Tom Hanks & Rita Wilson

Rita was on TV today.

She was doing Oprah, some kind of makeover madness. Rita is so good at that sort of thing. Seriously. 

She always had a talent for it. More talent for dressing than acting, I always say, but I would never tell Rita that. 

It's always "Kiss, kiss, left cheek, kiss, kiss right. You look mahvellous, dahling, mahvellous," and that sort of thing whenever we get together. 

Speaking of which, we haven't gotten together lately. Tom and Rita haven't even been to our new house. In fact, I don't think we've seen them since they were in Sundridge a while ago. 

Tom had just filming Castaway and he was exhausted, the poor thing. The paparazzi was hounding him and he just needed to get away. Seriously, you'd think since they offed Princess Diana they'd lay off celebrities a bit. 

Sundridge is about as far away as you can get, short of a deserted island, of course. So he called us from Pearson and said he and Rita were taking a charter flight to South River and could we pick them up and stay with us a while?

The house was a mess but our friends don't care about stuff like that.

Seriously.

In fact I was shocked when we saw Tom.

He hadn't even gotten his hair cut since Castaway.

And I seriously doubt if he had seen soap and water, either.

Luckily it was a warm day so Dave suggested we all go for a swim. He didn't want to come right out and say, "Tom, you stink, get your arse in the shower." Well, he did want to say that. Actually, he did say that.

Seriously.

Unfortunately the hot water heater wasn't hooked up yet so Tom went for a swim in our brand new swimming pool. We were proud of it. It had cost us several pay cheques and Dave managed to convey its value without bragging.

Tom was so impressed he asked where we got it and thought he might want to try to pick one up himself. "That would give ol' Spielberg something to chew on," he said. "And can you see the look on Meg's face when we invite the Ryans over for the next euchre night?"

He stopped in at the Crappy Tire in Huntsville on his way home but the pool wouldn't fit in the back of his rented limo so he had a fit right there in the parking lot and jammed the pool box in the nearby LCBO dumpster. Seriously.

The editor of the Forester was there snapping pictures and unfortunately she sold them to some tabloid trash in the U.K. So much for Tom's stellar reputation as Mr. Nice Guy.

Hey, but he IS a nice guy. That's why we stalked him and how we met him.

Me and Dave had always heard he was so nice. 

"We're nice," Dave says.

"They're nice," says I.

So we followed them around until they had us thrown in jail. While we were being prosecuted, Tom and Rita kinda realized we really were nice. So they dropped the charges, invited us out to dinner and we've been best pals ever since.

Seriously, we're going to have to have them over some day for some grub and a little euchre. 

Now that we're so close to the Muskoka Airport, they can fly in, we can take the Neon over to meet them, treat them to dinner at Chalet Suisse and put them up in the bunkie above the garage. Oh sure, we'll have to tidy it up first. I mean, they're pretty down to earth but even Tom might not like the mouse droppings in the silverware drawer and our Christmas decorations strewn all over the living room. One of these days we'll put them away. 

Seriously.