On the set of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Tom Cruise thought he’d go and do a nice thing for Simon Pegg – talk to him like he knew who he was. And what did they talk about? What any celebrity would talk about of course!

Soiled undercrackers!

That’s right. Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg talked about nappies, teaming with faecal matter while playing make-believe like big, hairy and very stupid children. Meanwhile, everyone else presumably looked on wondering if Cruise was trying to recruit someone for Scientology because he’s bang into that alien guff isn’t he?

Talking about what (some of the things) Tom spoke about on set, Simon said:

‘We talked a lot about fatherhood. Stuff like what nappies you buy, teaching your kid to ride a bike. Ordinary stuff.’

No aliens then? No Thetan whatsit?

Well. Maybe. See, Simon ‘You liked him better when he seemed nice in Spaced, rather than this diamond eyed careerist in Hollywood’ Pegg  revealed that, when he was feeling blue and homesick, Cruise would offer to stay late and keep him company.

Pegg got all dewy eyed, adding:

‘He is kind of superhuman. I mean, he’s incredibly good-looking. He’s a very good actor. He’s built. He’s 49 and looks 32. He is beyond criticism.

‘He’s at the top despite the cynical beatings that he receives. It’s because he conducts himself properly. If you start believing all that c**p about how important you are, that’s when you stop working, because nobody wants to work with an a***hole.’

Sounds like someone has totally been converted, eh?

Tom Cruise took off as Maverick in Top Gun over 25 years ago and now, in a bid to distract us from his peculiar religious/cult* views, he’s saying that he might be taking to the air again in Top Gun 2.

Obviously, Hollywood is clean out of fresh ideas at the moment.

Cruise is currently promoting his fourth Mission: Impossible film, and he’s told MTV that there’s been discussions with Top Gun director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer about revisiting the film which Quentin Tarantino thinks is about being gay.

Cruise said, while everyone glared at him thinking about nothing other than Scientology:

“I said to Tony, I want to make another movie with him… Tony and I and Jerry, we never thought that we would do it again. Then they started to come to us with these ideas of where it is now. I thought, ‘Wow, that would be… what we could do now’”

Come up with a new idea and not rest on your laurels perhaps?

He continued:

“If we can find a story that suits what we all want to do… we all want to make a film that is in the same kind of tone as the other one and shoot it in the same way as we shot ‘Top Gun.’”

Of course, this is all dependent on whether there’s an appetite for Tom Cruise by the time its takes this project to get off the ground.

We all know that he’s nowhere near as loved as he was, pre-alien bothery.

*Let’s just clear this ‘cult’ thing up, lest Scientology get all jumpy about it all. Basically, Scientology sees itself as a religion. We see all religions as cults. So, far from trying to discredit Scientology, we’re actually discrediting all religion as a load of bunkum. Soz ‘ard.

The celebrity autobiography is a funny thing. For example, Geri Halliwell has fourteen of them out and Katie Price, a whopping 5,460 biographies written in her best joined-up handwriting. Even Justin Bieber has three biogs out, even though he’s only a matter of weeks old.

And so, the next kid to get a book deal is Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ daughter, Suri, and she’s only five years old!

Five years old! She can barely wipe her own hoon, let alone manipulate a quill. Still, maybe daddy’s alien friends can give her secret powers to overcome that little obstacle called age?

Of course, no-one is stupid enough to offer Suri Cruise a biography deal (or maybe they are? Some of the worst scum you’ll meet work in publishing don’t they? Apart from any watching who want to give hecklerspray some ill-advised book deal so we can release a Beano-style Christmas annual, eh?) so what’s going on?

Well, it’s been reported that Suri is to write a children’s book.

This makes sense because, at 5, you’ve really not experienced the world enough to write a Danielle Steele novel or some kind of spy-thriller.

Apparently, some utterly unreliable source informs the world’s press, she’s already written it and Tom and Katie think it’s ‘so good, they plan to publish it when she’s finished.’

Some other source who probably hasn’t met The Cruises, adds:

‘Not only is Suri writing the book, she’s also working on all the illustrations.’

E! News say that a representative for Tom and Katie have denied the report, but we’ve gone and written all this anyway. Seriously. This is what it’s like being a gossip writer.

Scientology hasn’t really taken off around the world. That’s because, despite having a foot in the world of entertainment, it really lacks any semblance of humour. Effectively, Scientologists are humour vacuums.

