I think I’m starting to worry about celebrities. I think there may be some kind of virus going around the various movie, television and music celebrities these days. I don’t exactly know when it started but I have this feeling it could go back to Angelina Jolie. I think she may have originally made it okay for celebrities to start acting openly like lunatics, but I really can’t be sure.

You remember how she was especially when she was with Billy Bob Thornton. They were walking around wearing pendants containing each other’s blood. Then there was that time on the red carpet of some damn thing when they were practically having sex with each other in front of everyone. It all capped off with the strange moment at the Academy Awards when everyone wondered if Angelina and her brother had some kind of relationship that was more than just brother and sister. At some point Angelina’s craziness seemed to fade a bit. Of course I am not saying she isn’t crazy to this day and I can’t say her gallivanting around the world adopting children like they were puppies is exactly sane but it’s a little better than carrying vials of someone’s blood around your neck.

What usually happens with celebrities is that one of them does something and the rest of them decide that it must be okay. Slowly it works its way up the celebrity food chain until the most-popular people can now feel free to act like lunatics. That’s what seems to have happened with Tom Cruise.

I actually liked Tom Cruise at one point. I knew he was a Scientologist but so much of Scientology is nutty and yet no nuttier than any other religion when you look at it and so I was willing to look past it. Generally he seemed like a nice guy. He even did a few things like pull some kid out of a crowd when it looked like he might have been in trouble at some red carpet thing and rescued some guy who had been in a car wreck. Or did Tom rescue a guy with his boat? Or was it both? I’m pretty sure he never turned water into wine but, anyway, he did some things that made him seem like a nice guy.

Then, you probably all recall, Tom seemed to suffer a complete meltdown before our very eyes. Rumor still abound that several starlets were “auditioned” to be the next Mrs. Cruise. I have a friend who has some connections with the Hollywood scene and he swears these stories are true. If they are then the signs of his meltdown were coming well before he jumped on a single cushion on a talk show. The rumor says Katie was picked because she had once expressed some interest in Scientology or something like that. She is a pretty girl, I will give her that. If you’ve ever seen her topless scenes in the movie “The Gift” you know what I’m talking about.

So, before too long Tom was sitting in front of Oprah (you know, the talk show host turned cult leader) doing gymnastics on her furniture. I admit I shook my head at that and wondered what he was thinking. Yes, it was silly and methinks he didst protest too much, but I was still willing to shake it off. He hadn’t killed anyone so, whatever. Let him jump around. I even liked “War of the Worlds.”

Then he had the thing with Matt Lauer and I began to wonder about Tom’s sanity for real. Yes, we were supposed to believe that a star who once said he was nearly illiterate had read and understood the history of psychology. Sure, he knows the history as it is told by Scientologists.

Then Tom faded from the news except for the stories of the sonogram machine and the birth of Suri. Tom was quickly overshadowed by Mel Gibson who became the latest to come down with the celebrity insanity bug. Of course, if you saw the “South Park” episode “The Passion of the Jew” you know that, once again, our true cultural touchstones are Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They had Gibson jumping around smearing feces on the wall in that episode long before he began spouting anti-Semitic sentiment into the face of the police officer arresting him for driving under the influence.

It’s interesting to go back and look at Mel’s movies now. He recently says he has been filled with rage all of his life and he doesn’t know why. Take a look at the scene in “Mad Max” where he sits there on the beach seething with rage over the death of his wife and child. Of course Mel was also raised by a man who has gone on record saying the Holocaust never happened. He has also essentially built his own church and believes only Catholics who say the mass in Latin will actually go to heaven. He also has a penchant lately for making movies in languages no one speaks anymore.

Now we have Madonna jumping on the madness train. Of course she began jumping on that train somewhere about the time she suddenly decided she was British. Yeah, sure, she married and Englishman but when did that require that you start speaking with an English accent? Anyway, she started to speak with one a few years ago and shows no sign of stopping. Now she has apparently taken a cue from Angelina and gone child-shopping.

When did it become popular for celebrities to fly to some impoverished country and start lining kids up and picking the one they like best? It’s like watching the Westminster Dog Show with these people. Are they all going to be carrying them in little bags under their arms like Paris and Nicole were doing with their dogs before too long? You have to wonder if the latest accessory of Rodeo Drive is some Kenyan child. I am sure there are designers creating accessories for them even as I write this.

What’s funny to me is how each of the celebrities has a way to attempt to justify their actions no matter what. The popular thing to do now is immediately check yourself into rehab as soon as you caught doing anything. If you are caught driving drunk then check yourself in. If you are caught soliciting sex from teenage pages, just check yourself into rehab and the blame a priest. Their publicity people immediately start kicking into overdrive and trying to justify everything they do. Mel had a drinking problem. Tom is just passionate and out-spoken. Madonna isn’t really grocery shopping for children like you would a new bike but she’s saving lives or something. She has quite a name to live up to there.

I’m just wondering who’s going to be next. Will Tom Hanks be found running pantsless up the coast? Will Scarlett Johanssen end up holding up a bank or something in the near future? Maybe Dakota Fanning will attempt to hold up a stagecoach or something.

I just know that Entertainment Tonight will be there to cover it ad nausem.

Bryan W. Alaspa’s new novel Dust is now available for sale at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.