In a shocking development that is likely to rock Hollywood and immediately plunge the baked goods industry into a depression, Tom Cruise proves that not even coworkers are insulated from his efforts to prove his incredibly sincere love of Katie Holmes. A spy on the Paramount lot passes along the tale of an MI:3 meeting that took place yesterday:

A fun game to kick off your lunch hour: Which of these people are celebrating Michael Jackson's acquittal, which have seen Jesus descend from the sky to reward the faithful during the Rapture, and which are doing The Cruise? Answers after the jump.

There are almost more Cruise-related items this morning than any one blog can tackle, necessitating a morning round-up. Pull yourself up to the buffet and lose yourself in the all-you-can-eat action of The Morning Cruise:

After the extreme emotional duress we experienced during yesterday's acquittal Passion, we couldn't even get through enough of this story to find out if they're talking about the revival of a music career, or plans for the greatest "sleepover party" of all time, featuring Jesus Juice in Capri Sun containers, a fresh shipment of Vaseline, and the largest gathering of cancer-stricken tykes since the aftermath of Nagasaki. Hey, when the llama bucks you off and doesn't kill you, you climb right back on.

· Even on a day where seemingly anything can happen, we still can't bring ourselves to believe that Paris Hilton's going to hang up the nightvision vagina and retire herself from the public eye.
· How many of these Jacko headlines will wind up atop tomorrow's tabloid stories?
· It's just like the Beverly Hills Hotel, but everyone's fucking in exchange for money instead of...well, it's exactly like the BHH.
· "Michael Jackson has been found not guilty of all charges in his child molestation case. Now what?" We think we don't need to spell out the punchline for you. But Slate will tell you "how Michael Jackson got off."

Whether doing a little tap-dance of "Not guilty" joy across the top of his site, or suggesting that a district attorney be thrown in jail for doing his job, Matt Drudge always keeps it classy. This headline's going to get him his own Ferris wheel at Neverland Ranch.

Liveblogging the run-up to the reading of the verdict in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial...(new entries at top).

Cruise: "Listen, the thing you've got to know about Katie is that she's an incredibly bright and self-determined woman. She makes her own decisions."

The Lindsay Lohan/Jessica Simpson gang war is in full effect. After Lohan busted the ceremonial first cap by conspicuously denying Simpson entry to her MTV Movie Awards post-party at the Standard, the Simps (gang color: cornflower) went all "no you DI'INT!" and sent dad Joe (gang handle: Daddy J-Murder) to promptly commence the yanking of weaves in the tabloids. From Radar's website:

It seems that E! has removed the section of the "Watch With Kristin" column that we linked to earlier, in which she claimed that Tom Cruise had a "meeting" with Jessica Alba (and had "placed a call or two" to Jennifer Garner) before falling truly, madly, deeply in love with Katie Holmes. We have no idea why the item was so hastily disappeared (why do we immediately picture one of Cruise's lawyers musing about what it would be like to own an entire cable channel?), but we have the full text of the deleted section after the jump:

Just one night after Tom Cruise lamely climbed atop Jay Leno's couch to continue his crusade against romantic credibility, publicity partner Katie Holmes sat down with Dave Letterman (and this time, we watched...sigh) to fulfill her contractual obligations...to love, of course:

When he's not making ruinous career choices or impregnating his fiancée, Ben Affleck keeps busy by delighting his friends with his impressive repertoire of genital-related shenanigans. Here, Affleck demonstrates his vaunted Boston Tea Bag (degree of difficulty: 6.5) for director pal Kevin Smith:

Through the magic of our exclusive StallionVision™, we're able to provide you, the blog consumer, with a more robust multimedia experience of this PrivacyWatch sighting of Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson at Dodger Stadium:

Your guesses for this week's blind item game are real, and they're spectacular. Take another lap around One Secret Suck-Face (and then Some) Blind Vice before continuing on:

We promised ourselves that we were done with all Cruise-related activities for the day (unless you count the uncontrollable facial tics that result every time we picturing him kissing Katie Holmes), but how can we ignore Cruise's interview with Entertainment Weekly, in which the international movie star/part-time drug counselor drops some serious faux-knowledge about psychiatry's murderous tools? Especially after he refers to Brooke Shields' belief in the efficacy of antidepressants as "misinformed"?

A reader checks in with this brief account of the action outside Tuesday's Mr. and Mrs. Smith premiere, where a certain famously shrinking actress got a bone-rattling fame-check at the hands of Brad Pitt:

Look, we're not going to lie to you. We went out last night, got grievously drunk (on a school night, no less), and forgot to TiVo Tom Cruise's appearance on Leno, so this AP story is the first account we've read. We know, we've failed you (but surely you're used to that by now, we fail you upwards of 12 times per day), but more importantly, we've failed Tom Cruise. How can we properly recognize his exhaustive efforts to publicly legitimize his highly successful publicity partnership if we're out guzzling liquid pain-relief, instead of watching Cruise perform a pale, face-saving imitation of the "look at how hopelessly insincere fake love looks from atop a couch!" dance for Jay Leno? We're not fit to thrust ourselves downward and exuberantly punch the ground that Cruise's feet would stand on, if the power of ersatz love weren't suspending him six inches above it. And so we apologize in the threefold manner of our Biblical forebears: We're sorry, we're sorry, we're sorry.

Wherein we invite our readers to marvel at the seemingly supernatural powers of humpy E! gossip prestidigitator Ted Casablanca and guess the identity of the sedated rabbit pulled out of his blind-item hat. This week's challenge falls right into Ted's wheelhouse, publicly hetero actors engaging in "semi-private poof-poundings," perhaps the finest phrase ever produced by the master. Ladle on a liberal amount of One Secret Suck-Face (and then Some) Blind Vice:

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's handlers can go through the public charade of booking the couple into separate hotels until Mr. and Mrs. Smith opens, but they can't stop the couple from indiscreetly ordering room service to replenish their energy levels for another round of filthy, furniture-rattling hotel porking. Says Page Six:

In a talk show moment that fell somewhat short of Hugh Grant's sheepish admission to Jay Leno that getting blown by a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard probably wasn't the wisest move, Olympic-level phone-tosser Russell Crowe went on Letterman last night to issue yet another public apology. From the NY Daily News: