The Placenta Gourmet

(The actor as a young dork)



Tom Cruise strikes me as being a cocky, arrogant dork but the Great Himself has surpassed himself this time. According to the Daily Mail he is planning on eating the placenta that is expelled after Katie gives birth to their baby. I'm not making that up. I'm mad, not nuts. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, is nuts.

The actor, 43, said: 'I thought that would be good. Very nutritious.'

Now I have been present at the birth of both of my sons and I cut their umbilical cords and I know the drill. I am a fully trained coach in the time-honoured Lamaze tradition. My job was to yell "Stroke! Stroke!" as Lady Mad lay there contracting. .... No, that's not it. I yelled "breathe! breathe!" or something. Stroke was what I yelled when I was coxswain for a short time of my university's freshman rowing eight back in 1972. (It get harder and harder to keep this straight I tell you).

Now any Lamaze-trained breathing coach guy knows a few things about the child bearing process. For instance, the Lamaze training manual says that when one's wife/partner/darling/ love/mistress/strangerwithwhomonehappenstobehavingachild says she needs gas, one is supposed to talk her through the next few sets of contractions smothering her with encouraging phrases like, "You go girl!" and "Do the next set for the Gipper!"

Real guys know better. We know at that moment when she demands gas with that crazed glassy eyed stare that can melt steel and power a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, that the drill is to dump the Lamaze training manual in the wastebasket while muttering, "Yes dear. Right away my love" .... and then run like hell down the hallway hollering "Gas! Gas! For the love of God get gas in room 201 now!" That's what real men do.

What we do not do, what we would never consider in our most drunken state at a rowing team hazing, is consider the nourishing aspects of baby placentas. It does not enter a sane man's brain. And if it did enter our admittedly thick skulls, as extraordinary a hypothetical stretch as this is, no real man would talk about it on television to a national reporter in terms of being a feasible snack. Not now. Not ever.

Yup. Tom Cruise is an cocky, arrogant, dorky stupido.

And what's this about silent birthings? Sheesh ............ Nuts I tell you ......

Update:

Katie and the Culinary Dork are happy parents of a bouncing baby girl. Apparently, the placenta was not consumed by the Great Himself, nutritious though it may have been. It is rumoured that the only haute cuisine chef willing to undertake the cooking, wanted to boil it and serve it in buns with ketchup, and lord knows you lose most of the vitamins that way .... and the suger in the ketchup ..... Everyone knows placenta is best when broiled on a BBQ with the liberal use of a white wine basting. Can't blame Tom for taking a pass at the last moment.

No report on whether the birth was a silent affair, entirely respectful of the mother, mind you.