Say goodbye to Binky and Sheba, everybody. After 32 years, Matt Groening pulled the plug on his Life In Hell comic last week with this installment. If you’re unfamiliar with the strip, you can play a round of catch-up by scouring this German website’s 70-strip archive.
Rest in Hell
Skateboarding’s Art and Craft
Joel Rice's "Flip" column for McSweeney's discusses the culture of skateboarding. This week he interviews Cole Louison, author of The Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding.
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Detritus
This year, the good folks at Slate and the Whiting Foundation kicked off a new literary prize, intended to reward authors for great second novels. To wrap up the year, they’ve asked several winners of the prize, including Akhil Sharma, Helen DeWitt and Daniel Alarcon, to write short pieces about objects that symbolize the writing process for their books. (Akhil Sharma chooses a stopwatch, while Eileen Myles chooses a can of Cafe Bustelo.)
Hodgman on the Apocalypse
Humorist, author, and sometime PC representative John Hodgman is interviewed for The A.V. Club. Among the discussion points? Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
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Britain’s Illuminated Manuscripts
Illuminated manuscripts such as bestiaries and bibles, prayer books and propaganda, histories and stories, each owned and annotated by kings and queens, go on display at the British Library in London. ("The Genius of Illumination", November 11-March 13)
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Bourne Speaks Aussie
The Australian Broadcasting Company's radio program, The Book Show, invited Millions staff writer Michael Bourne to speak on the book app for Jack Kerouac's On the Road. To read Bourne's Millions piece on the Kerouac book app, click here.
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“Smudge between the lines, fill the sexy man up.”
Mark your calendars. Thrill Murray, a Bill Murray-inspired coloring book, goes on sale this August.
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