Out of the Loop

Or, What hath Claire Danes wrought?

So today's been a day of Internet surfing and TV watching and I've come across a lot of belated celebrity news. What's the antonym of "news"? history? Anyway, I've always said that I would watch the very nearly perfect Mary-Louise Parker read the phone book, and apparently the boys over at Esquire, where she writes sex articles, had a similar idea. The magazine presented a short video series of disquieting bedtime stories with the oddball actress. One features a reading of Josh Ritter's song "To the Dogs of Whoever" which is, sadly, less than the sum of its parts. The videos are, well, interesting..?, but I watched them all anyway. Here's one for your perusal:


So I continued to watch YouTube videos of Mary-Louise and discovered she had done Hedda Gabler on Broadway, who knew?, and that she had won a Tony back in 2001 for Proof and gushed about her then boyfriend Billy Crudup. I think somewhere I knew that she had dated him. I was, however, unaware that Mr. Crudup had left his girlfriend of eight years--who was seven months pregnant at the time!--for Claire Danes whom he met on the set of Stage Beauty. I even saw that movie--it was pretty decent. Now I've always vaguely liked Claire Danes even if she's too skinny and not brilliantly talented. But she was in Romeo + Juliet and The Hours, and she was Beth in Little Women. I didn't know she was a home wrecker too (also, she left musician Ben Lee for Crudup). So then after a couple of years she cheated on Billy while filming Evening, which I also saw, shacking up with my celeb crush, Hugh Dancy. Bitch. Additionally, Mr. Dancy is apparently bisexual--how did I miss that! The crazy couple is now married, but with these stats I'm not sure they're one for the books.

The fabulous Miss Parker is doing just fine though. She's dating Charlie Mars and is the poster girl for marijuana. Here she shares a story with Chelsea Lately about how she stabbed a former boyfriend for eating her guacamole (hopefully it was Billy):


So Mel Gibson has gone batshit crazy once more, threatening his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva with whom he's locked in a child custody battle. Really, Mel? Anyway, this comes just in time to destroy his return to acting in Edge of Darkness.

Brandon Flowers has apparently begun a solo career (in addition to The Killers). What?!? In this music video, "Crossfire," Flowers makes a very pretty damsel in distress sporting some old-school threads. Charlize Theron keeps saving his ass from ninjas playing the warrior woman with considerably more clothes than in Aeon Flux. The only problem is that ninjas are so 2007. The tune is solidly in The Killers' sonic realm, and I'll watch anything with Flowers and Theron.


Meryl Streep continues to keep things classy, as always. She's currently close to signing Great Hope Springs where she would be married to Jeff Bridges--awesome!--and is in talks to play Margaret "Iron Lady" Thatcher. I can see it now. So there's some old gossip for you that, unless you already knew it, you couldn't care less about.