Smashed: The Life and Tweets of Drunk Hulk

I laughed.I cried (mostly from laughing so hard.)I stopped following @BreakingNews.Comic books. Cartoons. TV shows. Movies.Add to that list Twitter.Stan Lee. Jack Kirby. Bill Bixby. Lou Ferrigno. Eric Bana. Ed Norton. Mark Ruffalo.Add to THAT list Christian A. Dumais.The big green guy has been portrayed differently over the years (grey, green, red, etc.), but I dare say my favorite version is and always will be inebriated.SMASHED contains the lion's share of DRUNKHULK's tweets, and a good deal of Hulk-behind-the-curtain type stories. Your comic book collection and/or your social media profile are incomplete without it.

Great to have Drunk Hulk's tweets on my kindle. They make me smile everytime I read them. Never gets old!

Rarely do you find writing that is so original, direct, insightful and funny. The author's collection of his twitter comments comes in hysterical small pieces which produce a feast to digest and savor. Definitely a book to read, give to others and share. An instant classic.

The story of the Life and Tweets of DRUNK HULK is a fascinating look at how one writer's Twitter parody account became an internet phenomenon. You can learn a lot from DRUNK HULK besides 1001 ways to get alcohol poisoning. Much recommended!

Puny human should read.

If you are a fan of the social media phenomenon DRUNK HULK, then you will find a lot in this slim volume to make you happy. His brand of playful observational humor has garnered him fans from around the world, and he packs some of the best Tweets from over five years in here.But you will also find something you might not have expected, which is the writer and man behind the character. SMASHED will be many people's introduction to the real Christian A. Dumais: an American writer who packed a bag one day, left all that was familiar, and moved to Poland to eventually become a husband, father, and lecturer. He elaborates on that adventure at length in SMASHED.The release of each of Dumais' books is a special occassion. He writes in an immersive style that constantly keeps you wondering where the autobiography ends and the fiction begins. While his straight fiction stories are very engaging, such as those that are featured in the COVER STORIES anthology, SMASHED is like a spiritual sequel to his more personal, earlier volume EMPTY ROOMS LONELY COUNTRIES - but with a lethal dose of humor and bombast that explodes in your face like a gamma bomb.So why does this release only get four stars from me if I like the author so much? Because Dumais has this terrible habit of putting ENDINGS on his books. Eventually you will get to that part of the book where the words stop and the pages yield to the back cover, and perhaps you'll join me in my frustration.But at least we can all wait in that state together, for the next book that's sure to come...

I have to admit—although I knew of the Drunk Hulk Twitter account, and followed it—I am Luddite at heart who won’t use a Smart Phone and rarely uses Twitter, doesn’t see its purpose, and follows and is followed in the mid-100s.Nevertheless, the Drunk Hulk phenomenon of the last 5 years (191,000 followers as of this writing) has been fascinating to me—and is now made even more so by the release of the collected Tweets and a rich variety of accompanying essays that both contextual and offer insight into both the writer and the writing.First, the writer, whom the opening essay focuses on. Dumais begins with a well-crafted exploration of the sincerity/insincerity divide when it comes to answering (and asking) “How are you?,” spurred in part by his move from America to Poland. This is a discussion I had some months ago with some friends. When we ask each other “How are you?,” the last thing anyone seems to want is an honest answer. Give it a try. See what happens.What has this to do with a Hulk in his cups? It’s about Identity. It’s about Story—yours, and mine, and everyone else’s.How do our alter-ego writing channels work? Are we always, on some level (like in our dreams) all of our characters, all of the time? Is the alter-ego, the manifestation of the Secret Personalities our authorship allows out, as in the case of Drunk Hulk, just an extreme example?What is it about social media modes that have allowed so many of us to express our characters in these often revolutionary ways?What do these cyber-avenues of complex self-expression say about our society, and our relationship with Story? If Dumais were to say the same things as himself, without Drunk Hulk, would the interest—the impact—be the same?Dumais writes, “I spent most of my life writing, hoping for readers to give my work a chance, and the moment I started writing in ALL CAPS in broken English, they started paying attention” (p. 23).No one really knows why a Drunk Hulk hits big (or a Twilight, or a Harry Potter), and that’s probably for the best. But I think it starts with where we are as a Society. In many ways, Conflict is the new Communication. But, after reading the opening essays of Smashed, I think that, in the twenty-first century, Sarcasm is also an aspect of Communication. And further, as Dumais observes, “Sarcasm, like humor, is communication’s self-defense mode” (9).Nothing has been the same in the Post-9/11 malaise and the decision to go to war in 2003. It was within this never-to-be-the-same-again world that Dumais hints at the origins of Drunk Hulk, sitting in a pub in March of 2003, listening to the president make his proclamations of Patriotism, War, and Vengeance.Five years on, Drunk Hulk has drawn the attention of Time Magazine, among other stalwart news corporations, and Dumais has done three TEDx talks as a result of it.It is at this point that Dumais gives a primer on using Twitter successfully and lets the reader know that the book is set up as Tweets by year (a Director’s Cut, actually; he has removed some he deemed “terrible or repetitive”).The Tweets themselves are a mix of politics, psychology, pop culture, and often-times profound spiritual insights. If the Buddha was a drinker, some of the tenets of Buddhism might have sounded like some of these.I’ve pulled a selection from 2010 for readers unfamiliar with Drunk Hulk:PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS DRESS LIKE BUFF SMURF FROM AVATAR! ISRAEL TO RETALIATE WITH TWILIGHT THEME!DRUNK HULK KNOW DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOST AND SARAH PALIN SPEECH! LOST MAKE SENSE!PROTEST IN KYRGYZSTAN HAS WORLD ON EDGE AS PEOPLES SEARCH FOR IT ON GOOGLE MAP!IT GREAT THAT TEA PARTY SAME FOR ADULT AS IT IS FOR CHILDS! IT REQUIRE LOT IMAGINATION TO MAINTAIN ILLUSION!AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION WANT RID ASPERGER SYNDROME! THIS MEAN PEOPLES GO BACK TO BE JUST WEIRD AGAIN!DRUNK HULK HAVE NO THING TO DO TODAY! DRUNK HULK FEEL LIKE CHARACTER IN MURAKAMI BOOK!LISTEN GRANDPA! IF DRUNK HULK WANT HEAR SAME STORY OVER AND OVER! DRUNK HULK READ DEAN KOONTZ BOOK!As Dumais states in the introductory chapters, this collection serves as a snapshot of the past several years in world events. At times, it is even prescient (or synchronicitous, as today in the news there is an article about the accusations against the writer of True Detective as plagiarizing from several sources):DRUNK HULK AGAINST PLAGIARISM! THERE NEVER REASON TO COPY SOMEONE ELSE WORK AS YOUR OWN! CUT AND PASTE IF YOU AGREE!After the sections by year, there are specialty sections, called “Resolutions!” and “Pick Up Lines.” There is also a fascinating section of retweets about Gaddafi’s death first being found out through Drunk Hulk. It is instructive to read the abundant amount of tweets wondering what is wrong with the world (and the tweeter) that they got the news from such a source.In a final essay, Dumais announces that, after a nearly 5-year run, he has decided to end the Twitter feed for Drunk Hulk, so he doesn’t become too dependant on it as a writer and speaker. With attention from the likes of Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Russell Brand, plus the cover quote from NPR, Drunk Hulk has certainly gotten attention and made an impact, and has served his creator well.Perhaps this End of 2013 tweet says it best about the impact of the Drunk Hulk tweets, and others like it:TWITTER WORTH $40 BILLION! HEY TWITTER! YOU WELCOME!