Link Roundup

by Mallory Ortberg · February 17, 2015

HI there is a Tumblr devoted to photographs of famous people who used to date called OLD LOVES and some of them are SURPRISING and some of them are NOT SURPRISING and some of them are WONDERFULLY TERRIBLE and I’m on page 45, how far back are you?

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Lesley Gore died and that’s sad

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Sulagna Misra wrote about life hacks for the marginalized and that’s good

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This doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but I’ve listened to “Dance With Me” about fourteen times this weekend.

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While I was looking through YouTube for all these videos, I came across “Did You Know These Celebrities Were Murdered?” and, well, you know. Watched it. Here it is.

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That’s all I’ve got for you today, my darlings. *fans self wearily* Come back tomorrow, perhaps I’ll have the strength to stir from this divan then.

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104 Comments

  2. jaeferous +17

    Lesley Gore, no! I actually just finished reading Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s, and it was fantastic. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know more about Gore or her female contemporaries.

  3. AVincennes +9

    I’ve been so excited for Glastonbury since October and those pictures of Keira Knightley made me think, am I really ready for Glastonbury again? Really? Even the fragrant and delightful Keira Knightly looks how I feel when it rains in these photographs, who even knows how I (less fragrant, less delightful) look on such occasions.

  4. kilks401 +31

    Sad about Lesley Gore, but glad I’m not the only one who’s favorite song by her is this one. So much more than ‘It’s my party”.

    2. gripyfish +4

      I’ve always enjoyed “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” most, just in terms of its sheer ridiculousness, but yes! She’s so much more than just “It’s My Party”.

    3. supernanify +8

      I thought she was just another lame early-60s teeny-bopper until I heard “You Don’t Own Me”. Holy shit, there is some righteous venom in her voice. I’ve loved her with my whole heart ever since.

  5. ToastiewithCheese +21

    Lena Dunham told a story once about browsing through Old Loves (apparently a hobby) and coming across a picture of her boyfriend with ScarJo. She already knew they’d dated, but she said it was kind of odd, anyway.

    So: which actress would be your kryptonite? As in, if you came across a photo of your partner with a famous ex, which one would be most jealousy inducing? ScarJo’d be pretty high on my list, but Natalie Portman would be all the way at the top, since that’s the boy’s one and only celeb crush.

    The boy actually has no exes at all – he’d never even kissed anyone before me. Honestly, that feels a little strange too.

    1. clarestainthorp +12

      Ooh, can we talk about how having a boyfriend with no ex’s can feel strange sometimes? (He’d kissed a couple of people before, but I’m his one and only girlfriend.) It’s not something I can exactly put my finger on…

      1. ToastiewithCheese +11

        I don’t know, for me it’s partly that he has no comparison material? Like, he’s pretty great in general, but I can compare him to (a few) other guys, and he comes out the winner practically every time. It’s also that in his place, I’d get curious about how it is to kiss someone else. And I sometimes wonder if he would have been just as content with basically any girl he dated, and if he’s not just staying with me at least in part because he hates change.

        Then again, I am objectively a pretty awesome girlfriend, so maybe that’s why he’s so happy with me 😉

        1. clarestainthorp +12

          I think you’re right, I guess it’s a version of the time-old ‘what if there’s someone else more suited to me?’ question. Not that you need to have dated huge numbers of people before finding someone good, but just having an awareness that the relationship you’re in isn’t the only way a relationship can be.

          Haha, you’re right though, I’m pretty sure our respective boyfriends are so happy because we’re pretty amazing people 😉

          1. RuncibleSpoon +2

            definitely get all of this, as I am the first long-term serious live-in girlfriend that my boyfriend has had, while I’ve actually lived with someone before and have had much longer relationships.

            I too would consider myself pretty objectively awesome, and he is really wonderful, but there have been some learning curves re: him living with a SO. And the lack of comparison material is something I do wonder about sometimes.

    2. jimmyjimjimjim +28

      Straight up the thing that annoys me about my general virginity the most is a complete lack of dating experience. I have no stories to share, nothing to compare against.

      1. Danielle B. +18

        I’m in that boat too, and it sucks sometimes, but I like 2 things about it: 1. I have no trainwrecks of a relationship in my past to have to work on the damage from, and 2. I have amazing stories of ridiculous crushes and how things specularly didn’t work out, in my aborted attempts to make it something.

