The Week in Entertainment

Live: An extremely well-done and funny L'Italiana in Algieri at the Met.

DVD: The Incredible Hulk, which was okay, and Hulk, which was ... as odd as I'd heard. Mark Ruffalo is certainly a better Banner than the other two. And having Nick Nolte play Banner's father in the first and then Betty's father in the second (instead of Sam Eliot) was a weird choice.

TV: Caught the first episode of The Good Place on On Demand and will definitely try to catch up this week. It was funny and thought-provoking. And I like seeing Kristen Bell back on TV.

Read: The Sandman Overture by Neil Gaiman - extraordinary. "Everything But the Squeal", a funny if slight Scalzi short originally in Metatropolis, so I broke down and bought that ("more or less "the city beyond", says the forward. It should have been "metapolis" - polis is 'city' and that '-tro' in metropolis goes with the 'me' of 'metr-', mother. But I digress.). It's a collection of five stories, and three of them are very good indeed. One ("Everything But..." ) is slight but funny, and the other (the first in the book, unfortunately) just left me totally cold. Couldn't even finish it. YMMV, obviously. The Librarians and the Lost Lamp - can't wait for the show to start. The Inquisitor's Tale, which was truly wonderful. I started Zhivago's Secret Journey but he made so many tantalizing references to things from Inside the Zhivago Storm that I finally gave in and bought that one to read first. Finished Eruption: The Untold Story of Mout St. Helens, which was well-done indeed. Started Kabu Kabu, a collection of short stories by Nnedi Okonafor, which are so far everything I'd expect from her (brilliant, in a word).