Tom Cruise did a spread for W Magazine as his Stacee Jax character from this summer’s sure-to-be biggest box office turd, “Rock of Ages.” Playing a sad, washed-up former star clinging to the tattered remains of his career must have been a real stretch for Tom.

Newly-engaged Jessica Biel graces the cover of W Magazine’s “American Beauty” issue, probably because she has some terrible new movie to promote that nobody will ever go see because “7th Heaven” was the zenith of her career and everybody knows it but her. Once you’ve stepped into post-”Happy Gilmore” Adam Sandler territory, I’m afraid there’s no turning back. It’s already too late for you.

It pains me to say this, but Kirsten Dunst actually doesn’t look that bad in the February issue of W Magazine. So long as she keeps her mouth shut and her tits out, she’ll do just fine. Which, incidentally, is the same thing my mom told me right before she dropped me off at community college.

Michelle Williams, Elizabeth Olsen, Rooney Mara and Charlize Theron in W Magazine’s Best Performances 2012:

I’ve always found Carey Mulligan very refined and lady-like and intelligent, by which I of course mean “inescapably boring.” However, that was before I saw this W Magazine cover with her in her bra. Now I might have to re-think everything. I’m like the Aristotle of boobs.

W Magazine painted up “Twilight’s” Kristen Stewart with enough brow powder and foundation for a whole army of Liz Taylors in their new September issue. I don’t think they used that much makeup turning Robert Downey, Jr into a black man in “Tropic Thunder.”

A very pregnant Miranda Kerr poses nude in W Magazine’s special Family Issue, although I don’t see what’s so very “family” about it. You try taking your top off near a YMCA and see just how family-oriented the staff finds it. My eyes were oozing pepper spray and gravel for a damn week.

The rest of the non-naked people (Katherine Heigl, Jenna Jameson, Madonna and Lourdes, and Usher):

Silver is currently $23 an ounce, so by my calculations, that’s nearly $28,000 worth of silver on Kim Kardashian’s ass alone. Pretty pricey. W Magazine should have saved themselves some money and just hosed her down with pee instead. I’ve got a couple of mayonnaise jars full of the stuff that I’d be willing to part with for twenty bucks. Apparently there is no exchange-traded fund for urine. Never trust an investment broker who lives in a cardboard box and accepts payment in Boone’s Farm and Camel Lights.

Jennifer Aniston and her “The Bounty Hunter” co-star Gerard Butler did a sweaty desert shoot for next month’s W Magazine, and from what I can tell, Jennifer is supposed to be the prostitute and Gerard the john in the pictorial. Like in this picture, where she’s counting the cash, and then this one, where she’s being hauled away by the cops. In real life, Jennifer would never waste valuable time counting money. She’d be too busy scouring the seats for any residual semen that she could scrape into a test tube and take to a lab. I guess the photographers at W Magazine were going for a tongue-in-cheek kinda thing.

There’s something different about Madonna’s face in this pic on the left from last year’s W Magazine photo shoot. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if I could, I bet it’d come back smelling like mustache wax and estrogen cream. Bitch looks like an old catcher’s mitt that somebody left out in the rain for six weeks.

See boyfriend Jesus’ wiener here.

Rihanna is featured in the February 2010 issue of W magazine, and she talks about her latest album, “Rated R” and opens up a little about how she’s recovering from her messy relationship with Chris Brown.  She does not, sadly, offer an explanation for her Kate Gosselin-esque hair.

On the media circus following the assault, and her refusal to comment publicly at the time:

Looking back, she says she is proud of herself for remaining the quiet eye of the storm. “Not talking was a big thing for me,” says Rihanna, whose 13th tattoo, procured on Avenue B in New York’s East Village just the night before this interview, is visible, still raised and reddened, on the right side of her collarbone. It reads never a failure, always a lesson, but backward so she can read it when she looks in the mirror. “I’m glad I didn’t talk to people, because I was able to deal with things in my own way, without saying the wrong things or giving people the wrong impression.”

On how she coped afterward:

“I started to go crazy after about a month in the house,” she says of the time after her split from Brown, “so I went back to work, and the mic was my therapist. With the mic, there were no negative comments, no negative energy.”

“At first I completely shut down. But now I feel like this happened to me so I could be a voice for young girls who are going through what I went through and don’t know how to talk about it,” she says. “It’s not about Chris, about hurting him or sabotaging his career. I don’t care about that part of it.”

On her latest album, “Rated R”, which was inspired by the collapse of her relationship with Brown:

“This was a different type of record for me,” she says in her steady island lilt, sitting in a backstage dressing room after taping a BET show. “It was really personal; it was from me in the most authentic way. It’s like a movie”—hence the title—“in that when I was making this album, every day I was in a different mood. Sometimes I was pissed off, sometimes I was miserable, and every song brings out a different story.”

“It’s still hard to listen to certain songs,” she admits. “Certain ones I couldn’t even record—I’d keep pushing them back [on the schedule].” There was one track in particular she had a hard time facing. Called “The Last Song,” it has lyrics that read like the final goodbye to a great love. “When the label finally said we had 12 hours to turn in the album, I was like, Okay, I have to do it. I just drank some red wine, dimmed the lights, got in the booth and sang it.”

Rihanna in the February 2010 issue of W:

Actress and former face of Lancome cosmetics Uma Thurman attempts “bordello sexy” in a spread for next months’ W magazine. The Daily Mail says

The 39-year-old smoulders on a couch clad in a feathered stole, and black stockings and suspenders in a photoshoot for W magazine.

The 39-year-old looks like a tragic actress on the way down the greasy pole of celebrity.

“Greasy pole of celebrity?” Funny, I always just called him “Mickey Rourke.” To each his own, I guess.

Bonus pics of Kim Kardashian in — what else? — a bikini:

We’re picking up right where we left off with those pictures Brad took of Angelina in the art issue of W Magazine, right at the see-through nipple and crack part (or “the good part” as it’s referred to in elite photography circles). Witness how Brad transformed the above picture from “shitty photograph” to “highbrow art” simply by adhering to these four basic rules:

1.) Only use black and white film

2.) Three words: overexpose, overexpose, overexpose!!

3.) Intentionally blur the subject by using a shutter speed of 1/60 or longer (or get your Grandma with Parkinson’s to hold the camera), and lastly

4.) Make sure there’s a naked or almost-naked chick in the photograph

And there you have it! Stay tuned for next week’s Shortcut to Success lesson, where we’ll be tackling the finer points of turning “mindless celebrity gossip” into “thought-provoking social satire!”