The Week in Entertainment

Live: Busy weekend - first, La Cage at the Hippodrome with George Hamilton and Christopher Sieber, which was so much fun, so much fun. And then today, La Traviata at the Lyric, with a completely stunning Elizabeth Futral as Violetta - what a tour de force in Act I (the sequence of E Strano, Ah Forse Lui and Sempre Libera) and then that great death scene. She was brilliant - such coloratura. Wow.

TV: Last week I forgot to say that I had watched Boss and Once Upon A Time, and enjoyed them both, if very differently. Watched them again and enjoyed them again. Kelsey Grammar is massive and menacing and oddly sincere; he has a lot of range and presence. Once was also good - complex and fun. Though I do wonder if Emma owns a shirt that isn't see-through; even the sweater she wears over the see-through tank-top is see-through. The Middle - Frankie yelling at Axl "You are pleasant, aren't you???" Modern Family: "I'm breaking out the nail gun." "I'm outta here. I've seen you with a glue gun and I think nails will be harder to get out of my hair." Snort. But the new next-door neighbor? He really points out what a white show this is. Not even a Black Best Friend... The Mentalist. Oh. My. God. Watching Jane on that tv show I was thinking, c'mon, he'll never blurt out something incriminating. And then Jane got him talking about Red John, and I actually laughed in shocked delight. Jane used Red John to kill that serial killer. Wow. (Now for the repercussions...) Psych - just when I thought they'd ditched the 90s lead-ins, they had one. Plus they played with the credits - I love when they do that!

Read: A Killing Tide - not terribly good: the repeated emphasis on how sexy they found each other (yes, I suppose I should have expected it, since it was billed as "a romantic thriller") got old, the hero was too damn pushy for my taste, and the mystery wasn't really (also, funnily: I've been to Astoria and hadn't thought of it as "a small town" - so I was surprised to look it up and see it has fewer than 10,000 residents. It seemed bigger when we drove through, possibly because it's narrow and therefore long?) Some more Rusch shorts. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley, a lovely entry in the Flavia de Luce books. And started Cornelia Funke's Reckless, quite good so far.