Juliet Lapidos offers a handy rundown of "the good parts" in Andrew Morton's new unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise. From the sound of it, the book's focus is on the same two damn subjects that Cruise-related gossip has always centered on: his sexual orientation and his devotion to Scientology. To the thumping disappointment of millions, Morton seems to have found nothing but evidence that Cruise is heterosexual. He even offers testimony that the guy is homophobic, which if true is...well, pretty damn funny, really, since he has to listen to the same rumors as the rest of us. Based on the anecdotes that Morton offers about Cruise's romantic life, you may wonder if people started getting the idea that he must be putting on some kind of an act because, rather than acting on instinct, he works from notes that he made on the courtship process based on his close textual reading of Archie comics. The Tomcat likes to make out in cars and subjects his favored ladies with unholy barrages of long-stemmed roses and love notes, until they have only two options: give in or, like Sofia Vergara, freak out at all the over-attention and slip away through the fire exit while Top Gun is on the phone to the florist again.

Eventually, in the course of this grand narrative, Cruise converts to Scientology and is finally inducted into the deepest secrets of the universe, which are reserved for the eyes and ears of those who have proven themselves worthy of receiving the ultmate gospel of L. Ron Hubbard. According to Morton, church father David Miscavige may have misjudged Cruise's readiness to, as Jack Nicholson once put it, handle the truth: "Tom found the knowledge he had just received disturbing and alarming, as he struggled to reconcile the creationist myth with the more practical teachings contained in the lower levels of Scientology. … It was recalled that around this time relations became 'ugly' between David Miscavige and the Hollywood actor, Tom complaining that he had studied all these years and the whole faith was about space aliens." (All this may lend an intriguing new subtext to The War of the Worlds.) Earlier, under Miscavige's orders, a "team of twenty Sea Org disciples was set to work digging, hoeing, and planting wheat grass and wildflower seed near the Cruises' bungalow. Former Scientologist Maureen Bolstad recalled working until early in the morning in the mud and pouring rain," all so that Cruise and Nicole Kidman could realize their shared "fantasy of running through a meadow of wildflowers together." This was the point where my own faith in Cruise's heterosexuality began to flag, since I find it hard to believe that any straight man would have a fantasy like that. But then I realized that I was being small-minded; I can't really picture any gay men, or hardly any women, having that fantasy either. It could be that Morton missed his real scoop, which, if this story is true, would seem to be that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are actually a couple of eight-year-old girls.

For more Scientology weirdness, check out Dana Goodyear's recent New Yorker article about the church's "Celebrity Centre", a seven-story, turreted castle, originally built as a "a long-term residential hotel for movie stars", where celebrity church members are encouraged to check in for weeks at a time and concentrate on their study of church teachings. It doesn't have much about Tom Cruise in it, but it does have a terrifying description of the annual Christmas variety show, where this year someone took note of cast member Jenna Elfman's last name and took it to the terribly logical extreme.