Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?: Insanely Annoying Modern Things

by Steve Lowe

Overview

Based on two runaway U.K. bestsellers, this encyclopedic attack on modern culture is so hilariously bitter that it actually becomes uplifting. The American edition has been ingeniously adapted and features exclusive new material for U.S. audiences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446197885
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	11/12/2008
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Steve Lowe has written for numerous publications including Q, Big Issue, and Blender. Alan McArthur was deputy editor of Solidarity and has worked on campaigns for free education. They met at Cardiff University.

Brendan Hay was a headline producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and a contributing writer to America: The Book. More recently, he's written for The Simpsons, Frank TV, and The Mighty B! Born and raised in New York, he earned his BFA in dramatic writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Brendan now resides in Los Angeles with his wife, playwright and freelance writer Jennifer Chen, and their three-legged cat, Bentley.

Editorial Reviews

Lowe and McArthur filled two books for the U.K. market with cynically profane critiques of the ephemera of contemporary culture; this edition features material from those volumes combined with new entries from Hay, a former writer for The Daily Show. Nonetheless, a strong British streak running runs throughout, particularly when it comes to vocabulary such as "posh jackasses" and "cobblers to your iPod playlist." The targets are for the most part predictable-celebrities, rich people, George W. Bush, etc. How much space a topic rates is sometimes mystifying: the entries on Chinese Communist Party and the hidden teachings of Scientology go on for several pages, yet the Blackberry rates only a single line. There's even an entry on people in bear costumes on motorbikes advertising stuff-which, they say, "happens more than you might imagine." It's all amusing enough in small doses, but not quite as clever as, say, the Onion. (Nov.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly