Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Apparently the airport Security people are trained to look at your face to see if you are twitching like a terrorist..." (more)
Key Phrases: phone whore, phone asshole, gay athlete, Middle East, United States, Bill Gates (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Adams builds his latest book (after 2004's The Religion War) out of entries from his blog, which results in a lot of short chapters and abrupt changes in topic. Still, some ongoing themes do emerge, as the bestselling cartoonist discusses his wedding plans—including his fear that he'll dance like a drunken monkey at the reception—and his struggle with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition which took away his voice during intimate conversations even though he could still give speeches to large audiences. He even tosses in a few Dilbert strips, with several examples of gags that were suppressed by his syndicate (he couldn't show a police officer firing a gun, for example, but a doughnut that shoots bullets met with approval). Readers who only know Adams through the comics page will discover a saltier tone to his cynicism. If you have the choice of working as the guy who craps on the carpet, or the guy who has to clean it up, runs one bit of advice, only one of those jobs lets you read a magazine at the same time. The randomness of this collection may not attract many new fans, but it's likely to keep his already sizable audience amused. (Oct. 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Adams, creator of the wildly popular Dilbert comic strip and 23 books, including the best-selling Dilbert Principle (1997) and Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook (1997), ventures out to write his first non-Dilbert book, ostensibly against the best advice of his fans. Taken from Adam's Dilbert blog, he offers more than 150 short pieces covering every slice of life beyond the workplace, such as tips on how not to dance like a dork, comic relief on the fears of terrorism, the not-so-subtle differences between men and women, embarrassing public-bathroom moments, appropriate uses for your own clone, and so on. One can't help comparing this random collection of quips to similar observations by Dave Barry (who gets a mention), and the results are just as witty. You will constantly find yourself thinking "I wish I had said that," while you admit to sharing all of his politically incorrect thoughts that we don't dare speak of. Seemingly without consciously doing it, Adams reveals much about his personality, fears, and inner thought process. Keep this handy for your next flight. Siegfried, David

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; First Edition edition (October 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841852
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841852
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #459,891 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You gotta love duhDilbert's creator!, October 23, 2007

By	Robert Schmidt (Honolulu, HI & Logan, UT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I don't know whether you have to appreciate Scott Adam's "dark side" to enjoy this book, but it helps. His dark side? His non-cartoon creations, whether business-related or not. Of these, they range from The Dilbert Principle to God's Debris. The TEXT drives the deeper meanings, and not the drawings.

In Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!, Adams steals from his blog and looks at the world through his Dilbert-framed sunglasses. You immediately are transported to Adams' world:

"Thanks to hurricane Wilma, nothing has crapped on our Eyewitness News van for hours. Back to you, Bob."

"If I'm dumb enough to buy water, I'm certainly dumb enough to pay too much for it."

"And the one thing worse than a moron with an opinion is lots of them."

"Rule 472: Before you touch a monkey god's tail to cure your leprosy, make sure the tail doesn't have a little hole in the end."

This book is organized (?) as a series of short chapters, reading as a blog in that you can "feel" his timeline as Adams vacations in Maui, plans his wedding, and so on. Don't miss Hi Jean (p. 19), Try this at home (p. 36), Adopting (p. 55), and German cannibal (p. 120). You will learn about the Scott Adams Diet (p. 101) and the Albra Cadaver (p. 107).

The book includes Dilbert strips that didn't make it past the editors, and a surprising amount of political-social-ethical insights. For example, should inDUHviduals respect the beliefs of others? Adams gets serious...

"Many of our biggest world problems are caused by different religious views. But its not socially acceptable to even discuss whether those views originate from the almighty or a drunken guy whizzing on a tree stump. At a bare minimum, just to pick one example, either Christianity or Islam is completely and utterly wrong. The beliefs are mutually exclusive. Muslims believe all Christians will burn in Hell. Christians believe that the Koran is fiction. They both can't be right. (They could obviously both be wrong if the Heaven's Gate guys turn out to have it right.)" (p. 116).

Witty, humorous, caustic, satirical, sobering, scathing, insightful... expect everything from this book, because it IS another thought experiment.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and Mind Expanding, October 22, 2007

By	Laugh Lover - See all my reviews

Scott's blog is an uncensored hysterically funny look at everything.
This book is based on the blog and it's seriously funny while also taking my mind places it never would have gone on its own. You're gonna laugh till it hurts.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "A COLLECTION OF 1 - 1 1/2 PAGE "ONE-LINERS" BY THE CREATOR OF DILBERT!", November 13, 2007

By	Rick Shaq Goldstein "Rick Shaq Goldstein" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I am one of the millions of fans of Scott Adams comic strip Dilbert. But unlike many of those fans, I have never read his blog, nor viewed any of his other books. So the complaints from other fans who've reviewed this book, regarding that portions of this book were previously displayed for free on his blog, have no negative effect on my review. I started reading this book with absolutely no bias or pre-conceived notions. What I found during this "reading" adventure, is a witty author, who really seems to have his deeper views shackled by his mass media comic strip editors. There seems to be so much angst and torment begging to get out from inside Scott's "true-self", that I feel getting to know the "real" man behind Dilbert, is like peeking behind the curtain in "The Wizard Of Oz."

Scott, is a very intelligent writer who can take you full circle, all the way around an argument or point he's trying to make, and in one circular trip, agree with you, disagree with you, congratulate you, and lambast you, and you sometimes feel that you've never left the place you started in.

The author makes it painstakingly clear, that he doesn't believe in G-d or miracles, and he just as strongly feels there is not a politician or voter that should be trusted with the position or the vote. He does feel that rigging voting machines would probably benefit us more in the long run than an honest election. Though I admit to not doing an actual count, I believe it is safe to say that one of Scott's ten favorite words is "TURD".

Scott also seems to enjoy asking questions. A few of which are: "Who is holier-Mother Teresa or Bill Gates?" - "If Santa Claus fought Jesus, who would win?" - "I have a nickname for your nose. Do you want to hear it?" - "Is that the way you usually walk?" - "I once got an email from a guy named Richard Head. I wonder what his friends call him?" - "If you had to design a dating website that matched people on just two criteria, what would those criteria be?" - "What two criteria would match people better than sense of humor and ass size?" - "Congressman Jefferson, why did you put the money in food containers and store it in your freezer?" - "How can you tell the difference between a reincarnated monkey god and an ordinary tree-climbing, banana-eating guy with a disease-healing tail?" - "Did you ever wonder what it's like to be a cat and have a giant human hand petting you?" - "Would the Middle East be less like ignorant, psycho d*ckheads, if America were less arrogant, warmongering, and hypocritical?" - "How many cartoonists does it take to change a light bulb?" - "Would you sell your DNA for $100 million if you knew your clone would become a sex slave to a billionaire?" - "Why aren't more humans tapping more chimps?" - "Hypothetically, in the future, if a sex doll robot was indistinguishable from a human woman, and you weren't in a relationship with a human, would you tap the robot?" - "To (Scott) it comes down to one question: Where are all the petrified Jesus turds?"

In summary: This is not your Father's Dilbert. It's up to you whether this is the material you're looking for.