Hey, remember where Tom Cruise held his birthday party? Jog your memory with Gawker's EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of the embarrassing 2004 celebration. That's right: on the MV Freewinds, the massive "cruise ship" training center for the highest level members of the Church of Scientology. Bad news for aspiring OT VIIIs: the ship's been sealed and docked in Curacao due to the discovery of "significant amounts of blue asbestos" all over her. Blue asbestos is the insulating material that's been banned in the US for years because of all the lung cancer it causes. And, obviously, the 40-year-old cruise ship has been contaminated with it since day one—putting the lives of nearly all OT VIII Scientologists at risk! According to a CNN I-Report: "An affidavit filed in 2001 by Lawrence Woodcraft, a former Scientologist and trained architect, claims that Woodcraft encountered the fibrous minerals while working on the ship in 1987, and promptly informed Scientology leaders." And they didn't do anything about it for 20 years. So where does a Scientologist go when he dies of mesothelioma?

Richard Edelman, the touchy CEO of the massive Wal-Mart supporting PR firm Edelman, is going above and beyond for his client AdMeTech, a prostate cancer foundation. He's inviting a select group of "key opinion leaders"/ perfect strangers to his own apartment for dinner, where he will discuss his own experience with a false positive exam for prostate cancer. Sounds...interesting! (Note: we debated over whether it would be wrong to publish this until we discovered that Edelman already wrote all about his prostate exam on his blog). Points to him for taking up a good cause, but we...have some other thing to do that night. Not that we were invited in the first place. The full email enticing the opinion leaders to this "robust discussion" of prostates, after the jump.

Here's a heartwarming adage from my grandmother: "You can never be too rich or too thin." (Can't wait to see you this weekend, Safta! Yes, I'm laying off the matzo.) Emily Brill has always been rich, but hasn't always been thin. In fact, she was once chubby in a spoiled 10 year-old kind of way, which makes sense because she is the daughter of media millionaire Steve Brill, so she probably got to eat allll the candy she wanted to. But now Emily is thin. And on her blog, she announced that she'll do whatever it takes to stay that way.

Cynthia Nixon is living proof that bad things happen to good actresses. Speaking openly for the first time about her 2006 diagnosis with breast cancer on Good Morning America today, the happily outed actress demonstrated exactly how a public figure maintains grace under fire. And even after telling us how one goes about telling their kids they sorta have to undergo an operation, and how to deal with the public's response to her coming out, one of the most intriguing lessons the Sex And The City star shared had to do with which half of a lesbian couple is called "Mom" and which is called "Mommy." Nixon's life lessons, after the jump.

Boy, ABC News president David Westin must have really been moved by the story of Randy Pausch, a 47 year-old professor and father who has terminal cancer. It's not every day an exec as high up as Westin takes the time to email the entire ABCTV staff just to talk about an uplifting story! Westin is truly touched by how Pausch has altered our lives. That's one interpretation. Another, more accurate interpretation, which is completely validated by the contents of Westin's email [via Jossip], is that the exec saw a good chance to use this ill man's story as an example of the badass corporate interactivity going on under the Disney umbrella. Westin's totally excited about Pausch's TV segment, sister company Hyperion is publishing the book, and the guy once wanted to be an "Imagineer" for another Disney unit... When he still had his life before him, of course. The full email, after the jump.

Patrick Swayze's fellow celebrities shouldn't be blamed for making such a public show of their sympathy for the cancer-stricken actor. Even if it would be more seemly to pass on their good wishes in person, or privately, they can't always dodge reporters' questions. But do stars like Kelly Lynch really have to promote the pernicious notion that a positive attitude can help against a disease as deadly as Swayze's pancreatic cancer?

Anderson Cooper is still the prettiest anchor on CNN after minor surgery to remove a spot of skin cancer. Anderson worried everyone a little yesterday morning when he said viewers might see his scar and "think I got into a fist fight with Charlie Rose." But really, the scar looks more like Cooper nicked himself shaving, at least judging by his appearance on CNN tonight. Hopefully all traces of cancer have disappeared as surely as this blemish will. High definition still shot, taken within the hour, after the jump.

