NICOLE Kidman was well aware that Tom Cruise was using a private detective to wiretap her phones during their 2001 divorce. Kidman hired private eye Richie Di Sabatino, who told Page Six last week, "We swept her phones and put on an encryption device, so she couldn’t be wiretapped . . . We tried to keep one step ahead." But Kidman knew that Cruise’s private detective, Anthony Pellicano, was a resourceful opponent. One pal said: "During her divorce, she would talk to friends on the phone and every couple of minutes break into the conversation and say, ‘So, Tom, are you listening,’ or ‘Am I saying what you want me to say, Tom?’ She knew he was either tapping her phone or trying to. She was no dummy. She not only knew about it but taunted Tom." In fact, Pellicano may have been successful in his phone snooping. Kidman has been questioned by the FBI in the Pellicano investigation because the feds found a recording of her talking to Cruise in computers they seized from Pellicano’s office in 2002. Di Sabatino suggests the tape was from Cruise’s phone. via NYPost

I’ve heard rumors that Isaac Hayes didn’t actually quit South Park because of the Trapped In The Closet episode, but he quit because of his recent stroke…If that’s true, I have my suspicions that this was an ingenious publicity stunt by the makers of he show to promote the season opener:

Last week’s spat that pitted “South Park” against Scientology and Isaac Hayes, with a rumored dollop of Tom Cruise stirred in, led Wednesday night to the animated series’ highest-rated season premiere since 2002, according to a Comedy Central spokesman.

An estimated 3.5 million viewers — including 2.3 million in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 age bracket — tuned in to watch the show unleash a new salvo against Scientology.

In the episode, the first of the series’ 10th season, Isaac Hayes’ Chef character was brainwashed by the “Super Adventure Club” and then apparently killed off.

Hayes, a soul singer best known for composing the Oscar-winning theme to the movie “Shaft,” has voiced Chef since 1997. The outspoken Scientologist quit the show last week, saying he could no longer tolerate its religious “intolerance and bigotry.”

Series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker immediately blasted back, saying Hayes left because he couldn’t stomach an episode from last November that mocked Scientology and its celebrity followers, including Tom Cruise. A rerun of that episode, called “Trapped in the Closet,” was then yanked off the air without notice last week, resulting in rumors that Cruise made demands to pull it. The actor’s spokesman denied it. Stone and Parker said there would be retribution.

Without Hayes’ participation, they cobbled together clips of his character for Wednesday’s episode, in which the “Super Adventure Club” that Chef joins turns its brainwashed members into child molesters. “South Park’s” impish grade-schoolers try to save him, but he is burned, stabbed and mauled by a mountain lion and bear. They try to revive him, and it’s not clear if they succeed.

“We shouldn’t be mad at Chef for leaving us,” says one of the children. “We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains.” via CNN

Anyway, you can watch Chef’s demise here.  Warming, it’s a bit graphic:

Tom Cruise is even less popular than… Saddam Hussein.

The ‘Mission Impossible’ star was voted the person people would least like to go camping overnight with in a recent poll.

The actor took a massive 41 per cent of the vote in the survey, conducted by Stuff magazine, ahead of the Iraqi dictator.

 

It is not the only unwanted accolade Cruise has scooped in recent weeks.

The Hollywood heavyweight recently suffered the embarrassment of ‘winning’ a Razzie for his outrageous behaviour in 2005.

He was awarded the newly-created Most Tiresome Tabloid Target prize at the ceremony - which acknowledges the year’s worst films and stars.

Cruise - who is engaged to pregnant actress Katie Holmes - was given the unwanted accolade for his embarrassing behaviour last year, which included the now infamous ‘couch jumping’ incident on the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show’, proposing to Holmes at the Eiffel Tower and his gushing pregnancy announcement.

Unsurprisingly, Cruise did not attend the ceremony to collect his award. via Showbiz News

Wow, Tom Cruise really is crazy about Katie Holmes…oh wait…no, he’s just crazy:

Tom Cruise has displayed his excitement about the impending birth of his baby with Katie Holmes by jumping up and down on a chair at an event where he was guest of honour.

According to reports, Cruise was attending Yahoo’s Influential Speakers event in California, where he answered questions from the crowd in attendance.

After an arm-wrestling match with chief executive Terry Semel, Cruise reportedly re-created his Oprah couch-hopping incident by jumping up and down on a chair, to show his excitement about becoming a father again.

The actor then brought his heavily pregnant fiancée out on stage for a kiss. via RTE

Ad space has been bought to protest the “advice on mental health” doled out by Tom Cruise and Scientology. This seems timely given Scientology’s nationwide battle against the mental-health industry.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which is closely tied to Scientology, has been the force behind more than two dozen bills in Arizona in recent years, including measures to restrict prescriptions of Ritalin.

