. As for her recent string of box office duds (The Invasion, anyone?), she said she has no regrets. “You always strive to make a good movie,” she said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. You step into something with the best of intentions and you hope. I think that kind of approach to a career, and a life, is the healthiest way to be.”

[From Us Weekly]

I find it really annoying when articles always call her Connor and Isabella her “adopted children” instead of just her children. But that’s neither here nor there. Nicole has been making the publicity rounds lately, and was on the cover of Vanity Fair last month with a long interview. She seems pretty demure and low-key, but also very honest. She talked about Keith Urban’s struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. Before I always thought she came off as sort of an “ice princess” who wouldn’t talk about anything in her life that was less-than-perfect. But she talked about loving someone who has issues, and how they work on it and keep their relationship intact. Nicole said something in the Vanity Fair piece that I thought was remarkably profound. “I kept looking for happiness, and then I realized: This is it. It’s a moment, and it comes, and it goes, and it’ll come back again.” It sounds like she has an optimistic yet realistic outlook.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Nicole at the Margot At The Wedding’ Movie Screening at the New York Film Festival on October 7th. Images thanks to PR Photos.

This week’s Star Magazine has Katie Holmes jealous over a supposed on-set ongoing flirtation Tom had with a pretty German brunette extra in Berlin, but OK! Magazine features a fawning piece that focuses on the elaborate meal Katie planned for Valentine’s day. Star claims they’re having trouble at the eve of their upcoming anniversary, while OK! says they’re supportive of each other and take time to communicate and that everything is all so rosy.

Neither article has much substance. Star says that along with being pissed off at the attention Tom is showing some unnamed extra, Katie “may feel threatened by his leading lady, Carice Van Houten, 31,” since “the chemistry is obvious” when they work together. Supposedly Tom talks too much about how beautiful and what a great actress Clarice is, but I think Star is inventing stuff to be able to put Tom and Katie on the cover. At least OK! has some details to back up their claims that sound like they’re actually true.

OK! offers a few examples of why all the happy marriage cliché’s apply. Among the inset features in the article are two different stories about how the Scientology cult goes out of their way to ensure that Tom and Katie are treated like royalty, comping them expensive vacations and creating an entire luxury apartment for them in Beverly Hills while they wait for renovations to be completed on their home. The amount of trouble and expense the cult goes through to ensure their highest profile members are happy is outrageous:

After plunking down $35 million for the perfect Beverly Hills love nest, Tom immediately began renovating the home. The work wasn’t done by the time the lease on their current house expired in September, so a friend of Tom tells OK!, “The had the old house completely packed and put into storage.” Technically, the Cruises were homeless in Beverly Hills - until the Scientology Celebrity Centre International stepped in…

After knocking down walls and doing a round-the-clock overhaul of some space on the building’s sixth and seventh floors, a luxurious duplex apartment was created for the Cruises to use whenever they need. Their temporary home has a living room with a terrace, a dining room, a full kitchen, separate offices for Tom and Katie and a fully equipped gym. The master bedroom, which has its own private terrace, has an adjoining nursery for Suri. There are two additional bedrooms for Connor and Isabella.

[From OK! Magazine, print edition, November 12, 2007]

One of those other bedrooms is probably for Katie, because she and Tom don’t sleep in the same room according to many accounts.

And in case a fully decked out completely free apartment in Beverly Hills isn’t enough to keep the Cruise’s smiling and advocating the cult, they were also on vacation in Florida recently at Scientology’s expense. OK! says that they went missing for a few days and that’s where they were, not that we noticed:

When Tom celebrated his 45th birthday on July 3, the whole world awaited photos of the family together, but to no avail. OK! has learned that the couple, along with Connor, Isabella and little Suri, snuck away to Clearwater, Florida, where they stayed at the Scientology Center complex (Clearwater is the worldwide headquarters for Scientology) for two days.

[From OK! Magazine, print edition, November 12, 2007]

Of course Tom’s entire family came along, and supposedly Katie chartered a yacht, but I’m guessing the Scientology people had more to do with that.

Plus the head of Scientology, the guy that was rumored to have joined them on their honeymoon (a story that Tom’s rep denies) was also there.

They were joined by Tom’s mother, Mary Lee, his sisters Cass, Marian and Lee Anne, and Tom’s best friend David Miscavige, who is the head of Scientology.

“Katie arranged for the charter of a fabulous yacht,” a friend of Tom tells OK!. “It was a gorgeous day and they sailed around the Clearwater Harbor for a while and then anchored on a private barrier island. Everything had been set up for just off the sand for a sunset dinner…”

Katie’s birthday gift to Tom, however, was a little too large to be presented to him on the island. “She gave him a custom-designed motorcycle.”

[From OK! Magazine, print edition, November 12, 2007]

So they went on a yacht, undoubtedly owned by the Scientology cult, to a Scientology island and had a dinner set out for them by workers at the Scientology headquarters.

Tom chose to spend his birthday being catered to by the cult he has a symbiotic relationship with, and Katie came along for the ride.

While celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Alley are given everything for free and treated like five star resort guests by Scientology, average people involved with the cult are forced to fork over their life savings, with many working as slave laborers in “reducation” camps for Sea Org.

Here are Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes at the 23rd Annual Museum Of The Moving Image Black Tie Salute Honoring Tom Cruise in NY last night. I wonder where they stayed and if that was comped by Scientology too. Thanks to PR Photos for these pictures.

Oh to be a spoiled little Scientologist! Suri Cruise sounds like she’s got it made – at least for now. According to Us Weekly, the tot almost never hears the word “no.” In Scientology, it’s considered better to explain why actions are wrong. I can’t argue with that – but I think a “no” now and then might be useful, like “No! Don’t lay down in the train tracks!” It might be a little quicker than explaining what the force and weight of a train can do to a body. But that’s just me, and I’m close-minded like that. This article makes it sound like Suri is spoiled, so it’s hard to tell if it’s due to Scientology or overly-doting parents.

“Everyone knows that Suri Cruise, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ adorable little daughter, leads a charmed existence but her upbringing as a Scientologist remains largely a mystery. How does the religion started by L. Ron Hubbard influence Suri’s life on a daily basis? Us Weekly has learned that while Suri — who as a baby was breastfed and nursed on a mixture of barley water, milk and corn syrup which Hubbard advocated as being healthier than formula and breast milk — is too young to take classes at the Scientology Centre, the 18-month-old is constantly surrounded by believers, including her two nannies.

“‘Tom doesn’t like associating with people who aren’t Scientologists,’ says an insider. Additionally, Holmes, 29, and Cruise, 45, have a hard time saying no to Suri. But it’s not simply because they’re pushovers. ‘It’s all about being positive and supportive,’ says the couple’s friend (Hubbard advised parents to ‘try to be the child’s friend.’) As for discipline, one former church member tells Us that Scientologists do not scold their children, but instead explain that bad behavior (like throwing a toy) is the ‘wrong action.’ (A Scientology rep tells Us, ‘How a parent disciplines their child is left up to the parent.’)

“Cruise and Holmes, says their pal, are very lenient and do not like to give Suri too many rules: ‘Suri pretty much does whatever she wants, whenever she wants. If she fusses before bed, they let her stay up later. If they want her to go swimming and she cries, they’ll take her out. If she whines about food, they’ll ask her what else she wants to eat. They always want to please her.’”

[From Us Weekly]

Ooooohhh, Tom and Katie are such bad parents. They want to make their kid happy! I’m kidding, that’s a pretty natural inclination. On the one hand you want to be firm, and on the other you want your kid to like you. I can’t help but wonder if L Ron Hubbard would have the same ideas about parents being their children’s friend if he’d seen the way Lindsay Lohan turned out. Yeah, when your parent/friend snorts coke with you, you may have blurred the lines a bit.

What are some other scientology pearls of wisdom regarding child rearing? Here’s a recap of what Celebitchy wrote a year ago:

“In yet another disturbing chapter of the TomKat saga, Mike Wallace of the National Enquirer reports that Scientologists plan to commandeer Katie’s baby for three days after its birth. What’s more, the baby will be isolated for a day after it’s born. Despite reports that she’s spending 8 hours a day being indoctrinated into Scientology, Katie has come to her senses and is questioning this counter-intuitive practice:

“furious KATIE HOLMES warned fiancé/daddy-to-be TOM CRUISE that she’ll absolutely refuse to allow Scientologists to commandeer her newborn at birth for what their church calls “Processing a New Mother” - a bizarre ritual which involves separating mother and child for three days, allowing only minimal contact! As her time approaches, sources say, Katie’s becoming hysterical over the idea that her baby will be controlled by the sect’s handlers from the moment he/she enters the world. In a raging confrontation, Katie told Tom she flatly rejects Scientology’s edict that newborns should be left totally alone for the entire first day after birth.

“Any human who’s not brainwashed would agree that it’s harmful and cruel to leave a newborn baby alone at any time, especially on its first day in the world. It’s also quite difficult, if not impossible, to breastfeed if you don’t start up within the first three days after birth. This is wrong for so many reasons.”

Want to know some other freaky stuff? If you’re a Scientologist and your kid trips over the root of a tree and hurts himself, you’re supposed to take the kid back to the tree and press the root against the injury, and give the pain back to the root. True story.

“Parents are encouraged not to comfort or nurture young children because Hubbard believed children are small adults, able to think and fend for themselves from a very early age. For example, a child who falls and hurts himself is taken to the place where he was hurt and the injury is pressed against the object that caused it. It is believed the pain can be made to flow back into the object.

“‘That’s called a contact assist,’ Teresa Summers said. ‘There is also a fever assist. We were discouraged from seeking medical help or giving medication, even Tylenol, to bring down a fever. Instead, you get the child to hold an object still. That’s supposed to bring down the fever. When it doesn’t work, it’s because you aren’t doing it right or didn’t repeat it often enough. I tried it on my child. Naturally, it didn’t work.’”

[From the New York Post]

Good luck Suri!

