The Stars: They're Just Like Us (When We Were Twelve)

So Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got engaged after having dated for two months. Where to begin? I'm sure this topic will be covered ad nauseum today and through the weekend, through the marriage and the honeymoon and the rumors and the eventual, inalterable conclusion in ugly, public divorce, so maybe not beginning would be the best approach. But its too late for that -- I've already typed in the title.

It all just strikes me as kind of sad and stupid, like something I might have done in the eighth grade. Actually, maybe seventh grade.

If I had access to money and Oprah and, indeed, Katie Holmes or the seventh grade equivalent of her, its very likely that I may have publicly courted her, jumped up and down in the middle school cafeteria, pointed my chocolate milk to the stars and shouted "I love Katie Holmes or the seventh grade equivalent of her!" Perhaps, if things were going well and I thought there could be a future with this seventh grade girl, I would have assigned a minion from my strange cult to follow her and provide instructions in the ways my strange cult ("I'm sorry Katie, that's just not how we do things in the KISS Army -- it's GENE with the tongue and PAUL with the star and the pout and the whole drag queen/rock star thing happening...").

I might have even asked her to marry me, taken her to some exotic place (like, say, the Williamsport Mall, or the Harrisburg Mall, or maybe even Hoss's Steakhouse on route 15) and gotten down on one knee and done the whole bit and really, really believed that this was the right thing to do, that I was old enough and mature enough and we knew each other well enough to actually be married.

Maybe. When I was twelve.

But I'm not anymore and neither are these two morons.

Oh, and by the way, Tom, in the interest of concluding this entry on a seventh grade level: I've seen her naked.