Arizona legislators met John Travolta and other Scientology celebs in an effort to influence thier votes. Scientology ran a similar campaign in Florida that ultimately failed.

Of course the highest profile celeb in Scientology is Tom Cruise. And the star and his church routinely recommend that everyone should refuse and/or abstain from any drugs prescribed by psychiatrists. And also reject any suggested care or counseling offered by mental health professionals.

This belief apparently led to tragedy when a Scientologist’s 28-year-old son stabbed his mother to death. The young man Jeremy Perkins is deeply disturbed and now is being held within the Rochester Psychiatric Center. He was found not responsible for the murder of his mother due to mental defect.

Perkins was the schizophrenic son of Elli Perkins a senior auditor (counselor) at the Buffalo Scientology branch in New York.

Consistent with his mother’s beliefs Jeremy Perkins never received treatment from mental health professionals, but instead was cared for according to Scientology’s guidelines and practices. He received vitamins.

Scientology’s solution for mental health failed Jeremy Perkins and the young man’s family, deeply involved in the church, has reportedly cut him off since his incarceration.

Without a psychiatric diagnosis of mental defect Perkins might now be on death row.

This seemingly needless death of a 54-year-old mother of two has prompted Scientology critics to run protests in newspapers regarding the church’s ongoing war against psychiatry and/or any mental health professionals and the treatment and/or counseling they can provide. via Smart

I was quite sad today to hear that Isaac Hayes who plays the lovable “Chef” on South Park will be leaving the show because of the Tom Cruise Scientology episode.  He’s such a hypocrite.  Isaac’s fine with jokes about other people’s religions and cultures, but when it comes to what he believes, it isn’t funny.  Sound pretty familiar…Cartoons seem to have struck a nerve with all sorts of hypocrites lately:

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — Soul singer Isaac Hayes said Monday he was quitting his job as the voice of the lusty character “Chef” on the satiric cable TV cartoon “South Park,” citing the show’s “inappropriate ridicule” of religion.

But series co-creator Matt Stone said the veteran recording artist was upset the show had recently lampooned the Church of Scientology, of which Hayes is an outspoken follower.

“In ten years and over 150 episodes of ‘South Park,’ Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslim, Mormons or Jews,” Stone said in a statement issued by the Comedy Central network.

“He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show.” (Watch how ‘Chef” got fed up with the show — 1:58)

He added: “Of course we will release Isaac from his contract, and we wish him well.”

In a statement explaining his departure from the show, Hayes, 63, did not mention last fall’s episode poking fun at Scientology and some of its celebrity adherents, including actor Tom Cruise.

Rather, Hayes said the show’s parody of religion in general was part of what he saw as a “growing insensitivity toward personal spiritual beliefs” in the media, including the recent controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs … begins,” Hayes said.

The crudely animated cartoon, heading into its 10th season next week as one of Comedy Central’s biggest hits, centers on the antics of four foul-mouthed fourth graders in the town of South Park, Colorado.

Outlandish religious satire has been a mainstay of the show since its debut on the Viacom Inc.-owned network in 1997. The series grew out of two short films by Stone and collaborator Trey Parker — “Jesus vs. Frosty” and “The Spirit of Christmas,” the latter featuring a martial-arts duel between Jesus and Santa Claus over the true meaning of Christmas.

Hayes, the first black composer to win an Oscar for best song with his theme to the 1971 film “Shaft,” gained renewed fame on “South Park” as the voice of Jerome “Chef” McElroy, the school cafeteria cook whom the boys often seek out for advice.

In an episode last fall, one of the gang, Stan, scores so high on a Scientology test that church followers think he is the next L. Ron Hubbard, the late science-fiction writer who founded the religion. Hayes did not take part in that episode.

In an interview with Reuters late last year, Hayes talked about a foundation he formed to bring Scientology-based study techniques to disadvantaged inner-city schools, in partnership with fellow devotee Lisa Marie Presley.

“But it’s not religious,” he said then, describing himself as Baptist by birth and Scientology as “an applied religious philosophy.”

Comedy Central spokesman Tony Fox said producers have not decided whether Chef would be dropped from the show or continued with another actor supplying his voice. CNN

This is crazy.  Who wears high heels to a kid’s basketball game?  I guess when you’re Tom Cruise you do a lot of weird things.  It’s hard to see Katie’s baby bump in these shots because of her coat, but isn’t it cute how they’re all wearing the same style jacket?

via JJB