Has Tom Brady Gone Soft?

Dan Shaughnessy, writing in today's Boston Globe, has spoken for hard-core football fans everywhere:

"I can't take it anymore. Aliens have overtaken Tom Brady's body. He's not the guy we thought we knew."

"Yesterday was the last straw."

"You know what I'm talking about. You opened your newspaper (or perhaps viewed online) and saw the photograph of Gisele Bundchen feeding Brady at poolside in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico."

"That did it. The tipping point. The coup de grace. The shark jumped."

"She was feeding him."

Tom Brady Rehabs in Puerto Vallarta


For all the Tom and Gisele fans on the Freeway, from boston.com:

"While the rest of us are huddled beneath a pile of blankets trying to survive another batch of frigid weather, Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen are busy catching some rays south of the border."

"On Sunday, the paparazzi snapped the Patriots signal-caller and his supermodel sweetheart snuggling in sunny Puerto Vallarta, Mexico."

"While it's unclear if the couple is or isn't engaged, they sure look like lovebirds lounging poolside in their boardshorts and bikini."

Watch out for the lizards!

Barbie Turns Fifty

"This March, Barbie Millicent Roberts will turn 50.

"We know her as the age-immune creature Barbie, 11 1/2 inches of plastic delivered by Mattel onto our cultural landscape in a zebra-striped bathing suit.

"She has been painted by Warhol, scrutinized by intellectuals, sabotaged by pranksters, pilloried by cultural critics and purchased more than a billion times.

"Margaux Lange figures she was about 4 or 5 when she got her first Barbie. “I remember very quickly becoming obsessed with collecting as many as I possibly could,” she says.

"Eventually she had around 50. 'I played with them, embarrassingly, until about seventh or eighth grade. In secret.'

"She’s 29 now and makes jewelry for a living; in her studio, along with her soldering torch and other standard tools of the trade, is a much larger Barbie collection.

"But these dolls are mostly in pieces, stored in stacked plastic boxes marked with phrases like “One Eye” or “Mouths With Teeth.”

Read more from today's New York Times Magazine.