Xenu ate Joel Goodson

It's been 25 years since the release of Risky Business, Tom Cruise's first staring role and a pretty darn good movie.

To celebrate, Tom Cruise is throwing himself a party on his new website; a glitzy, easy-to-maneuver ode to all that is Cruise.

But instead of being able to compliment Cruise for having such a cool and useful website -- it is full of goodies such as trailers to all of his many movies -- I can't help but thinking it's all part of an effort to convert me to his wacky moon man religion. And I feel this way even though the site makes no mention of auditing or placenta eating. (Although the background music is culty as a compound in Texas.)

Since I'm pretty sure I'm also going to feel this way about his movies from here going forward, Tom Cruise could be in real trouble, if others feel the same way.

Germany nimbly dodges the Scientologist takeover

In today's Germanic nations and fringe religions with questionable tax status news, Germany has banned Tom Cruises' latest movie from filming on German military sites because the star has "publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult."

Continuing with the official candor, Berlin declared that Scientology "masquerades as a religion to make money."

Strong words, although I do have to quibble with the German's characterization of Scientology's true intentions. While I'm sure back in L. Ron's time it was solely about stuffing the coffers, these days Scientology also functions as a helpful support group where closeted male actors can exchange tips on butching it up -- or at least on how to behave so bizarrely the debate over their sexuality becomes secondary.

Still, for whatever reason, Europe, Germany in particular, has an intense intolerance of Scientology that is even more wacky than the weird, wild religion itself.

What does a Scientologist have to do to gain a little status on the Continent? Call for the execution of an author? Kill a cartoonist? Would a pope do the trick? He's pretty old anyway.

Not that Scientology is all spaceships and giggles. The church does have a history of using private investigators as weapons of harassment against its critics, and Scientologists have been known to sweep up a young starlet and brainwash her into a life of Stepford-like servitude -- although, when that happens, the rumor is she is quite well-compensated and rarely forced to wear a veil.

Anyway, what if Scientology was, as the Germans suggest, simply about the bottom line. Would the world be a worse place if all religion was based solely on the pragmatic pursuit of Deutsche Marks (er, Euros), instead of the noble irrationality of fighting over whether your supernatural force is more omnipotent than the other guy’s supernatural force?

I thought Jesus would be taller

This mostly speaks for itself:

(Scientologist) leader David Miscavige believes that in the future, Cruise, 44, will be worshipped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion.

A source close to the actor, who has risen to one of the church’s top levels, said: “Tom has been told he is Scientology’s Christ-like figure.

“Like Christ, he’s been criticized for his views. But future generations will realize he was right.”

It's never good for a fledgling religion when important news about the future accession of a deity is broken by a down-market tabloid in a feature called "Victoria Newtown's Bizarre."

Although maybe the whole thing is not as "bizarre" as Victoria Newtown would have us believe.

Like Christ and Tom Cruise, Ted Logan and Bill S. Preston Esq. were criticized for their views. But as a result of a chance encounter with George Carlin and a rather unique phone booth the existence of all future generations became based on the two slack-jawed San Dimas stoners' zen-like guitar playing. Who would have thought?

So it was a movie. But a funny movie. Which made history cool. And Tom Cruise is an actor.

Just saying.

Tom Cruise weds, Xenu show restraint

Tom Cruise married the possibly brainwashed actress Katie Holmes over the weekend. There was the prerequisite weirdness: Cruise had grown a half-foot since last seen, the ceremony ended with a "never ending" kiss that caused the audience to squirm, yelp and finally beg the newlyweds to unlock lips, and the best man will be accompanying the happy couple on their honeymoon.

As I skimmed over the press and blogsphere accounts of the wedding I noticed, in many of the descriptions, there were gratuitous slaps at certain aspects of Scientology. I read comments along the lines of "during the wedding Xenu refrained from zapping anyone with his laser beam," and "Tomkat waved their friends goodbye and entered the giant spaceship."

Yes, the story of Scientology is far-fetched. But why assume the Scientologists would incorporate it into their public wedding ceremony?

When was the last time you heard someone say, "what I really liked about the wedding was the part when a robed, bearded man who wasn't invited by either the bride or the groom magically appeared. He was groggy at first -- he said he had been dead a few days. When he came to I found him to be charismatic and omnipresent."

Or, "I thought it was going to be a beachfront ceremony until the sea parted and the shuttle bus followed the two magnificent walls of water to a beautiful island."

That's not to say Tom Cruise and Scientology wouldn't be worthy adversaries in a nutty contest. But still, you have to be careful what you insinuate. You wouldn't want to find yourself on the business end of Xenu's laser beam. From what I gather, stranger things have happened.

Xenu made him do it

Taking a page from the playbook of the Philadelphia Eagles, Paramount Pictures has T.Oed* Tom Cruise. While Terrell Owens got the ax for yelling at his quarterback on the sidelines and fighting a team representative in the locker room, T.C. was let go because he proved fond of jumping up and down like a madman on Oprah's couch and eating his baby's placenta.

What surprised Hollywood wasn't so much that an ailing studio cut ties with a high-maintenance star, but the way Paramount boss Sumner Redstone gleefully cited Cruise's off-screen behavior as the rationale behind the decision to drop him.

It seems to me that a lot of Cruise's "erratic behavior" is a result of his belief in Scientology not jelling with the way normal people go about their business.

I'm not going to defend the practice of Scientology -- it appears to be quite silly. Nevertheless, enough people take it seriously enough for it to be considered a religion. It might be a religion based on space travel and pseudo-psychiatry, but that's because it was founded in 1952 when such things were in vogue.

Back when the "real" religions were founded people knew nothing about the way our brains work or about the universe around us. So these "real" religions were, and continue to be, justified by the exsistence of an unseen magic, pure and simple.

If a religion were to invented today, God would probably live inside the internet and we can only hope there would be little mention of Paris Hilton.

Yes, I do smell a whiff of religious intolerance in the ostracism of Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. If Tom Cruise had picked any other religion outside the mainstream Judeo-Christian umbrella, there would at least be some people standing up for his odd beliefs and behavior.

That being said, we have tradition in America of keeping our constitutionally-protected weird religious practices to ourselves. So to some extent Cruise has brought his troubles on himself. There are plenty of other Scientologists in Hollywood, but we didn't hear about placenta-eating until Cruise brought it up.

Cruise needs take a page from Madonna and try to use his made-up religion for good. Recently, Madonna proposed using Kabbalah water to clean up nuclear waste. We all laughed hysterically, but it was nice to see her trying to help.

When Scientology drives Tom Cruise to do things like make Brooke Shields cry for using antidepressants, he just comes off like a huge jerk. The kind you wouldn't want to hitch your multi-billion dollar movie studio to.

*Of course the Eagles were taking a page from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers playbook when they Keyshawned T.O. Maybe one day a studio will Cruise Lohan.