Have you seen they way they’re absolutely unhappy to talk about their religion? Surely you gotta face some persecution to be a proper religious person, right? It’s all about getting called an idiot and seeking strength from your god… or in the case on Scientology followers, A.L.F. or whatever it is they pray to/obtain people’s PIN numbers for.

Of course, anyone who mocks them incurs immediate wrath. So you can imagine that they’re not too thrilled with the off-hand way in which South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone dealt with them. As a result, one former member of the cult (don’t worry about the ‘cult’ tag – we think Christianity is a stupid cult too) says that the church sent someone to spy on them.

Mark “Marty” Rathbun, a former high-ranking Scientologist, said members of a alien botherers sent a “harassment agency” to try and see to it that Parker and Stone stopped mocking them.

He posted a document on his website that he describes as a report from the “Office of Special Affairs” that says Scientologists tried to find direct links to people who were friends of the “South Park” creators — including John Stamos, a friend of Stone’s.

In a tedious, jargon-loaded document, various attempts at snooping are described:

“Otherwise the special collections (covert information gathering such as trash collection, purchased phone records, hacked airline reservations, purchased bank records) will be debugged in order to get some viable strings that can be pulled”

“It is clear that this investigation is not going anywhere and DCOE (D/Commanding Officer External OSA) is getting it debugged.”

It goes without saying that Rathbun will now be getting harassed by Scientologists and that they’ll no doubt have him down as a crackpot or an immoral swine of some kind.

This seems to be the sole purpose of the Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs’ (OSA). They’re silencers. Or, if you prefer, complete fucking nutters.

Rathbun noted that OSA’s main activity;

“entails stifling criticism by an escalating gradient of techniques beginning with quiet investigation and moving up to infiltration, identification of and use of influential friends and contacts of the target, loud investigation, threats, attempts to harm the target financially, intense propaganda to discredit and ultimately, if all else fails, utter destruction of the target through overt harassment.”

Gah. They’re obviously a weak group if they can’t withstand a bit of criticism eh? Seriously. If we went around harassing everyone just because they were critical, we wouldn’t have time to do anything else and it would end up absorbing us, leaving us paranoid, jumpy and looking like… well… SCIENTOLOGISTS.

Not surprising that they’re like this when, in a letter in 1966, L. Ron Hubbard wrote about the procedure for dealing with criticism.

“(1) Spot who is attacking us.
(2) Start investigating them promptly for felonies or worse using own professionals, not outside agencies.
(3) Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them.
(4) Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press.”

That’s nice isn’t it? He added, in the Attacks on Scientology, “Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter” document:

“Don’t ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way. You can get “reasonable about it” and lose. Sure we break no laws. Sure we have nothing to hide. BUT attackers are simply an anti-Scientology propaganda agency so far as we are concerned. They have proven they want no facts and will only lie no matter what they discover. So BANISH all ideas that any fair hearing is intended and start our attack with their first breath. Never wait. Never talk about us – only them. Use their blood, sex, crime to get headlines. Don’t use us. I speak from 15 years of experience in this. There has never yet been an attacker who was not reeking with crime. All we had to do was look for it and murder would come out.”

Great eh? So yeah. If we’re taking sides, we’re squarely behind the comedians.

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Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes made millions of stoners chuckle nacho crumbs into their bellybuttons are their alter-egos Jay and Silent Bob. Littered with pop-culture and sci-fi references, they were always going to achieve cult-herodom.

And now, you’ll get to slap your glazed eyeballs on them in the flesh as they’ve announced a tour of the UK this February.

They’ll be performing the successful comedy podcast Jay and Silent Bob Get Old right before your very eyes. It’ll be like Charlie Sheen’s tour, only good.

The duo will be looking at their friendship and the way it evolved via the silver screen with all you reprobates staring at them.

They’ll be recording the podcasts before a live audience and then given away for free at www.smodcast.com.

How nice of them.

Tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday 9 September 2011 through www.aeglive.co.uk for these dates:

17th February O2 Manchester Apollo
18th February London HMV Hammersmith Apollo
19th February Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Now, no-one is allowed to say that Kevin Smith’s films are a bit overrated, okay?

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

If we said it once we said it a million times – the main problem of most modern religion is none of them are making sex-bots for the masses to enjoy with full biblical immunity. Seriously, we think about that every Christmas.

