Past Deadline

Astounding Cruise-Shields Life Parallels Send Random Linkage Junkies Into Obsessive, All-Consuming Dither

It's just all so very unbelievable, isn't it? I mean, what are the chances that Brooke Shields and her arch-nemesis, Tom Cruise, would welcome new children into the world on the same day (Tuesday)? And not only the same day but at the same hospital (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood) and on the same floor. They simply don't make odds that high in this or any other world, by gosh.

But it turns out that's only the beginning of the surreal series of coincidences that link Shields and Cruise. It's like that whole Kennedy-Lincoln thing, only way way more mind-boggling. The crack Past Deadline investigative team has uncovered some 20 more incredible twists of fate connecting the two that can't help but rock your world.

Consider:

• Both of their surnames have an "i," an "e" and at least one "s."
• Each became the parent of a baby girl.
• Cruise's new daughter Suri weighed in at 7.7 pounds, Shields' new daughter Grier Hammond at 7 pounds. There is at least one "7" in each.
• Each infant measured 20 inches at birth.
• Shields is 40 years old. Cruise is 43. There is a "4" in each.
• Shields defended taking medication for postpartum depression. Cruise shunned drugs for prepartum aggression.
• His birth name is Thomas Cruise Mapother. Hers is Brooke Christa Shields. There are 20 total letters in each.
• Shields is married to Chris Henchy. Cruise in engaged to Katie Holmes. There are 11 letters in each name -- five in the first name, six in the last. Moreover, "married" and "engaged" each has seven letters and three vowels.
• Holmes. Henchy. Both start with an "H."
• Henchy's middle name is Thomas.
• Cruise and Shields appeared together in the 1981 film "Endless Love."
• Both were born in the state of New York -- she in New York City, he in Syracuse.
• She has praised the therapeutic benefits of being prone on a couch in an analyst's office. He is prone to wildly jumping on one in a talk show studio.
• Cruise defends Scientology. Shields defends psychiatry. The first syllable of each is pronounced "sigh."
• Neither has ever collaborated with Pauley Shore.
• Both consider themselves actors.
• Both have worked as producers.
• Both have been the target of jokes on "South Park" (Cruise on the series, Shields in the 1999 feature "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut").
• Her initials are B.S., while Cruise has been accused of spouting it.
• Shields starred in the 1979 film "Just You and Me, Kid." Cruise was once married to Nicole Kidman.

Pretty amazing, stuff, huh? Anyway, if fate continues to intervene, Shields and Holmes should wind up in the same "Mommy & Me" class. Grier and Suri will become great pals and, around about 2031, write a book together trashing their still-feuding parental units. That will make the irony circle complete.

Katie Holmes Silently Delivers Female Scientological Bio Unit; Tom Cruise Said to Be 'Over the Couch' With Joy

After appearing to be carring a medicine ball around in her abdomen for the better part of a month, Katie Holmes finally gave birth to Tom Cruise's child late this afternoon. It's a girl who tipped the scales at 7 pounds, 7 ounces and measured 20 inches long. She has been given the name Suri, which in Hebrew is translated to mean, "She who is doomed to tabloid overexposure and a lifetime of psychoanalysis in defiance of her therapy-hating father." No word on whether Cruise followed through on his vow to devour the placenta post-delivery.

And how ironic that Cruise nemesis Brooke Shields, who sparred with Cruise in the press over her use of meds to deal with postpartum depression, also had her baby on Tuesday. She too birthed a 7-pound, 20-inch girl. No matter how much Brooke wants to remove herself from the shadow of Tom, it seem they're destined to be linked -- no doubt to her ongoing horror.