The Week in Entertainment

TV: House had one of those weird episodes where you couldn't be quite sure what was true and was was a lie or even what order things were happening in. Had House not been so really inappropriate with the school kids it would have been a lot funnier than it was. The Middle was actually kind of poignant, though why Brick couldn't read magazines was beyond me. I didn't get the tv turned off fast enough to miss the opening of the execrable Better With You so I got to see the parents steal a pizza from the delivery boy. Hohohaha sooooo funny. Modern Family was hysterical as usual. And as usual Phil is this wonderful combination of cluelessness, cleverness, and love. He touches me even while I'm laughing helplessly at him. Clare: "About last night... I know I get a little carried away sometimes -" Phil: "You don't have to apologize." Clare: "I don't think I was -" Phil: (seamlessly) "You were right to get angry." I saw where Big Red was on; that was one of the earliest movies I remember seeing (at the drive-in, in fact), and it was the movie that made me realize that "based on a book" doesn't mean it will necessarily do more than vaguely resemble that book. But I'd forgotten most of the actual plot of the movie; it wasn't bad at all, if hardly the Kjelgaard plot or characters. One funny thing - Walter Pidgeon was trying to teach the dog to hold his head up for the Westminster Kennel Club show by whacking it under the chin and walking it on a loose leash; when I watched the actual show last week the handlers all had leashes up under the dogs' jaws and the leashes tight. I guess they all figured out the whacking method didn't work! Also spotted Mystery Men and had to watch it (again). "We've got a blind date with Destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster." And of course The Mentalist. I did guess he was working with her - I mean, how did she get that gun duct taped to him without his cooperation? - but now I'm dying to know who set her up. La Roche? That would be ironic but predictable. The director? He did quote Blake... I like this show.

Read: Braniac Ken Jennings's book. I is an Other, a sort of natural history of metaphor. A couple of Fletchers and A Master of Mysteries by Robert Eustace, and I began The Martin Hewitt Collection by Arthur Morrison. Also three lovely Vonnegut collections (Armageddon in Retrospect, Look at the Birdie, and While Mortals Sleep).