Enter then Claude Vorilhon, a Frenchman now known as Rael. He founded a religious movement, and although he doesn’t actually manufacture busty lady robots in slit-sided mini skirts and little to no moral programming, he does know where we can find them.

Surprising hint: It’s not Japan.

Rael wasn’t always a religious mastermind on par with Moses, Abraham, Mohammad and Jesus. No – he used to be a simple Frenchman who ran away from boarding school, played guitar in the streets and didn’t shower often. Fast-forward a few years to 1973 and you’ll find Rael (but as he was known then – Claude) standing in a volcano crater watching a spaceship descend right in front of him.

We’ll let this be explained partially in Claude’s own words. This from Rael.org:

“On the 13th of December 1973, French journalist Rael was contacted by a visitor from another planet, and asked to establish an Embassy to welcome these people back to Earth. The extra-terrestrial human being was a little over four feet tall, had long dark hair, almond shaped eyes, olive skin, and exuded harmony and humor. Rael recently described him by saying quite simply, “If he were to walk down a street in Japan, he would not even be noticed.” In other words, they look like us, and we look like them. In fact, we were created “in their image” as explained in the Bible.”

And so the adventure began. Now let’s skip to the more exciting stuff – Rael was eventually taken up on the spaceship and flown to another planet. As Wikipedia puts it:

“[Rael] said that, on October 7, 1975, he was contacted by one of the Elohim, who took him to another planet to meet Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. (Though, Vorilhon, after watching Jesus Myth youtube videos, recently came out publicly and stated that Jesus wasn’t on the planet, and it was actually instead Mithras. And Vorilhon apologized, saying, “It was an honest mistake.”) He stated that his second book, Les extra-terrestres m’ont emmené sur leur planète (“Extraterrestrials Took Me To Their Planet”), relates the teaching he received from these people. In this book, Vorhilhon describes harmonious and peaceable beings, who were free of money, sickness, and war.”

Those harmonious peaceable beings also frequently get to dine with Moses & Buddha and treat sexy robots like like a tenth grade prom date. Confused? Here’s more from Wikipedia:

“He said that in October 7, 1975, an hour before midnight, after having a sudden urge to observe the night sky, he decided to go to Roc Plat, an uninhabited place between two brooks surround by a forest. According to him a spacecraft suddenly landed and shone a bright light behind a bush. He said he then met the same extraterrestrial from his first encounter in December 13, 1973. He said after a few words, he was taken up in that spacecraft with the Eloha and sent to a remote base relatively close to the solar system where he was given a resort-style relaxation treatment.

“He said that on the morning of October 8, received a lecture from Yahweh Elohim about his current achievement towards the foundation of MADECH, the need for geniocracy, Buddhism, and about the ideas of God and Soul, and later traveled to the Planet of the Eternals. He said the planet orbited around a very large star and had a climate similar to the rain forests of Earth. He later claimed to have sat down with the Eloha and had a meal with the major prophets including Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. He said that a guide showed him installations which houses machines for creating biological robots. He gave a picture of his mother to a machine which he claimed created similarly-appearing biological robot. He said that in the night, he received an introduction to bedroom his future home at the Planet of the Eternals and was presented young, mature female biological robots. He said that before reaching a climax, he wore a helmet which plays music controlled by his thoughts which the females danced to. Then the climax happens.”

And there you have it – Raelians all summed up in a nice contrite article. If you’re interested in joining, all you have to do is make love to a Dustbuster on stage at a convention or something. In all honesty we haven’t studied up on joining, but if we were heading up a weird robot-sex cult that’s probably how we’d have people join.

Serioauly – have you seen the new Dustbuster Pivot Vacs? Just look at it - that’s the kind of sexy apparatus we’d not be ashamed to bring home to the parents on Thanksgiving weekend.

Well, we’d probably be a little ashamed. Still – picture it in a wedding dress. Exciting, right?

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Some people say they’d be more religious if the Bible wasn’t written on such old, thin, flimsy paper, while others cite the need for more pictures contained therein.

Well if that’s how you feel, we’ve good news for you. The Book Of Oahspe is only about 127 years old, and its packed full of pictures “drawn” by angels themselves.

John Ballou Newbrough wrote Oahspe: A New Bible, and first published it in 1882. Well we say he wrote it – but he claims something entirely different. According to him the book was written by his hand – but not under his control. We’ll let Wikipedia explain things:

“Newbrough, who wrote Oahspe on one of the first typewriters (which was a recent invention at that time), claimed that Oahspe was the result of angelic control, and was written through automatic writing on the typewriter. Oahspe also includes many drawings made by Newbrough, which are also said to be through angelic control.”

