22

MONDAY

Joe Queenan is one of the dwindling number of reasons not to walk right through the humor section of your favorite bookstore. The thinking and/or aging hipster’s Lewis Grizzard, Queenan is a very funny man who keeps the politics light and the observations pointed but respectable (and not cruel). After cutting his teeth as a standout writer for Spy and eventually writing for practically every mag on the rack, Queenan is now the proud father of nine books tackling sports fans, movies and movie making, and—his favorite punching bags—boomers and rednecks. Queenan Country is the author’s attempt to make sense of the British by recounting a solo vacation to the Isles. As a history fanatic who writes with a cynical eye for pop-culture minutiae and a high joke-per-paragraph ratio, Queenan is up to the task—which, of course, includes making fun of the food. Some passages even recall the work of the late Bill Hicks, though nothing in here is nearly as funny as Hicks’ attribution of one of Britain’s few gun deaths to an American’s objection to “boiled pizza.” Queenan reads at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Andrew Earles)