        …this may be small comfort sometimes, but there it is. OH & getting a free laugh whenever anyone says “oh I haven’t had sex in [amount of time, really any]!!” I really am going to miss being able to chuckle magnanimously at their plight when it finally happens for me.

    3. blueathena623 +14

      Natalie Portman as well, since she is a huge celebrity crush and so incredibly dainty and delicate and petite and I’m all birthing hips and peasant stock and square jaw. Pretty much all of his previous (non-famous) girlfriends looked like little dark pixies and I’m Helga the Hun, but we’ve been married for 10 years so apparently I’m at least a little his type.

    4. bookwormV +2

      My boyfriend and I both essentially have no exes – right before we got together, he went on a blind date and then a second date with another girl (which pushed me into making a move), and I had kissed two girls one one occasion that I never told people about, but otherwise neither of us had any romantic experience. We’ve been together for six years now, and it does sometimes feel a bit weird to have no experience of exes (but nice).

  6. bitzyboozer +25

    I got obsessed with Old Loves a while back and then totally forgot it existed, so thank you! Guyssss, what was going on with Jamie Dornan’s pants in the mid-aughts? Was this a trend I have mercifully erased from my memory? His torso looks about six feet long, and his legs are just little stumps.

    1. ToastiewithCheese +10

      They are terrible pants, and should be burned. And yes, I seem to vaguely recall guys wearing them, and prematurely feeling like a grumpy old lady at 20 for thinking them silly and juvenile.

    2. happyharbingers +15

      Yeah, most of what I’m getting here is how horribly everyone dressed in the mid-2000s. Yikes.

      1. bitzyboozer +11

        Yeah. I suspect the skinny jean era will not be remembered as being particularly kind to the average body type, but it certainly works for celebrities.

    3. heylibrarygirl +18

      My first thought about Jamie Dornan in those pictures is that he’s always looked that bored and uninterested, and it’s not a new affectation.

      But the thing that will actually haunt me all day is that Keri Washington was engaged to David Moscow for like, 3 years. How? What? How? What? WHY?

  7. Dav +42

    Old Loves tells me Eleanor Roosevelt was in love with Amelia Earnhardt.

    !!!

    How did I not know this?

  8. SwitchingGenres +19

    The Orleans are my uncles! (Well, my 2nd uncles I guess–my father’s cousins). I’m so happy to see Mallory showing them some love!

    1. merrite +31

      “I pull out my tampon and throw it violently at his head.”

      I have had literally this exact fantasy about so many awful men, including but not limited to Congressional Republicans.

  10. sarahsaysssoo +2

    Not on topic, please forgive me, but are there any Dallas area toasties who can recommend a therapist and/or a general doctor. I need someone who won’t be shamey because I’m bigger, and also who might be willing to discuss adult-onset ADHD/ADD with me. Therapist is for general depression and anxiety

    1. Ordinarily +4

      So, I don’t live in Dallas, but I just found a therapist after having these same worries/issues. I know your situation may be different, but I went through my EAP at work (if you have it, I would use it) and got 5 free sessions. They gave me a list of about 6 names to choose from based on where was most convenient for me to travel. And then I figured that I could try them out and move to someone else on the list, and it would be free. (The EAP also said that if I didn’t like any of them after researching, I could call back and they would give me more names.)

      It might not be what you want to do, but if no one has any recs, it might be helpful. The sheer number of therapy choices for me was hindering my ability to actually make an appointment so being able to choose from a list of 6 was the only way I would have actually made a decision.

      (I ended up liking my first choice fairly well and I’m getting an adult ADD test tomorrow.)

    2. Danielle Plum +1

      http://irispsychologicalservices.com/ She’s in Arlington, but she’s incredible as far as body image/health at every size. I’m not sure her background with ADHD/ADD, but she is extremely well-versed in many different issues. She’s the antithesis of shamey in any way. 🙂

  11. ppyajunebug +52

    There’s a super interesting piece in the New Yorker about the debutante who saved the paper in 1925 by writing a piece on how boring the men the had to dance with at the deb events were and how they’d much rather meet unsuitable men at cabarets. Because she was a famous deb and it got written about in the front page of the NYT and people actually started reading the magazine and it was saved from financial ruin.

    And then she eloped with Irving Berlin and got disowned because he was Jewish but they were married for over 60 years and now I need to track down her novels and it was just really, really fascinating.

      1. ppyajunebug +15

        Isn’t it??? The part where he calls her up and says “Let’s get married today” and she takes the subway for the first time to meet him…

        Someone needs to write her biography. NOW.

  12. ramina +8

    Whichever one of you Toastie Twitters initially linked the Nostalgia Machine yesterday, know that I am spending my work from home snow day reliving eighth grade in Y2K and I hate you (but I love you at the same time.)

      1. GruntledDave +3

        Wow. From the comments on Youtube:

        “Bell got his draft notice in May ’67, he wanted to record with his group, the Drells, before he got shipped off to Vietnam. He pulled out “Tighten Up,” one of the group’s old demos. Bell got shot in the leg in Vietnam; the record went to Number One while he was in a military hospital, trying to convince people the song on the radio was his.”

  13. winterbymorning +15

    When I left for work this morning, my eyes started watering from the cold, and then the water actually froze in the outer corners of my eyes. I had to stop and pry my eyelids and lashes apart. It shouldn’t be in the -30s in mid-February!

  14. threatqualitypress +32

    Oh, dang, Old Loves. I knew that Liam Neeson and Helen Mirren had dated and (I think lived together?) but somehow it’s different to SEE it.

    Dang.

      1. threatqualitypress +9

        I remember it from a list of “Amazing Things About Liam Neeson,” the upshot of which was: a lot of things.

    2. bitzyboozer +15

      “Can you imagine riding horses in shiny suits of armor, having sword fights and stuff, and you’re falling in love with Helen Mirren? It doesn’t get any better than that.” No it does not, Liam, no it does not.

      Also I remember watching Excalibur a lot in my childhood but I must have been too young to remember the two of them being in it. Time for a rewatch!

  15. Frumiosa +23

    Old Loves is mesmerizing. WHY did we all dress like that in the late 90s, early 00s?? HOW did I not know about Sarah Paulson and Cherry Jones, and, on page 20: Anna Wintour has had the same hair for exactly ever and had a thing with Bob Marley.
    This site is providing an important social service.

    1. elsamac +3

      Riiiight? I only learned about Paulson & Jones after they split. There’s something so right in their photos together, which is a good reminder that you can’t gauge anyone’s life from the outside.

      1. Kisamae +1

        Paulson & Jones walked past me on the street once in New York City and they were holding hands and I can assure you, they looked PERFECT.

  16. sausagedog +9

    Oh man I love Old Loves. It’s always interesting to see which relationships fell through the cracks– on a few occasions, I’ve vaguely remembered some celebrity couple, like “oh, wasn’t X dating Y?” but it’s not listed in the “Personal life” section on Wikipedia and I can’t find obvious record of it because it was pre-online gossip sites.

    Also, thanks for reminding me of Shane West, Old Loves! I had such a crush on him back in the “Walk to Remember” days. And now I don’t get it.

  18. chnellociraptor +38

    I got 9 pages into Old Loves and I refuse to go any further because nothing will ever, ever top this one: http://oldloves.tumblr.com/post/95569220033/porfi…

    Porfirio Rubirosa married his fourth wife, American heiress Barbara Hutton, in 1953. Hutton wore black and carried a scotch and soda down the aisle.

    Rubirosa’s ex-girlfriend Zsa Zsa Gabor told newspaper reporters she gave the marriage six months and that in a couple of weeks “this man will be after me again.”

    Rubirosa and Hutton separated after 53 days.

    In the settlement Rubirosa received a coffee plantation in the Dominican Republic, polo ponies, 2.5 million dollars in cash, and a B-52 plane.

    Rubirosa promptly flew the plane West to win back Gabor.

    1. winterbymorning +20

      HOW MANY polo ponies? Was she contractually obligated to use them only for playing polo? We need more details!

    3. Alli525 +18

      The marriage may have been doomed, but I must say I would very much like to wear all black and carry scotch down the aisle instead of flowers. Practical, I say!

