Baby gift for the TomKitten? A normal life

First off: Medicine has its place. Speaking as someone who sat in on a couple births, I hope Tom put his “vitamins and exercise before drugs” speech in the closet for the blessed event. There is a time and place to make your points about using medication. A hospital delivery room while your beloved Kat is in labor with her first baby is not the time or the place for philosophical debates about psychotropic substances. Perhaps a wise (and still able to walk) Tom has saved that talk for a knee-slapping night with the parents-in-law afterward. If Tom was really smart, he ordered up a round of epidurals for everyone in the birthing room and threw in a couple (quiet!) bottles of Champagne as well.

Secondly, lose the couch routine and random, icky displays of affection. America loves the fiercely individual character, but comes after the freaky nutcase with pitchforks and fire. If you don’t believe me, Michael Jackson has a couple spare rooms you can rent over in Bahrain. The couch-and-underwear shtick was cute in “Risky Business,” but when you’re in your mid-40s, a smile and “I’m very happy with my life; Katie really is a doll” works wonders with the suburban red staters.

Third: Try hanging out at Casa Del TomKat for a while. Despite the rumors, new mothers do not like their husbands jetting around the world for movie premieres and German talk shows, no matter how many jets you insist are idling at the airport to whisk you home. Parenthood isn’t a subplot in the next “Mission: Impossible” sequel, complete with highly-flammable technology. Changing a diaper requires little more than a garden hose, an industrial-strength gas mask and you actually being there to do it.

Another interesting moniker
I don’t hold out much hope for this latest chapter in the celebrity kid chronicles. The first decision celebrity parents have to make is a name for the little sprout and the last thing you want to do is follow in the nomenclatural stumbling of celebrities like television chef Jamie Oliver (“Daisy Boo” and “Poppy Honey”) or Toni Braxton (“Denim” and “Diezel Ky”). Celebrity birth is traumatic enough without being saddled with a name that will inspire spit-takes at Beverly Hills High.

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No, if there is one kind thing TomKat could have done for the little Kitten, it was to break with this questionable Hollywood tradition. Leave the produce aisle to Gwyneth Paltrow. Start a new Hollywood fad by choosing something normal, something people can spell without a Peruvian dictionary, something that will look good under that bleary-eyed mug shot when the little devil goes through the terrible teens and gets pulled over doing 130 on the 405 with more snow than Aspen’s Steeplechase in February.

So does “Suri” pass the spit test? Hmmm… Questionable at best.

Since I doubt TomKat decided to start breeding Alpacan llamas or have a special affinity for the Syracuse University Research Institute, we’ll run with the official press release and trust that Suri has its origins in Hebrew, meaning “princess,” or in Persian, meaning “red rose”. Personally, my money bets that Tom took one look at the fringe of hair on top of the wee TomKitten and immediately thought of his favorite song from the musical Oklahoma!  “Hush, you bird, my baby's a-sleepin'!  Maybe got a dream worth a-keepin'. Whoa! you team, and jist keep a-creepin'. Don't you hurry with the surrey with the fringe on the top!”

While the name won’t inspire peals of laughter, I’m disappointed TomKat missed the perfect name, one that they are already very familiar with, practically leaps off the page and certainly rolls off the tongue of their entire entourage.

Sue.

Oh well, they came close. Good luck kid; your birth was probably the quietest moment that you will get for the next 20+ years…

Writer Ian Ferrell submits this article with a sense of relief that his mom decided against “John-John.”

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