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What event was so important that Tom Cruise insisted on throwing his busting-at-the-uteral-seams contractual concubine Katie Holmes onto a 14-hour flight to Sydney so that they could be there in person? It was the memorial service for Australian media mogul Kerry Packer, whose son James, now in charge of the family's billions, is reportedly becoming more and more swept up in the intergalactic glamour of Hollywood's celebrity Scientologist set. But Cruise wasn't the only megalomaniacal alpha-star on hand:

[Russell] Crowe read Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" on behalf of Packer's daughter Gretel. The late mogul's son James, who has taken control of the family company, paid his own tribute. [...]


Forbes magazine ranked Packer as the world's 94th wealthiest person, with a $5 billion fortune amassed through his family's company, Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd., which he inherited from his father in 1974.

Cruise did not present, but reacted to every eulogy with his trademark brand of over-the-top enthusiasm: nodding his head rhythmically with a white-man's overbite, pumping his fists in the air, and shouting a thunderous "Russell, you ROCKED it!" which echoed off the walls of the silent auditorium at the end of Crowe's reading.