I bought it on impulse.
I loved his material. I remember my friends and I, whenever a new Maddox story was posted, gathered around the PC and laughed our asses off. Even the girls we were with laughed at his over the top masculinity and misogyny. Although he has fallen off considerably in terms of quality, it can be understood. "He was saving his "A" material for the book," I thought, " I suppose he would put out some lower quality shit." So the newer, unfunny entries didn't bother me much, I figured he was saving his load for the book.
So when getting the book, almost on the first day, I expected to laugh my ass off. I recall distinctly running to my room when going home (lived with parents over the summer), shirking my daily chores to read the hilarity.
The problem? It wasn't there.
Maddox put some effort in there but it wasn't funny. I remember his old rants where he could write two paragraphs of bitterness that would have me rolling on the floor, almost literally. For Alphabet of Manliness (AoM I will call it from here on out), I smiled perhaps twice, maybe three times at the very most. I set the book aside after the first twenty pages and did something else. A book that I like, I typically will spend hours at a time reading it. The fact that I was too bored to get past 20 pages was a bad sign.
Returning to the book, the ideas just aren't funny. It wasn't because he did them before, it was just that the funny was gone. I keep harping on this because of course, it is why you buy AoM. The best way I can describe AoM was is that it is The Simpsons movie of Maddox. While it is better than the newer stuff they are showing on TV, it doesn't even come close to obtaining the magic of the earlier seasons.
I think the same thing happened to Maddox. He changed. His book stuff wasn't funny, his new articles are not funny, and in general, I think Maddox blew his proverbial creative load from 1998-2003. It is now 2008 and his stuff has become beyond old hat. I'd say he should give up but he had high sales with AoM and still gets huge amounts of hits on his rarely updated website so I doubt he will be going away anytime soon. Perhaps there is a chance he will redeem himself but I'm not holding my breath.
As for what happened with my copy, I sold it to Hastings for $4.25 in cash along with other pop culture books that weren't worth buying or reading, and spent that cash on something probably even dumber.
Rating: 5/10 - Read Maddox's material from 1998-2003. That is all you need as the rest of the stuff does not even compare.
