Brady's hidden talents

You can bet he won't be appearing on Broadway any time soon, but Tom Brady did impress us with his performance on ''Saturday Night Live" over the weekend. Displaying a familiar fearlessness, the Patriots quarterback poked fun at his pretty-boy image in sketches about a song-and-dance man with a sweet derriere, a Middle Eastern chef, and an UGGs-wearing soprano sax player whose resemblance to Kenny G was not coincidental. The two-time Super Bowl MVP may have seemed a curious choice to host, but Brady, whose better half Bridget Moynahan is an actress, is not the first gridiron guy to get the call. In 1987, Brady's idol, Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, hosted ''SNL," and before that Fran Tarkenton, O.J. Simpson, and Alex Karras all were center stage. (Montana's musical guest, incidentally, was Deborah Harry, while Brady's was Beck.) Looking dapper and, as always, dimple-chinned, Brady opened the show with a humorous tune about his many hidden talents, which include winning the Tour de France with no pants -- who knew? -- and a killer impression of Kermit the Frog. ''It's not easy being green," croaked the close-cropped QB. (Ain't that a fact, Donovan McNabb?) What followed for 90 minutes was a series of bits that Brady's teammates, and maybe even coach Bill Belichick, will be teasing him about for a long time to come. Can you imagine, for example, what macho Willie McGinest will have to say about Brady wearing a jockstrap on TV? Our personal fave was ''Tom Brady's Falafel City," in which No. 12 dressed like Aladdin and chanted ''Baba Ganoush!" The skit fell apart when Horatio Sanz inexplicably showed up as former Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung, but Brady called an audible, ad-libbing with a winning smile. In the end, our hometown hero didn't show a lot of comedic range, but considering he missed a day of rehearsals last week to go to the White House, he managed to make us proud.

FILM FEST HONORS Director/screenwriter/producer Mary Harron will receive this year's Filmmaker on the Edge Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival. Harron's highly anticipated new film, ''The Notorious Bettie Page," starring Gretchen Mol as the naughty-yet-nice pinup, is being released by HBO films this year. Her previous movies include ''I Shot Andy Warhol" and ''American Psycho." Directors Jim Jarmusch and Gus Van Sant, producer Christine Vachon, and filmmaker John Waters previously won the award. Meanwhile, the Nantucket Film Festival, which coincides with the P'town fest this year, will be honoring actor/writer Steve Martin. Last year's honoree was Charlie Kaufman, who went on to win the Academy Award for his original screenplay for ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

MORE POWER TO HER Harvard lecturer Samantha Power has won a National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting for an article she wrote in The New Yorker about the Darfur region of Sudan. Power was founding executive director of the Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy in 1998, and her book ''A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction.

LIGHT UP THE NIGHT Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker was the featured speaker at last night's Literary Lights event, which celebrated the region's exceptional literary talent. Authors honored last night included Noam Chomsky, Ada Louise Huxtable, Bill McKibben, Michael Ignatieff, Jorie Graham, and Amy Bloom, the only one on the roster who's written about female-to-male transsexualism.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Writer and prodigious eater R.W. Apple Jr. was in town the other night and drew quite a crowd at Hamersley's Bistro. Celebrating the publication of his new book, ''Apple's America: The Discriminating Traveler's Guide to 40 Great Cities in the United States and Canada," the New York Times scribe chatted with chefs Jasper White, Ana Sortun, Jody Adams, Ian Just, Barbara Lynch, and Lydia Shire.

GREEN THUMBS UP The New York Botanical Garden, one of the world's great plant research and education centers, has a new director, and she's Kim Tripp, former director of the excellent botanic garden at Smith College. Tripp, who did her postdoctoral work at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, has been VP for Horticulture and the Living Collections at the New York Botanical Garden since 1999.

OUT AND ABOUT Recovered from a serious bout of the flu, former mayor Kevin White lunched yesterday at Ciao Bella on Newbury Street and was greeted by well-wishers. We're told White's wife, Kathryn, remains at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she's being treated for pneumonia.

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