TUBE BE OR NOT TUBE BE

Opening here this weekend is Eighth Grade, writer-director Bo Burnham's chronicle of a few days in the life of an eighth grader. I had the opportunity to sit down with Burnham recently; check out my interview online at Phoenix New Times.

Just because it plays Saturday on Comet TV...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...our honoree is the title character of The Twonky...

 
...the control-freak ambulatory TV set that bedevils Hans Conried in Arch Oboler's peculiar 1953 satire...

BOOKED SOLID

While I’m in list mode, here’s my annual list of books I read (as always, this doesn’t count individual short stories, articles, essays, reviews, comics, blogs, poems and the like):

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Dr. Who and the Giant Robot by Terrance Dicks

Praise of Folly by Erasmus

One For My Baby by Barry Graham

The Betrayers by Donald Hamilton

The Cool Man by W.R. Burnett

The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker

Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

The Summer of Katya by Trevanian

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy

After Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer

Untouched By Human Hands by Robert Sheckley

Night of the Auk by Arch Oboler