So What’s Your Favorite Show?

It took two seasons, and although I’ve always enjoyed watching Fringe from the start, now I can finally say that this is my favorite show on TV right now!

I follow a lot of shows but after The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there really hasn’t been anything that I can claim to be a favorite. Well, that is up until last week when Fringe’s fall finale aired. It seems fitting that it’s another scifi show.

In the beginning, the stand-alone episodes remind me too much of The X-Files, and although that’s nothing bad for a self-confessed Phile, I wonder about its originality. But the larger mythology of the show is entirely different - put very simply, TXF is about government conspiracy to hide the existence of aliens on earth whereas Fringe is about the existence of alternate universes and the danger of these universe to collide and go into an all-out war with each other so that only one survive. Websites have been created for this; I’m afraid I’m not qualified to discuss the depth of the storyline and the science behind it, which could fill several netbooks.

So what makes this show work? I give it to J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost, Alias). He knows how to make a good show that isn’t just commercially viable but multilayered as well. His shows are very exciting shows, too. Ultimately, what carries Fringe is the great dynamic among its three leads - Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), Walter Bishop (John Noble), and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson). And, yes, the mind-bending stories, too.

Justine versus Serena

It’s a few minutes before Justine Henin takes on Serena Williams in the finals of the Australian Open. This is really a dream final. One that has more meat than just a potential fantastic match between two best players of their generation. That Justine has just came out of retirement - a year ago, tennis is something she has placed behind her, that it’s not a stretch to thin that she while Serena was winning the 2009 Australian Open, Justine is online doing a job search. 

OK it’s about to start now. I’ll get back to you later. I’m cheering for Justine!

UPDATE: Well Serena won in three sets. French Open next, Justine! You’ll own it.

More Tennis

So I haven’t been able to tune in to anything but tennis since last week. Not that I’m complaining. This will probably last until the end of this week. The Australian Open this year must be the most exciting Slam  in a long while. Even if I am an ardent fan of Roger Federer (and the comeback girl Justine Henin), I can see how wide open the field is with regard to contenders for the title. Everyone’s just upped their level; it’s like they’re all running on new Mopar performance parts.Maybe it’s just because it’s the start of the year and everyone’s fresh. Still, it’s been a week, and counting, of terrific tennis.

As of post time, upcoming singles matches to salivate over:

Men’s singles semifinals:

Cilic vs (either Murray or Nadal)

Quarters:

Federer vs Davydenko

Djokovic vs Tsonga

Women’s singles semifinals:

Henin vs Zheng

Quarters:

S. Williams vs Azarenka

V. Williams vs Na

Tennis is a Young Man’s (or Woman’s) Sport

They say tennis is a sport for the young. Professional tennis, that is. Club players can play tennis as long as they can still swing a racket and run a few steps. I was watching an interview with Sania Mirza where she said that if you start training by 8 years old, that is rather late already for you to develop the skills needed to be a pro. So tennis players start at 4 years old and usually retire before they reach 30. There are a few exceptions, of course. There are those who didn’t train since childhood to become pros, like James Blake (who was a Harvard varsity player). There are those, like Andre Agassi, who played until their late 30s. But they are exceptions to the general rule, and only the special ones really become successful like that.

I imagine what it’s like to start “working” so young and then retire so young, with a pocketful of money to spend your entire adult years with. That must be quite awesome. I mean, they earn good money at an age when others are scouring for skin solutions at www.acnesolution.org. Then, they have the rest of their lives to enjoy the fruit of their endeavors. There’s a catch to that lifestyle, of course. Any tennis player would tell you how they don’t have a “normal” life, and that’s true. Theirs is dedicated to the sport alone, and that single-mindedness is their capital and the price they have to pay as well.  

Henin’s Return

Justine Henin’s comeback to women’s tennis has been making noise since she announced her retirement in 2008 while ranked no.1 in the world, and tennis pundits are speculating how long that “retirement” will last. If her reason for quitting isn’t bizzare enough (she need to “find herself”), her vacation from tennis saw her joining a reality show, acting on a play (or a movie?), playing the part of a U.N. goodwill ambassador, and maybe really “finding herself” after her divorce from husband Pierre Hardenne. 

Now that she’s back, it’s all very exciting in women’s field again. With another comeback queen, and long-time rival/compatriot,  Kim Clijsters doing so well, the two Belgians are making good on all the hype they’ve been generating these days. They are set to clash at the quarterfinals of this year’s Australian Open, if both get that far.

Here’s a snippet of Henin’s epic win against another one of my favorites, Elena Dementieva.

These two made me palpitate in nervousness and with their awesome, neck-to-neck fight out. I wanted them both to win. Now, give me my zit cream, because I think the stress of watching that match play out just gave me one.

