The Week in Entertainment

TV: House - not bad, though I think it would have been great had Foreman actually been making less money. Numb3rs - David must have been spectacularly unlucky, assuming he's telling the truth. Damn few Israelis actually die from rocket attacks - less than 20 in a year, usually, 53 in the latest war with Lebanon which is probably when David was there... But it was a good episode. I've always liked Otto. Better Off Ted - "Give a man an insult, he can hurt people for a day. Teach a man to insult, he can hurt people who tease him because he never learned to fish. Anyway, I've devised a formula." "Look at that. You had a problem in your life and who stepped up to help you? Math. She has always been there for you, hasn't she, Phil?" I love this show. Modern Family, also a good episode; I liked the wrap-up when Cameron was explaining how Mitchell could always put himself first and turn his back on the suffering of others. Funny stuff. The Mentalist - "You didn't really think we were young enough to have been in this class when we walked in, did you?" "Everyone over 21 looks the same to me." "Tactful and evasive! You're going to do well in life." And I loved it when Jane, all innocently, instigated the drunken fight at the reunion. Funny. And Leverage - yay! It's back. Still with Tara, unfortunately. I don't like that actress, and I don't like the character. She's too ... what they want us to see as perfect. Hell, now she can fight, too? And when you join an established team, you don't demand that they adapt to you.

Read: Finished Chronic City. I haven't said much about it, because I realized I had to finish it before I could decide what I thought. Which is: it's excellent. Not quite as good as Motherless Brooklyn, but better than The Fortress of Solitude. A bildungsroman but not about a young man, just an oblivious one, a story unfolding in a Manhattan not quite like our own, with the sort of odd, searching - or groping - conversations Lethem is so good at. I've read some criticism of his novels, saying they tend to slow down and go off track in the last quarter; I don't think so - it's just that the place his characters end up isn't the one we really thought (or maybe hoped) they would. The Subversive Copy Editor, which isn't what I thought it would be, but was interesting in its right (a sort of meta-how-to book).