    4. elsamac +7

      ahahahahaha Barbara Hutton’s expression in that first photograph! She was no chump; she knew exactly what was happening here.

    6. Lisa +8

      There is a whole book about Rubirosa – The Last Playboy: The High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa – that came out a few years ago. From one story to the next your jaw will just keep dropping. Not the least of which stories is this: You know the giant pepper grinders waiters use in restaurants? Supposedly Parisian waiters called the pepper grinders Rubirosas in homage to his rather generous (and apparently famous) proportions.

  19. stirringsofconsciousness +18

    You can pretty much always tell who is about to break up with whom in the Old Loves picture. Also, some guys are just skeevy-looking with every partner they have. (John Mayer, Gary Oldman…)

    2. bitzyboozer +12

      I always forget Uma Thurman used to be married to Gary Oldman. I guess she likes ’em skeevy.

  20. toomanybicycles +6

    You know, I didn’t really get Brad Pitt before but those pics with Thandie…I see what all the fuss was about.

    1. toomanybicycles +31

      anytime someone asks you what 2005 was like, just answer “Britney Spears and Kevin Federline at Blockbuster.”

  21. Absotively +9

    Dear Toast,

    I am mildly ill and staying home from work. Please send small amounts of bland food and reassurances that I’m not being lazy by staying home even though I probably could make it to work.

    For reference, my reasons for staying home are that I slept poorly last night due to fever and aches and digestive unhappiness, and I was recently around several people who said they were just getting over a bug but that they were sure they were no longer contagious, so I’m pretty sure at least one of them was wrong and I don’t want to repeat their error and infect someone else. Plus my appetite isn’t fully returned yet, so it’s not like I’m completely recovered.

    1. raqueue +8

      Totally doing the right thing. Frame it as a preventative health day — you’re taking care of yourself so you don’t get worse.

      1. Dav +6

        And so you don’t get other people sick. I’ve gotten sick from colleagues that came in when they weren’t contagious anymore either, and the frothing rage I felt is only matched by my gratitude when people stay home.

        1. Absotively +1

          That’s pretty much my theory, though the “not contagious” people I was exposed to recently were all at non-work events.

    2. RuncibleSpoon +1

      I did the same thing last week, and felt the same vague guilt and questions of “lazy??”

      But! This is definitely the right thing! I felt so much better leaving early the one day and staying home the next. It meant I was actually feeling GOOD by Friday and TOTALLY HEALTHY today. It’s taken me a while to get it, but pushing myself and being vaguely blergh-y for two weeks is much less good than staying home for a day or two here or there.

      1. Absotively +2

        Thank you for your reassurances!

        I’m starting to consider staying home tomorrow, too. I didn’t feel completely terrible today, but I didn’t feel as non-terrible as I thought I was going to based on how I felt when I woke up. I suppose I’ll have to see how I feel in the morning.

    1. houblonchouffe +6

      Yeah, apparently the scene in the “novel”/movie where Nora’s character smashes a pie on Bernstein’s character’s head happened at a dinner party with Ben Bradlee:

      The dinner-party scene, in which Streep throws a Key lime pie in Nicholson’s face, is based on a real-life dinner party at the home of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn. Actually, Ephron doused Bernstein with a bottle of wine. But Key lime pie is messier, and will undoubtedly have as much comedy impact in the movie as it does in the novel. Probably more.

      – -http://articles.philly.com/1986-04-20/entertainment/26080028_1_watergate-reporter-carl-bernstein-heartburn-nora-ephron

      The scene is hilariously related in Bradlee’s memoir.

      1. dancingcrowdesigns +1

        thank you – I did too! And while I can imagine wanting to dump things on one’s husband, wanting to dump things on the Carl Bernstein is absolutely reasonable.

  23. Bothari

    I was so pleased to see a Sulagna article, but I can’t get to that link at work, and by the time I get home I will have forgotten because I have a very small brain/attention span. Woe! Sorry to let you down, Sulagna!

  24. Swim_Upstream +2

    Is it just me, or is Lesley Gore channeling a little Kim Kelly in that video? I never noticed how much Busy Phillips resembles her in general, but her facial expressions in that video really jibe with that character.

  26. bibliobotic +14

    Whoopi’s expression in that photo with Lyle Trachtenberg is perfection.

