Cult writer, author, podcaster and preeminent “Weird Al” Yankovic historian Nathan Rabin loves the objectively terrible. He's spent the last quarter century celebrating the spectacular garbage that makes life worth living. Rabin began his obsession with the abysmal at the The A.V. Club in 1996, where he worked for eighteen years, primarily as the site’s head writer. Rabin left The A.V. Club in 2013 to become a staff writer for the short-lived but much loved film website The Dissolve before starting Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place in 2017. The Joy of Trash collects the best pieces from the Happy Place alongside 8 new entries on both seasons of Baywatch Nights, Shasta McNasty, Robert Evans’ Get High On Yourself, Adrien Brody’s ad-libbed introduction for Sean Paul on Saturday Night Live, and more. The Flaming Garbage Fire extended edition of The Joy of Trash combines brand new pieces on the notorious Easy Rider sequel Easy Rider: The Ride Back and the infamous Kelsey Grammer vehicle Gary the Rat with classics from the Happy Place archives on everything from a coffee table book celebrating kiddie cigarette pitchman Joe Camel to John Kricfalusi’s reviled “Adult” Spike TV Ren & Stimpy reboot to a lengthy closing essay that uses an ill-fated Blues Brothers convention to explore multi-generational depression, the blues and the author’s complicated feelings about his hometown of Chicago. The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition is an even better book about very bad people and very bad entertainment from a true American original. PRAISE FOR The Joy of Trash “Being somewhat of an expert on Nathan Rabin’s entire body of work, I can honestly say that The Joy of Trash is absolutely one of the best non-weird Al rated books he’s ever written. Terrific.” -“Weird Al” Yankovic “This is not a condemnation, it’s a celebration of how, despite the pop-culture garbage we’re forced to wade through every day, we can still rise above it. And make fun of it. In a celebratory way. I think I mixed up my metaphors here.” - Patton Oswalt “Is anyone as adept at insightful dives into the bizarre avenues of pop culture as Nathan Rabin is with ‘The Joy of Trash’!?!” - Andrew Helm, writer of A Talking Cat!?! “Nathan Rabin does not merely poke fun at bad media. He exactingly, methodically lies each of its sins bare with the thrilling precision of Hercule Poriot revealing the true identity of the murderer. Except instead of explaining how some gardener shot poison through a blowgun he’s dismantling Loqueesha to its atomic components. It’s an incredible spectacle.” - Justin McElroy “Nathan Rabin is one of my favorite pop-culture critics and historians. He takes on the good, the bad, and what some might refer to as the “ugly.” To me, it’s all beautiful. Especially the ugly. Like a crab scuttling along this nation’s depths, he collects forgotten, shimmering, neglected objects and reveals them to a most grateful world." - Mike Sacks “I have been reading Nathan since I was a no-name improvisor riding the L Train. Now I am a no-name podcaster driving a station wagon, and STILL reading him. The Joy of Trash was a fast, funny, eye opening read. A dark trip down an awful memory lane. It seems made for me. I mean the dude even covers Steven Seagal’s book!” - Jon Gabrus “Nathan Rabin is one of the funniest pop-culture writers out there. He engages some truly twisted topics with a mix of humor, insight and true curiosity. Please read this fascinating and hilarious book so that his suffering will not be in vain!” - Jordan Morris

First published in the US in 1959 by Bernard Geis Associates, New York. The "Me" in the title is a comparatively unknown Marx named Julius (1895-1977), who, under the nom de plume of Groucho, enjoyed a sensational career on Broadway and in Hollywood with such comedy classics as Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, and A Day at the Races. His solo career included work as a film actor, television game show emcee, and author of The Groucho Letters, Memoirs of a Mangy Lover, and his classic autobiography, Groucho and Me. With impeccable timing, outrageous humor, irreverent wit, and a superb sense of the ridiculous, Groucho tells the saga of the Marx Brothers: the poverty of their childhood in New York's Upper East Side; the crooked world of small-time vaudeville (where they learned to carry blackjacks); how a pretzel magnate and the graceless dancer of his dreams led to the Marx Brothers' first Broadway hit, I'll Say She Is!, how the stock market crash in 1929 proved a godsend for Groucho (even though he lost nearly a quarter of a million dollars); the adventures of the Marx Brothers in Hollywood, the making of their hilarious films, and Groucho's triumphant television series, You Bet Your Life!. Here is the life and lunatic times of the great eccentric genius, Groucho, a.k.a. Julius Henry Marx. "The book is never less than readable and its glimpses of American show business at its least glamorous are simple, true and sometimes rather touching."-Times Literary Supplement "My advice is to ration yourself to a chapter a night-it's that delectable."-Chicago Sunday Tribune