Searching for Katie

As those who know me can attest to, nothing interests me more than celebrities, and, though I hate to make such a strong statement, and will ultimately end up regretting this, I dare say no celebrity interests me more than our dear, sweet Katie Holmes, aka Kate Cruise. I don't know why I'm so interested. It goes beyond the whole TomKat thing, because I loved her before that. I loved watching her get punk'd on MTV, because she just seems SO genuinely sweet and at a complete loss for words the whole time. I loved it when she went on that MTV show Diary before the release of her movie First Daughter. While on Diary, she talked about how embarassing it is when her mother buys her underwear, and she also got excited when she realized how well her pedicure matched the argyle sweater she was wearing at the time.

I think my love for Katie also has very much to do with my love for the only role people really remember her for, that of Joey Potter (which sucks, because the movie Pieces of April was actually quite good. You should rent it. Seriously.). My love for Joey really blossomed in the third season, when she and Pacey finally got together. But I liked her in the first season too, especially when she sang "On My Own" from Les Mis in a really nasally voice that everyone pretended was amazing. There was also an episode in the second season when Joey wore the exact same Gap jeans and light purple flannel Abercrombie shirt (which I still have, by the by) that I had been LIVING in my sophomore year of high school. So that might have had something to do with it.

BUT. Whatever the reason may be, certainly Katie is someone who has come to fascinate many people as of late. In the past three years, she's gone from being a sweet, unassumingly pretty young actress to one half of one of the world's most talked about couples. Back in my Sycamore Review blogging days, I posted this little number in which I pondered the whereabouts of Tom and Katie's mysterious baby, aptly nicknamed by the press "Tomkitten," which is kind of cute and endearing in a way that the unfortunate actual name of the child, Suri, is not. Still, once the pictures finally surfaced, I couldn't help but feeling a little bit, okay, a lot, of love for the youngest of the Cruise clan.

Unlike the somewhat nebulous origins of my love for Katie, the reasons for my fascination with this baby are pretty easy to pinpoint: as a baby, I myself was the ugly version of young Ms. Suri. It's true! I know what it's like to look mildly-Asian as a baby, despite having two very caucasian parents. I know what it's like to spend the first year of your life looking like you're wearing a baby wig. It ain't fun, people. Of course, to top it off, I had a tail, but that's a whole other blog post.

So, bearing in mind my somewhat formidable fascination with Katie and Suri, you can imagine my excitement upon hearing the news that Katie would be spending a couple of months in Shreveport, Louisiana (my hometown), filming the first film she's signed on to since dating/marrying/having the alien baby of Tom Cruise.

I returned home last week, beau in tow, and spent four days with my eyes peeled. I was practically drooling as my parents pointed out the various houses she has been rumored to have taken up residence in since arriving about a month ago. No sign of Katie or Suri. She's rumored to be a big runner, so every morning as I took my own little jog around the Pierre Bayou trail, I ran through various dialogue exchanges should our paths happen to cross. "Oh, that's right, I heard you were in town," I imagined myself saying casually as we stretched our hamstrings, leaning on the same bench. "I really enjoyed Thank You for Smoking. Do you really think it was an accident that the sex scene was left out of the screening at Sundance? Ha, yeah, me either." And so on, and so forth.

But alas. No Katie on the trail either. No Katie at the grocery store, or the local tavern. No Katie at the new Starbucks. No Katie at Target, where only two weeks ago she was rumored to have arrived with police escorts. No Katie, no Katie, no Katie.

I can only believe that some cruel twist of scientology kept us apart. But I'll be back in August, Katie. Or Kate. Do you prefer Kate, really? Maybe I'll just call you Kay-Kay. We can meet up for lunch at Earthereal. My treat. And when we do finally meet, I'll try and play it cool, but I have a feeling my words will sound strikingly similar to what Honey, the character who plays Hugh Grant's sister in the little remembered but actually pretty decent romantic comedy Notting Hill, exclaims to Julia Roberts' character Anna Scott, actress and celebrity extrordinaire, upon unexpectedly meeting her at a dinner party:

"Oh God, this is one of those key moments in life, when it's possible you can be really, genuinely cool - and I'm failing 100%. I absolutely and totally and utterly adore you and I think you're the most beautiful woman in the world and more importantly I genuinely believe and have believed for some time now that we can be best friends. What do YOU think?"