Amy Adams Ever Ever After

It's really wonderful to read that with her Academy Award nomination, Amy Adams has joined the top tier of American actresses, "after a decade of odd jobs, Midwestern dinner theater and dead-end roles...a period of my life where I had to work several jobs to pay my bills. Something would go wrong and you'd have to take another job to get your car running. That was very real for me."

We first became aware of her in in "Enchanted," and loved her presence and charm as she channeled the magic of Disney Princesses, in the context of present-day Manhattan.

Have a look:

Read Your Kindle Library On Your iPhone/iTouch!

I just downloaded a new, free application from the iTunes App Store called "Kindle" that lets me read any book stored on my Kindle on my iTouch/iPhone.

And whenever I stop reading on one device, the other device has it bookmarked.

Brilliant! Now I can read with a backlighted screen when I need to, or when I don't have my Kindle with me.

Click here for more information from today's New York Times

The Snuggies Infestation

Like you, I've been really creeped out lately by all the Snuggies commercials I've been seeing. (Thank God for DVR and TiVo.)

I kind of expect an upcoming Snuggies commercial to include a pair of purple sneakers as a bonus with each purchase.

I mean really, would anyone -- even in Kansas -- go to their kid's soccer game in a Snuggie?

So it was quite refreshing to read about an intrepid New York Times reporter's account of being out and about in Manhattan in a blue Snuggie:

"My biggest fear was that I would be treated as some kind of doomsday zealot when I donned my Snuggie in Times Square. I have longish hair and a beard, and the Snuggie, with its generous draping sleeves, can appear from the front like a clerical gown. It seemed to shout: “Repent!”

"As I stood near the TKTS booth writing this thought in my notebook, I realized that: “Hey, I’m writing in my notebook while standing up wearing a blanket. These sleeves are handy.”

"Then a woman in red stockings who was promoting the musical “Chicago” came tap-dancing over to me. “You’ve got my favorite blanket on!” she said. She had forgotten its proper name. “It’s a, um, Huggy?”

She handed me a flier for the show, which I was able to take easily because Snuggie has sleeves. I did not have anywhere to put it, however, because Snuggie does not have pockets. As I twisted to reach for the back pocket of my pants, the clingy Snuggie pulled away from my shirt and discharged a powerful bolt of static onto a sensitive area of my chest.

"Ow!"

Tom And Gisele Get Married

Pats superstud Tom Brady reportedly...
The Boston Herald has reported that it's a done deal.
Because I know that many Freeway regulars want all of the details, here they are:

"New England Patriots superstud Tom Brady - the region’s most eligible bachelor - reportedly tied the knot last night with his supermodel galpal, Gisele Bundchen, in a romantic twilight wedding in California.

US Weekly magazine reported on its Web site that the pigskin prince and his Brazilian bombshell traded “I do’s” in a small Catholic ceremony in St. Monica’s Church in Santa Monica. The “very small and intimate” gathering consisted mostly of immediate family, including Brady’s parents, Tom Sr. and Gaylen, and 2-year-old son, Jack, by ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan .

The 28-year-old bride wore a form-fitting strapless ivory lace gown with a trumpet skirt, scalloped edges, long train and a floor-length veil with attached handmade satin roses and attached satin headband by her favorite designers Dolce & Gabbana, the magazine reported. Her three dogs also wore matching Dolce & Gabbana floral lace collars.

A spokesman for the Patriots was unable to immediately confirm that Brady was a married man. But a source at US said the story was “1,000 percent true.” A witness to the nups confirmed the details for the magazine, the source said.

The reported wedding seemed to fit with what Bundchen once described as her perfect “I do” scenario.

“I don’t like parties,” she said. “I prefer something more intimate, just for the closest people.”

The church, in a quiet parish near the beach, is known as “the church of the stars” because a number of movies have been filmed there, including “Going My Way” and “The Bells of St. Mary.”

Parishioners include Martin Sheen, Brooke Shields, Kelsey Grammer and the late Chris Farley . Lucy Lawless of “Xena, Warrior Princess” fame also was married there.

In recent weeks, both Brady and Bundchen repeatedly denied engagement rumors that began in December when TMZ.com reported that No. 12 proposed to his girlfriend of two years on a private jet filled with roses and champagne.

“Someone deduced I was getting engaged . . . I don’t know how people are so creative,” Bundchen told Brazilian magazine Caras Gi last month after receiving more than 100 e-mails from pals asking about the engagement.

And just last week at a charity event in Allston, Brady also claimed he had no immediate wedding plans. When WBZ-TV (Ch. 4) sportsguy Steve Burton asked the QB/QT whether he was going to tie the knot, the two-time Super Bowl MVPreplied “I say, ‘may’ - maybe, maybe not.”

