Customer Reviews

Rough Draft: Pop Culture the Way It Almost Was

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

'Rough Draft' continues in the style perfected by the National Lampoon in the seventies and eighties, making fun of the culture that surrounds us all the time (and who's producers take it so seriously).

Like the Lampoon, this well produced book, mimics that culture with wicked results. Page 57 has a shampoo called ''Gee, Your Hair Smells Like Shampoo'', the makers were concerned with truth in personal hygiene packaging, on page 65 novelist Stephen King tries his hand at technical writing by doing the Operating Instructions for the Sony Betamax recorder.

All the graphic material is beautifully produced, down to the barcode on the cover of 'J The Jerry Springer Magazine'. It is this kind of detail that makes 'Rough Draft' so funny and special.

I'm waitng for the sequel.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

A very funny book from the very funny website. It's filled with smart pop culture parody, from Dr. Seuss ("The Salmon that Cheats at Backgammon") up through Harry Potter (with a PlayStation logo tattooed on his forehead). Also hilarious bits on Star Trek, Britney Spears, Sex and the City, Do the Right Thing, the Indigo Girls, Madonna and Hunter S. Thompson. Not every single gag works, but the hits far outweight the misses.

I disagree with the reader from Georgia. God bless Modern Humorist.

Perhaps the concept is a bit thin to begin with--essentially, a book of unconnected jokes on pop culture from the fifties to the nineties. The humor here is barely college newspaper level, from cbeap wordplay ("Cabbage Patch Adults!") to just plain obvious ... Sending up pop-culture is a national pastime. You have to do a little better than this to warrant putting out a book.

"Rough Draft" is amusing for the first page or two, but it quickly becomes stale and repetitive. It's basically one joke repeated over and over and over. It reads as if the writers made a list of pop culture icons, shouted them out at each other, and then shouted out the first incongruous ideas that popped into their heads ("Mister Rogers!" -- "Tank top!") Very few of the ideas are clever, witty, or chuckle-inducing.

This book is unbelievably funny--especially the crude sex jokes! I made of giant color xerox of the Britney Spears poster even though my girlfriend doesn't think it's funny.

This is the best humor book I've read since ITEMS FROM OUR CATALOG. I'm also a biog fan of MY FIRST PRESIDENTIARY. I can't wait to buy the next Modern Humorist book!

I was moved to tears by how utterly hilarious this book was. There is nothing besides pop culture and history that provides such timeless fodder for intelligent humor.

After the brilliant "My First Presidentiary", I thought that the boys at MH couldn't top themselves. I was wrong. If mass market paperbacks in the just over 100 page range get funnier than this, I'm not sure I can take it.
I hear MH has a book in the work about America. This should be good, folks.

Perhaps the concept is a bit thin to begin with--essentially, a book of unconnected jokes on pop culture from the fifties to the nineties. The humor here is barely college newspaper level, from cbeap wordplay ("Cabbage Patch Adults!") to just plain obvious (Brittany Spears wearing a tube top that says "ejaculate here"). Sending up pop-culture is a national pastime. You have to do a little better than this to warrant putting out a book.

When this book is good, it is very good. Other times, it aims but misses its mark--perhaps because of too-gentle editing, perhaps because a reader might be clueless about what's going on. But about one time in ten, it crosses the line into outright poor taste. One of my teenage daughters bought this for another daughter for Christmas, and once we got a glimpse of its periodic in-your-face grossness, we all were very sorry that we'd brought it into our home.

I am a writer myself (including comedy), and I'm not pleased at what books like this reveal about what's happened to the national standard of humor over the last decade or so. In times gone by, you could count on books like these (if not the writers, then the editors) to dance along the edge without crossing it so blatantly. But now, it's as though if a book simply "tries to be funny," then everything is OK, meaning those of us who take offense are somehow "the problem."

Especially after 911, it's time for some of us to stand up to this attitude, and this gross drift in the national standard of humor. One star. It's too bad, because without the vulgarity, nearly everyone would enjoy this book. The writers are clearly very clever people who are capable of much better.