Rating: 
Summary: As hilarious as Michael Bolton singing opera.....
Review: Notice how all the reviews panning this book are from New Jersey and Delaware and middle America? Of course Queenan is an elitist snob and of course he's gonna dump on people and forms of entertainment you like....that's kinda the point! Geez, don't all be so literal.....Bottom line: It ain't Woody Allen but the book is funny.
Rating: 
Summary: Snipe snipe snipe, tripe tripe tripe
Review: I've never actually thrown a book away before. Not until this one. I took it to the doctor's office to read while waiting, and after my appointment I had to pull over and find a Dumpster because I didn't even want the thing in the car. My personal beef: Queenan includes all horror fiction in his definition of "trash" without appearing to have read any of it very carefully. I read a lot of horror fiction (and sometimes write it), and I'll be the first to admit that a lot of it is idiotic crap -- but I don't believe that Peter Straub, Dan Simmons, and Clive Barker deserve to be mindlessly included in that definition. In his attempt to show how smart and above-it-all he is, Queenan comes off looking stupider than the stuff he means to skewer.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely biting cultural criticism, but lacking a point
Review: Joe attacks America's cultural mediocrity with a vehemence and force that demands a laugh. Unfortunately, he has no point. We ramble through Joe's America, laughing from start to finish, but never really come to a conclusion. It was worth the trip, but where are we? And, as a columnist for TVGuide, how could he forgot to comment on the drivel we see there?
Rating:
Summary: Queenan's makes himself look incredibly stupid
Review: I know he probably doesn't care if people think he's a jerk, but the point here is that he comes off just plain foolish. And BORING. At a thin length, barely over 200 pages this book needs many sittings to get through Queenan's drivel. Cats is bad. So is Red Lobster. So is John Tesh. Wow, what a revelation. Maybe Queenan was living so far outside the normal world that all of these statements really ARE a revelation to him. How about something slightly more intelligent than "it sucks" or "that song sucks and everyone knows that." Right Joe. Go back to the suburbs with your Elvis Costello records and continue to write for that intellectual journal known as TV Guide. The most embarassing moments have to come when he goes to France with his family and tries to be serious with us for a moment about "good culture". I guess if we all read Andre Gide and watched black and white Belgian films we would be slightly smarter than the legions of Dean Koontz fans, huh? Wait for a used copy of the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: Queenan makes a fool of himself
Review: The parts of this book that weren't painfully obvious were simply dull and reveal Queenan's desperate calculation. Does he really think that anybody who would read an alleged critique of bad art would need to be informed that 'Cats' is not good musical theater, that V.C. Andrews was a bad writer or that Yanni, John Tesh, and Kenny G are attrocious? One wonders what audience Queenan had in mind anyway? For that matter, lumping Billy Joel in with the aforementioned is simply Queenan's concession that the rest of his book is a pointless exercise in preaching to the gospel. So he foolishly chose a popular songwriter who has been praised by everybody from Tony Bennett to Philip Glass, and made a desperate attempt to have at least say ONE target that might provoke the slightest argument from his readers. At least it might have if Queenan had even the slightest semblance of depth to his circular contumely. Painfully aware that he had little or no basis for his diatribe against Joel, he simply ran through the songs people would know and, without rhyme or reason, pronounced that they 'suck'. Well folks, how often do you get insight like that? This book is simply a must-read for all those who would receive the news that 'The Cannonball Run 2' was a bad film as a stunning revelation
Rating:
Summary: Baseless and poorly thought out
Review: For a self-confessed cultural snob, Queenan doesn't seem to know much about the methodologies of good criticism. While an undeniably gifted rhetorician, Queenan is in rather shallow water indeed. By presenting no standard for his attacks except for some arbitrary mythical aesthetic that he declines to share, his rantings don't have any basis in any discernible paradigm of taste. Queenan simply spits out his bile with little concern for organization or insight. He comes to no grand conlusion and when at a loss for a valid objection, he devolves into the 'this sucks because it sucks' type of thing. His targets range from the too easy (Yanni, John Tesh, Cats), to the hopelessly out of date (Molly Ringwald, Love Story...Love Story!?). And some just seem out of place considering who their surrounded by (Billy Joel). Good crticism is noted for clarity of structure and rigor of thought. Both are noticeably absent here.
Rating: 
Summary: Using his own words: Queenan is a "Megahack"
Review: I recently saw Queenan on the "Late Show with Tom Snyder" discussing his book which was a satirical critique of "mainstream" American society. Admittedly, I found the topic interesting so I decided to purchase it. Queenan pulls out all the stops lashing into everything from Red Lobster to Billy Joel. He delivers written tirades that delve into almost every major category of society. The reason I disliked the book wasn't because of its content. In fact, I agreed on a lot of the things he tore apart. I, too, have no desire to see "Cats" and Steven Seagal is the worst actor since Mark Hamill. My parents are going to Branson, MO for their 35th anniversary and I continously chide them for that. So we do agree on a lot of the same issues. My displeasure of his book came from his condescending and pretentious attitude. He displays a "holier than thou attitude" which really becomes intolerable. I love sarcasm but can Mr. Queenan really dislike all of these things?