“I am in a great spot in my life. I have a lot of people who care about me that I love being around,” Tom continued, “and one of them is my girlfriend.” However, Brady added that “unfortunately” the engagement rumors weren’t true.

However, the Internet was buzzing earlier this week about some fuzzy paparazzi snaps of Gisele taken at Carnival in Brazil, which showed a ring on her left ring finger.

A pal close to the couple told Us Bundchen and Brady are perfect together.

“She’s definitely ‘The One,’ ” the source said. “She really makes him comfortable and just happy.”

The couple purchased an $11.7 million piece of property in a gated community in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles late last year and are building a house there."

Get a Grip, You’re British!

Timely commentary about tonight's Academy Awards:

"Britons are a chauvinistic bunch, proprietary about their place in the world and eager to see their talents recognized abroad. 

"So they were gratified in January when Kate Winslet, one of their favorite home-team actors, snagged a Golden Globe Award, her second of the night, for her performance as a frustrated prisoner of suburbia in “Revolutionary Road.”

"That is until, failing her own actorly advice to “gather,” she began hyperventilating and burst into convulsive sobs, right there on stage. 

"Ms. Winslet then went on to pay tribute to people no one had ever heard of, like her agents and make-up artists; announced that she loved her co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio “with all my heart”; forgot Angelina Jolie’s name; and generally behaved as if she had just learned that a donor heart had finally been found, enabling her transplant operation to go ahead after all.

"Oh my God, was the general reaction in Britain."

God Bless The Boston Ironworkers!

I was in an adjoining building a few years ago, during construction of a different wing of Dana Farber, and saw some names of young cancer patients painted on the beams. It was (and still is) a very moving experience, as this video demonstrates.

I pray, as one of the Ironworkers once said, that a cure will be found and they won't have to build any more of these.

(Thanks also to the Red Sox for supporting the Dana Farber Institute.)

Chris Rock Should Host The Oscars Again!!

Chris Rock is a worthy heir to George Carlin. He is a cultural subversive at a time when we really need one.

He speaks truth to power, as at The Academy Awards broadcast in 2005:

"He lamented Hollywood’s offerings for black audiences, and the camera cut more than once during the night to a stoic looking Spike Lee. And in what was (for me at least) the highlight of this year’s Oscar presentation, Rock revealed the serious disconnect the Oscars have with audiences. He took the home viewers, as well as those in the Kodak Theatre, across town to the Magic Johnson Theatre where he interviewed movie-goers at the cineplex. None of them had seen The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, or Sideways but they’d all seen White Chicks."

And he can make politics understandable to fans of the NFL:

"It was such a bad pick, I thought Al Davis made it.''
-- Chris on The Howard Stern Show on Sirius Radio, on John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate.

Check out "Kill the Messenger," Chris Rock’s latest HBO special if you can, to witness an artist at the peak of his comedic powers.

Red Sox Nation

Of course I'm biased, but you can't help noticing that there are an awful lot of Red Sox fans at games the Sox play on the road -- to the point where in some cities it must be embarrassing to the other team when the Sox fans seem to outnumber the home team fans.

"Red Sox Nation" is much more than a marketing concept.

So because we're in that awful dead zone right now between the end of the football season and the first Spring Training game, and because my nephew Paul sent me this excellent video that a friend of his wrote and produced, it's time for baseball!

(You can get more information about the video here.)

Octomom Update

Some followup to a recent post on the Freeway:

"MONTEBELLO, Calif. — Pictures of children, his trophies, decorate Dr. Tien C. Chiu’s office.

"Three smiling siblings, he says, were the first Japanese-American triplets conceived in a laboratory, while the robust-looking quadruplets were born after sperm was injected into their mother’s eggs with a needle.

"To the couples who turned to Dr. Chiu to have families, the babies were special gifts. To the government and fertility industry, though, such large multiple births have begun to look like breakdowns in the system. The issue has taken on renewed scrutiny since a California woman, Nadya Suleman, who already had six children conceived through in vitro procedures, gave birth to octuplets near here last month.

"Nearly a third of in vitro births involve twins or more. The government, along with professional associations, have been pushing fertility doctors to reduce that number, citing the disastrous health consequences that sometimes come with multiple births — infant mortality, low birth weights, long-term disabilities and thousands of dollars’ worth of medical care.

"The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the association of fertility doctors, even adopted guidelines in 2008 encouraging the transfer of only one embryo for women under 35, and no more than two, except in extraordinary circumstances. The guidelines allow more for older women, up to a maximum of five.

"But unlike some other countries, the United States has no laws to enforce those guidelines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a surveillance system that collects data on fertility clinics, but reporting is voluntary and there are no government sanctions for not reporting."