Remember the “suicide” death of that Tom Cruise photo extortioner who supposedly hung himself while he was on house arrest? Everyone was saying it looked like a Church of Scientology job, not that uh, we would ever suggest that. The National Enquirer has the details of how the guy was found, and it sounds even more suspicious.

The shower stall where he hung himself was too low for him to have done the job properly and he would have had to bring his knees up under him to hang himself. Who commits suicide like that? Wouldn’t someone chose a more effective method than squatting to die if they were serious about it?

David Hans Schmidt, 47, was found hanged in the shower of his Phoenix home on Sept. 28 - after police were alerted that the court-ordered house arrest monitor he was wearing had gone silent..

He was just days away from pleading guilty - and faced two years in prison - when he was found dead.

Police sergeant Any Hill told The Enquirer that they were treating the case as a suicide.

But a bizarre detail could cast a cloud over the investigation.

“Schmidt had been hanging for at least a day when he was found, revealed an insider.

“And the shower stall was so low that to achieve the drop needed to hang himself, he had to bring his knees up under him, like he was squatting.

“It was such an unusual situation that some people have discussed the possibility of foul play.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, October 15, 2007]

Now this is pure speculation, not that we’re above that or anything, but if Schmidt was about to plead guilty for the Tom Cruise extortion case is it possible that details about the pictures could have been leaked? Is it reasonable to think that some information may get out as part of his plea bargain and that someone might have feared that?

So far all we know about the Tom Cruise photos were that they were of his wedding, but how valuable would regular non-scandalous wedding photos be after the fact? No one wants to see wedding candids of celebrities months afterward unless there’s something going on that the celebrities wouldn’t want to get out.

Schmidt is said to have a lot of other “powerful enemies,” so it’s possible that even if it was foul play there were any number of people or shady cult organizations that could have been behind it. It sounds like the case is going to be considered a suicide despite the odd nature of how the man was hung, and we will probably only have our active imaginations to fill in the details of how he died and who was responsible.

Speaking of imaginations, if someone was killed and then hung like that to make it look like a suicide how would you do it? Would you smother them with a pillow so there aren’t marks and then hang them up with their knees under them so that it looks like they were asphyxiated that way? Did this guy even get an autopsy? It doesn’t sound like it.

Header image via The Bosh.

Tom Cruise is laying out plans to build a huge underground bunker at his Telluride, Colorado estate. It will have a state of the art air purification system and will be large enough with enough equipment and supplies for at least ten people to survive for years. That’s not crazy or anything.

Devout Scientologist Tom Cruise plans to build a $10 million bunker under his Telluride, Colorado, mansion, a source tells Star! Equipped with a high tech air-purifying system, “it’s a self-contained underground system where up to 10 people can survice for years.” Apparently, Scientologists believe that the evil deposed galatic [sic] ruler Xenu is set to attack Earth, and they’ll need a safe place to survive.

[From Star Magazine, print edition, October 1, 2007]

According to the drug-fueled ramblings of Scientology’s founder, L Ron Hubbard, there was a big attack 75 million years ago in which this Xenu guy made billions of people line up by volcanoes and terminated them with hydrogen bombs. All of our problems stem from this one incident, claim Scientologists, and our memories and psychological problems are made up of the fractured souls of the people who were killed. We would all have god-like knowledge and ability if only we could free ourselves of the trauma of that event. This is something that Scientologists are brainwashed to believe they have achieved once they surrender enough time, money, common sense and free will. Only when they reach the highest level of the cult, or Operating Thetan 3, are Scientologists told the story about the volcano genocide, but thanks to the wonder of the Internet you get it for free.

I wasn’t able to dig up much about Scientology’s teachings on the end of the world, and maybe you can help shed some light onto this matter. According to Wikipedia, Xenu is supposedly trapped in an alternate universe forever, kind of like those three villains stuck under glass and floating in space in the Superman movie. He could come back though, and only the super rich deluded folks like Cruise and Travolta will be prepared.

Concern for the survival of one’s family in the event of a nuclear attack or massive world war is only natural, and maybe if I had a quarter of a billion dollars I would consider setting up a giant underground bunker too. I really doubt it though. The only preparations I made on December 31, 1999 were getting an outfit and having my nails done for a New Year’s party. Stockpiling water and supplies for the millennium just wasn’t high on my to-do list.

Maybe if Cruise could pop some lithium every day he wouldn’t be so worried about the end of the world. Along with providing ease of mind and more stable moods, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper, too. L Ron Hubbard must have realized that prescription medication would help his most devoted followers figure out what bullshit he was preaching, so he decided to make psychiatrists enemy number one. The guy was crazy like a fox.

In other Tom Cruise news, he has been given permission by the German government to film scenes for his Nazi hero movie Valkyrie at the Bendlerblock building, a World War II historic site. The German government was initially reluctant to grant permission to film there due to concern for the preservation of the site. A minute of silence was observed at the location this weekend before filming began.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are shown leaving an Italian restaurant in Berlin on Thursday. Thanks to WENN for these pictures. All details about Scientology from Operation Clambake and Wikipedia.