At the Buffy reunion during the 2008 Paley Festival this year (I saw the DVD), Marti Noxon, producer and writer from TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Grey’s Anatomy, and Private Practice, said that if Joss Whedon will call her one day to say that he’s building a rocket, she wouldn’t doubt him for a minute. Some people are just so talented they come up with unexpected things just by setting their minds onto it. Well, I believe such people only set their minds on things they know they can do; it just surprises others to finally see how much they really can.   

Another person in that panel who has been working a lot is Amber Benson. Her credits include actor, writer, director, producer, singer, and humanitarian. She’s only 31.

From left to right: Amber Benson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Emma Caulfield (March 2008, PaleyFest)
 

I’ve been lurking around Buffy forums to read episode discussions and fans seem to love this girl even if she isn’t as well known as her costars, mostly because besides creating an endearing character on TV, she seems to be a genuinely nice person in real life. What impressed me is seeing the range of her work. The acting part seems to be the bread and butter (she’s been in some obscure movies I don’t think I’ll ever watch), but she’s also co-written comic books and books; wrote, directed, produced, and starred in two of her own independent films; cowrote and directed a cult animation called Ghosts of Albion for the British network BBC; written and presented her own stage play; composed and recorded two songs for her fans; and is about to release her first solo book series to be published by Penguin Books.

I would do anything to be able to have half of that. Well, anything that I can do, I mean, without having to pack a Zero Halliburton and travel the world to learn things. Anyway, I haven’t finished watching her first attempt at writing/directing – a movie called Chance (2002) – but I kinda like the opening monologue (voiceover):

All right, you live your life in a totally normal, full-on reality check kind of way. That’s good and cool. Things don’t get messed up. People you love hang around until you can’t stand them anymore. Things never change. But shit like that doesn’t happen in real life. Real life is just a movie with someone’s finger jammed on fast forward. The numbers change faster than you can count. When you’re a little kid, you never think you’re gonna die. I mean death is just some kind of esoteric thing you see on TV or read about it in a book. Then one day you realize what it really is, and nothing is ever the same again. From that day on, you’re f&*%ed.

When not having Disney vacations with their children, the tennis power couple of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf are busy designing for their Kreiss furniture line.
(coffee table)

(dining table)

(bed)
 

The majority of the new collection was in black and white because these are Graf’s favorite color combinations. She said, “They are not only visually different but also of distinctly different materials.” Exactly what can be said of the contrast in the iconic couple’s personalities. So distinctly different, yet perfect together.

The husband-and-wife team of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf stepped out for the 13th Grand Slam for Children, last Saturday, October 11.  

The annual event, a project of The Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, featured a host of talents, including this year’s performers Natasha Bedingfield, Sheryl Crow, The Killers, Lifehouse, Ray Romano, Rod Stewart, and David Spade. Charice Pempengco was among the list of performers that night (lucky girl). Other A-list celebrities, including Mariah Carey as a surprise guest,  were also in attendance. 

It’s a musical extravaganza with the aim of raising money to support the education of underserved children in the Agassis’ hometown of las vegas nv.

I mean her creator and alter ego, Tina Fey.

AP photo

The funny lady won big at the Emmys, although her show, 30 Rock, is still one of the most underappreciated shows on TV today (despite winning the Best Comedy category for 2 years in a row). If I hadn’t been living and breathing the Internet, I probably wouldn’t even know about it. As it is, it’s one of my most favorite shows these days – each episode lasts just about the right time to keep me amused and laughing (about 20 minutes without commercial break); it’s just my kind of comedy. To be honest, if not for this show, I wouldn’t be able to specify what my kind of comedy is (although I enjoyed F.R.I.E.N.D.S. a lot).

The third season is set to premier on October 30. For now, enjoy these clips from the previous season.

Episode Cooter (clip: Jenna pulls out all the stops to get Kenneth to Beijing).

Episode: Succession (Liz goes Corporate!)

The two “politicians” addressed the issue of sexism in the campaign.

Scully is my favorite TV heroine. She may very well be the only one. I admire her intensity, her sense of rigidity that is not quite unflexible but is rooted in something more than fleeting emotions and shallow aspirations. As they say, she’s a buzzkill – she is rarely amused, but when she is, finally, sparks fly.

I can attempt to write everything that I appreciated about this character Chris Carter created and Gillian Anderson so masterfully portrayed, despite the fact that her real-life persona will probably giggle over Scully’s repressed personality, but someone else have already done that for me.

Here’s a thoughtful article published on Salon, detailing why Dana Scully, THE “smart-girl icon who was (and would still be, alas) a rare television bird: professional, independent, unsentimental,” became both the cerebral center and the heart of an otherwise formulaic science fiction narrative.

“The truth is out there – it will come to you as it has come to me.”

Those are FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder’s last words to the global conspirators and their pawns.

When the actor who played him, David Duchovny, showed up at the premiers (Los Angeles and London) of the latest X-Files movie, fans didn’t fail to notice how scruffy and sullen he looked:

It turned out that he was having bigger problems than looking ruffled. He reportedly issued a statement through his lawyers that he voluntarily entered a rehab center for his sex addiction, a long-rumored-about condition he repeatedly denied in the past few years.

Duchovny’s hit TV show Californication, where he plays an oversexed and self-destructive, but brilliant, writer, will premier its second season soon.

Forget politics. You’ll probably see this one in thousands of other blogs anyway. It’s just, like, totally, funny not to share.

He may be dropping to no. 2 in the world ranking in a weeks’ time; he may be losing confidence and tournaments lately, but you can’t say Roger Federer doesn’t have style!

Here’s TheFed carrying the Swiss flag at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Bejing Olympics. I got the photo from tennisforum.com and the highlighted part is obviously a mistake.

He looks good in red, no? I can imagine him driving a red Ferrari F430. I bet this guy doesn’t need car insurance, no matter how many millions his car(s) costs. With his tour schedule, I wonder if he even drives at all. Tennis stars have such a globe-trotting lifestyle.