DAILY DIRT: Johnny’s scared of clowns? Tom was a washout as a priest?

You just have to love that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Trekkie, right?  … Welcome to today’s three thoughts that make up Vol. 990 of The Daily Dirt.

1. If you haven’t figured out by now, I find great entertainment from the strange and downright quirky, especially when it involves the people we have termed “celebrities”.

Here are 10 of my favorite items I have never shared until this day. Hope you enjoy:

• 1. Actor Johnny Depp suffers from coulrophobia, a fear of clowns. Somehow, this does not come as a huge surprise, does it?
• 2. Actor Tom Cruise, Hollywood’s most famous Scientologist, once aspired to be a Catholic priest. He attended seminary for a short time, but after a night of stealing booze and drinking, Cruise and his cohorts were politely asked not to return.
• 3. This one’s downright strange. Actor Ashton Kutcher once went to pick up a girlfriend at her home and when she didn’t answer the door, he looked in through a window, saw a pool of red on the floor (“I thought it was red wine”), and … left. Turned out she had been murdered by a serial killer, and the “wine” was her blood.
• 4. Famous sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer may teach you a trick or two about spicing up your love life, but did you know she could also probably blow your brains out from 400 yards away? She was a sniper in the Israeli army during the early formation of the state. 
• 5. The late Martin Luther King Jr. was a huge “Star Trek” fan.
• 6. Actress Angelina Jolie once wanted to be a funeral director. Somehow, this one does not surprise me either.
• 7. Actor Jack Nicholson was raised by his grandparents (and believed they were his mother and father), and the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother. He was 38 years old when the truth came out. The actor’s biological father is uncertain.
• 8. Speaking of Jack, before Simon Cowell was judging others’ talent, he was at the bottom of the entertainment totem pole, polishing set props. He got a job as a runner on director Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” at Elstree Studios in London and one of his jobs was buffing Jack Nicholson’s axe for the famous “Here’s Johnny” scene.
• 9. Miley Cyrus is Dolly Parton’s goddaughter.
• 10. When actor Christopher Walken was 16 years old, he worked several odd jobs, one of which was as a lion tamer in a circus.

2. Did you know (Part 51):

• That Cher once had a fling with the aforementioned Tom Cruise.
• That Pamela Anderson was once engaged to Kid Rock.
• That Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande were also once engaged. (Pete also dated Kim Kardashian and Kate Beckinsale.)
• That Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx were a couple for six years.
• That Nicole Kidman was once engaged to Lenny Kravitz.

3. The best of this week’s “Found on Facebook”:

• “I may look like I’m having deep thoughts, but 99 percent of the time I’m thinking about what I’m going to eat later.”
• (Actual sign at a store) “Summer break: Parents we have duct tape and Benadryl.”
• “Dick Allen should be in the Hall of Fame.”
• “It’s weird when you realize we are the last generation on this Earth to know what life was like before social media.”
• “You’re never more than 115 miles from a McDonald’s.”

Steve Thought O’ The Day — Did you know actress Maya Rudolph is part of a Prince cover band named Princess?

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. What is a fear of Tom Cruise called?