Oprah Jumps on Tom Cruise’s Couch

HOLLYWOOD – Tom Cruise still wonders how it was that modern civilization has progressed (or regressed) to the point where everything a guy has worked for throughout his long, intense and sometimes loopy life can be negated because, one day, and for a few seconds, he jumped up and down on the couch of a hostess, Oprah, whose weight fluctuates more than an asteroid-sized yo-yo going up and down over a planet twice the size of Jupiter. Then again, Scientology may have helped Cruise overcome his dyslexia, but it has never guided him to an understanding of how an object’s weight increases the closer it gets to the surface of a tremendous mass, though he did feel lighter the higher he jumped away from Oprah’s gravitational field. In sum, one day Mr. Cruise was at the height of his acting prowess, and the next day he was contemplating using a Midwestern American accent to play a German Nazi dedicated to killing Hitler and perhaps, on the side, making sure that a certain man destined to be the grandfather of Tom Cruise invested heavily in IBM stock.

Such are the vicissitudes of the human drama that, last week, as Cruise was releasing his wife, Katie Holmes, from her sleeping trunk, there was a knock on the door, and in walked Oprah Winfrey flanked by four acrobats from the Barnum and Bailey Circus. She was wearing a red cape and dark sunglasses. Katie fled to the other side of the room by a wall featuring the mummy remains of L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise stood his ground before the approaching posse, and said: “And they say I’m a walking freak show.”

“Tommy,” quipped Oprah, “that mummy ain’t walking, but you’re still a freak show. Is that Katie wearing the same outfit Raquel Welch wore in One Million Years B.C.?”

“Okay, Oprah, what you do want?”

“Pay-back,” she replied, while removing her shades and focusing her eyes on a huge and expensive-looking couch.

“No, you wouldn’t? Do you know the work that went into that sofa?”

“Probably about the same amount of work that went into Lisa Rinni’s surgically enhanced face and body.”

“Well, not that much work,” conceded Cruise, “but still a lot. The satin was weaved by twenty-five unemployed pipe-fitters from New Jersey using silk made from my own personal collection of Arpiope appensa female spiders. The frame was designed by a Scientology buddy of mine who used to get drunk with Frank Lloyd Wright. The cushions were flown in from Thailand, not that I’m sure if the Thais are master cushion-makers, but such an outlandish transportation fee nonetheless gives it an aura of class. The springs were forged in fires of Mordor. And finally, it was upholstered by me, Tom Cruise – and, lest you forget, I get paid twenty-five thousand per movie.”

“That was a fine speech,” said Oprah. “Not bad for a dyslexic kid from Canada by way of Syracuse, New York…But…”

She snapped both her fingers, whereupon the four acrobats did two hand-springs before landing atop the couch. Then they proceeded to flip, flop and do play patty-cakes while bouncing high from the recoil of the Springs of Mordor. Katie Holmes threw herself around Cruise to stop him from going ape-shit until both man and wife, in super slow motion, mouthed the words, “No, don’t do it!” But it was too late, as Oprah, at present weighing in at the maximum value of her fluctuation cycle, climbed on the couch and began jumping up and down in imitation of how Cruise had done on her show back on May 23, 2005. She even impersonated his speech, saying over and over how much he loved his then girl friend, Katie Holmes.

At that point, Katie whispered in the ear of Tom, “I guess in hindsight, maybe you should’ve just hired a plane to pull a banner professing your love, hah?”

Cruise laughed in agreement.

Then the couch collapsed from the combined weight of four professional acrobats and one professional busy-body.
Afterward they all retired to the outside patio for drinks and pizza.