My mother’s time lapse between telling me sorrowfully about London’s tube terror attacks this morning and saying, “At least when you were in New Zealand, I never once worried,” lasted approximately fifty-three minutes. It was the first thing that crossed my mind; the fact that, in an alternate universe or perhaps under very slightly different circumstances, I could have, would have been living in London this Spring, ridden the subway every day, known friends and a home in that old, imperial city.

As they continue to update the death toll and injury counts I find myself thinking, at least it isn’t September 11th, with the shower of soot and ashes raining down as if from clouds of fire, blackening the streets as confusion and fear darted across Manhattan. And even then, when mobile phone systems were shut down in case terrorists used phones to set off their bombs, we all knew the unspoken reason: in case there are more traps set. Hidden and waiting for the perfect moment to go off because ‘surprise! It’s not over yet.’ There is the thought, could it have been worse? Was it supposed to be worse? Were the streets of London meant to be swarmed with even more panicked people running for their lives?

And for the people who did run, for anyone who gasped for fresh air in the smoky arteries of London’s transportation system and wondered if they would be able to escape, it doesn’t get any worse. Every passenger has a new phobia. They will hesitate to cross the gap and flinch when the doors shudder closed. Would-be passengers chill when they realize, “I was supposed to be on that train.”

It frightens me that we live in a time when there is a “classic Al Qaeda” As if practiced, method terror is just like a barbeque with “classic summer food,” or a cheesy romantic movie with a “classic fairytale ending.”

Tom Cruise is an actor. How do we know he’s not just acting all crazy and carrying the part with Academy Award caliber emotion and credibility? After all, he’s done the research. He understands the history of psychiatry. That man knows what ritalin is made of. Maybe he’s just been doing all this research to get in character. A character that knows so much about the drugs that he doesn’t believe in that he could probably produce them by hand, he just doesn’t because he disagrees with their uses and purpose in society. Am I being glib?

Tommy claims to be the sort of person who will research and learn about subjects in order to form an objective and educated opinion. I claim to be the same sort of person. My mom was the first person to mention his inflammatory and insolent remarks about Brooke Shields using anti-depressant drugs and therapy to treat post-partum depression, and she was pretty burned up about it, going so far as to declare a boycott against his new movie (nobody is hurting if she doesn’t go see it – I don’t think my mom has been inside a movie theater since Tom Cruise was married). Then, Brooke’s “War of Words” response came out in the NYT Op-Ed. Feeling like I needed more background information before I could make my judgment, I turned to my ever searching Google and was deluged with articles, blog responses, a boycotting petition and even a free verse frown from Rosie O’Donnell; critical analysis, fans turned away, and 176,000 raised eyebrows came up in the search results.

Tom Cruise accused Matt Lauer of being glib. The pronunciation of the word glib strikes me as a little bit glib. That’s pretty much how I’m going to remember Tom Cruise for the rest of my life. That crazed look in his eye every time he says “scientology” and the way he furrowed his once Sexiest Man Alive brow when he and the way he laughed gleefully maniacally after looking over at Katie Holmes and saying, “I can’t restrain myself.”

Please, Tom, do try.