Oahspe was a cult hit too. It had many followers – one of which we told you about a few weeks ago – the woman who starved herself to death in a hotel room because the government wouldn’t build her spaceship. Now that’s dedication.

Some of Oahspe sounds like it could have come straight out of the Book of Genesis or something – like this excerpt;

“JEHOVIH said: By virtue of My presence created I the seen and the unseen worlds. And I commanded man to name them; and man called the seen worlds Corper, and the unseen worlds Es; and the inhabitants of Corpor, man called corporeans. But the inhabitants of Es he called sometimes es’eans and sometimes spirits, and sometimes angels.”

While other parts of it sound more like the catalogue of L Ron Hubbard. For instance, the book teaches that the biblically referenced star that glowed so bright on the night of Christ‘s birth was actually a spaceship. Here’s the quote from Oahspe itself:

“When the birth was completed, the angels of heaven re-entered their starship and hastened back to paradise.”

Sounds pretty out there, right? But like we said, lots of people devoted their lives to this book, and according to what we just saw on a page of Amazon.com customer reviews, a lot of people still do. One such writes:

“Oahspe is more than a book. It is a way of life. Oahspe is filled with inspiration and spiritual truths. Oahspe is pronounced: O as in o’clock, AH as in father, SPE as in speak. Oahspe means SKY, EARTH and SPIRIT. Oahspe teaches man to recognize his oneness with the “infinite spirit of the universe”, and accept this infinite intelligence, as his guiding light and inspiration. Oahspe is a miracle in itself. It contains the highest ethical, moral and spiritual teachings. Oahspe answers many questions, explaining many profound myseries. It floods the mind of the new reader with “New Light” on subjects life and death. Oahspe is a Bible of advanced spiritual truth, universal light and knowledge….”

And there were lots of other quotes like that one. People, apparently, really love that thing. Would you like to read it? You can you know – and for free too. It’s online.

It’s not for us though – we’re far too busy. Why, on Thursday nights alone we’ve got five shows to watch. We really don’t have time for this ‘reading’ thing that’s become so cool of late.

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As any nostalgic 25 – 30 year old will tell you the mid-80s were a truly magical cinematic time for any kid to grow up in. In the wake of George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy, we were bombarded with a cluster of imaginative, mystical live-action fantasy adventure films, which eagerly promoted a genuine sense of mischievous fun and adventure.

Tales of typically normal excitable youngsters going on epic adventures that lifted the heart stirred the soul and haunted our dreams. But it was the palpable sense of adventure that really convinced, giving us youngsters an achievable sense of daydream adventure – long before the internet or Xbox-claimed adolescent imagination.  

Why the mid-80s? Give us another span of time where there was an equally audacious flux of films that dared to lift the lid on Pandora’s Box to capture our imagination and fiendishly tape into our most primal kiddie fears? So forget the CGI-bloated likes of Harry Potter, Golden Compass and the new Narnia adventures and let us divulge to you hecklerspray’s definitive Top 10 Cult Classic Fantasy Adventure Flicks from the Mid-80s…

1. The Goonies (1985)     

How could you possibly compile an ultimate mid 80s film tribute list without including this cult classic from Superman helmer Richard Donner? It’s the tale of a group of young suburbanites going on a (frankly ludicrous) adventure to thwart the council from demolishing their family homes by seeking hidden pirate treasure in booby-trapped underground lairs. But what makes it more believable is its incredibly gifted and likable young cast. Move over Harry Potter, these kids have charisma! With the likes of Mikey, Chunk, Mouth and Data on your team you won’t need magical powers to accomplish a distinguishing characteristic. And yes that’s No Country For Old Men’s Josh Brolin playing Mikey’s teenage brother! And who could forget The Fratellis? The archetypal kiddie movie bad guys, headed by super-bad ass (but sweet as pie in real life – if you believe the cast commentary) old trouper Anne Ramsey. And it’s got Spielberg on executive producing duties and a great cheesy but catchy Cyndi Lauper music video to go with it – what more could your young hearts ask for?        

