Introducing the Happy Place's Second Book: The Joy of Trash: Nathan Rabin's Happy Place's Definitive Guide to the Very Worst of Everything! — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

Declan Haven Books’ new logo, courtesy of Felipe Duralde

When the first paperback proofs for The Weird Accordion to Al came in I spent a fair amount of time gazing adoringly at my own book, particularly Felipe Sobreiro’s brilliant illustrations, with an incredible sense of achievement and pride.

I’d done it! I’d really done it! Before the birth of this beautiful website I dreamed about writing the ultimate guide to the albums of “Weird Al” Yankovic in the form of The Weird Accordion to Al, an obsessive exploration of every track on every album Al has ever released. I doggedly pursued that dream through the hard times, when interest in the project seemed modest at best and non-existent at worst and the rewards for its completion felt both abstract and very far away.

And now I had something very tangible and real at the end of a long, difficult, wonderful journey, a book I published myself that was every bit as professional, polished and good as the three books I had written for Scribner, a prestigious division of Simon & Schuster that has published the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Don DeLillo and Nitro from American Gladiators.

I promoted The Weird Accordion to Al relentlessly on this site and social media for some very good reasons. I was super proud of my book and wanted to share it with the world, of course, but also because my livelihood was in no small part dependent on its success.

It is very difficult to sell books independently. Selling thousands of copies of a self-published book, as I did with The Weird Accordion to Al, is borderline miraculous but I had an incredible advantage over other independent writers in the form of “Weird Al” Yankovic.

With Al’s invaluable assistance as a copy-editor, fact-checker, introduction writer and subject I was able to piggy-back on the extraordinary popularity and success of one of our most rightfully beloved entertainers.

The same, alas, will not be true of the NEXT BOOK FROM NATHAN RABIN’S HAPPY PLACE AND ITS PUBLISHING ARM, DECLAN HAVEN BOOKS.

With The Weird Accordion to Al I wrote about the best, most beloved and popular pop parodist in all of American music. With my upcoming book The Joy of Trash I will be writing about the very worst pop culture has to offer. The Joy of Trash will collect the very best pieces ever to appear on Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place. It will be a cozy compendium of comic essays about unconscionable creative crimes like Loqueesha, Steven Seagal’s Alt-Right thriller The Way of the Shadow Wolves and the reprehensible manifestos of the deplorable likes of Rachel Dolezal, Lou Pearlman, Milo Yianopoulis, Marabel Morgan and Doug Hutchinson.

I’m happy to suffer for you. All I ask is that you (Jay Sherman voice) buy my book!

I’m calling it The Joy of Trash because to me trash culture is all about the life-affirming joy of discovery that comes with finding something so fascinatingly terrible that you MUST share it with the world. Sometimes that joy comes from what I’m writing about, like the all-time so-bad-they’re-absolutely magnificent cult classics Plan 9 From Outer Space and Manos: The Hands of Fate. Sometimes the joy comes from the incredible pleasure I took in writing the pieces in the book and sometimes it comes from the infectious joy of getting to share my world and its myriad wonders and horrors with you.

The Joy of Trash is a hilarious and insightful deep dive into “entertainment” that’s not just bad: it’s morally indefensible, the kind of irredeemable garbage that shouldn’t exist, yet does all the same.

Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place’s second book will offer a guided tour through some of the craziest moments in recent pop culture history, from the Fyre Festival to the notorious tweet where Mark Duplass suggested that Liberals follow his pure-hearted friend Ben Shapiro to Gal Gadot and friends’ universally reviled cover of “Imagine” to Jeremy Renner’s app.

Felipe’s illustration for Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue — Felipe’s illustration for *Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue*

Since it proved so successful last time, I will be following the same sturdy blueprint for The Joy of Trash that I did with The Weird Accordion, beginning with getting Felipe to do the illustrations again and financing the project through crowd-funding initially and later sales via Amazon, this website and smaller bookstores.

Today marks the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign for The Joy of Trash, which I plan to publish on September 27th, 2021 to give me enough time to make it as good as humanly possible.

I’ll be polishing this website’s most priceless gems but I will also be writing a fair amount of original pieces for the book. The more money I raise via Kickstarter, the more original articles I will write. I’ve got all kinds of stuff in mind for original pieces for the book, like MAGA rappers, Van Morrison’s anti-lockdown protest songs and Rudy Giuliani’s notorious Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference.

I’m committed to writing at least five new pieces for The Joy of Trash no matter how much money is raised. If we hit eight thousand dollars, I will write eight original articles. If we hit ten thousand dollars I will write ten new articles for it, including the definitive article on short-lived Quibi.

I’m making ten thousand dollars THE QUIBI THRESHOLD. If we meet or exceed that number I will be giving Quibi the exhaustive autopsy it is crying out for.

By pre-ordering the book on Kickstarter, you also get access to the original articles I will be writing for the book before anyone else does, as they are written. You’ll also get to participate in polls and conversations that will help determine the final contents of The Joy of Trash. But that’s not all! You also get awesome autographed, exclusive 5x7 cards of Felipe’s artwork for the book suitable for framing, like this wonderful mash-up of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Lame Claim to Fame” and Way of the Shadow Wolves/The Joy of Trash I’m calling Weird Meets Trash and this inspired riff on the fiery disaster that was the Fyre Festival.

By pre-ordering the book you’ll also help ensure that this website makes it through some very scary times and striking a blow for independent media and independent publishing, for the little guy, the underdog, the old pro who is just barely hanging on.

Be a garbage hero! Hop onboard my righteous literary garbage truck and hang on! Pre-order The Joy of Trash and help make the world a sillier, more ridiculous and more awesome place!

I appreciate every book sale to an almost unseemly degree, especially now that I am my own publisher and publicist, but the first day sales on Kickstarter mean the most to me because they establish a sense of joyous sense of momentum and excitement that can ideally carry a plucky little project all the way through to completion and beyond. Seeing how many people were excited about The Weird Accordion to Al via its robust first day on Kickstarter gave me hope and confidence in the project. It’s hard to overstate what it meant to me, emotionally and professionally as well financially.

I get a dopamine hit every time I see that someone has pledged, and I reflexively smile, particularly if the patron is someone I know via social media and/or IRL and has supported my earlier projects. It’s incredibly validating knowing that people have your back year in and year out, and have stuck by you through thick and thin, the good times and the not so good times alike.

A deep cut from H8R — A deep cut from *H8R*

If nothing else, this will give me a whole new passion project to flog relentlessly, now that The Weird Accordion to Al is no longer a new release by any stretch of the imagination.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to make a living via crowd-funding these last four years and the great thing about The Joy of Trash is that you can buy it once for a relatively modest price and then it own forever. Better yet, you can buy a whole mess o’ copies for yourself AND everyone you know!

The Joy of Trash is going to be great! It already is! I can’t wait to share it with y’all.

If you’re reading this blog post you know damn well just how special and unique this website is. So please share the news of The Joy of Trash and its Kickstarter because its success is largely dependent on word of mouth and grass roots support from lovely patrons and readers like yourself.

I had an amazing first day for the Weird Accordion to Al’s Kickstarter that filled me with hope and optimism and made me extra-determined to write the best possible book to justify the public’s faith in me.

I’m hoping to have a similarly strong first day for The Joy of Trash but I need your help to make that happen.

Take this magnificent literary journey with me! You won’t be disappointed!

Pre-order The Joy of Trash here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/weirdaccordiontoal/the-joy-of-trash?ref=project_build

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang!

Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here