    Edit: Actually, her expression in any photo with any man is super great. “I know, right? lol ugh”

  28. elsamac +15

    So far my biggest take-away from Old Loves is that Heidi Klum and Seal are goofily, admirably into Halloween.

    2. protocoach

      And maybe a little racist? I cringed pretty hard when I saw the Kali costume. Other than that, it seemed like a lot of goofy fun.

      1. elsamac +6

        I cringed at that too, but doubtless much harder because — and this is awful — I made and wore a (much less elaborate) Kali costume a lifetime ago. (Just the arms and the belt, no elaborate headdress, no skin-painting.)

        I’m not making excuses. It’s appalling: I appropriated not just a cultural figure but a religious figure as my frivolous costume. There’s no question that’s the most blithely racist thing I’ve ever done. It was more than 20 years ago, and I’m so deeply ashamed of it that the memory just bubbles up in my brain randomly — like, I thought of it out of nowhere a few days ago — as a reminder that I have to perpetually interrogate my actions and thoughts to be the person I would like to be.

        [edited to add: It is astoundingly hard not to make excuses, but the truth is there are no excuses for this. It doesn’t matter how young, how sheltered, how inexperienced in the world I was, it was a vile thing to do. So vile that I might end up deleting this comment later, because I am horribly ashamed of younger myself for doing it, and I might decide I have to be cautious in how and when I admit it to people instead of letting it sit here like a time bomb in my commenting history. I hope you’ll understand if that’s what I do.]

        1. protocoach +1

          Totally understand. I have my fair share of things in my past that I really, really wish I hadn’t done too. Please do what you need to do.

  30. Daniel_Loo +9

    Old Loves has taught me that Gary Oldman always looked like an old man, even back in the ’80s

  31. bitzyboozer +10

    The SJP/RDJ pics are still some of my favorites on Old Loves. Oh, to be young and have great hair and a kitten in NYC in the 80s.

  32. Charlotte +3

    Barishnikov and Jessica Lange! He was my first Huge Huge Crush. I saw him dance Prodigal Son when I was 13 (during his brief Balanchine period). Revelatory, in part because he was wearing almost nothing and we had seats very close to the front. Sigh.

  34. Apollonia

    I know what you mean about not processing the stories:

    "So I met this man, who was very young, as I was. We went out for dinner in a group, with people I didn’t know. And there it was. I didn’t speak English, he didn’t speak French. I haven’t a clue how we managed. The miracle of love…

    Years later at the Waldorf in New York, where I had a very nice suite, I invited Miles to dinner. The face of the maitre d’hotel when he came in was indescribable. After two hours, the food was more or less thrown in our faces. The meal was long and painful, and then he left.

    At four o’clock in the morning I got a call from Miles, who was in tears. “I couldn’t come by myself,” he said. “I don’t ever want to see you again here, in a country where this kind of relationship is impossible.” I suddenly understood that I’d made a terrible mistake, from which came a strange feeling of humiliation that I’ll never forget. In America his colour was made blatantly obvious to me, whereas in Paris I didn’t even notice that he was black.

    Between Miles and me there was a great love affair, the kind you’d want everybody to experience. Throughout our lives, we were never lost to each other. Whenever he could, he would leave messages for me in the places I travelled in Europe: “I was here, you weren’t.”

    He came to see me at my house a few months before he died. He was sitting in the drawing room and at one point I went to the verandah to look at the garden. I heard his devilish laugh. I asked him what had provoked it. “No matter where I was,” he said, “in whatever corner of the world, looking at that back, I’d know it was you.”

    – The French singer and actress, Juliette Gréco, in an essay for The Guardian on her romance with Miles Davies

    Oh my god, this is the greatest love story. Why are Marion Cottiliard and David Oyelowo not in talks to do this RIGHT NOW?

  36. Lee Thomson

    thank you – I did too! And while I can imagine wanting to dump things on one's husband, wanting to dump things on the Carl Bernstein is absolutely reasonable.

  37. christinaemoss +2

    Things I learned from that Tumblr: Heidi Klum and Seal apparently take Halloween very seriously.

  40. thewhelk +2

    …Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey Jr? Jamie Lee Curtis and Adam Ant?

    This is like celebrity coupling MadLibs