2. Return To Oz (1985)     

We weren’t really fans of the original Wizard of Oz movie but when Fairuza Balk came waltzing along with her talking chicken Billina and C3PO-type robot companion Tik-Tok we were overwhelmed by the results. And it was fucking scary too! What with those sinister, sub-Starlight Express Wheelers skirting around, those crumbling and gruesome claymation monsters and that hideous witch Mombi, with her eerie glass cabinet selection of limitless heads. No annoying musical numbers, no cowardly lion or clumsy scarecrow, (well not until later on anyway), just a gothic nightmarish adventure with startling baroque imagery in a mysterious, distant land where you will find ham sandwiches hanging on trees and an old man modelling red slippers.    

3. Labyrinth (1986)     

In our opinion Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly was never better than when she played the feisty 15-year-old babysitter Sarah in Jim Henson’s spellbinding adventure. David Bowie camps it up as the glamorous Goblin King, along with a slew of Henson’s imaginative puppeteer creations – and we don’t mind those catchy dance numbers either.       

4. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)     

Anyone remember the haunting chanting of the Egyptian Rametep? The hallucinogenic stained-glass window knight that suddenly broke away from its frame to demonstrate the impressive power of early CGI? Or the opening shocker where a turkey dinner comes alive to attack its consumer? Well that’s all from this cult special effects Oscar-nominated Sherlock Holmes prequel adventure – which was subtitled (Indiana Jones style): The Pyramid of Fear. Dreamt up by early Harry Potter helmer Chris Columbus, (with Spielberg once again on producing duties), this was a notable highlight for the young cast of unknowns involved and proved a chilling sweeping and deadly adventure, a world away from the archetypal cosy Peter Cushing/Basil Rathbone movie outings.    

5. Explorers (1985)     

Explorers was the warmhearted tale of a trio of kiddie science geeks who – masterminded by computer whiz-kid River Phoenix, (debuting alongside a painfully young Ethan Hawke) – convert a junkyard carousel car into a floating capsule capable of travelling into outer space. Although looking more like a glorified wheelie bin than anything NASA would conceive the capsule is their gateway to adolescent freedom and they use it like any other teenage kids would use it: to travel the world, explore the universe and of course peep on girlies getting undressed.    

6. The Lost Boys (1987)     

“Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire” went the encouraging tagline to this impressionable coming-of-age puberty flick (masking as a vampire movie). The Lost Boys is about two teenage brothers who rub shoulders with a leather-clad clan of blood thirsty vampires following their relocation to a new town in sunny California. A sequel is currently in the works, (welcome back Corey Feldman as Edgar Frog), but the original still holds up today as an irreplaceable nostalgic horror fantasy adventure… and Kiefer Sutherland is still the cool kid you wanna be when your strange.    

7. Dark Crystal (1983)


Set in a dark and vast mystical world this is the penultimate moment when muppet maestros Jim Henson and Frank Oz ventured into the limitless realm of the feature film. It’s a testament to the sheer power of suspension of disbelief that we willingly surrender our soles to a land populated entirely by puppet creations, ranging from the grotesque eagle-like entities of the feared Skekses to the almost sickly sweet Gelfings. It’s not exactly ‘live-action’ but we like it.    

8. Flight of the Navigator (1986)     

This is the film that embraces the journey of a 12-year-old whizzkid who goes on a bombastic time-travelling adventure when he’s abducted by an alien space-capsule, piloted by a robot that looks bizarrely like your dentist’s examination lamp. But it’s a heck of a lot of fun even 20 years on! Hell, it’s even got a young Sarah Jessica Parker in it as an annoyingly friendly (when hasn’t she been annoying?) laboratory assistant.     

9. Highlander (1986)     

If you don’t get too distracted by Christopher Lambert’s dodgy Scottish vocals, or the ridiculously complex plot, then Highlander is still a thrilling adventure yarn to rival Flash Gordon. And just like that said sci-fi film it’s got a truly marvellous signature score by Queen. Fuck the sequels, reassert yourself with the masterly original.      

10. Repo Man (1984)     

Alex Cox’s superb science fiction film stars a young Emilio Estevez as Otto: a punk rocker who becomes the ultimate car repossession professional after helping to steal a wanted vehicle. The twist in the tale is that there’s some strange glowing object inside the boot of the car that’s got the attention of government agents and UFO enthusiasts alike. With classy support from veteran character actor Harry Dean Stanton this was the film that put the ‘punk’ into punk rocker. 

[story by Oliver Pfeiffer]