Customer Reviews

Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Explains Cloning, Blouse Monsters, Voting Machines, Romance, Monkey Gods, How to Avoid Being Mistaken for a Rodent, and More

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

I love Dilbert, but after reading this book, I find I don't much like Scott Adams. By his own admission, many of these recycled blog posts were written in stream-of-conciousness fashion, often on a blackberry while waiting in airports and the like. That's fine for a blog, I guess, but no way to write a book.

The two stars I am awarding come mostly from the sections that are, ironically given the title, actually about drawing comics. When Adams actually discusses his work and the foibles of the syndicate, newspaper editors, and disgruntled readers, it's funny and fascinating. Unfortunately this stuff comprises only a handful of the dozens of short chapters. Elsewhere, when Adams shares his not particularly insightful observations about religion, marriage, politics, and psychology, he comes across as self-impressed, shallow, and sometimes willfully ignorant.

If you like Dilbert, borrow this at the library and skim for the comics sections. Otherwise, don't bother.

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.

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.

As background, the comics in Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies is probably the funnies thing I've ever seen regarding business/office humor. You can open that book to any page and crack up since the humor is so true. Likewise, the Dilbert Principle made me laugh out loud since it had emails from real companies and Scott Adams' comments were witty add ons. So the author has talent. But less and less his comics and writing makes me even smile, much less chuckle. This book had one chuckle. It is a collection of mostly 1 page writings. Scott Adams write a page as he is sitting waiting to have his throat examine. There was way more about his medical problems and his upcoming marriage than I care to read about. If they were funny, maybe ok. But not. So a collection of his short musings as he is on a plane or sitting around. His name will sell more, and he is already rich. But if this book is evaluated on quality and content, not on his former brillance, then it scores poorly. Skim through it at a bookstore for 5 minutes before buying - you'll agree with me. Too late for me, I bought it!

Scott Adams' "private area" is a character in several entries in STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY BRAINS! If this sort of thing offends you, you won't like this book; but if you can go with it and enjoy the way Adams plays with words and concepts, you'll have a good time reading it. Dilbert fan or not, you'll have plenty of opportunities to laugh ... and maybe even think.

Negative: Adams can be redundant. Deleting repetitive sections of some of the blogs would have improved the book.

Rating: 3.5

Scott Adams is the creator of the infamous Dilbert comics, which I must admit to never having read. If anything though, not being a Dilbert groupie makes me an unbiased reviewer. The title of Scott Adam¡¦s latest book is pretty reflective of its contents: funny, silly, self-deprecating and slightly offensive. The book contains over 150 short pieces which are not so much stories as they are random musings on human behavior, dating, sports, travel, dieting and everything in between (and some topics that I could definitely have lived without, such as Chinese striptease funerals). Adams also includes some Dilbert comic strips and provides some background explanation and commentary on them, which I found pretty interesting.

Adams is a good writer and there were quite a few times when he did make a good point or provided some interesting insight. Then I would question my opinion after reading on to a crazy comment, such as the idea of the asterisk being the most obscene letter in the English language (I wasn¡¦t aware that it was a letter¡Khmmm). But to be fair Adams adds that ¡§the asterisk protects you from seeing naked cuss words that would otherwise blind you and put you on the slippery slope to porn addiction¡¨. Thanks for clearing that one up Mr. Adams º

On a serious note, this book cannot nor should not be taken too seriously. It¡¦s intended to make people laugh and so it succeeds. There were some sections I loved, others I liked, some I found offensive and others just left me dumbfounded. No matter what my specific reaction was though, I think the point is that I did react. It made me think. It made me laugh. It made me blush.

It is my understanding that all of the pieces in the book originated from Adams¡¦ blog which would explain the over all offbeat nature of the writing topics, which definitely makes it a unique read.

This book is a good one to leave on your night table and read every once in a while for a good laugh or in some cases a good scare. It¡¦s the kind of book that can be picked up at any time and read in any order over and over again, which I probably will.

Finally I¡¦ll leave you with Adams¡¦ thoughts on marriage (from the back cover):

¡§Now I¡¦m married, and that means I have to explain myself a lot. I can no longer leave a hot iron on my shirt just to see how long it takes to burn it, then draw more comics and buy another shirt. Suddenly that sort of thing is wrong¡¨.

[...]

I would have liked to like this book more. The chapters are short, pithy and amusing, but there's no overarching plot or story so it feels like you're just reading someone's blog. And wait! You ARE just reading someone's blog, because this book is a collection of Scott Adams' blog postings you can read for free online. Damn, I wish I'd known that first.

I have for some years now been a fan of Dilbert, and have also with delight read some of Adams' other books like "The Dilbert Principle", which I also found very funny. He is, or at least can be, a very witty man, Scott Adams, and does have an ability to cut to the bone of a subject, which is absolutely joyous to read about.

This book, however, is not that great. Firstly the blog format makes the chapters/sections of the book far too short and to a certain exent repetitive. Many, far too many, ideas seem like the half baked kind, that should have been left out completely or at least have been expanded on before being put into bookform. Also Adams, at times, comes across as not witty or funny at all, but 'weird' for the sake of being weird (he is not weird at all, but he like to project an image of himself being terribly close to being absolutely barking). He seems almost like an ageing Hunter S Thompson or such. He is also terribly self-important and a bit conceited at times, which makes the already doubtful material even less funny.

There are naturally redeeming factors. It is not everything in it, that is not one bit funny. Loads of satire and a critical look at society can be spotted in this volume too. There are many amuzing passages, but sadly they do not outweigh the less good ones. Read it if you're a fan. Otherwise there are much better books out there to make you laugh. 2,5 stars.

I am not a huge Scott Adams fan, but I have glanced at the Dilbert comics now and again, and even chuckled at a friends set of the animated series on DVD, so I figured I would give this book a shot.

I was pleasantly surprised to find it witty, engaging, and as well thought out as something so COMPLETELY random could possibly claim to be. I may not rush out and find everything ever put to paper by the author, but I have to say this was good stuff