Rating:
Summary: Queenan Misfires, fails to make distinctions
Review: I have had a soft spot in my heart for Joe Queenan ever since I stumbled across If You're Talking To Me Your Career Must Be In Trouble, his collection of search and destroy movie criticism. His two subsequent books (Imperial Caddy and The Unkindest Cut) did little or nothing for me. The latter was based on the protagonist (Queenan) going to extraordinary lengths to make a jackass of himself, a tried and true form of humor that leaves me cold even in expert hands. The former was yet another involved Dan Quale joke, and I'm at least nominally a Republican. Still, I held out some hope that Queenan's new book Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon would live up to Talking. It doesn't, quite. The central problem is that Queenan expects the spectacle of a previously sophisticated man wallowing in the mass culture to be inherantly funny. He is condescending about nearly everything, and thereby fails to make a number of important distinctions. He goes on at some length about three moderately priced chain retaurants; Red Lobster, Sizzler, and The Olive Garden. He is startled that Sizzler is as good as it is because he doesn't stop to realize that by and large a steak house is a steak house. The primary differences between Sizzler and Ruth's Chris Steak House is a slightly better grade of beef and a $50 surcharge. The food in both is so basic that it would take real talent to do it badly. By contrast Red Lobster deals in seafood, an altogether more delicate matter. A mediocre steak is merely tough. Mediocre lobster is inedible at best and frequently deadly. In between these two extreems lies The Olive Garden. To someone accustomed to the best Italian food in New York the fare is a poor substitute but it is miles above S'barro, a distinction that Queenan misses entirely. The three chains are not competing with the output of the best chefs in their class, they are competing with Denny's. Sizzler and The Olive Garden do so successfully, improving on the steak and spagetti platters respectively. Red Lobster does not manage to improve on Denny's seafood platter. If Queenan had taken note of this he could have made the grade as a man of some insight. As it is he merely comes across as a snob. Similarly Queenan goes to some lengths to skewer the Broadway production of Victor/Victoria . Unfortunately he is so busy comparing the (Awful) performances by Julie Andrews, Liza Minnelli, and Rachel Welch that he fails to put his finger on the show's disasterous flaw. The Movie was watchable only because of the performance of Robert Preston as an aging homosexual humbug. Lacking Preston the Broadway show was doomed by the basic taciness of the premise. Had Queenan noticed he could have drawn parallels with S.O.B. , another Blake Edwards fiasco rendered marginally watchable by Preston. Lacking that insight he is left thrashing about at nothing much. Queenan gets a few things right. Wayne Newton does continue to pack 'em in in 'Vegas bacause he is an Old Trooper. He knows how to put on a show, and even if you don't like the show you have to respect the showman. But Queenan apparently cannot recognize Showmanship outside of a narrow range of perrennial headliners (Wayne Newton, Barry Manilow, Andy Williams, Jerry Lewis). None of these are GREAT ENTERTAINERS because none of them produces much in the way of content, but they are all good at form for the sake of form. Queenan is always demanding content of forms that are poor at sustaining it. He is also hard on people who do not push the envelope. It is a very rare entertainer who can consistantly reach a new level, but that does not mean that the ones who have a command of the level they are on are contemptable. Queenan lumps the merely competant in with the imbecile. He cannot see that Donny Osmond is worse than Billy Joel; a workhorse who is good at what he does, and knows his limitations. By contrast Barbara Streisand (whom Queenan also cannot stand) was a good singer, and then a fair commedienne. She could have stopped at either one and maintained some level of respect. Unfortunately she failed to appreciate the limits of her form, and has become a byword in the field of schlock dramatism. In the end this is Queenan's failure: he expects every broadway production to be on a par with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Thus he cannot diferentiate between Victor/Victoria (a limp drag comedy bereft of its trick wheel) and Cats (A costumed spectacle that is ment to be nothing more than what it is). In Queenan we have the failure of the Intellectual Critic, the inability to criticize a thing on its actual merits.
Rating:
Summary: Queenan dropped the ball.
Review: This book could have been a funny, nasty little read. Instead, it only offered three or four good laughs and half a dozen insights. Even though the chapter is one of the funniest, everyone alright knows that Cannonball Run II is BAD. Ditto for Branson, MO and John Tesh. It's when Queenan is tearing down sacred cows that he is at his best. Particularly nasty were the (well-deserved) attacks on Billy Joel and the author of The Bridges of Madison County. Too often, however, the author just lists things that he thought "sucked" rather than explaining why they sucked. He also makes sure we know that he had good taste before his misadventures in writing this book. Elvis Costello recieved more mentions in this book than in his autobiography. Queenan is a much funnier man being interviewed than on paper. The book's only redeeming quality? Queenan found Evil Dead II to be "watchable."
Rating:
Summary: BOR-ing.
Review: Queenan's targets are obvious (what right-thinking American doesn't hate Yanni, John Tesh, or the musical CATS?), and he lacks a single original comic insight to make you overlook how easy his choices are.Too easy. Too slick. Utterly witless. For intelligent, really biting satire and/or social commentary that rings true even today, read Johnathan Swift, Alexander Pope, or Oscar Wilde. Queenan doesn't even come close.
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