Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields Trade Insults
By Chip Hilton

Jumpin' Tom Flash

WEST CHESTER, Penna. - Tom Cruise followed his breathtaking performance on Oprah last week with an eyebrow-raising attack on Brooke Shields this week—which leaves people atwitter at the prospect of what he'll do next week. Challenge Russell Crowe to a fight? Do a Full Monty appearance on the Letterman show? Call Angelina Jolie an adulterous whore? Announce his love for Dakota Fanning?

Stay tuned all you rubberneckers and doctoral candidates in celebrity meltdowns. The vanilla sky's apparently the limit as Cruise ricochets across American promoting his summer release, War of the Worlds, which opens in theaters on June 29.

While Cruise's rapidly diminishing number of friends and fans were still asking "What's gotten into that boy?" after seeing Tom go Gollum on Oprah, much to Oprah's dismay, the pint-size actor lobbed a grenade into Brook Shields' lap when he shouted during an Access Hollywood interview that Shields is a junkie for using antidepressants.

"When someone says 'medication' has helped them (sic), it is to cope," screamed Cruise as he jumped up and down, flapping his arms and crowing. "Medication doesn't cure anything! There is no science behind psychiatry! To pretend otherwise is criminal. There is nothing on L. Ron Hubbard's green earth that can cure Paxil-popping junkies like Brooke Shields except faith, vitamins, exercise, and high colonics. Disease and death begin in the colon!"

Before startled Access Hollywood producers could cut to a commercial, Cruise whipped a large, full-color photo of his colon, taken from the inside, out of the tattered, oversize tote bag he carries everywhere these days.

"Look at this!" yelled Cruise, 42. "I've got the colon of a twenty-year old. That's why Katie loves me. And you ought to see her colon! I'm so in love."

Somewhere Howard Dean is laughing. Brooke Shields, however, is not. Shields, 40, began taking Paxil to treat her postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter Rowan, whom she named after bizarro English comedian Rowan Atkinson. Before long Shields had an Elvislike appetite for Paxil, which she described in her book Down Came the Rain Man.

Cruise called the book "a disservice to America."

Shields called Cruise "a [butt]hole who ought to be arrested for practicing Quackery without a license if he's going around claiming he used Scientology to get people off drugs. He should stick to communicating with aliens. The only thing Scientology relieves people of is their money."

Shields, who is currently appearing in the hit London musical Chicago, also mocked the sixteen-year age gap between Cruise and his new colonic interest, Katie Holmes. Said Shields, "If Tommy wants to see Chicago, I'll leave him two tickets—one adult, one child. If Katie has to baby sit, perhaps he'd like to take Dakota while he's still taller than she is."

People salivating at the prospect of a nuclear verbal exchange between Cruise and Shields may be disappointed. Cruise's minders at DreamWorks, which sank $130 million into War of the Worlds, are concerned that Cruise's behavior is taking the spotlight off the movie. They've quietly ordered him to stay on message during his public appearances, which have been curtailed sharply.

In other news, Britney Spears declared today that sex after pregnancy is even better than sex before pregnancy. Pictures at eleven.