Humping the Couch

In May 2005, Tom Cruise appeared on Oprah. In telling about his love affair with Katie Holmes, Cruise jumped up and down like a rabid chimpanzee and, quite literally, humped the couch. It seems to us that the act of humping the couch is synonymous with being overly affected. As Cruise surely had no idea what it looks or feels like to be in love, he resorted to air humping near furniture. Now we ask: who and what else has humped the couch? Brittany and Kevin Spears? The Walt Disney Hall?

Friday, August 12, 2005


It doesn't get any better than this: Tom Cruise Kills Oprah

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Humping in Action


Another opinion about the phenomenon

"Enough news about Tom Cruise. If we already didn't know he was a bad actor, we sure do now that he is supposedly dating Katie Holmes (who is she anyway?). He is like a boy crying wolf, except he's a man crying 'straight!' He can't even fool himself, so how is he going to fool the rest of the world?" (Metro, Boston, June 27, 2005)

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Here's the first half of TomKat wielding his evil force unto Oprah:

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Humping the couch is not jumping the shark - that well-chronicled cultural phenomenon of a faltering TV show making a desperate move to save its ass. While it may sound similar, humping the couch is quite different. Dare I say, it's more complex - perhaps a post-modern version of the familiar shark jump. When someone or something humps the couch they are not merely attempting to save themselves from obscurity or declining ratings, they are not becoming something they weren't. Oh no, humping the couch is performing something they never were, or maybe something they believe they should have been, or just maybe, something they believe they should be now. This might be, as I suspect is the case with Tom, based on a publicist' suggestion, or it could simply be an unconscious self-consciousness that plagues college freshman throughout the world. Whatever causes it, it is important that we begin to label this as the pathology it's become. People and things are humping the couch everywhere - in your city, in your town, maybe, just maybe, in your living room. Leave no stone unturned.

Ok. This might be too simplistic. But so you get the point: Donald Trump humped the couch during the finale of season 3. Without Regis there to pinch hit for him, he was left alone to play himself on live TV. And by god, he was atrocious. It's too bad Tom hadn't dry humped the couch yet, because I had no words to describe what he was doing. Now I can look back on what seems ancient history and make a little sense of a Donald gone mad.