The Joy of Trash

Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition

By: Nathan Rabin

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

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 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

Hilarious but read by a mispronouncing robot

I have enjoyed Nathan Rabin's writing since his AV club days and this book is no exception. His thoughts on cultural trash are simultaneously hilarious and insightful. My only drawback is the terrible AI-generated narration. It frequently mispronounces words ("pie" instead of "P.I.," "one thousand nine hundred and ninety seven" instead of "1997," etc. It detracts from the humor. I found myself frequently listening to a sentence, pausing, then saying it as a human would say it, and laughing. Unless Skynet becomes self-aware, hopefully his next book will have a human narrator.