CNN Anchor and America's Boyfriend Anderson Cooper wrote on his show's blog today that he's been absent for a couple days because he was undergoing "minor surgery" to remove "a small spot of skin cancer" from under his left eye. He'll be back on the air tonight, and he is informing the public of the surgery only so that we don't suspect the stitches are the result of "a fist fight with Charlie Rose." Oh, Anderson. We wouldn't assume that. We'd dream it. [AC360 via HuffPo]

When we watched the last season of The Sopranos, we remember watching Johnny Sack freely smoke cigarettes in his hospital gown despite having terminal cancer and feeling completely indifferent. One more of Tony's adversaries going down in a puff of smoke was, in the context of the show, actually something to smile about. But seeing the cancer-stricken visage of Patrick Swayze doing the same thing? Frankly, it guts us. At this point, we're not sure whether to watch the last scene of Dirty Dancing over and over again while fighting back tears or to hop a plane to wherever Swayze is at the moment and personally pluck the cig from his lips. Seen here post-diagnosis, it seems Swayze just can't kick the habit, no matter how brutal it is on his body:

Sad news to report. Patrick Swayze, the always charming, dirty dancing, clay massaging late '80s acting stalwart (and star of everyone's favorite SNL skit), has allegedly just received news that his previously diagnosed pancreatic cancer has spread. According to the National Enquirer, doctors have told him he has approximately five weeks to live:

Today's Page Six leads with what looks like your average "I'm a friend of Richard Johnson's" book plug item, the heartwarming story of one Robert Schimmel, a comic, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2000. Schimmel wrote a book called "Cancer on $5 a Day" and it seems mostly concerned with how to get laid whilst coping with cancer. Whatever, kind of heartwarming right? Not really! The item veers between life-affirming and creepy, like a drunk driver caroming down the moral highway in a blizzard. (The blizzard is cancer, the driver is Schimmel, and on one side of the road is the sweet release of death and on the other is the married Schimmel's banging of his daughter's best friend.)

Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor of 9/11, began running a radio ad in New Hampshire this week that's all about how he survived his prostrate cancer without any help from the government. "I had prostate cancer five, six years ago. My chance of surviving cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine." Of course, because Rudy Giuliani is saying those things, each sentence contains its own egregious lie. Even the first one!

Kris Carr got a rare form of cancer at age 31, and she decided to share her wisdom for young people with old-people diagnoses in a book, and a blog, called "Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips." She was on Oprah on Monday! Her book made Times health blogger Tara Parker-Pope feel like she'd "just had three cups of coffee." Great! But: Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips? Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips? We could almost get behind this title if this book was by a member of the semi-defunct pop group TLC. Instead it is a documentary on TLC.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation gave a little cancer-stricken child a 31-inch tall horse, a couple stray pit bulls killed it two days later, and then some CNN web editor wrote the best headline ever. The foundation will not be giving cancer boy a second tiny horse. :(

Former White House spokesbot Tony Snow will be the keynote speaker at the American Magazine Conference in Boca Raton, Florida at the end of the month. Men's Health editor David Zinczenko, the AMC 2007 chairman, is super jazzed about it. But should he be? Former keynote speakers included former President Bill Clinton, former future presidents Barack Obama and John McCain. Tony Snow was a regular guest host for the Rush Limbaugh Show and frontman for the band "Beats Workin'." He did, as Zinczenko made sure to mention, survive the cancer that God so unjustly gave him. Who else is speaking in Boca, and why?

New York magazine goes against type this week in a searing indictment of the medical treatment afforded to the lower classes and people of color who develop cancer. How else to interpret this collage of survivors other than a to-the-trenches style photo depiction of the horrifying fact that so many wealthy, entitled people in our town manage to survive the illness?

• Byron "Barney" Calame's term as Times ombudsman will not be that paper's last. No word yet on a successor, but we understand that this guy is not in the running. [WWD]
  

Sometimes, news comes along that puts a spring in your step and a gleam in your eye. (No, not Britney Spears going to rehab just now! Well, okay, yes, it does.) But it's also how we felt when we heard that Hallmark was introducing "'Journeys,' a collection of 176 greeting cards "that help people through a difficult time, empathize with them, celebrate a success, or simply brighten their day with a smile." Like the "Sorry You're Infertile" card above!