Tommy was chatting it up with Diane Sawyer last night. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, here it is in all its black t shirt glory.

And now…I have something to confess. It’s going to sound odd, and it’s going to make my strange and bizarre interest in Xenu and his followers seem like nap time in Romper Room. But I have to say it. I can’t hold it in any longer; I need to let it out.

I am now obsessed with the fact that Tommy never gets out of his black t shirt.

Not ever.

Can someone explain this to me? I know how this sounds, but honestly, I can’t take it anymore and I need someone to answer me. I need an answer. I can’t stop thinking about this. Every time I see the guy, it’s now the first thing I notice.

On the page I linked to, there are over 40 Tommy videos, and in only two of them is he not wearing a black, tight fitting t shirt. Seriously. Watch them. Look at the pictures. Black. T shirt. All of them. Here’s Tommy at the MI 3 Premier, in his black t shirt. Here’s Tommy walking down the street with Katie, in his black t shirt. And here’s Tommy buying a new sonogram machine so he can watch the Cruise fetus shift to the left, and by golly, he’s wearing his black t shirt.

How does this happen?




Tommy enters a chic and trendy men’s clothes store. A tall man in a good looking suit walks up to him smiling from earring to earring.

Man: “May I help you?”

TC: “Yeah buddy. I’d like some casual t shirts.”

Man: “Absolutely Mr. Cruise. Absolutely. Right over here. Step this way.”

(The Man leads Tommy, who is trying to step this way, over to a row of fabulously, outrageously expensive t shirts in every color imaginable and some that aren’t.)

TC: “Wow. Lots a colors, man.”

Man: “Yessir. Now these……”

TC: “I mean, wow. That sure is a lot of different colors ya got there, Buddy.”

Man: “Yes. Yes it is. A lot of colors. Now…”

TC: “I mean, I’ve seen a lot of colors, but this…this is some selection, Man. Some hefty selection ya got goin’ on.”

Man: “Yup.” (Long pause as he lets the dust settle.) “So…over here is a bunch of..”

TC: “Black.”

Man: “Excuse me?”

(The man, not BEING Black, wonders if if this was indeed covered in the Costumer Service manual he received in the mail that winter.)

TC: “Black. I want black, man.”

Man: “Oh! OHHhhh! Sure Mr. Cruise they come in all colors, we have…”

TC: “I want black. 82 of them.”

Man: “You want 82 black t shirts?”

(The Man blinks a little.)

TC: “Yeah. 82. Black. T shirts. All in Small.”

Man: “82 small black t shirts? That’s what you want?”

(TC glares. Hard. That steely, raisin-like glare we know from…..all of his movies.)

Man: “I…..right. 82. 82 it is. 82 small black t shirts. Okay. Now….over here are some…”

TC: (Suddenly smiling from out of nowhere, for no reason, pushing his head back so his neck disappears like a turtle on a bumpy car ride, and laughs that throaty, uncomfortable, weirdly erratic laugh we’ve heard…. in all of his movies) “Okay man! Okay! Good Luck! GOOD to see you again! Okay! FANTASTIC! Have a great, great, GREAT DAY! BYEEE!”

TC leaves with a slight bounce and whistling “Merrily We Roll Along”, and the man notices as he walks out of the store, that Tommy is wearing a small black t shirt. The Man walks aimlessly into the nearest sock pile.






So, what is it?

What is it abut Tommy and his one t shirt life that haunts me so?

And it does haunt me. More than his furniture polo, more than the silent birth, more than his poor beleaguered, harried, stiffly romantic relationship, even more than his Osmond cloned Pepsodent smile. I can’t stop thinking about his t shirts.

I wonder if he’s like Howard Hughes and has a row of 500 different black t shirts hanging in his closet. Like, here has all this money and these impeccable Armani suits all hanging neatly, ad firmly pressed in his walk in closet in his mansion on the hill, and next to them, is a long sliding glass door, that when opened reveals a 10 foot long line of perfectly hung, perfectly steamed, crew necked, capped sleeved t shirts hanging mercilessly on identical wooden hangers awaiting approval. All he has to do is pick the next black t shirt in line. No thinking. No decisions. No thought behind anything. He doesn’t have to choose. He doesn’t have to make a definitive decision on how he looks and how he’s perceived; he simply, blindly, mechanically, and with no impulse at all, grabs the next black t shirt in the row.

No reasoning, nothing to stress about. It's all done at arm’s length and with nothing left to chance and no risk involved. Not one brain cell is wasted.

Hm.

I love Sheila O'Malley.

In all honesty, this is really more my issue than Tommy’s. He’s perfectly fine with his t shirts, I’m the one that’s writing about it. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m spending too much time thinking about useless stuff when in reality I should be out there contributing to what’s really important in the world. Like……well, like….

I need to get a life.