The Body Wash Dilemma

I remember when I visit The Body Shop every weekend to look for new items, mostly bath products. I love their fruity body scrubs, body wash, bath sponge, and all that stuff, even if their price not really what you would call reasonable. Plus, they have the best body creams (really, their stuff is awesome). Whenever they go on Sale, my friends and I will exchange notes on which items we got ourselves and suggest products to each other. And then the economy, our own personal economy, that is, failed, and I stopped going there altogether. I think it may be a couple of years now since I last bought a pricey bath product.

So when I was buying one, a less expensive but as it turned out OK product, too, at Watson’s (which imcidentally faces a Body Shop store in that mall), I was thinking if I should try visiting the store again and see if they have cut down their prices over the years - an unlikely thing. But I’m not complaining. I suppose a brand should have value for its name, even if they carry the best acne body wash or not. Still, I decided to settle for my Watson’s strawberry/citrus body scrub which I got for one third of the other store’s price. I preferred to getvalue for my money this time.

OPEN

Andre Agassi’s book, Open: An Autobiography, is everything it promised to be.

It is a roller-coaster ride of emotions from reading about an unhappy childhood, borne from the pressure of fulfilling a parent’s dream, to glimpses of greatness and backstories from a seemingly glittering world most tennis fans know only from afar (that is, from what we see on the TV screens).

It is maybe jarring to know that one of the greats of the game hated the very sport that made him a legend. Or that he made several wrong decisions, personal and professional, while operating under the mantra “Image Is Everything,” something that was not his idea but became the very essence of how people looked at him for a long time. 

The title of the book is Open, and in it, Andre Agassi poured his heart, in the writing voice of his friend, J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer-prize winning author. They say it is unlike any sports biography out there. I cannot say, because this is the only one I’ve read. It has its share of critics, but many more are those who embraced the lessons from a life of someone who made some wrong choices but many right ones, and is now a legitimate role model and admirable humanitarian.  

It’s not all drama, though. Some of the best parts about the book, and honestly my favorite, are the telling of the courtship between him and his wife, the great Steffi Graf. Those are some of the most romantic  true stories I’ve  ever read in a long time. It even has itsshare of the funnies, too, and a dash of locker-room gossip. Besides his mullet during the 90s, another secret Agassi revealed is that he stopped wearing underwear since his win at the 1999 French Open. He said, “something works, you don’t change it.” I wonder if he ever had a need for a hemorrhoid cream, though.

Good Sleep

I find myself unable to do with less than six hours of sleep each day, unlike the years past where 4 hours is enough, with occassional 8 to 12 hours of sleep time during weekends. Maybe this is my body telling me that I’ve overused my resources enough. So I’m trying to make some adjustments. When I was happy to spend my entire nights, up until dawn, awake before (and sleep through until late noon), I’m making it a point to be in bed before the clock strikes 12 am now. For the past few days, I’m finding that this schedule very much to my liking. It has even eliminated my chronic migraines. Let’s just hope this won’t mean that I’ll eat more, because surely this has added “breakfast” to my vocabulary. You might find me talking about taking no xplode, if it comes to that.

Coffee Addict?

Everyday at work, one place that never fails to get a visit from me, aside from the restroom, is the coffee vendo machine. Now that I’ve been trying, and so far succeeding, to get to work much earlier than my usual, my coffee intake is sure to spike a lot more. Here’s hoping I can control my coffee cravings enough not to warrant use of colon cleanse products in the near future.

So the coffee is quite crap. On some good days, it smells good, at least. For Php8.00, I really shouldn’t complain. Fact is, I don’t really crave that coffee. By some force of habit, my mind has been programmed to think that I need to have my fix as soon as I arrive at work, after luch, and at 3 pm, or after dinner if I’m still working by then. 

Tennis, Golden Globes, etc.

Can somebody point me to the best eye cream in the market today, please, because I’m surely going to need it after today. It’s going to be a very hectic Monday, with work at the office, the Australian Open opening (Z: heh, redundant, no?) this afternoon, the Golden Globes replay later (I decided to skip the live broadcast to be more time efficient), and tons of other stuff after/during that. A hectic Monday may also signal a very hectic week for me, but expect to see me  blabbering here more than usual in the coming days. I do have a few stories to share.

My other blog has tiny scoops about Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova, and what they’ve been up to so far in Melbourne. With the tournament getting under way, if I’ll get the chance to watch most of the matches, at least the big ones, I’d probably recap them here. See you later, then, alligeyter. (<–somehow, I didn’t like reading that, so if you hated it, too, sorry to us.)